30 Days of Shopping, Stalking, and Tracking the Fastest Growing Retailers

I know I have not been writing much on the blog. However, there is a big reason why and it was just released for public consumption yesterday. My first full scale research report for ExactTarget. We tracked the 100 of the fastest growing retailers over a 30 day period through shopping, social, email, website, in-store employee behavior and much more. The report is long but packed full of insights on the behaviors of retailers large and small.

Download the full report here.

More info :

For those retailers hoping to avoid the fate of Borders, Circuit City, and Tower Records, all eyes are focused on optimization. Revenue optimization. Website optimization. Brand optimization. Product optimization. Loyalty optimization. Lost for many retailers in this pressure-packed environment is another form of optimization—audience optimization. Today’s retailers are no longer creatures of mass media alone. To thrive and survive, they must earn and own audiences across an amazing array of email, mobile and social channels. The retail brands that can best leverage their consumer touchpoints to build, nurture, and grow their audiences won’t just have direct lines of communications to potential customers, they’ll have a distinct competitive advantage over competitors who fail to build such audiences.

In Retail Touchpoints Exposed!, we tracked each retailer’s efforts at five specific retail consumer touchpoints:

In-Store
Website
Email
Social Networks
Mobile Channels

While one might automatically assume that the “Hot 100 Retailers” are fully leveraging their touchpoints to maximize both the size and engagement of proprietary email, mobile, and social audiences, we found quite the opposite. Consider that of the Hot 100 Retailers with brick and mortar stores, only:

2% used in-store signage to promote email or SMS (text message) engagement
8% used in-store signage to promote their social communities on Facebook, Twitter, etc.
44% sought email opt-in at point-of-purchase
2% offered digital copies of receipts via email

Online, the story was equally striking. Among the Hot 100 Retailers with eCommerce websites, only: