May 18 – Webinar with David Metter!

After our hugely successful March webinar with Jeff Kershner, we were overwhelmed by requests for “more! more!” So we’ve obliged.

Next week, we’re hosting a webinar with automotive internet marketing guru David Metter.

This one’s called How to Beat Your Competition and Drive the HighestQuality Leads to Your Showroom.
It’s free (of course) and David will be covering the critical importance of scoring leads from all sources, and how to drive only the best leads to your floor. He’ll be talking about:

• Quality over quantity – how to offer incentives to only the leads most likely to buy
• Adding incentives to direct and email campaigns that will dramatically increase show rates
• Re-incenting based on lead score: How to get the best leads to come back
• Great processes for handling those leads once they’re in the door

Don’t miss this one – Wednesday, May 18 at 1:00 ET. It’s free, it’s only 30 minutes, and space is limited!  Register now!

Smart Retail Media: Shopper Marketing – Less Trade, More Media

This great blog post we found on Smart Retail Media was definitely worth sharing. Shoppper marketing is growing and changing – it’s not just limited to in-store displays and premium shelf space in the brick-and-mortar world.

Inspired by last weeks Shopper Marketing Summit, this blogger takes an intelligent look at the growth of retail media:

I’ve attended the Shopper Marketing Summit(formerly In-store Marketing Summit) for the last 3 years. Each year I find that shopper marketing is looking less like trade and more like media. Here are 5 observations:

1. Shopper marketing is growing. Shopper marketing is the fastest growing category of marketing, according to Ad Age figures quoted by Greg Murtaugh of Triad.

2. Stores are powerful reach vehicles. Pete LaFond of Walmart noted Walmart.com reaches 53MM uniques per month and Smart Network reaches 150MM per week. Together they reach 1/3 to 1/2 of US shoppers each week.

3. Retail makes media more powerful. Booz & Company reported consumers say they are 38% more likely to be influenced by mobile ads in-store than at home or in the office. Julie Beck of Ahold demonstrated 7:1 returns from targeting display ads related to their circulars.

4. CPMs are attractive. Rob Gierkink of DataLogix contrasted CPMs: $400 for direct mail, $100 for circulars, and $5-10 for targeted display ads. The Walmart Smart Network ranges $2-4.

5.  Smart marketers are realigning their media accordingly. Geoff Jackson, Campbell’s Director of Integrated Shopper Marketing, got his agencies to combine their individual frameworks into a single Campbell’s path to purchase. The framework and planning processes developed in Shopper Marketing have been adopted across the organization from Sales to Brand Marketing and their agencies—advertising, media, promotion, digital.

Read the rest of the post here.

Watch our Lead to Show Webinar with Jeff Kershner of DealerRefresh!

Last week, we held a sold-out webinar on how to improve lead to show rates with Jeff Kershner of DealerRefresh.com. Feedback was overwhelmingly positive, and attendees sent us more questions than we could possibly answer in the 30 minutes we’d alloted for the event!

Since then, we’ve had numerous requests for a playback link, for the slides, and for more webinars. In response, we’re posting the video here (we had to break it into two 15-minute segments) along with the slides!

Enjoy…and feel free to share!!  

Slides are HERE.

….and we will be having more webinars, that’s a promise. Stay tuned!

Free Webinar with DealerRefresh.com for Automotive Marketing Pros

We’re hosting our first webinar – and we’re very excited about it! For our first web-based event, we’ve got none other than the brilliant Jeff Kershner of DealerRefresh.com as our guest speaker!

Want to learn more? Here’s the official pitch:

Driving leads for your dealership is challenging enough. But what can you do to actually get them through your door?

That critical step in the marketing process is measured as Lead to Show. And it could be the key to growing your sales.

Targeted incentives are a proven effective way to get motivated buyers into the showroom. The right incentive, like a gift card or cash card, offered to the right customer will help bring that customer to your dealership over your competitors. And, done right, those customers will make a beeline to your sales staff when they get there!

Learn the one sure way to improve your Lead to Show ratio in this free, 30-minute, “get it done” webinar with Jeff Kershner of DealerRefresh.com.

Register now - space is strictly limited to 100 participants!

Whats E-Commerce Media, and Why Do I Need a Strategy? : Retail Online Integration

HookLogic CEO Jonathan Opdyke’s article is featured in today’s issue of Retail Online Integration!  Here’s a snippet:

More and more retailers are realizing that their e-commerce site also represents very valuable real estate. Tens of millions of shoppers visit online stores each day, showing interest in different types of products and creating countless opportunities for brands to interact with a highly concentrated target audience. Brands are also beginning to realize that a majority of shopping decisions are now made online, even if purchases are ultimately made in a physical store, making e-commerce sites an increasingly critical part of their marketing mix.

E-commerce media, just like in-store marketing in the offline world, allows marketers to target consumers while they’re shopping, and enables retailers to unlock new profits from their valuable digital real estate.The obvious difference with offline programs is the variety of options the digital medium makes possible. The moment a retailer begins viewing its online store as a media property, a number of questions and dilemmas arise. The web is full of online publishers and thousands of different ad networks, technologies, media formats and gimmicks that help them make money. At first glance, most of these seem incompatible with a retail business focused on creating great customer experiences that promote conversion and repeat business. The promise of high-profit media revenue is too big to be ignored. Could the wrong approach risk alienating customers and hurt your business?

Read the whole story: Whats E-Commerce Media, and Why Do I Need a Strategy?

Announcing the Econsultancy Innovation Awards 2010 shortlist (Guess who made the list?)

We’re very excited to have made the Shortlist for the Consultancy Awards!  In October, we announced our partnership with Kiddicare, the UK’s largest privately owned nursery and baby supplier.

It’s that partnership that put HookLogic and Kiddicare in the running for for “Most Innovative New Technology.”  Have a look at the list – and keep your fingers crossed!

Announcing the Econsultancy Innovation Awards 2010 shortlist.

Free-shipping day was one of the busiest ever for online retail sales | VentureBeat

Some exciting headlines in the e-commerce world today, as reported by VentureBeat:

Free-shipping day was one of the busiest ever for online retail sales

December 17, also known as Free Shipping Day because it’s the last day you could get free shipping for pre-Christmas online purchases, was the busiest spending day in online history.

Market researcher comScore said that Free Shipping Day generated $942 million in online sales, up 61 percent from a year earlier. The numbers so far show that this season has been the busiest ever for online retail sales. That’s both a good leading economic indicator for the overall economy, as well as an indicator that online sales are taking market share away from physical retail stores. It shows that online retailers are figuring out how to promote their goods so that consumers make their last minute purchases online instead of in crowded malls.

Online shopping has been strong all season. Free Shipping Day (when 1,500 online merchants offered free shipping) was eclipsed by Cyber Monday (Nov. 29), which saw sales of $1.028 billion, and by Green Monday (Dec. 13), at $954 million. Year to date, the first 47 days of the November-December shopping season generated $27.46 billion in sales, up 12 percent from a year ago. Cyber Monday is now expected to become the busiest shopping day of the year; that’s a first for the first Monday after Thanksgiving.

Read the full article by Dean Takahashi here, on VentureBeat.