Making email campaigns relevant to your website visitors can be highly effective in converting them from browsers to shoppers. Behavioural data is a powerful tool in doing just that. Internet Retailing recently hosted a webinar, in association with RedEye, where participants gained an insight into behavioural email and how they might use it to benefit their businesses. Our speaker was Matthew Kelleher, commercial director at RedEye.

Reflecting customers’ interests in the products and content they are shown on websites and emails can help boost sales dramatically. In a recent Internet Retailing webinar Richard Evans, director of marketing EMEA for Silverpop, Rolf Doerr, director of business development for Baynote, and Alistair McLeish, CTO of MusicRoom.com, explored how retailers can make this work for them.

In our final preview of our annual conference, Internet Retailing 2011, we asked Gavin Sathianathan, head of commerce partnerships at Facebook, how retail and social media can work together most effectively.

December’s holiday season is the busiest time for most retailers. Internet Retailing recently hosted a webinar giving merchants practical advice and useful tips on how to make the most of this time of year. Our guest speaker was Kylee Hall, product marketing manager at IBM.

Aiming to help UK etailers combat fraud and protect user identities, BT has announced the launch of a new authentication service.
Called BT Managed Authentication, the service has been developed for etailers selling high value goods, and online providers which tend to attract large numbers of regular customers, accessing specific applications.

Currys and PC World parent company Dixons Retail has partnered with Panasonic to launch its first Facebook marketing campaign. The ‘Your Moment’ campaign has launched online and offers people the chance to win Panasonic cameras and camcorders and a top prize of £5,000 by uploading their favourite ‘summer moment’.

Affordable luxury fashion etailer My-Wardrobe is pushing ahead with its international growth strategy, aiming to at least double sales in the Middle East in the next year. Both ex-pats and local customers in are flocking to the site, according to marketing director Rob Moss, attracted by high profile brands such as Burberry, D&G, Acne and Vivienne Westwood

Leading global businesses, including our own parcel delivery company Yodel, have joined forces to launch the International Cyber Security Protection Alliance (ICSPA) this week. The group has been formed to help tackle the growing threat posed by cybercriminals.
ICSPA will be run as a global not-for-profit organisation that will channel funding, expertise and assistance directly into law enforcement cybercrime units in both domestic and international markets.

A new study conducted by Havas Media Social and Lightspeed Research, suggests that despite the retail industry hailing social commerce as the next big thing, 89% of people have not bought anything through Facebook and 44% are not interested in doing so. However the majority of consumers (70%) feel that targeted advertising based on interests or shopping behaviour, similar to Amazon’s recommendation model, would make them more likely to buy products on social networks.

Sofa giant DFS has appointed affilinet as its affiliate marketing network of choice and together they have started working on a call-tracking programme that will help shape future marketing activities. The deal will see affilinet help to better integrate online and offline marketing to maximise sales and ROI from digital marketing channels.

In a UK supermarket first, Waitrose.com is covering the cost of planting thousands of wild cherry, hazel and silver birch woodlands across the UK, in a new CSR initiative. Conservation charity The Woodland Trust has partnered with Waitrose for the scheme which will result in 35,000 native British trees being planted during 2011. The initiative will counter possible accusations from environmentalists of additional delivery vans emitting high levels of C02 as the service expands.

Tesco has launched an official Facebook page as part of its strategy to expand its social media community. The page brings together Tesco’s existing Facebook pages and the aim is to further developthe online relationships with customers. Marketing activities tailored to Facebook fans are in the pipeline including exclusive offers and promotions.

Scottish fashion brand Lyle and Scott is to launch a social-media commerce store enabling customers to shop through Facebook. The application, developed by BT Fresca, follows Lyle and Scott’s recently relaunched mobile-optimised website.
Lyle and Scott has a 130-year history and is known for its quality jackets, polo shirts, skirts and knitwear. Its golden eagle logo is now widely recognised in the UK and beyond. The online store was relaunched in 2010 and the now serves the UK, France, Germany, Sweden.

Today there are clear differences about the way men and women are using the latest digital channels to shop, with women leaning more towards social and men more towards mobile. Research just out from shopper research agency Shoppercentric shows 38% of men own a smartphone (compared to 29 % of women) and 60% of women use Facebook (compared to 52% of men).

Couponstar, the digital discount voucher specialist, has launched a new suite of solutions enabling brands to offer customers coupons through social networks Twitter and Facebook.
The service will allow retailers and FMCG brands to issue secure printable coupons on social networks, with the added guarantee that the offers will not be distributed by third parties. The service, called ‘Social Bricks’, has the advantage of being easily integrated into etailers’ existing social media activities.

Digital marketing disciplines like Search Engine Optimisation, Pay-Per-Click advertising and email marketing are still seen as more effective than social media for brand building and driving sales leads, says a survey of over 100 marketers. The ‘Digital Disciplines’ report from Rocket shows that only 21% of marketers surveyed rate social media as ‘very effective’ for brand building, and only 17% rating it as ‘very effective for driving sales leads.

There is a boom in credit card fraud and ID theft in the UK, finds a study by the leading online security show – Infosec – that kicks off in London this week and 60% of victims blame online retailers

The retailers are coming – Mobile Marketing Association starts US programme to get more retails and mobile companies working together US CTIA wireless event in Las Vegas reports 20% of attendees are now retail brands

More businesses are concentrating on digital marketing at the expense of marketing’s core principals, according to an industry roundtable in Manchester this week organized by UKFast. A clear endorsement of a multi-channel strategy, at least …

Fashion chain Oasis has launched a peer-to-peer mobile gift voucher service using SMS at the same time as an app that allows for one click check out when shopping on an iPhone