I read the above statement in an article on Business 2 Business Community on the topic of 2011 PR Trends: Email and Social Engagement. The author was saying that the ability to engage with your audience through email isn’t diminished by the advent of social media and sites such as Twitter and Facebook, but instead the engagement can be augmented by making it easy to share your email message via social media as well.

A couple of years ago, we added Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter icons to images available in eNudge and suggested that you should use these to point people to your organisation’s presence on these social sites (review our June 2009 newsletter). Sharing your email content in this way requires you to hyperlink the icons to a version of your email message that you have placed on your website. However, to make this less work for you, we’re considering adding the ability to insert automated links to “tweet this” and “share this on Facebook” to your eNudge email messages. That will allow your contacts to share an online version of your email message (of course without the personalised content) which will be hosted on the eNudge server; a bit like the functionality to “View this email in a browser”. So that we can gauge interest, please let us know by commenting on our blog if you would like the social sharing functionality added!

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Coles, Woolworths and Harvey Norman investing heavily in online stores

An article by David Ramli in the Financial Review yesterday with the title “Cole’s high-octane online shopping push” described Cole Supermarket’s trial program allowing customers to purchase groceries online and then collect their order at Coles Express store at a Shell petrol station.  It seems that customer feedback indicated that uptake of online grocery shopping in Australia has been slow, because customers don’t want to wait around at home for their order to arrive.  This new model will allow the customer to collect their order anytime between 3pm and midnight on the appropriate day.  The Shell service station will have large fridges installed to hold customer orders.

Personally, I can see the merit in their new distribution method, having  been put off myself from ordering groceries online for the reason mentioned above.  Having groceries delivered to work is not usually convenient either, due to lack of space in the fridge at work and the awkwardness of getting the food home.

Will other retailers be able to piggy-back onto this new distribution channel, particularly those with temperature-sensitive products??!   Will impulse buying move to the Coles Express store instead of the supermarket?

In the same article, reference was made to new and significant increases in  spending on online stores planned by Woolworths and Harvey Norman (yes, the same Gerry Harvey  who condemned online shopping because of its impact on Australian retailers).

What do you think?  Would you spend more or less if you ordered your groceries online?  Are you participating in Cole’s Click and Collect 6-month trial?

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