Earlier today, our friends at Vin65, a subsidiary of Wine Direct and VinTank, two companies at the forefront of digital strategy and commerce in the wine industry, announced a partnership. The aim is to integrate their respective technologies to help wineries better understand the relationship between eCommerce transactions and social media activity. Monitoring the value of social media marketing and its relationship with what transactions come through the shopping cart is a

A recent column explored the potential impact of social media on retail by describing campaigns designed to take advantage of customers’ activity on Facebook. The goal was to leverage social interactions to amplify a positive shopping experience across their network. With social commerce, most retailers see their goal as building engagement and providing customer service rather than putting a storefront on Facebook. Meanwhile, marketers and planners have been analyzing the ma

As consumers have embraced the Internet and incorporated it into their lives a funny thing has happened: shopping at local stores is more likely to start online. Back in 2006 about 16% of in-store retail sales were started online and Forrester Research predicted that by 2012 that number would grow to 38%. Add to that the 11% of all retail sales that are completed online and almost 50% of all retail sales begin online. We now live in that future predicted by Forrester, and the

There are two different campaigns being fought that concern the interstate shipping of wine. Wineries have been largely successful in convincing the courts that they deserve the right to ship direct to consumers and will operate in compliance with state laws, whether favorable or not. To date their campaign has yielded 37 states and DC with the prospect of gaining 3 new states (NJ, MD and NM) in the coming legislative year. On the other hand there is a campaign being waged by