FRONT COVER- TOM
Welcome to our March issue of The Store Magazine! This week brings you a traffic building special edition following on from the Christmas issue (December 2012).
That‘s right, from social media to search engine optimisation to interactive advertisements, The Store team will discuss and analyse which department store adopts best practice when it comes to traffic building techniques. Following on from the previous edition, our team thought the competition between House of Fraser, Harrods and Fenwick was that we‘ve decided to stick with these and see who will come out on top. Plus, more importantly, we have asked you, our beloved Store readers, to let us know what you think a brand can do to be most effective and even more appealing to the general public whilst building traffic to their website! So, will it be the infamous, well-loved Harrods brand that wins the battle, the modest (yet secretly ‗dark horse‘ of the competition) House of Fraser that brings you affordable luxury or will it be the niche brand Fenwick who steals the competition? We say let‘s find out! So once again, kick back, relax, grab a tea (or coffee) and let battle of the department store brands commence!
The Store Magazine Team
Meet the Editors What is Traffic Building? Refresh Your Memory Store context What Do You Think? Search Marketing Back Links Online PR Social Media Online Advertising E-mail Marketing Department Store E-mail Mobile Marketing Mobile App Marketing Online Partnerships Affiliate Marketing Viral Marketing What We Think References
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So what is this strange phrase? Well, traffic building refers to the act of driving visitors to your company‘s (or even your personal) website. Driving these visitors to the desired website can generate awareness and even sales, therefore revenue for the company. Generating traffic to an organisation‘s website can help achieve specific emarketing goals the company may have set. According to Dave Chaffey and PR Smith (2009) there are three key aspects to successful traffic building: TARGETS These are essentially the e-marketing goals of the organisation. It refers to the quality, quantity and cost of traffic building techniques (see below). Quantity refers particularly to how many individuals, either recurring or unique, visit the website. Some organisations will measure success based upon how many visitors they have had, but this is complicated to compare against sales and return of investment (ROI) of the traffic building investment. Instead organisations should ask themselves two key questions: are the visitors of the desired target market demographic? Secondly, are they actually engaging with the content of the website or clicking off straight away? These will determine truer success. This is quality. Cost of traffic refers to cost per acquisition or cost per action (CPA) which works out
whether the ROI is worth the initial traffic building campaigns costs. CPA may apply to cost per visitor, cost per lead or cost per enquiry. The value of sales should also be compared to the cost of campaign costs. However, there is the argument that if a customer doesn‘t purchase, there is nothing wrong with the traffic building but the website itself. TECHNIQUES See over the page for a full comprehensive diagram detailing traffic building techniques. An organisation needs to find the right mix of online and offline traffic building techniques for their campaign; there is no one size fits all! TIMING An organisation‘s traffic building campaign may have times of high potential, maybe during a website launch or re-launch. However, it‘s important to remember that consumers are looking to purchase all year round. So continuous traffic building techniques should be invested in as well as heightened activity from the organisation. A consistent level of service, in-store and online, is key when it comes to customer retention.
Category
Techniques
Search Marketing
Search engine optimisation (SEO), Paid search (pay per click, PPC), paid for results/ inclusion.
Online PR
Social media, blogs, online communities, media alert services.
Online Partnerships
Affiliate marketing, sponsorship, cobranding, widget marketing.
Interactive Advertisements
Targeted pop-ups, (behavioural targeting, sponsorship, third-party, endorsement.
Email Services
Newsletters, direct emailing lists (opt-in).
Viral Marketing
Word of mouth, viral materials e.g.: videos, buzz marketing, media mentions/ attention.
Offline Marketing
Direct mail, exhibitions, packaging, merchandising, advertising, personal selling, PR, events, sales/ price promotion.
Source: Chaffey & Smith (2009)
Just to re-fresh our memories, here‘s some background information that was also included in the December issue, just to put the debate into context.
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FENWICK Founded in 1882 by John James Fenwick. Operates Bentalls and a Williams & Griffin stores. Still currently Fenwick family owned. Valued at UK £452 million. 11 stores in the UK. Online transactions are available but still mostly see in-store purchases. Their target market is primarily female ABC1‘s. Although the different locations of the store attract different variations of demographics.
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HOUSE OF FRASER Floated on the stock market in 1994. 62 stores in the UK. 2010 operating profit of UK£30 million (15.4% increase). Their target market is primarily females aged 45 years and social class AB. However, HoF also appeals to above average amount of C1 shoppers. 4th top online retailer. 60 million online sales in 2010/2011.
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HARRODS Popular London tourist destination. Valued at UK£1.6 billion (2010).
