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Good news! Smarter.com has just updated our feed specs to allow our merchants to highlight and display sale/discount prices in their feed! Now Smarter merchants will have the chance to show both the regular “retail” pricing of an item, but also indicate the current sale/discount pricing! Please check out the following live examples below!

Click here for Smarter Sale/Discount Price Example #1

Click Here for Smarter Sale/Discount Price Example #2

For current Smarter merchants we hope that you will start taking advantage of this new field right away, so please feel free to give me a call if you have any questions regarding this new feature.

Also, just a reminder to tune into Smarter’s own Joanna Estacio talking with Merchant Advantage’s Thomas Romeo about optimizing your Holiday Marketing! This FREE webinar is being held online Thursday, Nov. 13th at 2pm PST! You can register at the link below!

Free Holiday Webinar from Merchant Advantage featuring Smarter.com!

And finally, please let me know if I can offer you my support for a Smarter account set-up in time for the holiday’s! You can also register online here:

Register Now for Smarter.com!

Smarter.com has an exciting announcement regarding our latest entrance into social marketing! Please check out the link below to find out more about the launch of Smarter’s new Facebook application!

Click here to read the full Marketwatch Story!

You can actually download Smarter’s Facebook application here:

Download Smarter’s Facebook application now!

In other news, yours truly had a profitable time at Online Market World (www.onlinemarketworld.com) today, taking in 3 different panels:

• Keynote: Why Now is the Best Time to Sell Online
• Search Engine Optimization – Get Found Online or Get Left Behind!
• Improving Social Media Marketing Effectiveness – Adding Social Media to Your Marketing Mix

Check back in this space next week for Online Market World photos : )

And last but not least, the bell has rung, it’s FOURTH QUARTER! Let us help you to achieve the results you need to return in this tough year-end selling climate! Sign-up now for your Smarter.com account here:

Register here for a Smarter.com account today!

Last week’s post was a little bit lengthy, so I’m planning on keeping this one short and simple. I know that some of you are saying “we’ll see”, right? Ha! Okay, maybe you’re right…. Having said all that, there is no less a “punch” here for those that will read on!

First, I wanted to call to your attention a FREE webinar hosted by Hitwise entitled, “Retail Planning for the Holiday Season”. Here’s the blurb that caught my eye:

“The Holiday season will be here before you know it. Your retail competitors are already planning promotions and marketing initiatives to maximize traffic and sales. Make sure your promotions, content, affiliate partnerships and search programs hit the mark with Holiday gift-givers. Don’t miss this 30-minute webinar covering Hitwise data and trends from Holiday 2007 and early hints for 2008.”

Hitwise Webinar - Retail Planning for the Holiday Season
Date: Wednesday September 10, 2008
Time: 1pm EDT (10am PDT), 30 minute duration

Here is the link for Registering!

On to the second thing I want to mention here… Smarter.com is planning an exciting new roll-out in the next couple of weeks and I want you all to be the first to hear about it! We are going to be updating our category landing pages in a big way! Check an example out of a current category landing page:

Smarter’s Current Home & Garden Category Landing Page

These updated landing pages are going to really come into their own with lots of fun integration to help educate our shoppers and offer them even more value when they choose to shop for the products you offer thru Smarter! Following is our official “pre-launch” blub! (BTW – I’ll explain more about how this is a benefit to YOU, our merchants, in the next few weeks!)

“With this updated version of the Smarter.com channel and sub-category pages, we’ll be pulling all the levers to deliver a streamlined, magazine-like layout that displays content ranging from ‘Top Stores’ to ‘Best Deals’ to ‘Popular Video Reviews’, and even a ‘What’s Hot’ section updated frequently by our in-house ‘Channel Guides!’”

Hope you had a great Labor Day and I look forward to talking with you soon!

Of course when it’s mid-August and you’re an online retailer staring down the calendar toward the inevitable season of green & red, the question to ask is, “is our site READY for the holidays??” If you haven’t done that yet this month, lets pause together and ask that question now…

…Okay! I know here at Smarter our answer is ‘not quite’! We have a LOT of initiatives in the queue that we are still planning on launching this fall! (Go Green! anyone? More about that later!) Of course I will let you know about each exciting feature/opportunity as soon as the information becomes available! In the meantime – what was your answer?

Here are a few articles from this week with good suggestions to help you get ready!
Turning Web Clicks Into Purchases from CNN Money

What is SEO Anyway??
It’s FREE Traffic, You Need It - click here for 10 great SEO tips!

So read on, make sure you have an account with Smarter.com – and if you already have an account with us, keep in-touch so that together we can be sure that your account is optimized for its greatest performance potential on Smarter!

