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Aug 28, 2018, 06:14 AM
by
Karl Hellman
The idea that brick-and-mortar retailers should incorporate the interactivity of online shopping experiences has been suggested by retail luminaries for some time now. Frank Grillo, CMO of Harte Hanks, and Kim Whitler, Professor at University of Virginia, Darden School of Business, suggested it in their analysis of retailing in 2018. Some retailers—True Religion, for example—are beginning to integrate online capabilities with their brick-and-mortar stores.
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Aug 2, 2018, 05:15 AM
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JD Metcalf
Toys R Us has finally closed its doors. And like the sad meme of their mascot Geoffrey the Giraffe waving goodbye the finality has people buzzing and experts (for better or worse) speculating about the future of retail in an increasingly digital world. What could they have done differently?
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Jul 16, 2018, 15:44 PM
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None
The dealership network of a major import automotive brand was losing after-sales revenue, an extremely important part of the dealership's overall profitability.
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Jun 25, 2018, 15:35 PM
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None
Discover how to make the most of moving. Watch our video to learn how to drive sales and brand engagement for your business with the New Mover Marketing Suite by Harte Hanks.
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May 11, 2018, 15:44 PM
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None
What an exciting and yet challenging time to be in marketing. The demands placed on us as marketers are constantly expanding and are being driven from all areas that impact our customers’ and potential customers’ lives. Perhaps none is more top of mind at the moment than trust. People share their information with us in the two-fold belief that we first will respect it, and second, that we will use it in a way that is genuinely relevant to them.
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Apr 27, 2018, 15:44 PM
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None
In a world where customers demand exceptional, relevant experiences—online and offline—single data points and demographics simply won’t cut it. You cannot converse contextually with a shopper by knowing that she’s a 38-year-old female from Denver making $67,000 per year
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Apr 24, 2018, 15:44 PM
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None
This retail company needed a better way to navigate the United States Postal Service, they partnered with Harte Hanks to ensure its promotional mail arrived in homes at the desired time. Considering that postage can account for as much as 50% of the cost of a direct mail campaign, the retailer also sought to find postage savings.
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Apr 24, 2018, 13:38 PM
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Michael Behrenhausen
It’s my job to work with our team as we consistently strive to put the human back into our marketing efforts. What that means is we’re seeking to create meaningful conversations and interactions by understanding the context of a client's (or potential client's) placement within the buyer’s journey. Basically, we’re listening for clues and thoughtfully responding in kind—just as you would in a normal conversation with a friend.
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Apr 20, 2018, 15:44 PM
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None
This “Create-It-Yourself Superstore” relies heavily on repeat sales to their most loyal customers, promoted through monthly direct mailings of 8 million color circulars with time-sensitive coupons. However, 15% of the mail pieces were arriving at the customers’ homes late, significantly reducing the impact of the promotions.
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Apr 12, 2018, 15:44 PM
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None
Let’s start with Toys“R”Us . The childhood icon is closing its doors. What went wrong? How could they have avoided this fate? I’ve brought back a piece from October that explores how Toys“R”Us could have saved its stores. If your brand has a brick and mortar presence, click through to learn from their mistakes.
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Mar 22, 2018, 09:32 AM
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Nicole Bump
The definition of customer retention is simple: a customer continues to transact with your brand. But achieving customer retention? Not so simple. In fact, as Scott Neslin, Albert Wesley Frey Professor of Marketing at the Tuck School of Business, Dartmouth College, explained at a Harte Hanks Marketing Advisory Board meeting, customer retention is downright difficult to achieve in practice and can be expensive to boot.
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Mar 19, 2018, 11:26 AM
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Nicole Bump
Who would buy a mattress online, you may ask? Well, I would, for starters, and so do a lot of others—the online mattress industry is worth about $1.5B. But because a mattress is typically considered a 'fit product' that customers want to try out in person, these bed-in-a-box companies have had to innovate their customer experience to provide value to the buyer in other ways.