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Additional outlets at Heathrow and Gatwick airports. Delivers overseas online purchases to over 30 countries. 2011 revenue increased 12.7% to UK £651.7 million. Aims to be the world‘s number one department store. Their target market is primarily ABC1 young adults. Although being a tourist attraction makes it difficult to pin point. DEPARTMENT STORE CONTEXT Valued at UK£11.6 billion in 2011. Leading department stores include: M&S, John Lewis, Debenhams, House of Fraser and Harrods. The market in 2011 was valued at UK£14.1 billion. Mintel (2012) predicts the market to be valued at UK£18.1 billion (best case) and UK£13.9 billion (worst case) by 2016. Sale are predicted to be around UK£15.5 billion in 2016. Issues and threats include: recession, ageing population, little disposable income for families and rising cost of basic commodities.
From this information we can see that House of Fraser is potentially ahead of the game when it comes to traffic building to their website. Harrods appear to be developing their global online presence but more work is to be done. Fenwick, on the other hand, appears to be behind when it comes to utilising online as a profit making tool. Source: Mintel (2012)
In addition to the previous pages‘ department store context., The Store team did some more digging to put these brands into traffic building context.
Frequency of online purchase tends to be more occasional compared to in store, with sharp peaks around seasonal periods.
A Mintel report (2012) estimates that 10.5% (UK £1.2 billion) of the department store sector size was through online transactions in 2010 (7.7% increase). Of which House of Fraser, Debenhams, John Lewis and M&S heavily dominate (See Figure One for online sales by department store).
Among shoppers, it‘s been found that free delivery ranks highest in how to make online purchases more appealing (Figure Three). Under 35 year olds have also expressed a longing for more choice online and prefer to make a decision, based upon product reviews which can be integrated with social media sites and third-party websites (although these aren‘t entirely traffic building- they will help achieve customer sales and retention. Remember- the issue may not lie in the traffic building but the website itself!).
These department stores have managed to gain more market share due to the slow online development of stores such as Selfridges. A key trend in the department store market is: • Multi-channel offerings to build upon click and collect services. Taking this trend into account, House of Fraser have shown innovation through their new dotcom stores. These hold no stock and are purely designed for online browsing and ordering and will also enable product collection and returns. Should this pilot scheme prove to be successful, it could be seen rolled out in many other stores (a great offline traffic building technique!). 85% of consumers say they actually purchase on department store websites rather than in-store (see Figure Two).
So given the above facts, House of Fraser is very much a key player in the market with plenty of promising potential. Harrods appears to not be direct competition with the likes of HoF, John Lewis, Debenhams, M&S and so on. However, it is still apparent that although Harrods offers a lot of online services, it too has a long way to go before fulfilling it‘s potential. It is already evident that Fenwick is clearly behind with the online sales and utilisation but is the potential actually there for the brand? Now the context has been set, turn over to see what The Store readers think about traffic building >>> Sources: Mintel (2012); Chaffey & Smith (2009)
Figure One: Online sales by leading department stores
Figure Two: Frequency of in-store and online purchases at department stores
Figure Three: Ways of making online shopping more appealing Figure Four: Leading department stores shares of sector sales
Source: Mintel (2012)
So there‘s the market context facts by Mintel (2012) but are these entirely accurate? We sought information to find out what you think about traffic building. Two surveys were run on SurveyMonkey for two weeks. The first was a general traffic building survey which had a total of 51 respondents. The second survey is an online PR focused survey- given that The Store team all have a PR background, this was of special interest to us! The respondents for the survey were:
The following graphs show the questions asked and the percentage of responses for each answer for the general traffic building survey.
Why are these questions being asked?
These questions were asked to see how the public view common traffic building techniques and their general reaction to them. Although question 10 is not a traffic building technique following on from the Mintel (2012) context there‘s no mention of how this law change may affect the quality of an organisations web content.
The next set of questions and responses come from the specific online PR traffic building survey. The respondents were the same as the first survey.
So there‘s the raw data for both surveys., but, what does it mean? Well firstly The Store team would like to point out that this survey is only meant to be a general indicator and measures were not taken to try and create balanced sample. Therefore the gender and age questions are slightly biased towards 18-24 year olds and females. Surprisingly 65.31% of you have actually acted upon a direct email sent from department store, so does this prove that not all sales emails are junk? Are department stores becoming more inventive in their direct email traffic building approaches? In contradiction to that statistic, 65.31% of you have also acted upon the decision to opt out of such email schemes and 8.16% expressed they would like to but aren‘t sure how. 22.45% are happy to received the emails.