I won’t wish you a ‘happy holiday’ yet – it’s not even Labor Day, but let’s just say I hear the distant sound of jingle-bells jingling!

A quick word to the wise about our upcoming Dads & Grads Buying Guide!
Dads & Grads Buying Guide

• Taking orders for placement up until May 27th
• Need not only the Insertion Order in place by EOD, May 27th, but also the following information:
o Product Name
o Product Price
o Product Description (200 characters including spaces is ideal)
o Product Image URL
• Ad run dates are June 2nd thru June 15th, 14 days; with Fathers Day being June 15th : )
• Need to have live feed with Smarter account set up to participate
• Estimated 50k impressions

*Tip: Don’t forget to include any and all gift-cards into your feed for us! Follow this link to an article about how gift-cards (in addition to the “cash” standby) will be THE most popular choice for consumers purchasing graduation gifts:

http://www.marketingcharts.com/uncategorized/gift-cards-and-cash-most-popular-graduation-gifts-4560/?camp=newsletter&src=mc&type=textlink

If you do not yet have a Smarter.com account set-up, please click on the registration link below or give me a shout at the email addy provided here and we will be sure to get you started ASAP!

https://sam.smarter.com/register/sign_up_step_1.php

And lastly, Internet Retailer ’08 is only a month away!? (June 9th – 12th). Have you secured your badge, booked your travel and finalized your plans to attend? Smarter.com will be displaying at booth #1014, so I want to invite you to stop by and say hello! I’ll give out my exact schedule as we get closer to the dates! For more information about the upcoming Internet Retailer conference, click here:

http://www.internetretailer.com/IRCE2008/

I look forward to hearing from you soon!

I know it seems impossible to believe with Mother’s Day still a week away, but as of today, I am beginning to offer placement within our upcoming Dad’s & Grads Buying Guide!

This is going to be a great feature! It will run for two weeks, from June 2nd thru June 15th, a total of 14 days. Father’s Day is June 15th : )

This Buying Guide will be similar to the Mother’s Day Buying Guide that we are currently running. Please be sure to check it out live on our homepage, www.smarter.com! You might even be interested in doing some Mother’s Day shopping yourself while you are there! Following is a graphic to view in case you have too many windows open on your desk top as it is and don’t want to click-thru!

I need to have all orders for this space in (strictly) by the 27th of May, so don’t delay if you want to display for the total running time!

One other great thing to note about our Buying Guides is that the icon & link to the Buying Guide is accessible from ALL Smarter pages! That is why our estimate is 50k impressions for the run-time!

One last thing, to continue on with my new “welcome” section, please join with me in saying hello to the tre’ cool and upcoming Smarter merchant:

Ed Hardy (www.edhardyshop.com)

~ Hope you have some tasty enchiladas y tostadas planned for dinner tonight to celebrate Cinco de Mayo!!

A special Thank You for all those who responded to my question about adding a “green” field into our data-feeds. Here are some of the comments I received:

“YES!!! we would so love it! – ”

“Unfortunately, we do not have a lot of products we advertise as green…….yet. – ”

“Yes, we would be interested, about 70% of our products are Eco-Safe. – ”

We are working on exactly what form our Eco-Friendly initiatives will take moving forward. Once we are ready to launch I will definitely post it here first!

Today I want to stress the role of consumer ratings & reviews in calling attention to your online listings and pulling in quality traffic to your products. At Smarter.com we’ve found that having a wide variety and large number of independent consumer ratings of your products and store adds a huge bonus to your performance. That’s why Smarter offers so many ways to support your store in gathering and displaying ratings & reviews.

· Every 30 days our system scours the web to draw in ratings of your store and products from as many sources as possible.

· If you don’t yet have any ratings posted online, Smarter offers five easy tools for you to use to begin gathering them. These tools are available to our merchants at no extra cost and are pre-coded and action-ready.

· Smarter offers over 58,000 consumer review videos on site that we automatically link to any relevant products that you offer in your feed!

Please let me know if you have any questions for me regarding our rating & reviews systems here at Smarter and I will be happy to respond.

And finally, I want to begin a new little feature in my newsletter today; I’m calling it the “welcome” section! Normally I may only post one or two merchants here, but for the first listing, please note with me some of the outstanding merchants that have recently begun accounts with Smarter and whose products you will be able to find actively listing with us over the next coming weeks:

Fossil.com

Hello Direct

One Way Furniture

Isabella.com

Hanes.com

Champion Catalog

Apples of Gold

Pareto Logic

Image Source: Kinghorn Gardens / Garden Thymes blog

A special thank you for all those who responded to my question about adding a “green” field into our data-feeds. Here are some of the comments I received:

YES!!! we would so love it! –

Unfortunately, we do not have a lot of products we advertise as green…….yet. –

Yes, we would be interested, about 70% of our products are Eco-Safe. –

We are working on exactly what form our Eco-Friendly initiatives will take moving forward. Once we are ready to launch I will definitely post it here first!

