Insider Edition: The Experts' Guide to Channel Marketing - TheFind.com

Insider Edition:  The Experts' Guide to Channel Marketing

eTaildTail is excited to continue its oning series called: Insider Edition: The Experts' Guide to Channel Marketing, over the past several weeks we had great conversations with several shopping destination sites/marketing channels.

eTaildTail knows that using consumer shopping engines ("CSE"s) can help online retailers increase sales at a price they can afford, although many ecommerce merchants still are hesitant to work with CSEs for a myriad of reasons.

The most notable three reasons are:

1. lack of familiarity with a particular marketing channel
2. lack of evidence that a marketing channel increases sales cost effectively, and
3. difficulty of working with a marketing channel

As part of eTaildTail's 2009 effort to educate online retailers as to the many, cost-effective marketing channels available to them to list their product catalog, eTaildTail will interview executives at various CSEs and marketing channels and ask them to help us undertstand their value to growing an online merchant's sales and revenues.

eTaildTail hopes that these online Q&A sessions give you, the online merchant, pertinent information as to a particular marketing channel and the potential benefits of working with them.  And, if you decide to work them then great, please let them know that eTaildTail sent you their way.

So let's get started with an interview with TheFind.com and its Senior Director of Business Development, Rob Ulveling.  All interviews are conducted by Chip Arndt, an author of eTaildTail. 

If you would like to contact TheFind.com and Rob Ulveling you may email me at tips @ merchantadvantage.com and eTaildTail would be glad to accommodate you, or see below.

Insider Edition:  The Experts' Guide to Channel Marketing – TheFind.com

TheFind.com's Secrets to CSE Marketing Success for Online Merchants

Interview with Rob Ulveling by Chip Arndt, eTaildTail author.

1. When was TheFind.com founded and by whom?

In February 2005, a little over four years ago, theFind got going with its first venture financing. Our CEO Siva Kumar is one of the two co-founders of the company.

2. What sets TheFind.com apart from the other consumer shopping engines?

TheFind is a vertical search engine for shopping that is designed to simply find it all. Our mission is to make every product, every store, every sale, coupon and discount, instantaneously accessible to shoppers.

Just like Google and Yahoo, TheFind crawls the entire Web and finds all of the store Web sites. TheFind also accepts feeds from qualified sources like Merchant Advantage. Then, with patented search technology TheFind helps shoppers discover everything that online shopping, local shopping, and now, green shopping have to offer, so that they can quickly find the lowest price, the best deal, or that hard-to-find item.

Over 320 million products from more than 500,000 stores and online merchants are currently universally accessible through TheFind.com, TheFind Mobile, and TheFind iPhone App, making TheFind the leading source for comprehensive product information in the US.

3. What are the secrets to success for merchants advertising on TheFind.com?

The most successful merchants take advantage of the breadth and diversity of product searches on TheFind, by making sure that every product they sell is part of our index. To ensure that all their items are included merchants can help our crawler by following the best practices for SEO that are recommended for Google.

In addition, merchants can benefit by having robust and detailed product descriptions on their pages, showing clearly marked pricing and sale information, and making sure they have large product images. Merchants can also choose to augment our crawl by working through Merchant Advantage to supply a detailed and comprehensive data feed.

In the feed, they should add in any coupons and shipping offers that they may be currently running as we include those alongside relevant product search results to help drive more sales. In a typical month we send qualified consumer clicks to over 50,000 merchants. By advertising product listings on TheFind on a CPA basis, a merchant's relevant product matches will show up higher than other equivalent products,driving more qualified traffic and more sales within ROI metrics.

4. Who is using TheFind.com and why?

Last month over 11.5 million people visited TheFind, a growth of over 1,200% from a year ago. The feedback we consistently get from shoppers is that TheFind is able track down even the hardest-to-find items, which makes us a trusted and valued shopping destination.

Two-thirds of the searches on TheFind are in the following categories: apparel and accessories, health and beauty, jewelry, home and garden, and sports and outdoors. But with our large index (over 320 million products - over 20 times what is on most comparison shopping engines) we see consumer searches in every possible retail category - from auto parts and craft supplies to musical instruments and pet supplies! So no matter how small or how large you are and what kind of products you
sell, we have qualified shoppers looking for what you have to offer.