62.50% of you haven‘t clicked on sponsored links at the top of search engine results pages under the belief that they are only there to try and sell you something. 37.50% believe they are still relevant to your search suggesting the taboo-ness of these are breaking through to some people. It would be interesting to compare this to these links bounce rates and sales. Similarly 62.50% of you have also avoided clicking on banner advertisements. Presumably under the same avoidance of being sold something. From this is it clear that sponsored/ paid for search links and banner advertisements may not be creative enough in their approach to online browsers. This is backed up by 45.83% saying that banner ads that appear on a third-party website promoting the product they just search is not an effective technique and 25% go as far to say that it annoys them. Only 35.42% of respondents say that they have browsed other brands because they sponsor/ are sponsored by a brand they currently like. With over 50% saying they haven‘t ever, could sponsorship actually be an effective traffic building technique online, should it be more focused to the offline communications in order to be value for investment? And those dreaded cookie laws- although they are not a traffic building technique, remember the introduction. Sometimes it‘s
not the traffic building technique but the website itself. Since there was no mention of cookie laws on Mintel, it‘s such a current issue that it simply can not be ignored. 34.04% of you don‘t understand cookie laws at all and hate the pop up agreements because you don‘t know what you‘re actually agreeing to. Whereas collectively over 30% of you don‘t mind the change in law and realise agreeing to the policy doesn‘t make a difference to when before the law was passed. Overall, the most common of traffic building techniques have had a mixed response. The majority of respondents have expressed that they find the techniques annoying and in-effective. Now let‘s take a look at the online PR survey results, to see if they are any different. Over half of you have gone to a department store‘s website based upon their social media activity but 80% say they do not follow multiple department stores on social media websites to compare their products and services. This suggests that they are followed because of the their social media content instead. Similarly the same percentage also said they choose to receive email updates from stores. Only 20% of respondents said that they have browsed a department store‘s website based upon their blog activity. This suggests that blogs are a least
influential form of building traffic to a website. This could be because, even though being in the retail/ fashion sector, department stores don‘t see the need to need to show off their sector expertise through a blog and only a minority actually run a blog.
media scape with brands. Or is it? 64.295 of you still said you have visited a store‘s website based upon someone else liking, sharing, following or tweeting them on Facebook and Twitter. Which enforces the previous argument for third-party endorsement.
However, 53.33% of you have browsed a store‘s website based upon recommendation from other bloggers and magazine articles online. Suggesting that the value of third-party endorsement is very much key.
Exactly 50% of you said that if brands utilised different types of social media if would enable you to think more highly of those brands. However the sceptical 28.57% of you said it would depend upon the content. So they would have o be creative and utilised other platforms such as Pinterest, YouTube, LinkedIn, blogs and so on well.
Reassuringly 53.33% said news about a department store would reach you primarily online- which goes to show not all traffic building hope is lost! However, 26.67% still would only hear about news through word of mouth- an overlooked form of offline traffic building for the fear of the Chinese whispers effect. An incentive to get traffic to the desired website would be a competition or online freebie event where there is something to gain for the consumer. If as part of that competition liking, sharing, following, tweeting that company‘s profile was involved, 42.86% said you would go for it because it‘s free. However marginally different 35.71% said they wouldn‘t because they know how annoying it is when other people do that, suggesting that the old ‗like and share us to be entered into our competition‘ trick is losing it‘s novelty and clouding the social
So is online PR in general more successful? We like to think so here at The Store HQ! According to our survey (remember not an actual representative) the online PR techniques for department store‘s traffic building are far more successful than techniques such as interactive advertisements and direct email. But everything still remains to be seen! Flip over the page to see us pull apart and analyse traffic building techniques specific to House of Fraser, Harrods and Fenwick. Who will come out the winner? >>> If you would like access to the raw data of the survey contact The Store HQ on storehq@thestoremag.co.uk.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a powerful web marketing technique that helps websites better position themselves in search engines such as Google or Yahoo. Whenever you enter a query in a search engine and hit 'enter' you get a list of web results that contain that query term. Users normally tend to visit websites that are at the top of this list as they perceive those to be more relevant to the query. SEO is a technique which helps search engines find and rank your site higher than the millions of other sites in response to a search query. The first basic truth you need to know to learn SEO is that search engines are not humans. While this might be obvious for everybody, the differences between how humans and search engines view web pages aren't. Unlike humans, search engines are text-driven. Although technology advances rapidly, search engines are far from intelligent creatures that can feel the beauty of a cool design or enjoy the sounds and movement in movies. Instead, search engines crawl the Web, looking at particular site items (mainly text) to get an idea what a site is about. This brief explanation is not the most precise because as we will see next, search engines perform several activities in order to deliver search results – crawling, indexing, processing, calculating relevancy, and retrieving.
First, search engines crawl the Web to see what is there. This task is performed by a piece of software, called a crawler or a spider (or Googlebot, as is the case with Google). Spiders follow links from one page to another and index everything they find on their way. Having in mind the number of pages on the Web (over 20 billion), it is impossible for a spider to visit a site daily just to see if a new page has appeared or if an existing page has been modified, sometimes crawlers may not end up visiting your site for a month or two.
