Sears, Roebuck and Co.

Amazon is the latest brand synonymous with digital marketing to add print marketing heavily into its mix. Google did it years ago.

From 1969 to 1972, the retail success story Sears used the catchy jingle, “Sears Has Everything!” Not anymore.

The story of Sears and its eventual bankruptcy is very illustrative of what I mean about narrow-minded analytics.

Retail is having a moment. Since the calendar flipped to 2017, we’ve seen more bankruptcies than all of last year. What’s going on?

Remember when personalization was the coolest thing in direct marketing, and we couldn’t wait to cash in on the increased ROI

Ignorance is no defense against the law or USPS. "The U.S. Postal Service assessed Southern California Edison $7.6 million in penalties for not keeping its address lists up to date and Sears $1.1 million for allegedly violating the rules governing how folded self-mailers should be sealed, according to the lawsuits," reads a June 30 blog post in Dead Tree Edition. Poor data hygiene cost SCE its $7.6 million discount for preparing 82 million pieces of presorted First-Class mail sent between May 14, 2007 and November 26, 2008, according to the post.

Stores try to wean sales-addicted shoppers off discounts, but it's not easy. Early this year, nearly three-quarters of 1,000 shoppers surveyed by consumer research firm America's Research Group said it would take discounts of at least 50 percent to get them to buy a given item. ... Paco Underhill ... says retailers discounting during the downturn created shoppers who think everyday pricing "takes some fun out of" shopping. To help break the vicious cycle of discounting, Underhill says merchants have to think of ways to attract shoppers that can be just as intoxicating as two-hour sales or coupons.

Most marketers understand the value of a strong content marketing program for driving leads, boosting search results and shortening the sales cycle. But implementing a strong content marketing program is a struggle for many. It doesn't have to be. Any marketer can develop a robust content marketing program—or supercharge its existing program—in just three easy and inexpensive steps.

Customer loyalty is the lifeboat to which many companies currently are clinging, so CRM is getting more attention than ever. Hence, the corporate obsession over social media alongside an attempt to control, steer, monitor and grow the conversations about a company and its products.

The Federal Trade Commission has been firing warning shots across the bow of marketers’ behavioral targeting practices for the past year. The most frank signs of the agency’s intention to compel stringent self-regulation have come from its release earlier this year of intensified guidelines for online behavioral advertising and a June ruling against Sears for alleged deceptive advertising.