5. What are some of the challenges you are seeing in the retail sector during the current economic downturn, and what are you doing to overcome them?

What has been interesting during these tough economic times is that our traffic continues to grow every month. This we think reflects the trend that multi-channel retailers are seeing in that their growth coming from the online sector as opposed to offline sales. Shoppers are increasingly turning online in order to save time and money.

We are also seeing a strong demand for sale items, coupons, and free shipping offers and by including such information directly as part of our product search results, we deliver greater benefits to hard hit consumers in these recessionary times.
We see e-commerce only growing stronger as a channel, and are optimistic about what this will mean for the 2009 online Holiday Season.

Bonus Q: How do I get to work with TheFind.com as an ecommerce merchant?

We probably already crawl your e-commerce site and we would encourage you to follow the set of guidelines in answer #3 above.

You should definitely talk to your Merchant Advantage representative and discuss the ways in which they can help you gain an advantage over your peers in benefiting from TheFind's breadth and diversity of product search traffic.

They can help you with advertising options to drive more qualified traffic to your site. Small and medium-sized merchants can especially gain from the many different categories in which our consumers are looking for great products to buy.

Chip: Thank you so much Rob for your time and insights on how online merchants can benefit by working with TheFind.com

If you want to keep up with all entries as they relate to Insider Edition:  The Experts' Guide to Channel Marketing, please click on "Experts' Guide to Channel Marketing" under categories on the left hand side of the eTaildTail blog.

- Chip Arndt

Insider Edition: The Experts' Guide to Channel Marketing - Become.com

Insider Edition:  The Experts' Guide to Channel Marketing

eTaildTail is excited to continue its oning series called: Insider Edition: The Experts' Guide to Channel Marketing, over the past several weeks we had great conversations with several shopping destination sites/marketing channels.

eTaildTail knows that using consumer shopping engines ("CSE"s) can help online retailers increase sales at a price they can afford, although many ecommerce merchants still are hesitant to work with CSEs for a myriad of reasons.

The most notable three reasons are:

1. lack of familiarity with a particular marketing channel
2. lack of evidence that a marketing channel increases sales cost effectively, and
3. difficulty of working with a marketing channel

As part of eTaildTail's 2009 effort to educate online retailers as to the many, cost-effective marketing channels available to them to list their product catalog, eTaildTail will interview executives at various CSEs and marketing channels and ask them to help us undertstand their value to growing an online merchant's sales and revenues.

eTaildTail hopes that these online Q&A sessions give you, the online merchant, pertinent information as to a particular marketing channel and the potential benefits of working with them.  And, if you decide to work them then great, please let them know that eTaildTail sent you their way.

So let's get started with an interview with Become.com and its Director of Business Development & Sales, Lee Cohen.  All interviews are conducted by Chip Arndt, an author of eTaildTail. 

If you would like to contact Become.com and Lee Cohen you may email me at tips @ merchantadvantage.com and eTaildTail would be glad to accommodate you, or see below.

 

  Insider Edition:  The Experts' Guide to Channel Marketing – Become.com

Become.com's Secrets to CSE Marketing Success for Online Merchants

Interview with Lee Cohen by Chip Arndt, eTaildTail author... and check out the photo below of the very helpful and "cool" team at Become.com! We love them!

1. When was Become.com founded and by whom?

Become.com was founded in 2004 by Michael Yang, former founder of mySimon – the web’s first comparison search engine.

2. What sets Become.com apart from the other consumer shopping engines?

Become.com is a site that combines product research and comparison shopping, allowing shoppers to access product information and make better buying decisions.

Users can take advantage of Become.com’s research engine to search over 5 billion web pages of information—buying guides, product reviews, discussion forums and more—and then comparison shop on the same site to find the right product for their lifestyle and budget.

Whether online shoppers are looking for an ATV part or a home theater system , Become.com’s research and comparison shopping engine helps them get the information they need to make the best buying decision. With over 25 million products and over 5,000 stores, we’ve made it easy for users to find everything they need to shop on one site.

3. What are the secrets to success for merchants advertising on Become.com?

There are no real secrets to success, just a simple 3-prong approach –

1. Relevant titles & descriptions
2. ROI Tracker Integration and
3. Use of our marketing vehicles

 Here is a brief explanation of each of these:

1. Relevant Titles and Descriptions – Adding descriptive keyword information to your titles and descriptions helps your products appear for the right user queries. When consumers find what they are looking for, they buy which means higher conversions for our retailers.

2. ROI Tracker Integration – integrating our state-of-the-art ROI Tracker gives us visibility into which products are selling best for our retailers on Become.com. How does this help you sell more? Let’s say you are a jewelry retailer and you list 50 pearl bracelets with Become.com, our algorithm has no visibility into which of these bracelets is a popular, top seller. Integrating the ROI Tracker allows our algorithm to identify the best selling bracelet for a particular query and display it.

3. Marketing Tools – Become.com offers retailers multiple marketing tools to best showcase your products on our site. Here are is list of our most popular marketing vehicles:

Bidding – Become.com is a dynamic bidding system where retailers can bid for preferred placement both on a category level (in the dashboard) or on a product level (in the feed)

Free Logo Placement with a $0.10+ Bid – Retailers can bid $0.10 or more to receive not only better placement on the page but also free logo placement

Promo Text – An additional $0.05 (for soft goods) and $0.10 (for tech products) allows our retailers to place promotional language alongside their listings. Some popular uses of this are “3-Day Sale” and “Free Shipping” . 

Free %-Off Sticker – When retailers provide us the MSRP as well as the selling price in the feed, our system will automatically calculate the % off and display that saving free of charge to the users. This is a great way for retailers to showcase great deals and low prices!

4. Who is using Become.com and why?

Become.com has over 10 Million unique monthly visitors. 60% of our visitors are women searching for great deals on the latest shoes, clothing and household items. Our male users tend to search for discounted gps systems, HDTV and computers. 

Here are some success stories of shoppers on Become.com: http://www.become.com/success_story.html 

Become.com’s shopping blog is frequented by online shoppers looking for the latest in fashion, gadgets, gift ideas for events and product reviews.

5. What are some of the challenges you are seeing in the retail sector during the current economic downturn, and what are you doing to overcome them?

Consumers are more deal focused than ever before and retailers need to use every vehicle available to showcase these deals. One of Become.com’s newest features is % Off – this is a FREE tools retailers can use to showcase their low prices and great deals. Additionally, even in this down economy, retailers still need to make sales.

At Become.com we are committed to driving the highest quality, most qualified traffic to our retail partners to ensure that ROI and conversion metrics are met.

Bonus Q: How do I get to work with Become.com as an ecommerce merchant?

We are happy to answer any questions you have about listing your products on Become.com. We can even set you up right over the phone! You can give us a call at 408-215-4700 ext. 2 for Sales or email us at sales@become.com and if you mention “etaildtail” we’ll give you $50 in FREE CLICKS!

Chip: Thank you so much Lee for your time and insights on how online merchants can benefit by working with Become.com

If you want to keep up with all entries as they relate to Insider Edition:  The Experts' Guide to Channel Marketing, please click on "Experts' Guide to Channel Marketing" under categories on the left hand side of the eTaildTail blog.

- Chip Arndt

Insider Edition: The Experts' Guide to Channel Marketing - SortPrice.com

Insider Edition:  The Experts' Guide to Channel Marketing

eTaildTail is excited to continue its oning series called: Insider Edition: The Experts' Guide to Channel Marketing, over the past several weeks we had great conversations with several shopping destination sites/marketing channels.

eTaildTail knows that using consumer shopping engines ("CSE"s) can help online retailers increase sales at a price they can afford, although many ecommerce merchants still are hesitant to work with CSEs for a myriad of reasons.

