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Posted 6 days ago

Soshalize Podcast - Episode 06

Soshalize Podcast: Episode 06 - Back to the Basics: How Social and Digital Technologies are Affecting Customer Service

Special Guest: Aaron Magness, VP of Marketing, Clearly Contacts.ca

Welcome to the sixth episode of the Soshalize Podcast; a weekly discussion between digital marketers, tecnologists, and media personalities about the industries’ hottest topics.

This week Dave soshalizes with Aaron Magness, VP of Marketing at Clearly Contacts, Canada’s largest online retailer of contact lenses, eyeglasses, and sunglasses. Before Aaron joined the Clearly team in late 2011, he was the Senior Director of Brand Marketing & Business Development at Zappos. He was the perfect candidate for this week’s topic and getting some perspectives on delivering customer service in the e-commerce industry.

Please subscribe to the show on iTunes

Running time - 22:17
File Association  - mp3
Size: 20.9 MB

Shownotes:

  • Sounds clips used created by Simon Lacelle, SandyRB & Nickifit from Freesound.org
  • Have any comments, questions, or suggestions? We’d love to hear them! Leave a comment here or send them over to info@soshalgroup.com with “Podcast” in the title

Thanks for Soshalizing, and see you next week!

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Posted 3 weeks ago

Online Retailers Move Beyond Digital

As CEO of Soshal Group, Dave is responsible for our growth, strategic concepts, and client programs. When he’s not working to help our clients be social by nature, Dave is an active supporter of entrepreneurship in Ottawa and spends his “free” time helping other start-­‐ups develop sales and marketing programs.

Despite the hype around e-commerce, m-commerce (mobile) and social commerce, very few Canadian retailers have implemented a digital shopping solution. To say they are lagging is unfair, as there can be many headaches associated with online purchasing, from distribution to customer service to order fulfilment.

Of course, there are some Canadian brands that have operated solely online from day one, and are now embracing a new trend that gives these companies a physical footprint in the real world, if only for a few days.

Pop-up stores have become a key component to an online retailer’s strategy. Essentially, a pop-up store is one that a brand sets up in high-traffic areas, such as malls, subway stations or popular urban areas for a few days or weeks, with the goal of driving new customer foot traffic to its temporary store and giving existing customers an outlet to connect with the brand in a more personal way.

Earlier this month, Well.ca launched a virtual pop-up store in a Toronto subway station in partnership with Procter & Gamble. The virtual store is a unique concept that allows consumers to check out various products such as Pampers and Tide, and order directly from smartphone apps that can be launched through QR (quick response) codes found on each product. In true Well.ca style, products are being shipped as fast as the next day, at no cost to the customer.

Meanwhile, the Vancouver-based custom men’s apparel company Indochino hasn’t just hopped on the band wagon – it’s quickly established itself as a visionary brand when it comes to rolling out pop-up stores across Canada.

Indochino has even branded its nationwide pop-up stores and the company’s “Traveling Tailor” will be set up in Ottawa later this month. The Traveling Tailor has already left its mark in Vancouver and Calgary and, after its stop in Ottawa, the company plans to roll out the concept in other key Canadian markets, including a multi-week setup in Toronto later this spring.

“Retail isn’t black and white,” says Indochino co-founder and CEO Kyle Vucko. “I used to only think about e-commerce, but our vision needs to be much bigger as a multi-channel retailer that makes guys look great wherever they want to shop.”

For Mr. Vucko, this means online, offline, mobile, on social media channels and anywhere else consumers could think to purchase his clothing. There are tremendous benefits to the pop-up store, as well. “Media hype, scarcity, immediacy and an amazing brand experience are all at the core of our strategy,” he says.

Well.ca and Indochino are setting the standard for online Canadian retailers when it comes to pop-up locations. This trend is sure to continue across the country as success stories like these emerge. The real question will be whether it is better to live online and pop-up every now and then, or to build a store and then worry about an e-commerce solution.

This article was originally written for the Ottawa Business Journal. See the article on OBJ.ca here.

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Posted 2 months ago

Native Twitter Monetization

Asako is Soshal Group’s communications coordinator. When she’s not managing our communications initiatives, she spends her free time listening to new music, trying out new recipes, and mostly reading tech blogs. Careful chatting her up about new gadgets…she could talk for hours!

When Twitter joined Facebook and Google+ in launching their own brand pages back in December 2011, many brands and marketers wondered whether they were of any significant use as they were. The pages had two key elements that differentiated them from regular accounts, both of which were free to use. One was the ability to add a large banner image underneath their profile description that could be used for displaying their logo and tagline with more emphasis. The other element was the ability to keep an expanded post pinned to the top of their time line. As an example, here is Best Buy’s current Twitter brand page, which has both the large header image as well as a pinned photo tweet:

21 major brands were invited to be a part of the initial launch as they had committed $25,000 in advertising with Twitter, were already very active in their Twitter activities, and were looking for a way to make their page stand out in the crowd. Brand pages are only available to Twitter advertisers and Executive sources are saying that some big changes are coming to brand pages that will focus on adding experiences, including e-commerce, and contests and sweepstakes.

The new product will allow apps to be built by developers, much like the experience on Facebook, but the features will be built into the Twitter time line. This will be a new type of tweet that goes beyond the standard 140-character message, image, or video. The most exciting implication of this is the potential to create native e-commerce apps built within the Twitter time line. This would clarify the value of Twitter’s brand pages better to marketers as it would drive users to their own pages.

Since last month, Twitter has been rolling out new programs with brands for e-commerce. Two notable examples both come from American Express, who launched a self-serve ad platform for small and medium-sized businesses, as well as a program in which it sends offers to Twitter users in exchange for certain actions, such as tweeting a particular hashtag. Dell, Best Buy, H&M, and 1-800-Flowers have all participated in using the latter feature since January.

Twitter hopes that these new features will add incentive for marketers to take part of their advertising program as an easier way to drive revenue on the micro-blogging site. There has not been any exact dates announced for the release of this product, but Twitter has been telling their clients to expect it sometime this year.

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