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Mar 15, 2018, 13:43 PM
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Jon Dome
We've established that people will perceive your brand based on their own experiences with it. And if those experiences are unremarkable—or worse, negative—your customers won’t miss you when you disappear. The best way to design a remarkable experience is to design it around the customer’s needs throughout the buyer’s journey.
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Mar 7, 2018, 12:39 PM
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Natasha Silensky
Does this sound familiar? You and your significant other have plans to go out on a Friday night. One of you has a very specific expectation for the date night but wants the other to make the plans on their own, while still meeting some unarticulated expectation. It’s not mind reading but may as well be—the planning partner is playing a guessing game, working off assumptions, which inevitably leads to the anticipating partner’s disappointment.
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Mar 5, 2018, 14:44 PM
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None
This issue of Featured includes our top content from January 2018. Several of our most-read pieces this month illustrate the challenges marketers are still grappling with around getting their teams to design and execute on the experiences customers want.
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Feb 23, 2018, 13:06 PM
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Jon Dome
Understanding your customer’s needs and the value of the customer experience should be common by now. Unfortunately, when you look at many retail organizations, there are still only a handful that really get it.
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Feb 21, 2018, 12:52 PM
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Nicole Bump
As a New Hampshire-ite, I need really good winter boots if I’m to leave the house between November and March. The last time I was in the market for such boots, I saved up and splurged on a pair of LL Bean’s infamous Bean Boots. They were pricey, but I was confident that if they weren’t up to snuff after a long winter of snowy, slushy treks to my kids’ bus stop, I could return them and find something else that was.
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Feb 20, 2018, 15:35 PM
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None
Kay Lemon, Accenture Professor of Marketing, Carroll School of Management at Boston College, predicts that consumer packaged goods manufacturers will continue to learn more about their end customers through data and technology—enabling them to build relationships directly with their consumers.
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Feb 20, 2018, 15:35 PM
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None
Scott Neslin, Albert Wesley Frey Professor of Marketing, Tuck School of Business, Dartmouth College, explains why brands are seeing such excessive product returns and provides advice on how to reduce return rate.
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Feb 14, 2018, 15:35 PM
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None
You must know your customers and their context more deeply to achieve more human marketing.
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Feb 14, 2018, 15:35 PM
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None
Don't be a creep. You must know your customers and their context more deeply to achieve more human marketing.
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Feb 14, 2018, 15:35 PM
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None
You must know your customers and their context more deeply to achieve more human marketing.
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Feb 14, 2018, 14:35 PM
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None
You must know your customers and their context more deeply to achieve more human marketing.
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Feb 5, 2018, 16:06 PM
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Karen Puckett
Some years ago, “…Best Buy’s management team realized a big box filled with stuff wasn’t all that appealing to a lot of people.” This is when the company began to focus squarely on providing customers with a better experience.
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Feb 2, 2018, 15:35 PM
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None
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Jan 30, 2018, 16:14 PM
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Michael Behrenhausen
We recently set up a conversation between Harte Hanks CMO Frank Grillo and Kimberly Whitler, Assistant Professor at the University of Virginia Darden School of Business, to discuss the current and future state of retail both digital and physical. The two ended up having a lively, insightful exchange of ideas.
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Jan 29, 2018, 14:59 PM
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John Deighton
Before the great recession of 2007, retail was quite adventurous. The idea of retail as theater was explored in everything from Niketown to American Girl to the Lego Store in Chicago’s Watertown. The recession forced us back to safer territory.
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Jan 29, 2018, 14:44 PM
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None
In the world of modern marketing it’s all too common to see irrelevant ads and ineffectual attempts at engagement. To make a difference and an impact there needs to be a genuine effort at speaking to the customer personally and in the moment. Thinking that a single data point or sending me a note on my birthday is personalization is just wrong.
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Jan 26, 2018, 09:23 AM
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Steve Acuna
Sometimes, 1 + 1 actually equals 3. Or 4 or 5 or more. And today I'm suggesting that if retail brands were to team up with the consumer brands they sell, they would both be able to better serve their customers and end up at that 3+ number.