The most notable three reasons are:

1. lack of familiarity with a particular marketing channel
2. lack of evidence that a marketing channel increases sales cost effectively, and
3. difficulty of working with a marketing channel

As part of eTaildTail's 2009 effort to educate online retailers as to the many, cost-effective marketing channels available to them to list their product catalog, eTaildTail will interview executives at various CSEs and marketing channels and ask them to help us undertstand their value to growing an online merchant's sales and revenues.

eTaildTail hopes that these online Q&A sessions give you, the online merchant, pertinent information as to a particular marketing channel and the potential benefits of working with them.  And, if you decide to work them then great, please let them know that eTaildTail sent you their way.

So let's get started with an interview with SortPrice and its Founder, Doron Simovitch.  All interviews are conducted by Chip Arndt, an author of eTaildTail. 

If you would like to contact SortPrice and Doron Simovitch you may email me at tips @ merchantadvantage.com and eTaildTail would be glad to accommodate you, or see below.

 Insider Edition:  The Experts' Guide to Channel Marketing – SortPrice.com

SortPrice's Secrets to CSE Marketing Success for Online Merchants

Interview with Doron Simovitch by Chip Arndt, eTaildTail author.

1. When was SortPrice.com founded and by whom?

Sortprice was founded in 2004 by Doron Simovitch and Asaf Klibansky, both of whom have backgrounds in technology and e-commerce.  The aim was to establish a shopping search engine that offered merchants a fairer, more cost-effective means of expanding their online advertising reach while giving shoppers a site that is fun, easy-to-use and provides real value.

2. What sets SortPrice.com apart from the other consumer shopping engines?

We pride ourselves on building and maintaining very strong relationships with our merchants. We genuinely want them to succeed and everything we do, from sales to our tech support team, is geared towards establishing trust with them in a personal way.

Unlike most of our competitors, we do not use a pay-per-click pricing model for our merchant listings. Instead, we offer monthly flat-fee based pricing.  This model negates the possibility of click fraud, which we’ve seen can have a devastating impact on a retailer’s advertising budget and ultimately, their bottom line.  Merchants can list as many products as they want on Sortprice and not have to worry about paying for fraudulent clicks on particular product listings.  It’s a fairer, more transparent way of doing business and our merchants collectively love the peace of mind they get from us.

We also strive to give shoppers and merchants alike the best shopping technology and tools on the web.  We were the first to expand the online shopping experience to Facebook with our enormously popular Wishlist shopping application, which allows users to build gift lists directly from Sortprice.com and share them with friends and family on their Facebook pages.  Similarly, we built a Facebook Store application for merchants that gives them the ability to sell their products through a virtual store on their individual Facebook profile.  Both of these applications are not only one-of-a-kind, but free to use.

Sortprice is continuously searching for ways to improve the online shopping experience.  In the last year alone we’ve added a Shop-by-Color feature that makes it even easier for a shopper to find what they’re looking for on our site and we’ll be rolling out a few more new technologies as well in the immediate future.  Our commitment to being an industry leader on the technology side almost borders on an obsession but the results speak for themselves.

3. What are the secrets to success for merchants advertising on SortPrice.com?

The Sortprice engine works by relevance and results are driven by what our shoppers are looking for. We use advanced algorithms to display the most relevant search results. Most successful merchants optimize their product data feeds by adding the relevant keywords such as model number/brand/manufacturer/product type and color in the name and description fields on their data feeds.

We strongly recommend that our merchants take advantage of all the benefits that working with Sortprice.com provides. This means finding a price package that best fits their budgets and online advertising goals.  Some merchants choose to list everything while others selectively target certain products, but either way, our pricing structure gives them the flexibility to figure out what works best.  It also means utilizing tools like the Facebook merchant store application, which is free to add and easy to set up with the help of our support team.

4. Who is using SortPrice.com and why?

Because we have thousands of product categories—everything from jewelry to medical supplies to even auto parts—anyone can (and does) utilize Sortprice.  We’ve designed Sortprice to be incredibly easy and even fun to use, so whether you’re a novice online shopper or a seasoned veteran, you will find exactly what you’re looking for.