After a page is crawled, the next step is to index its content. The indexed page is stored in a giant database, from where it can later be retrieved. Essentially, the process of indexing is identifying the words and expressions that best describe the page and assigning the page to particular keywords. For a human it will not be possible to process such amounts of information but generally search engines deal just fine with this task. Sometimes they might not get the meaning of a page right but if you help them by optimizing it, it will be easier for them to classify your pages correctly and for you – to get higher rankings. When a search request comes, the search engine processes it – i.e. it compares the search string in the search request with the indexed pages in the database. Since it is likely that more than one page (practically it is millions of pages) contains the search string, the search engine starts calculating the relevancy of each of the pages in its index with the search string.
There are various algorithms to calculate relevancy. Each of these algorithms has different relative weights for common factors like keyword density, links, or metatags. That is why different search engines give different search results pages for the same search string. What is more, it is a known fact that all major search engines, like Yahoo!, Google, Bing, etc. periodically change their algorithms and if you want to keep at the top, you also need to adapt your pages to the latest changes. This is one reason (the other is your competitors) to devote permanent efforts to SEO, if you'd like to be at the top. The last step in search engines' activity is retrieving the results. Basically, it is nothing more than simply displaying them in the browser – i.e. the endless pages of search results that are sorted from the most relevant to the least relevant sites. In terms of finding out about our department store‘s search engine optimisation it‘s impossible to depict exactly how they do this as if it was common knowledge on how to be top of results pages every organisation would be doing it. However we can look at where they rank when searching for department stores. When typing in ‗Department stores‘ into Google the following (see opposite are the first results. This clearly shows that House of Fraser and Harrods have good search engine optimisation techniques for the key terms. On the same search a sponsored/ paid for link for John Lewis. However, as we have seen from our primary research this does not prove to be an effective way of traffic building. However, HoF do have sponsored links but when search for ‗House of Fraser‘ which is also in effective.
“Search engine optimisation, the more quality back links there are from other sites to your site, the higher the site will be ranked in the natural or organic listings of the search engines‘‘ (Chaffey, 2008).
The Fenwick website does not have a lot of bank links as it is not like Harrods and House of Fraser, which is full of lots of back links.
Each website has a link from their homepage that when visitors access other links, they can always click on the homepage link and it takes them back to the main menu.
. The diagram above describes how to interact backlinks so when visitors access the websites, they find it interactive as there are lots of links to access.
Fenwick does not have many backlinks. This could be because there is not enough information to provide. House of Fraser and Harrods has more backlinks as there are lots of pages for visitors to go on to. This is constructive, stands out and enhances the website.
Online PR – ―shaping opinions and driving visitors to different websites‘‘ (Chaffey, 2008). ―Attracting visitors through search, Engagement and Dialogue. Building Campaign Buzz, Defensive/Crisis‖ (Chaffey, 2008). As mentioned above all of the department store websites are search engine optimised, although some more than others. Other ways of attracting visitors is through blogs, RSS feeds and online press releases. The engagement and dialogue is about how to best influence the audience through attracting visitors through blogs and so on. Building a campaign buzz is how to use social and online media to get the core messages of the organisation across. If these are communicated effectively then they will attract more traffic to the site. Crisis PR is always good to have on hand regardless of any campaign as things can always go wrong an it‘s better to be prepared.
Harrods do have a blog (see image below) as do House of Fraser, but Fenwick do not. Both Harrods and House of Fraser utilise their blogs well, although they are not well marketed as you have to go onto the website in order to find it, unless specifically searching for it. Therefore this in itself doesn‘t build traffic to the website but may be helpful in customer retention.
The power of business blogs can often be under-estimated by the public. Blogs are an effective way of showcasing sector expertise or talent, gives the company a voice and view on issues and can helps attract visitors from additional searches other than their own sector searches. As the primary research also shows, consumers would more likely have a higher opinion of an organisation should they utilise their blogging properly. Therefore Fenwick should consider starting a blog and other social media activity before they are left behind in the sector.
FOLLOW ME? Social media is a low-cost tools that are used to combine technology and social interaction with the use of words. These tools are typically internet or mobile based. A few that you have probably heard of include Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. Social media gives marketers a voice and a way to communicate with peers, customers and potential consumers. It personalizes the "brand" and helps you to spread your message in a relaxed and conversational way. There‘s many advantages in using social media however there are some disadvantages as well. The downfall to social media, if you could call it that , is it must be a part of your everyday life in order to keep the momentum and attention you need for it to be successful. Pincott (2000) suggests there are two key issues in site promotion. First there should be a media strategy which will mainly be determined by how to reach the target audience. It will define the online promotion techniques that should be used and where to advertise online. Second there is a creative strategy. All site promotion will influence perceptions of the brand (Chaffey, Smith, 2008).