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Jan 23, 2018, 12:51 PM
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Steve Acuna
Many brands operate under the assumption that their marketing communications and advertisements define the brand. In reality, you can tell customers what your brand is all day, but people will perceive your brand based on their own experiences with it. And if those experiences are unremarkable—or worse, negative—your customers won’t miss you when you disappear.
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Jan 18, 2018, 14:44 PM
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None
This month’s issue of Featured showcases some of our most popular articles from December. Included are 2018 marketing predictions from our Harte Hanks Marketing Advisory Board academic members—including John Deighton, Kim Whitler and others.
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Jan 14, 2018, 14:44 PM
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None
We’re all aware of the many challenges facing the retail industry—but what piques our interest more than the challenges is all of the opportunity. By getting to know customers more deeply and engaging them with valuable, human experiences, there is great opportunity for retail brands to stand apart from competition and secure a place in the new digital world.
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Jan 2, 2018, 14:07 PM
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Jon Dome
Too often customers are forced to search through a warehouse-like environment as they comb over large amounts of inventory to find the products that meet their needs. Racks are stuffed, it's difficult to find sizes, and complementary items are all the way across the store. Helpful product experts and stylists are few and far between—if they exist at all.
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Dec 20, 2017, 09:32 AM
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Michael Behrenhausen
As we wrap up 2017, it's a good time to reflect on the past twelve months—including some of our most-read thought leadership. Here, we take a look at retail, one of the most hotly discussed segments in marketing right now. Will brick and mortar survive? How can you best achieve an in-the-moment, omnichannel experience? Can anyone beat Amazon?
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Nov 29, 2017, 12:48 PM
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Karen Puckett
Marks & Spencer CEO Steve Rowe recently explained in Marketing Week that the British multinational retailer is looking to use data to "make M&S great again." In other words, he believes data will help M&S return to its former glory of one of the world's leading retailers.
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Nov 20, 2017, 14:21 PM
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Zach Nelson
Overall, Holiday 2017 is looking good. Holiday spending expectations continue to rise in large part due to improved household finances. In fact, almost 80% of consumers expect to spend the same or more this holiday season.
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Nov 17, 2017, 12:40 PM
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Nicole Bump
The most obvious way Target’s focus on the needs of this underserved segment comes to life is with two separate entrances: “one for time-starved shoppers who only need to pick up a few items, and the other for people who want to leisurely browse the store.”
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Nov 17, 2017, 11:58 AM
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Alan Kittle
The average heavy smartphone user checks their phone 150 times a day. 150 TIMES A DAY. On top of that, they—or more accurately, 90% of “they”—think that’s healthy. Their need to experience micro-euphoric moments again and again, all day and often at night, fuels this behavior, and it’s creating an entirely new set of expectations in the way businesses interact with them.
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Nov 8, 2017, 14:47 PM
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Frank Grillo
Got a loyalty program? Great. Chances are you’re seeing some incremental spend if you’re using the resulting data effectively. But true brand loyalty cannot be earned by dolling out rewards or tier status alone. It takes more than that. It takes authenticity and a reciprocal loyalty to the people that support the brand—employees and customers alike.
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Nov 3, 2017, 16:00 PM
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Karen Puckett
Philip Kotler recently published an article on MarketingJournal.org called “Will the 4th Industrial Revolution Kill Store-Based Retailing?” In it, he asserts that the internet, mobile devices and the Internet of Things (IoT) have brought us to the point of another industrial revolution—one that is killing brick and mortar retail. He points to closures of stores like J.C. Penney, Macy’s and Toys R Us.
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Oct 18, 2017, 10:32 AM
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Karen Puckett
In his article The shockingly sad but true story of Toys R Us' decline, Roger Hamilton explains that Toys R Us recently filed for bankruptcy after a losing battle with Amazon to be the ecommerce giant’s exclusive toy provider. While many may attribute this bankruptcy to the continued decline of brick and mortar retail, this failure is not a matter of digital versus physical or online versus offline.
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Oct 13, 2017, 10:29 AM
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JD Metcalf
We've established that mobile is the new battlefield for customer experience—enabling brands to execute a one-to-one, in-the-moment marketing strategy.One of the newest weapons in this battle for mobile dominance is the payment app.