Additionally, we have one of the most diverse client bases in the shopping search engine industry, encompassing merchants of literally every size and scope.  Of course, you will find the larger national established retail giants on Sortprice.  But we also host thousands of smaller, specialized “mom and pop” retailers that you won’t find anywhere else.  These merchants might otherwise not be able to expand to the internet if not for the value our flat-fee pricing structure provides.  By including them on Sortprice, we’re not only doing our part to level the playing field for merchants.  We believe we’re offering consumers the most choices to make an educated decision when shopping.

5. What are some of the challenges you are seeing in the retail sector during the current economic downturn, and what are you doing to overcome them?

On the merchant side, the obvious implication of a flailing economy is that many retailers are being forced to slash, or even cut entirely, their online advertising budgets.

We’ve stayed in close contact with many of our merchants throughout these troubled times and have tried to work with them to keep them in the fold while still respecting the financial hurdles they are facing, mostly through promotions or by changing the advertising packages they have with us.  We’re also strongly encouraging them to take advantage of the Facebook merchant store application, since it is provides free exposure to them and is something we assist them in setting up.  Additionally, by working with our partners such as MerchantAdvantage, we’re able to do most of the heavy lifting for merchants in maintaining their product listings and data feeds on Sortprice, giving them time to focus on other matters critical to their success.

The interesting thing about the current economic climate is that people are still shopping.  They’re just being smarter about it.  People are genuinely doing their research now and looking for every opportunity to save some money, which makes online shopping, and by extension Sortprice, an even more valuable resource for them.

Bonus Q: How do I get to work with Sortprice.com as an ecommerce merchant?

Setting up an account on Sortprice.com is extremely simple.  Just visit this page to learn more and get started: http://www.sortprice.com/enhanced.html

Chip: Thank you so much Doron for your time and insights on how online merchants can benefit by working with SortPrice.com.

If you want to keep up with all entries as they relate to Insider Edition:  The Experts' Guide to Channel Marketing, please click on "Experts' Guide to Channel Marketing" under categories on the left hand side of the eTaildTail blog.

- Chip Arndt

Rank Well on Google Product Search

eTaildTail relies on experts when we can and for online retailers (ecommerce merchants) we found a wonderful article on how best to work with Google Product Search.

MerchantAdvantage helps any ecommerce merchant work with Google Product search and over 200 other marketing channels, so if you are having difficulty feeding your product catalog to Google Product Search and/or working with other marketing and shopping channels, please feel free to contact us.  We help you also analyze cost-effectively all of your marketing campaigns using Chanalytics , which is available as a stand alone product or integrated into our Channel Management products.

The below article from SEOmozBlog about how to leverage Google Product Search will help a lot!  I really liked it.

-- Chip Arndt
Co-Founder, MerchantAdvantage

From SEOmozBlog
By: Tom
April 20, 2009

 

 

Google Base aka Google Shopping aka Google Products

"What do you know about Google Base? If you're running a site which sells something, you should be paying attention to Google Base because it's the service which underpins various vertical search portals from Google, including Google Products.

In case you're not familiar with Google Products and what they look like, let me give you an example:

See how Apple can't even rank top of Google for the phrase 'buy iphone'? Those 3 links above them are pulled from Google Shopping results. So having your products ranking highly in Google Shopping/Products/Base is clearly a good thing. But how do you get good rankings in this arcane Google offshoot? Is it all about pagerank?

Major Ranking Factors For Google Products

Below I present to you a list of the major ranking factors in Google Products, in no particular order. I've not done enough research to determine which are more important than others:..."

CLICK HERE to continue reading....it is worth it!

Shopzilla Reduces "Minimum Rates" For Certain Products, Effective April 28, 2009

eTaildTail friends at Shopzilla have notified us of a "decrease" in minimum rates pricing, effective April 28, 2009, for certain electronic products.

Hope this information helps.