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How to use Social media – tips Don‘t depend only on social media, you must integrate it with other vehicles of marketing. Social media will create awareness, but that‘s not enough to sell your product. Be yourself, reflect personality. There are no written "right" or "wrong" rules when it comes to social media, only you can determine what will work for you. Be consistent, if you do not plan on being consistent don't do it at all - it's a waste of everyone's time. Address negative comments straight away! Share all the positive comments!
The image opposite is taken from House of Fraser Facebook fun page. It shows negative comment from the customer and quick & effective response from House of Fraser. It illustrates that social media is a great tool when managed in a good way. Connecting and engaging with clients and customers is a great way to show the human side of your company and establish trust and loyalty. House of Fraser has a great presence on social media. Retailer is very closely with social media agency We Are Social to create an integrated strategy.
The department store has recently partnered with the National Union of Students' (NUS) Extra Card, to launch a vouchering app on the House of Fraser Facebook page. The app, created by We Are Social, enables students who "like" the brand on Facebook to receive a 10% discount when shopping on its site.
By pushing marketing campaigns through social media, House of Fraser is ensuring that it has a multichannel offering that provides a competitive advantage over its rivals. You will find the retailer on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Goggle +, YouTube and eBay.
Harrods also acknowledged power of social media and has its presence on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. In addition there‘s a video channel on Harrods website where you can follow latest news and fashion trends. Retailer also announced recently Harrods Magazine for iPad with free subscription (available on iTunes).
Family owned retailer Fenwick may be one of the most low-profile department store groups in the UK. The Fenwick.co.uk site covers womenswear, accessories, beauty, bath and body, home accessories and gifts. Their interaction with the customer is very minimal. There is no social media or fun pages. Visitors cannot follow Fenwick on any of the social media platforms. The success of other department store groups online such as John Lewis, Debenhams and Selfridges shows that ecommerce can be a lucrative channel for Fenwick, and entering the digital age could be the making of this family business.
Twitter for Business Twitter is probably the most effective social media tool for marketers. There is great power in being able to retweet. ―Retweet‖ simply means you re-share someone else‘s content that they posted in a tweet. It is great opportunity for departments store to retweet all the positive comments left by happy customers.
Interactive ads can ―help build site traffic and building brand recognition‘‘ (Chaffey, 2008). Fenwick have colourful images based adverts although they rarely have pop up adverts on external pages. Again this brand appears to be lacking behind in another key area that can help build traffic to the website.
Harrods adverts use a lot of imagery, colour and also have the advantage of being able to promote lots of other brands as well as themselves. Although they do use pop up advertisements on other external websites to build traffic to their own website they do not use targeted pop ups which can prove effective although our primary research failed to show this and instead annoy consumers. See images on the page to view types of pop up advertisements that Harrods use.
House of Fraser again use a lot of imagery and colour, except they always have their name and logo clearly on the advertisements, unlike Harrods. They also use targeted pop ups whereby they come up on external sites just after the consumer has browsed on House of Fraser. This can prove more effective as the consumer feel that‘s the ad is personal to them rather than the typical ‗advertising blur‘. However, it seems ads are still ads and annoy a large percentage of consumers. Could department stores get more creative in using online ads?
All three websites have some form of online ads to build site traffic and build brand recognition. It is effective targeting visitors through the dynamic graphics that have been used.
These are other examples of the online ads have been used to enhance the department store‘s image and to build traffic to their websites. Rich media and large format ads seems to be more successful in attracting consumer attention.
Sales promotions and seasonal sales are seemingly big topics to use banner interactive advertisements for. It almost seems to common though now, and all departments stores risk losing their appeal if more creativity is not applied in their approaches.
Opt-in e-mail is the key to successful email marketing. It is a powerful online communication tool. It is mostly used for direct response, but e-newsletters can also achieve branding objectives. Marketers are able to push out a targeted message to a customer to inform and remind and certain to view at least the subject line within their e-mail inbox. The main issue is Spam, unsolicited email sent by unscrupulous traders. Most spam messages on the Internet today are advertisements from individuals and the occasional small business looking for a way to make a fast buck. Spam messages are usually sent out using sophisticated techniques designed to mask the messages' true senders and points of origin. To achieve the potential benefits of opt-in e-mail, marketers should avoid Spam. Companies must ask consumers to provide their e-mail address and give them the option of ‗opting info‘ communications and choosing their communication preferences (type of content, frequency of e-mail). Opt-in email: advantages: • Preserves your email marketing reputation • Shows customers that you respect their privacy • Helps you email people who are interest in what you're selling • Saves you time and money by microfocusing your list • Lets you be more targeted in your campaigns • Helps you build long-term, trustbased relationships with customers • Can boost your sales and product interest
E-mail is still useful tool comparing with other search or social networking, and brands who have abandoned their mailing lists completely for Facebook and Twitter might end up regretting it. Only by combining all of these tools in your marketing strategy – email, search and social – you can amplify your brand‘s awareness, significantly increase your reach and maximize the effectiveness of your campaigns (Mediabistro, 2012).