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Oct 5, 2017, 15:15 PM
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Nicole Bump
From airlines and hotels to gas stations and drug stores, customer loyalty programs abound. Scott Neslin, Professor of Marketing at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College, argues that, while many brands initiate loyalty programs to generate incremental sales, the real value in a loyalty program is the data it generates.
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Sep 11, 2017, 13:39 PM
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Karen Puckett
Nordstrom just announced a bold new retail concept called Nordstrom Local, which it will test in West Hollywood starting October 3, 2017. The store features a host of services, but carries no dedicated inventory. Instead, customers can access a variety of services such as: fashion consulting from a personal stylist, lounging with a handcrafted expresso or a glass of beer or wine, selecting merchandise to transfer in for inspection, trying on selections, custom fitting and alterations, or even getting a manicure.
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Aug 29, 2017, 15:44 PM
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None
A Fortune 100 retailer decided to discontinue tobacco sales to reflect its health-conscious brand values. While the change gave the brand social clout, this retailer now needed to fill a $1.5B gap from lost tobacco sales and lost impulse purchases from tobacco customers. Episodic marketing campaigns based on static data weren’t going to cut it.
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Aug 18, 2017, 15:44 PM
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None
Significant and varied marketplace disruptions were creating challenges for one of the world’s most innovative and enduring brands. Smartphones and content streaming were eating into this consumer brand’s sales of core product lines like cameras, stereo systems and music players, camcorders, and even TVs. The shift away from physical storefronts, and the rise of dominant online sellers like Amazon, added to the challenge of connecting with customers.
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Aug 17, 2017, 15:44 PM
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None
We’ve selected the 5 best insights and articles from MarketingJournal.org and Harte Hanks. Welcome to Featured – a monthly digest of our six most popular marketing articles. This edition contains insights from marketing leaders like Kim Whitler and Frank Grillo. Hear their thoughts on topics like what CMOs are getting wrong (and how to fix it), defining your brand’s purpose, and getting to know your customers more deeply—beyond traditional personas. Enjoy!
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Jul 14, 2017, 15:44 PM
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None
For years, retailers have been told that to compete in the new ecommerce world, they need to have a well-established omnichannel organization. The 2016 holiday season proves that the time has come—and it is not going away. Retailers that do not have a
solid omnichannel strategy that lets customers shop whenever and however they want to shop are going to be left in the dust. How do I know this? Let’s look at the evidence.
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Jul 13, 2017, 11:53 AM
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Nicole Bump
On June 22, Harte Hanks CMO Frank Grillo and Marketing Advisory Board member Katherine Lemon, Ph.D., were featured as the keynote presentation at Wharton's Consumer Response to the Evolving Retailing Landscape conference.
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Jul 7, 2017, 10:24 AM
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Karen Puckett
A New York Times article asks, “Is there any home purchase more confusing and fraught with anxiety than buying a mattress?” Many people would answer ‘no.’ Somewhat akin to buying a new car, the process can be complicated by myriad choices of brands and models, plagued by hard selling and hidden costs (warranty, delivery), and let’s not get started with the returns process.
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Jun 21, 2017, 08:49 AM
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Karen Puckett
If you work in retail or consumer industries, you’re well aware of the challenge that ecommerce is creating for brick and mortar stores. Sears, Kmart, Macy’s, JC Penney, and many more brands have announced the shutting of stores this year in response to this pressure.
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Jun 19, 2017, 16:13 PM
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Frank Grillo
Over the past few years, retailers have been increasingly focusing on optimizing their digital channels and online shopping experiences, while many have been closing their physical store locations. After all, brick and mortar is going by the wayside, right?
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May 31, 2017, 15:56 PM
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Jon Dome
Tami Mohney, CMO of Modell’s Sporting Goods, posed this question at the latest meeting of the Harte Hanks Marketing Advisory Board—a provocative question, indeed, especially when asked by the CMO of a brand that heavily relies on brick and mortar stores. One might be tempted to think that the model is dying and that eventually everything will be replaced by online stores like Amazon. But if that was the case, Amazon would not be opening their own physical stores.