- Chip Arndt

 

"Dear Valued Shopzilla Merchant,

As part of Shopzilla's continued focus on merchant performance, we are decreasing minimum rates in our Electronics, Computers and Office Supplies categories effective April 28, 2009. A new rate card can be viewed by visiting the following link:

https://merchant.shopzilla.com/oa/resources/us/updated_rate_card.pdf

We hope these changes will allow you to increase your product sales by optimizing your campaign and deepening your participation in our merchant listings program. To take advantage of these changes, please log in to the bidding tool via the Shopzilla Business Services site. We will not automatically place or change bids on your behalf.

We are committed to helping you maximize sales while meeting your performance objectives. Please contact us if you have any questions.

Thank you,

Sales, Shopzilla"

Insider Edition: The Experts' Guide to Channel Marketing - Like.com

Insider Edition:  The Experts' Guide to Channel Marketing

Last week, eTaildTail had a great interview with consumer shopping engine FindGift.com as part of our 2009 ongoing series called: Insider Edition: The Experts' Guide to Channel Marketing, the weeks before that we had great conversations with several other marketing channels.

eTaildTail knows that using consumer shopping engines ("CSE"s) can help online retailers increase sales at a price they can afford, although many ecommerce merchants still are hesitant to work with CSEs for a myriad of reasons.

The most notable three reasons are:

1. lack of familiarity with a particular marketing channel
2. lack of evidence that a marketing channel increases sales cost effectively, and
3. difficulty of working with a marketing channel

As part of eTaildTail's 2009 effort to educate online retailers as to the many, cost-effective marketing channels available to them to list their product catalog, eTaildTail will interview executives at various CSEs and marketing channels and ask them to help us undertstand their value to growing an online merchant's sales and revenues.

eTaildTail hopes that these online Q&A sessions give you, the online merchant, pertinent information as to a particular marketing channel and the potential benefits of working with them.  And, if you decide to work them then great, please let them know that eTaildTail sent you their way.

So let's get started with an interview with Like.com and its Manager of Merchant Development, Jillian OrRico.  All interviews are conducted by Chip Arndt, an author of eTaildTail. 

If you would like to contact Like.com and Jillian OrRico you may email me at tips @ merchantadvantage.com and eTaildTail would be glad to accommodate you, or see below.

 Insider Edition:  The Experts' Guide to Channel Marketing – Like.com

Like.com's Secrets to CSE Marketing Success for Online Merchants

Interview with Jillian OrRico by Chip Arndt, eTaildTail author ... and check out the photo of Jillian's new baby!!! I love building close relationships with our marketing channels and we love working with Jillian and the team at Like.com...now they have a new addition.  Congratulations Jillian. :-) :-) :-) 

1. When was Like.com founded and by whom?

Like.com, originally Riya.com, was founded by Munjal Shah in 2004. The visual shopping search engine we know as Like.com started as a visual facial recognition search technology known as Riya.

Munjal and his team of engineers andPhD founders applied their patented facial visual recognition software towards an application that allowed users to find photos of themselves, friends and family, in their photo library. Recognizing that this was a useful tool, but not one that could be easily monetized, Riya was reinvented into Like.com. Like.com allows shoppers to search visually by shape, color, style and texture.

2. What sets Like.com apart from the other shopping engines?

Like.com is the first true visual search engine, where the contents of photos are used to search and retrieve similar items.

We believe that there are literally millions of items that are difficult to describe via text-based search. Like.com combines visual search around shape, color, style and texture, with traditional text search, to create the most  comprehensive shopping search engine.

Think of your favorite pair of red shoes and what an ordeal it can be to find their replacement.  Through photo upload or by browsing our huge inventory of styles, users can easily find a replacement for any favorite pair of shoe. Like.com is also a great tool for finding an item seen worn on someone else and for finding a more affordable version of a high fashion item.

3. What are the secrets to success for merchants advertising on Like.com?

Because Like.com gives a Guaranteed ROAS to merchants that work with them direct.... the secret is pretty clear. Work with Like.com and you're guaranteed to hit a minimum ROI or Like.com will discount your CPC rates.

4. Who is using Like.com and why?

Companies who list their products on Like.com are mid to large size soft good retailers selling handbags, luggage, jewelry, shoes, apparel and watches.