Benefits of e-mail vs. Social Media
Majority of companies use e-mail marketing. There‘s many benefits such as low cost, it is useful for customers to click through to the direct website or to special promotions offered by stores. Our research looked at Fenwick, House of Fraser and Harrods. Analysis showed that only House of Fraser and Harrods actively using e-mail marketing where as Fenwick remains very low-profiled with minimum email sent to their customers. House of Fraser use colours associated with their store (black, pink, white) and address their customers using ‗hello shopper‘ which is not as direct as it could be. Using personalised e-mail increase its effectiveness; for example using Miss Smith grabs attention. You will find links to all the social media sites as well as to House of Fraser blog. Products are shown with their prices, usually from your preferred sections of the store. At the bottom of every e-mail there‘s info about delivery, current promotions end upcoming special events. Recently House of Fraser added new feature to their emails which contain link to download HOF iPhone app. Harrods also use colours similar to their website. All e-mails are very simplistic what is associated with the website. There are very often links to competitions run by Harrods and special offers. The store doesn‘t focus on addressing customers by their names. Harrods use the Harrods Rewards card well as their inform and remind customers to use it when shopping online. Unlike House of Fraser which does not mention their loyalty card in their emails at all. Harrods e-mails contain direct links to Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest.
House of Fraser as well as Harrods send e-mails on the daily basis. Fenwick don‘t use e-mail marketing effectively. It gives the customer an option on their website to subscribe to Fenwick‘s newsletter but that‘s where it ends. Research lasted 3 months and during that time only two e-mail were received from Fenwick. They give you an option to share the content through social media sites however non of them are official Fenwick‘s pages.
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Designing effective e-mail It should grab attention in subject line and body Content should be relevant to target and be brief Be personalized – use Dear Mr Smith It has to provide unsubscribe option Should have direct links to website (Chaffey, Smith, 2008)
Mobile marketing anywhere!
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Mobile has started to play a huge role in marketing over the last couple of years. Mobile is changing the face of marketing. With increasing usage of smartphones we are now connected 24/7. Mobile applications are beginning to find widespread approval of companies - and generate revenues. Major brands are now running targeted mobile campaigns, and using them to experiment with new ways of interacting with consumers. Mobile marketing is increasingly the direction many businesses are taking. With the increasing number of users with smartphones and other mobile devices, businesses are using mobile marketing to reach these customers. Mobile shopping through apps is getting very popular thanks to the convenience and being able to shop anywhere at any time. Shoppers compare products and prices via mobile while visiting retailer; customers are browsing using apps.
Guide to marketing
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Provide tools people will find useful and interesting. Try to be as interactive as it is possible. Your app needs to be useful.
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Never confuse quantity with quality. Don't send pointless messages to people who have given you their details. Only send staff that is beneficial to your customers. Think what are their needs.
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Use the power of location. Use geography to make your message more relevant. Delivering the right message, at the right time and in the right location is the KEY.
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Offer your mobile contacts a way of opting out of receiving messages, such as sending the word "stop".
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Use "pull messaging" rather than just "push messaging". Department stores can offer consumers the opportunity to text "deal" in return for their latest offers.
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Mobile marketing should be integrated with your social media. The number of people using mobiles to access these sites has risen by more than 130% over the past 12 months, according to the Internet Advertising Bureau.
Mobile apps stores:
and
the
department
House of Fraser and Harrods have got their apps unlike Fenwick. The free House of Fraser app allowing customers to browse and shop over 1,000 designer brands across all categories. Customers can use the app to scan product barcodes whilst in their local store, read product reviews and information, as well check online availability; a great tool for customers looking for specific sizes or colour variations. The stock locator is another key feature which enables users to select items online and check product availability in their local stores. Users can create ‗gift lists‘ and ‗wish lists‘ which are great for storing those must buy products. The app is connected with social media sites as well, customers can share their wish lists with friends and family via Facebook. The app is also linked to House of Fraser‘s Reward Programme – Recognition. Harrods app enables customers to browse news on luxury items but you won‘t be able to shop via app. Features including: a restaurant guide, including menus from all 29 Harrods restaurants, history section of the app which explains everything about the chain's history, store floor plan, a news section which gives you all the latest gossip and special deals going on at Harrods, while the Twitter feed keeps you up to date with all the goings on at the shop. Customers can also add in-store events to their list of reminders.