Today I want to stress the role of consumer ratings & reviews in calling attention to your online listings and pulling in quality traffic to your products. At Smarter.com we’ve found that having a wide variety and large number of independent consumer ratings of your products and store adds a huge bonus to your performance. That’s why Smarter offers so many ways to support your store in gathering and displaying ratings & reviews.

• Every 30 days our system scours the web to draw in ratings of your store and products from as many sources as possible.

• If you don’t yet have any ratings posted online, Smarter offers five easy tools for you to use to begin gathering them. These tools are available to our merchants at no extra cost and are pre-coded and action-ready.

• Smarter offers over 58,000 consumer review videos on site that we automatically link to any relevant products that you offer in your feed!

Please let me know if you have any questions for me regarding our rating & reviews systems here at Smarter and I will be happy to respond.

And finally, I want to begin a new little feature in my newsletter today; I’m calling it the “welcome” section! Normally I may only post one or two merchants here, but for the first listing, please note with me some of the outstanding merchants that have recently begun accounts with Smarter and whose products you will be able to find actively listing with us over the next coming weeks:

Fossil.com
Hello Direct
One Way Furniture
Isabella.com
Hanes.com
Champion Catalog
Apples of Gold
Pareto Logic

I’m hoping all is well with you and that if you were at Ad: Tech last week that you are fully recovered! One thing I will say that besides a very busy, well-attended event, the weather last week in San Francisco was beautiful!

Something that has been catching my eye lately, (along with yours I’m sure!), have been all the “green” initiatives that are cropping up in retail! Just look at the recent articles about companies launching green or eco-friendly initiatives!

Toys R Us:
http://www.instoremarketer.org/article/toys-r-us-promotes-good-green-fun/40529

Banana Republic:
http://www.instoremarketer.org/article/toys-r-us-promotes-good-green-fun/40529

Office Depot:
http://publications.mediapost.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=Articles.showArticleHomePage&art_aid=80232

Here’s my question to you! If Smarter were to add a field in our data-feed for you to “check” signifying a product that can be categorized as “eco-friendly”, would you be interested in that? This would allow us to offer a variety of “green” sorts for our shoppers on Smarter – with your products included!

Please email me with any questions! I look forward to hearing from you!

If you’ve been following along with me, you’ll notice that this is the fourth and final installment of my “Introducing Smarter’s New Ad Deck” series! In the previous 3 email newsletters I’ve covered an Ad Deck overview, CPM Display Ads, Blogs, Videos & Coupon Sponsorships and now for the final area: Featured Merchant & Featured Products opportunities!

The centerpiece of these offerings is our Featured Merchant; Homepage placement. This area includes a graphic screen that rotates in display on our Homepage for a calendar period of one-month. The graphic includes your store logo. In January of this year, our Homepage received 4,325,386 impressions! When clicked, your logo will link to a full merchant “store” which we provide with this area. The store includes all the products that you have listed with us in one area. The Featured Merchant; Homepage is a great offer for calendar-targeted or seasonal time-frames!

The second area to take advantage of is our Featured Merchant; Product & Detail pages. These pages are actually the highest traffic pages on Smarter! Please contact me and I can give you specific impression numbers broken-down by category. Taking advantage of this program will give your listings the benefit of your logo inclusion, a link to a “store” including all of the products you have listed with Smarter, and an attention-drawing, color-highlighted background for each product listing.

The last area is our Featured Merchant; All Merchants Listed page. This is a page that pulls together all of the merchants listing with Smarter in one place and includes your store logo in a Featured Merchants box to the right side of the page information. This Featured Merchant opportunity also includes a link from your logo to a “store” that includes all of the products you have listed with Smarter in one area.

And finally there is the opportunity to have your products singled out and highlighted as Smarter Featured Products. The four products of your choice will be featured on one of our custom “Buying Guides” (see: http://www.smarter.com/home-theater-system-buying-guide/by–bg-11.html for an example). These products will appear for 1 month and can be changed out up to once-a-week. A merchant logo and link to the product are included!

So! I hope you have enjoyed our “tour” of the new advertising opportunities that Smarter.com is offering! These opportunities are available to you if you are already participating with us in our classic CPC listings or if you are simply looking for additional exposure for your products / brand without the CPC listings.

Please email or give me a call and I can get you further details, clarification and specific pricing!

Tomorrow is April 1st, don’t forget to do something fun to celebrate ; )