May 1, 2013 Expanding the Scope of 1:1 Personalization: Recommendations in Emails

We’ve been sharing how excited we are that product recommendations can go into emails and is now available for the various ecommerce platforms. You may be wondering, what’s all the fuss about being able to personalize emails?

April 30, 2013 The History of E-Commerce

Our friends at Miva Merchant pulled together a great infographic on the history of ecommerce, er, rather e-commerce

April 24, 2013 Tag You’re It: Ensuring All Email Marketing is Tracked

Do you know if your email campaigns are working? Are all those links actually pulling people into your site? To be sure, you should be tagging those links. Here’s a guest post from Tyler Holmes of eROI to show you how easy it is to tag and track.

March 26, 2013 The ABC’s of A/B and Multivariate Testing

Where does A/B and multivariate testing fit into this picture if you use product recommendations? There are some standard practices – and beliefs – about how to configure the different page types on your site.

March 4, 2013 Google Analytics Blog Series #4: Deeper Analysis Through Advanced & Custom Segments

This is the fourth in our on-going blog series. Within Google Analytics standard reports, there are ways to drill deep into your data. Advanced Segments allows you to isolate and analyze specific kinds of traffic.

February 5, 2013 Google Analytics Blog Series #3: Welcome to the World of Reports

This the third post in an on-going Google Analytics Blog Series. It assumes you’ve got Google Analytics set up and are ready to start using it. The good news is that you’ve done the hard part of getting everything set up – now the fun begins: diving in and looking at the Standard Reports!

January 31, 2013 Ecommerce Conversion Optimization: The Holy Grail of Lists

You spend all that time and money driving people to your website but 98% shoppers leave without making a purchase. What’s wrong? Why is your ecommerce conversion rate so low?

January 4, 2013 Google Analytics Blog Series #2: Setting up Your Ecommerce Store

Broken down, there are three main steps required to get Google Analytics setup in order to be able to fully assess what’s happening in your online store.

January 2, 2013 6 Ways to be Successful in 2013

Congratulations on surviving the 2012 holiday season — the biggest one to date! This is a good time to look at what worked, what didn’t and implement strategies that will result in even bigger successes for your online retail business.

November 29, 2012 Google Analytics Blog Series #1: 4 KPIs to Assess Recommendations

We’re kicking off a series on Google Analytics to help you navigate this terrific tool used to measure the effectiveness of all of your online marketing efforts. It’s also an easy way to see the impact recommendations are having on your business.

November 15, 2012 Let’s Get Personal

These days it seems like everyone’s talking about “personalization.” This term seems to be popping up across all retail sectors, but what does it really mean in the digital world?

October 31, 2012 The Next Big Thing – SoLoMo

If you’re a retailer, the marriage of Social, Local and Mobile has coined yet another term to learn: SoLoMo. When done right, retailers have an opportunity to deliver a multi-channel experience to drive ROI. The premise is simple: Social drives traffic Local drives action Mobile drives opportunity Deceptively simple, yes, and cutting edge retailers are just [...]

October 2, 2012 Report from the Front: Retailer Qs

In our ongoing webinar series, we’ve had attendees ask some great questions about how 4-Tell’s Boost® Recs4 Web can help their online stores. Here are some highlights and our answers.

August 29, 2012 The Customer and Cross Channel Personalization

Multi-, cross- and omni-channel personalization – these are the terms being bantered about in the ecommerce industry, but what do they really mean? Quite simply, there’s a new world order and your shoppers are driving it: they are choosing to engage with you and your business where and when it’s convenient for them, be it through their computer, tablet, phone or in your store.

July 30, 2012 Driving vs. Converting Traffic: How SEO And Product Recommendations Really Work

If you are experiencing a bit of a decrease in the number of visitors hitting your site this summer, then you’re not alone. Recent analysis revealed gross sales for online merchants in July declined by 30% from December highs over the past 4 years. But if you’ve implemented product recommendations, you can be confident that you’re ahead of the curve in terms of maximizing revenues from the visitors you are getting.

July 24, 2012 What Google’s Changes Mean for Retailers

Google is changing product search to a pay-to-play model with product listing ads so effectively engaging with the traffic your site is receiving is going to be more important than ever. These changes will have a huge effect on retailers of all sizes.

May 29, 2012 Are Avoidable SSL Errors Causing Your Shoppers to Flee?

There are so many different reasons you may experience a high abandon cart rate. Don’t let some easily-fixed issues be impacting your rate. Some thoughts on site secure connection (SSL) errors from Neil Lofgren, 4-Tell’s co-Founder and VP of Engineering.

March 21, 2012 Defining Your New Website’s Mood, Personality, and Brand

by guest blogger Debbie Levitt, CEO of As Was

Next up in the series from Debbie, a few things to think about before you let the programmers loose on building your new website.

February 21, 2012 5 Reasons to Care About Conversion

by guest blogger Lisa Williams, President of MEDIA forte marketing

Conversion Optimization is one of the most powerful ways to grow your online business, yet it’s often not included as a Marketing Budget line item and usually all the glory goes to driving traffic to your website. Getting your company to embrace conversion optimization and implement strategies for improved conversion should be a priority and it’s often one of the best marketing investments you can make in your site.  Here are five ideas to get you focusing more on conversion.