Online partnerships refer to techniques that overlap with online PR. Techniques include sponsorship, affiliate marketing and link building. Link building is a key activity for SEO, as mentioned previously. Chaffey and Smith have created a checklist for best practice link-building: • Achieve natural link building through quality content. • Request in-bound only or one way links from partners. • Reciprocal linking- two way links. • Buying links- on directories for example. • Create your own external links. • Generate buzz through PR. In the case of Harrods and House of Fraser as mentioned before they are search engine optimised and stock multiple well known brands and use reciprocal links between the websites. Fenwick do stock designer name products but they‘re lesser well known among the general public; they‘re more niche. Online partnerships also refers to sponsorship. Sponsorship online is different to virtual world sponsorship. It‘s more complicated to handle and you have to trust the organisation to handle their content- if they do something wrong online or damage their reputation it will immediately have a negative impact on the brand also in partnership.
None of the department stores have online sponsorship deals with an other organisation. Although as part of their online corporate social responsibility they do have online and virtual world partnerships with multiple charities. House of Fraser supports Sparks and Walk the Walk. Harrods doesn‘t appear to support any charities and neither does Fenwick. Although this could mean they do in the real world, just not online. Although supporting a charity isn‘t the same as a sponsorship partnership, it can help greatly with he reputation of brand and the brand‘s name will also be attached to anything the charity does, therefore still having the potential to build some traffic sometimes to the website.
Affiliate Marketing is one of the most popular ways to make money online but ‗what is affiliate marketing?‘. Many people see and hear about it and how normal people are making money by doing it, yet they fail to understand what it is and how it actually works. Affiliate marketing is that it‘s a technique where other publishers and websites will promote your business. Basically the way it works is that an affiliate is rewarded every time a visitor, customer or sale for your business is generated through an advertisement on their web site. There are many different ways compensation is provided, but the concept remains consistent—you pay them for generating business for you. If a viewer is at the affiliate‘s web site, and the affiliate doesn‘t quite have what they‘re looking for, they can easily click over to your web site. It‘s an increasingly popular technique for those seeking to maximize they‘re staying power on the web..
Affiliate marketing overlaps with other internet marketing methods to some degree, because affiliates often use regular advertising methods. Those methods include organic search engine optimization (SEO), paid search engine marketing (PPC - Pay Per Click), e-mail marketing, content marketing and in some sense display advertising. On the other hand, affiliates sometimes use less orthodox techniques, such as publishing reviews of products or services offered by a partner. Affiliate marketing is commonly confused with referral marketing, as both forms of marketing use third parties to drive sales to the retailer. However, both are distinct forms of marketing and the main difference between them is that affiliate marketing relies purely on financial motivations to drive sales while referral marketing relies on trust and personal relationships to drive sales. Affiliate marketing is frequently overlooked by advertisers. While search engines, e-mail, and website syndication capture much of the attention of online retailers, affiliate marketing carries a much lower profile. Still, affiliates continue to play a significant role in eretailers‗ marketing strategies.
Viral marketing is like a virus. Spreads around as word-of-mouth using all the traditional online and offline media. Viral marketing describes any strategy that encourages individuals to pass on a marketing message to others, creating the potential for exponential growth in the message‘s exposure and influence. Like viruses, such strategies take advantage of rapid multiplication to explode the message to thousands, to millions. Dr. Ralph F. Wilson (2012) stated that the elements of viral marketing necessary to point out are: • Gives away products or services; • Provides for effortless transfer to others; • Scales easily from small to very large; • Exploits common motivations and behaviours; • Utilizes existing communication networks; • Takes advantage of others‘ resources. The most powerful words in marketing are ‗FREE‘ and ‗SALE‘. They drive people and all the major retail markets out there. House of Fraser has a big SALE banner on its website every couple of months whereas Harrods and Fenwick don‘t.
Justin Kirby (2003) stated the three main things everyone needs to remember while creating a viral campaign: • Creative material – the ‗viral agent‘. This includes the creative message or offer and how it is spread (text, image, video). • Seeding. Identifying web sites, blogs or people to send e-mail to start the virus spreading. • Tracking. To monitor the effect and to assess the return from the cost of developing the viral agent and seeding.
So to conclude this month‘s special traffic building issue, we have defined that traffic building is the mixture of techniques that help to attract consumers to a specific website. This can result in customer loyalty, retention and sales, therefore revenue for the organisation. The context of the department stores shows positive financial figures for House of Fraser and Harrods. Although Fenwick do not necessarily have really negative figures, they are not a major player in the sector. They are also considerably behind on previously analysed website features and are also seemingly behind on digital innovation and traffic building techniques. House of Fraser is reported by Mintel to be the best performing in the online sector, with Harrods close behind, although Harrods are focusing more considerably on their global presence as opposed to their traffic building techniques because they are a bigger name department store. From the survey carried out by The Store team, it was found that consumer reactions and responses to online PR techniques were much more positive and helped to enhance the reputation of the brands among potential consumers, although social media ‘like and share to be entered’ competitions are wearing thin with consumers currently because they’re too frequent now and cause social media clutter. More traditional techniques such as banner advertisements and e-mail marketing are still very much a taboo technique that isn’t popular with consumers.
Harrods and House of Fraser both have search engine optimised websites, enhanced to be in top results in search engine queries, whereas Fenwick does not. However, this could be because Fenwick is more of a niche brand and people who shop with them would specifically choose to do so rather than ‘stumble’ across their website. House of Fraser also have sponsored links but these are seemingly in-effective as they only show up when searching for the brand therefore defying the point of building traffic from other searches. In addition to this House of Fraser and Harrods have many back links therefore further enhancing their chances of driving traffic to their sites. Fenwick does not however do this. As mentioned, online PR has more positive reactions from consumers, therefore it’s important particularly to analyse how well these brands are using this cheap tool. House of Fraser and Harrods both have business blogs which can help to showcase sector expertise and talent and gives the companies a voice online on sector issues. Fenwick does not have a blog and is therefore missing out on the opportunity to further build traffic to the website. The Harrods and House of Fraser blogs however, are more easily found on their websites, which defies the point of driving traffic to the website as it will only be found when already on there. However, this can help with customer retention.
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In addition to this the best practice social media tips are: Integrate social media into existing campaigns Be yourself to best reflect personality Be consistent in activity Address negativity Share positivity House of Fraser has the best social media presence across Facebook and Twitter, but our research suggests that consumers are demanding more! Consumer are seemingly getting bored the standard Twitter and Facebook activity and want more interesting activity on Pinterest for example. Harrods has an online presence but the brand name always speaks for itself so doesn’t have to have as much activity. Fenwick does not have a social media presence and needs to address this first and foremost in order to start a traffic building campaign.
All three website use banner/ interactive advertisements to build traffic to their website, but Harrods and Fenwick advertisements are harder to come by, whereas House of Frasers efforts penetrate the market better. With regards to e-mail marketing the main issue among consumers is the general assumption that it is all spam and unwanted in their inboxes. The Store team signed up to all three department stores and waited for the e-mails to come in. Harrods and House of Fraser regularly send e-mails regarding price promotion, sales and so on trying to build traffic to the website.
Only House of Fraser has a form of online partnership but these are with charities as opposed to other similar organisations to help build their CSR. Although the department stores may have other sponsorship negotiations in the ‘real’ world, these are not present online but they’re not major issues that need addressing. This technique is simply an ‘extra’. All in all House of Fraser performs the best with regards to traffic building techniques, although areas such as sponsorship and more targeted advertisements could be improved upon, they seem to have the best traffic building campaign in place to be successful. With Harrods it’s tricky- they are a global known brand and therefore word-of-mouth is more of their traffic building technique. Their brand is a legacy and therefore don’t necessarily have to roll out expensive traffic building campaigns, although they have harnessed the power of the majority of the techniques. Fenwick are behind- The Store team would even suggest that they’re too far behind for the 21st Century. They were the underperforming brand for the last magazine issue and are also in this traffic building issue! They need to take more control over their brand and enhance the opportunities that are now readily available to them. The Store magazine would suggest a starting point this brand would be a social media presence and build upon this. …And the winner is… House of Fraser!
Chaffey, D. & Smith, PR. (2009) eMarketing eXcellence (3rd Ed) ButterworthHeinemann: Oxford Fenwick (2013) ‗Homepage.‘ https://www.fenwick.co.uk/ [Accessed 25 March 2013]. Guardian (2013) Anywhere, any place, anytime [online] http://www.guardian.co.uk/mobile-marketing/mobile-habits-environment [accessed 10 March 2013] Harrods (2013) ‗Homepage.‘ http://m5.paperblog.com/i/32/321989/harrodsrewards-10-off-weekend-L-phDIxP.jpeg [Accessed 11 March 2013]. House of Fraser (1999-2013) ‗Homepage.‘ http://www.houseoffraser.co.uk/on/demandware.store/Sites-hofSite/default/Home-Show [Accessed 25 March]. Mediabistro (2013) E-mail vs. Social Media [online] http://www.mediabistro.com/alltwitter/email-vs-social-media-marketing_b27567 [Accessed 10 March 2013] Mintel (2012) Department Store Retailing [Online] [Accessed report on database on 18th February 2013] PR Moment (2013) Social Media Census [online] http://www.prmoment.com/685/social-media-census-2011.aspx [Accessed 10 March 2013] SEO (2013) http://images2.itprism.com/seo/backlinks.jpg [Accessed 12 March 2013]. The Agency Buzz (2013) http://theagencybuzz.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/emailmarketing-process.html [Accessed 09 March 2013] Visual (2010) Email Statistics [online] http://visual.ly/2010-email-statistics [Accessed 12 March]