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Apr 19, 2017, 15:35 PM
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None
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Apr 17, 2017, 07:09 AM
by
CHRISTIAN SARKAR
Professor Scott Galloway speaks about how Amazon is disrupting retail. His insights are worth close attention. Not only has Amazon changed consumer shopping habits, it has changed the relationship between shareholders and investors.
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Mar 31, 2017, 15:44 PM
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None
An online leader in luxury retail consignment earned $100M in its first year (2014), with plans to reach $1B by 2019. To fuel this ambitious growth, the company must continuously expand its membership of customers, who consign their high-end products for resale to other buyers.
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Mar 20, 2017, 15:44 PM
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None
A leading consumer electronics brand offers several rewards programs for their customers each year. However, the vendor helping this brand with ordering and fulfillment of these reward orders was taking weeks to validate and deliver items to the consumers—which feels like forever! In addition, the company didn’t offer email or chat support when customers wanted to check up on their reward status.
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Feb 3, 2017, 11:36 AM
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Ryan Moats
Historically, brick-and-mortar retailers have approached development of their online storefronts fatalistically. Companies thought that increasing online business couldn’t happen without poaching from brick-and-mortar storefronts—and if anyone was going to poach brick-and-motor business, it might as well be that same company’s online business. Online and bricks-and-mortar retail were treated as two separate animals. To grow online business, many companies thought they had no choice but to sacrifice bricks-and-mortar sales. All advances in online functionality for customers meant directing those customers away from brick-and-mortar locations.
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Feb 2, 2017, 10:51 AM
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Frank Grillo
Case study from Dr. Karl Hellman.
In our 3-second attention span world, social media marketing often grabs attention with dramatic discounts: 30% off or more. But discounts erode profits and detract from brand equity: “Thirty percent off? What’s wrong with this product?”
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Jan 25, 2017, 11:26 AM
by
Ryan Moats
For years, retailers have been told that to compete in the new ecommerce world, they need to have a well-established omnichannel organization. The 2016 holiday season proves that the time has come—and it is not going away. Retailers that do not have a solid omnichannel strategy that lets customers shop whenever and however they want to shop are going to be left in the dust.
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Jan 4, 2017, 16:40 PM
by
Ryan Moats
Many retailers are beginning to feel like competing with a dominant force like Amazon is a losing battle.
In the recent article “Can your brand win vs. Amazon?,” eBags.com CEO Mike Edwards examines the struggle for vendors and retailers to remain profitable in the shadow of the online retail giant. Amazon offers lower prices, convenience, a wide selection, product recommendations, a range of shipping options and a personalized customer experience. They’ve set the standard for customer expectations, and if you ignore that standard, you won’t succeed.
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Dec 8, 2016, 14:44 PM
by
None
Big data is revolutionizing marketing. We now can monitor and measure almost anything in our increasingly interconnected society. Most importantly, we can track the customer’s journey and generate longitudinal data at the most granular level.
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Nov 14, 2016, 14:44 PM
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None
Harte Hanks (HH) and Strategyn co-developed a strategic marketing service based on the premise that just as consumers “hire” products to do specific jobs, they also hire retailers to help them execute the “buying job” as they proceed along their buyer’s journey. To test the efficacy of this new service, HH and Strategyn focused on looking for strategic opportunities to help struggling brick-and-mortar businesses fight back against the relentless pressure from online competition.
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Jul 22, 2016, 15:44 PM
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None
Through our partnerships with multiple data sources, Harte-Hanks’ New Mover Data is one of the most powerful new mover marketing data sets available. Harte Hanks utilizes sources that obtain and update residential contact information daily from more than 3,000 sources. The data is processed by applying a variety of algorithms, confirming a move, and not just a name change for example.
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Dec 15, 2014, 13:09 PM
by
Linda Clasen
MyLowe’s, PowerUp Rewards by GameStop, My Best Buy—you’ve heard about lots of successful retail loyalty programs, and you may even belong to one of them yourself. And you may be thinking, “Hey, we need a program like that!”
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