The HBC Department Store Group has launched new stronger shopping apps for its brands.
Among the latest announcements from the HBC Department Store Group is that it has now launched a new iOS mobile commerce app for both its Lord & Taylor and Hudson’s Bay retail stores.
The application has been designed to span the gap between traditional media and online shopping.
To achieve the mobile app development, HBC has been working with Pounce, a consumer facing mobile commerce application that brings together traditional media with the smartphone and tablet channel. This gives customers the ability to use their mobile devices to purchase merchandise that they have seen in print media such as flyers or catalogs. Pounce remains the only app with approval from Hudson’s Bay and Lord & Taylor which gives customers the ability to shop directly from what they are seeing in print.
This mobile commerce app gives consumers the chance to use their devices to scan images in print media.
The m-shopping app was launched in Canada immediately ahead of the start of the Winter Olympic Games, this year. The timing was deliberate as the Hudson’s Bay is the official apparel sponsor of the Paralympic and Olympic teams that Canada is sending to compete in the Sochi 2014 games. The print ads that the retailer issues just ahead of – and during – the games will be the first that will display the Pounce shopping opportunity for consumers.
Outside of Canada, the smartphone shopping app will also be launched in the United States for Lord & Taylor.
According to Michael Crotty, the HBC chief marketing officer, the purpose of this new effort is to be able to embrace the latest popular technology and combine it with traditional media. He explained that “Pounce creates the opportunity to combine offline and online channels in a seamless way. He also pointed out that the unique capability of the app provides a natural fit with the brand as they expand their omni-channel strategy. It provides not only the opportunity to continue with traditional marketing and to appeal to users of mobile devices, but also the chance to bring them together.
To a growing extent, these platforms are driving visitors to online shopping sites.
The findings from the Q4 2013 Social Media Intelligence Report from Adobe have now been released and have revealed important social media marketing trends, revealing that this channel drives traffic to retail websites.
This report looked into trends involving paid, earned and owned social media.
Among the primary findings of this social media marketing report was that Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Tumblr were sending a tremendous and record breaking amount of valuable traffic onto retail websites in the last quarter of last year. It also determined that the revenue per visit (RPV) was rising across each of those networks.
This report used an extensive data analysis to provide meaningful social media marketing insight.
The analysis was performed using a considerable amount of aggregated and anonymous data that was collected from retail, travel, entertainment, and media sites from the last quarter of 2012 to the same quarter last year. This included over 1.5 billion posts on Facebook, approximately 240 impressions on that social network, in addition to 500 million unique social networking site visitors and 6.3 billion Facebook social engagements (which includes likes, shares, and comments). The Adobe Marketing Cloud was used for the paid social data.
The report that Adobe produced based on its analysis concluded that social media marketing is proving to play an exceptionally important role in the formation of the digital marketplace as well as in the way that consumers are being engaged by their favorite brands. That company feels that a more thorough understanding of these trends – regardless of whether they involve Facebook ads, Twitter links, or Pinterest retail placements – will help marketers to be able to improve the success of their campaigns.
Some of the more interesting data from the study also showed that there was a 340 percent year over year increase in the RPV from Tumblr, a 244 percent increase in the RPV from Pinterest, 131 percent from Twitter, and 72 percent from Facebook. This has revealed that when it comes to social media marketing, the ever-dominant Facebook is now starting to see some heavy competition moving in.
