For an online retail store the top spot of a search engine results page for any product you sell is the holy grail of online marketing, it is like having the prime spot on the high street or the biggest and best shop in the mall. Of this lucrative cherry there are also two bites, organic and paid listings.

One online company seems to have achieved this lofty goal in fairly short order, namely one worldstores.co.uk.

In an apparently shrinking market of home and garden furniture Worldstores.co.uk is thriving and last year boosted revenue by 70%. So how did they do this?

First some background information.

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As a designer, there are a few skills I’m required to have. Coming up with new and exciting ideas, bringing those ideas to life and generally making things look pretty. However, never in my career have I had to showcase psychic powers and predict the future to be able to do my job, that is, until I started working with @mediaquery.

What is @mediaquery?

@mediaquery is a relatively new feature of CSS which can be used to dictate how a website or email renders on particular sized screen such as a mobile device or desktop computer. I won’t bog you down with the details, but basically the way @mediaquery works is that the code is hidden in the email and only comes to life when it detects that your screen is below a certain size. As soon as it detects that you’re using a device with a smaller screen, it switches on the hidden code which manipulates and overrides elements of the email, changing its look and structure to suit the smaller screen.

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I have a real love/hate relationship with those emails that pop into my inbox before I even open my eyes in the morning, tempting me to must-buy experiences, weekends away and 10 vibroplate sessions.  These emails may appear harmless, but the promise of self-improvement and gourmet food just proves too hard to resist for me!  And such is the reason for Groupon’s success…

The name Groupon comes from the term “group” and was developed by now CEO, Andrew Mason in 2008.  It grew out of a website called The Point, where you can start a campaign and ask people to participate and deliver action because of the strength in numbers.  Just as the campaigns need a ‘tipping point’ of people to become viable, Groupon needs a certain number of buyers to make the deals valid.  This collective buying gives us the access to the deals which just seem too good to be true.

To date Groupon serves 500 markets and 44 countries.

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Foreign restaurants are an absolute goldmine for bad spelling. Most of us have enjoyed a giggle at the ‘innovative’ dishes that pop up on menus in exotic climes… like the ‘friend eggs and tose’ I had for breakfast in Thailand, for example. Delicious it was too.

In this context, typos are funny, endearing and completely forgivable; they don’t negatively affect your opinion of the restaurant or the quality of the service you expect to receive. But what about when you visit a new business online? If you’ve got no prior knowledge of the company, how do you feel if you open their website and it’s full of spelling mistakes and bad grammar? Bet you’d be more suspicious than I was tucking into my friend eggs… Read more…

It’s less than a week to go until our new campaign for cottages4you and VisitEngland is launched, so we thought it would be a good opportunity to look back on everything we’ve achieved – boy has it been a whirlwind few months!

This project started over 6 months ago, when we were asked to pitch for a joint campaign with cottages4you and VisitEngland. That in itself presented quite a challenge: 2 separate clients each with a different objective. It meant we really had to put our heads to together to come up with a cracking ad that essentially met 2 briefs! We knew it would be tricky but we couldn’t wait to start.

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The Swinton Mystery Tipper campaign began in March 2008 with the objective of generating insurance leads for Swinton Taxi Division.  Not only did it smash this objective out of the park, but it also won several marketing awards including a DMA Gold in the Financial Services category.  So when we were tasked earlier this year with improving upon it we were a little apprehensive, but netherless we accepted the challenge withgusto and started to devise a bigger and better Mystery Tipper campaign….  but would the awards follow!?

A brief overview

For those of you who are not familiar.  The Mystery Tipper is a mysterious blonde decked out in a mac and trilby who travels across towns and cities in the UK, handing a £1,000 tip to a cabbie who has a ‘Mystery Tipper’ sticker in their cab. Cabbies get a sticker after requesting a taxi insurance quote from Swinton Taxi Division. Easy, effective and successful, The Mystery Tipper’s appeal is its simplicity. that and the lure of a big tip.

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Thursday 17th November 2011- why is this such a significant date you may ask? Well I shall tell you. At approximately 11pm on that very day, at the Ramada Jarvis, Manchester, Red C won an MI award for the Best Retail Marketing Strategy on Jessop’s! Whoop! Celebrations all round. You may be thinking that’s fab but what does it mean? Why were we worthy of this win? Well as you read through this you’ll find out the intricate details of what a winning retail marketing strategy involves….

Who are Jessops?
Jessops is the UK’s largest specialist photographic retailer with 208 stores. Visit any of these to enquire about a camera and you’ll leave furnished with a wealth of knowledge and insight about the product in question. However, Jessops’ emails didn’t exude the same enthusiasm, expertise, personality or product range that they offered. This was a key factor in the failure of their emails to convert sales, especially when combined with a design that was dull and uninspiring. In a crowded marketplace, having enthusiastic staff with this level of expertise can be a key differentiator for customers. Jessops needed to make effective use of their emails to communicate this to their database of customers.

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It’s easy to get a bit disillusioned with award ceremonies. You head there with a nomination, hoping that this might be your year. Sometimes it is and you come back not just with the gong, but the respect of your peers too. But sometimes it’s not to be. And while it’s tempting to shrug your shoulders, pretend you’re not really bothered or that some terrible injustice has befallen you, actually it’s always better just to hold your hands up and say well done.

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Day two of the ECMOD Direct Commerce Show started with a session entitled ‘Increase your revenue by recovering lost sales’.  Abandonment in the sales cycle is something I know a little bit about as it’s something that I’ve spoken with my clients about several times over the years.  However, I wanted to use this session as a reminder of its potential power and perhaps pick up a new statistic or tactic.

Increase your revenue by recovering lost sales – Dominic Edmunds, Salescycle

The session with Dominic Edmunds from SalesCycle was a little like a sales pitch but putting to that one side, the content of the presentation was extremely thought provoking.  Firstly, a new statistic, which I’m convinced I’ll be quoting several times over the next week or so.  Apparently, MarketingSherpa have recently announced that 60% of shopping carts are in fact abandoned…  can you image the lost revenue figure associated with such a figure!?

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We have a rule at Red C.  If you attend an event, seminar or conference you must share your learnings and experiences with your colleagues and clients via a blog article.   So here is my report on Day 1 of the ECMOD Direct Commerce Show.

Power Panel – Where is the growth?

Speakers; Aamir Ahmad, MD, Dwell; Gerald Dawson, CD, Long Tall Sally; Kevin Hague, Partner, M8; Joe Murray, Founder, Worldstores; Nigel Swabey, CEO, Scotts & Co; Nick Wheeler, Chairman, Charles Tyrwhitt

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