Why is Like.com working for a range of soft good merchants?

Traditional comparison shopping engines were designed to search and match consumers on hard goods, such as specific quantifiable items like "Sony BRAVIA KDL-46XBR3 46 in. HDTV LCD TV." Try looking for a red high heeled shoe with a peep toe on any text search engine and you'll find poor results if any results at all. As a result, Like.com drives more leads to our soft good shoe merchants then any other CSE for some of the largest shoe retailers besides Yahoo! and Google.

5. What are some of the challenges you are seeing in the retail sector during the current economic downturn, and what are you doing to overcome them?

In the past years it has been all about volume volume volume with our retailers. With the macro economic situation - our retailers have now turned to focusing on ROI. Like.com recognized this trend in late 2008 and saw a need to understand how to intelligently match traffic to the right products our customers are selling. We did not want to optimize simply by cutting feeds over and over again, but instead to understand the behavior of each click and buyer who comes to Like.com and ultimately to our merchants.

By creating the gCPC program (guaranteed ROAS program) we are now able to better analyze user data and better target traffic to the appropriate merchants. The new program has been successful for both Like.com and our merchants.

Bonus Q: How do I get to work with Like.com as an ecommerce merchant?

MerchantAdvantage has created an easy process for merchants to participate with Like.com and their gCPC program. For non MerchantAdvantage clients to get started on Like.com's gCPC program, contact Jillian OrRico - Manager of Merchant Development at jillian@like.com for next steps.

Chip: Thank you so much Jillian for your time and insights on how online merchants can benefit by working with Like.com and congratulations again on the your new addition to the family.

If you want to keep up with all entries as they relate to Insider Edition:  The Experts' Guide to Channel Marketing, please click on "Experts' Guide to Channel Marketing" under categories on the left hand side of the eTaildTail blog.

- Chip Arndt

Insider Edition: The Experts' Guide to Channel Marketing - FindGift.com

Insider Edition:  The Experts' Guide to Channel Marketing

Last week, eTaildTail had a great interview with consumer shopping engine Street Prices.com as part of our 2009 ongoing series called: Insider Edition: The Experts' Guide to Channel Marketing, the weeks before that we had great conversations with several other marketing channels.

eTaildTail knows that using consumer shopping engines ("CSE"s) can help online retailers increase sales at a price they can afford, although many ecommerce merchants still are hesitant to work with CSEs for a myriad of reasons.

The most notable three reasons are:

1. lack of familiarity with a particular marketing channel
2. lack of evidence that a marketing channel increases sales cost effectively, and
3. difficulty of working with a marketing channel

As part of eTaildTail's 2009 effort to educate online retailers as to the many, cost-effective marketing channels available to them to list their product catalog, eTaildTail will interview executives at various CSEs and marketing channels and ask them to help us undertstand their value to growing an online merchant's sales and revenues.

eTaildTail hopes that these online Q&A sessions give you, the online merchant, pertinent information as to a particular marketing channel and the potential benefits of working with them.  And, if you decide to work them then great, please let them know that eTaildTail sent you their way.

So let's get started with an interview with Find Gift and its VP of Technology, Gary Wolf.  All interviews are conducted by Chip Arndt, an author of eTaildTail. 

If you would like to contact Find Gift and Gary Wolf you may email me at tips @ merchantadvantage.com and eTaildTail would be glad to accommodate you, or see below.

  Insider Edition:  The Experts' Guide to Channel Marketing – FindGift.com

 Find Gift Secrets to CSE Marketing Success for Online Merchants

Interview with Gary Wolf by Chip Arndt, eTaildTail author ... and check out the photo below and the wonderful, helpful, and "cool" team at FindGifts.com! We love them!

1. When was FindGift.com founded and by whom?

FindGift.com was initially started as Registry Online in August of 1997 by husband and wife co-founders Bob and Carolyn Zakrzewski.  In September of 1998, the web service was re-launched as FindGift.com, which today has grown to over 1200 merchant partners and more than 1 million shoppers a month.