January 26, 2012 Multiply your Marketing Impact with 4-Tell

How much do you spend on online marketing? Marketing’s goal, especially search engine marketing and optimization (SEO/SEM), is to get people to your online store. How many of them end up buying once they’re there? More than the average 2%? We help you better leverage the marketing dollars you’re already spending. We provide a better shopping experience for your customers, and it shows – in your analytics, your SEO ranking, and your bottom line.

January 13, 2012 The Power of Your Website’s Design

by guest blogger Debbie Levitt, CEO of As Was

You’re setting up a website. You can start with a free template or out-of-the-box design or layout. Well, you could, but could you be hurting your business by choosing something so plain?

January 11, 2012 Reader’s Digest Talking about Recommendations?

You know your market is hot when Reader’s Digest runs a cartoon about it! Product recommendations anyone?

July 14, 2011 Survey says: Which e-commerce platforms are in widespread use?

Here an interesting survey from UK Magento developer Tom Robertshaw.  Tom writes that his signature detection methodology has improved, allowing his analysis to disclose previously unidentified e-commmerce engines.

“The June 2011 eCommerce survey of the Alexa top 1 million sites found 25,592 online stores. Magento continues to reign as the most popular platform with 4,705 sites, an 15% increase since February.

July 1, 2011 3dcart Announces Version 4 and introduces 4-Tell integration

Ecommerce software provider 3dcart recently announced the launch of version 4. As the biggest rollout to date, 3dcart 4 capitalizes on the group buying trend by putting control of group deals in the hands of online businesses. The new version features tight integration with 4-Tell. As part of the release, 3dcart is inviting merchants to [...]

April 12, 2011 Don’t miss 4-Tell’s CEO, Ken Levy, speaking at InnoTech’s eMarketing Summit on 4/21/2011

eMarketing Summit “The Evolution to Digital Marketing” presents lots of great information on Thursday, April 21, Oregon Convention Center The eMarketing Summit brings together marketers, business owners and internet professionals from throughout the Northwest.  Now in its seventh year, the eMarketing Summit, a Special Event @ InnoTech, focuses on the strategies and concepts of eMarketing [...]

March 28, 2011 Product-Centric and Customer-Centric Recommendations

Retailers don’t always know who their customers are.  Although, the more we know about them, the more likely we are to generate additional sales during their shopping visits – we can also make very effective product recommendations for anonymous customers. Let’s take a quick look at how we can create the best possible customer experience [...]

February 28, 2011 Ecommerce sales to hit $279 Billion in 2015

Ecommerce Will Keep Rolling, Research Firm Says By Stu Woo (WSJ Blogs – Digits) Internet retail sales in the U.S. will grow 10% a year through 2015 as shoppers spend more time online, Forrester Research says, and the implications aren’t good for brick-and-mortar stores. According to a new report out Monday, U.S. ecommerce sales grew [...]

January 26, 2011 Are Impersonal Messages Hurting Your Online Marketing?

Marketers who fail to segment and target their messages may be at risk. (Note, this is a great article with compelling stats about the importance of Personalization. 4-Tell makes it easy to harness the power of personalization in your web pages, email, social media, ads, phone and mobile.) Marketing trends—especially in digital—are motivating brands to [...]

January 5, 2011 Cross-Sell is Best with Sales Data

Cross-sell recommendations are bought with the current product; thus, it is best to use sales data to determine cross-sell. Engagement, such as view data or interaction with products, is good for finding similar products, where similar products are an alternative to the viewed product. Engagement can harm cross-sell since the customer looked at, but never [...]

November 12, 2010 Why Won’t Apple Love Me Back?

This is a Very Powerful Post by Ryan Deutsch For those of you who don’t know me, I am an Apple Freak.  Ever since my first iPod, I have been enthralled with the brand and its products.  As an email marketer, I have often used Apple communications as examples of best-in-class email programs.  However, today [...]

October 20, 2010 Offers in Welcome Email Result in More Sales

Offers within welcome email result in significantly higher transaction rates than those within bulk messages, according to research released October 19 by Experian Marketing Services. 4-Tell can provide cross-sell / up-sell recommendations to make these email messages work harder and return more. Welcome e-mails have transaction rates nine times higher than bulk mailings, according to [...]

October 12, 2010 The Power of Transactional Email

I’ve been preaching about the power of transactional email for a long time. These emails have higher open rates and are kept around a lot longer than any other kind of email. Use this opportunity and space to include personalized recommendations that are based on the customer’s order or buying habits. Don’t miss a powerful [...]

October 6, 2010 Higher Holiday Sales Predicted

Consumers are expected to spend about 2.3% more this holiday season than they did last year, according to the National Retail Federation forecast released today. The forecast is markedly brighter than last year’s 0.4% increase and a 3.9% decline two years ago, amid a tanking economy. “What retailers are hoping to get this holiday season [...]

September 15, 2010 Can recommendations work with low volume products?

4-Tell is uniquely placed to help midsize retailers who have low sales volume, as well as new products for both midsize and large retailers. 4-Tell can do this with our patent-pending multidimensional analysis of aggregate sales, product attributes and customer purchases. More specifically, we make product recommendations based upon product sales as well as sales [...]