2. What sets FindGift.com apart from the other consumer shopping engines?

The biggest difference is that most gift sites are comparison shopping sites. FindGift.com's focus is to provide unique gift ideas to those gift givers who seek advice, or don't know what gift to give.  In essence, we're a search engine for gift ideas, giving shoppers their own personal gift adviser that understands the latest trends.  That is why FindGift.com is organized by occasion and recipient, this helps inspire revelation rather than comparison shopping approach which tends to focus on key word searches for brand, model and price.

3. What are the secrets to success for merchants advertising on FindGift.com?

This is a subject we could discuss in some length, so I will keep it to the top five:

1. Accurate Data – Too often data is incorrect.  Having data that accurately reflects the current price as well as inventory is critical.
2. Static Product Identifiers - Being popularity driven, merchants should avoid resetting their rankings by rotating in new Product IDs for the same product.  Retailers who do change their SKUs for tracking purposes can, as long as they 're able to provide another Product ID field in their feed that doesn't change.  This gives us something to lock onto over the long haul.
3. Robust Tracking - Make sure it sets a cookie, so you can see if they come back within a few days to make the purchase.  Many times a shopper will want to ponder their purchase for a while.
4. Use of our free Broad Message Service – Some merchants overlook this gem.  This is a message that can be displayed with every product advertised.  It's a great way to educate shoppers about promotional offers.
5. Providing Details on Best Sellers or Hot Items – By providing our FindGift.com representatives with a hot items list, each of our merchants can work with our editorial staff to efficiently build a targeted campaign.

4. Who is using FindGift.com and why?

Woman and men of all age groups show up at our site; however, the largest demographic gravitates toward the ages of 21-40, college educated, affluent, and about 60% female. This demographic is Internet educated and wants to optimize their time.  They find using FindGift.com to be a fast and efficient method by which to both organize and obtain their gifts.  The main attraction is our Gift Wizard.  Shoppers like its quick and easy interface, as well as the ability to hone in on combinations of categories they find interesting.  Our registry service is also a strong repeat visitor magnet for us.

5. What are some of the challenges you are seeing in the retail sector during the current economic downturn, and what are you doing to overcome them?

Our conversions are holding up pretty well in this environment.  What has changed is gift givers are spending less per purchase.  Thus, people still have gifts to buy, but they're being more price conscious about their purchase.  

Additionally, in the 9 years since we launched our CPC program, our rates have never been raised, thereby making it easier in times of tight credit for merchants to keep their products live on FindGift.com.  That, and good ROI figures, make for a winning combination in any environment.

In an effort to help both our shoppers and our retail partners, we recently launched a “Deal of the Week” feature.  Our gift experts select one retailer each week who they feel has an excellent promotion.  The featured retailer essentially gets free advertising here. There's absolutely no cost to the merchant  -  they just have to provide an attractive offer that we believe is promotable on our site.

And, last but not least, maintaining a quality service is always our primary initiative.  The better and more relevant we can build FindGift.com technology and the campaigns of our merchants, the higher the consumer confidence will be, and the more likely they are to make a purchase.  Therefore, FindGift.com is constantly working to improve the gift shopper experience.

Bonus Q: How do I get to work with FindGift.com as an ecommerce merchant?

Retailers can sign up online via this link.  Or they can call us at (877) BE-GIFTY that is (877) 234-4389.  New data feed accounts can be set up starting $500 level, non-data feed accounts start at $100.  Our click-through rates range from 11-20 cents for product listings depending on deposit level.

FindGift.com does not require data feeds for participation.  Merchants also have the option of opening a non-data feed, (manual data entry account).  We support an easy to use interface that provides the merchants with the same features our data feed clients experience.  Of course the primary difference between the account types being that non-feed users manually supply and update their product information.  Manual accounts can be converted to feed accounts when the merchant is ready.

 Chip: Thank you so much Gary for your time and insights on how online merchants can benefit by working with FindGift.com

If you want to keep up with all entries as they relate to Insider Edition:  The Experts' Guide to Channel Marketing, please click on "Experts' Guide to Channel Marketing" under categories on the left hand side of the eTaildTail blog.

- Chip Arndt