Multichannel Surfing

I’m the lonely MCM Awards guy, and I’m waiting for your entries. I kind of feel like Charlie Brown, camped out at the mail box, hoping the Little Red-Haired Girl will send him a Valentine.

Maybe I’m just being wishy-washy. I know there were a lot of great catalogs and e-commerce sites that are worthy of getting Gold or Silver in the 2010 MCM Awards. And I’m sure those merchants are just waiting until the last minute to get their entries done.

Some merchants be afraid to enter, thinking they will have to compete against titans like Orvis, L.L. Bean and Harry & David. But we made some changes in categories that we hope help the Daveys of multichannel retail compete with the Goliaths. more

Headsets.com CEO Mike Faith will be speaking this morning at the MeritDirect co-op about managing your business during hard times. Last night at the cocktail reception, Faith gave me a hint about how his company is getting by.

Its expanding into the business-to-consumer world. Faith said it will officially launch Headphones.com next week. more

But again, Compendium Blogware founder Chris Baggott hitting the cutting room floor is again a good thing. Why? Because he’s got a story to tell you about Twitter.

And the timing of this is great. While social media gurus are screaming about the value of tweeting, Baggott puts it in perspective. It’s a growing piece of the social media puzzle, but it’s not quite the Holy Grail.

Twitter may not drive leads (qualified or random), but can be a pretty darn customer service tool. Here’s a story Baggott shared with MULTICHANNEL MERCHANT: more

Let my loss be your gain, readers!

Once in a while we close an issue of MULTICHANNEL MERCHANT, some content hits the cutting room floor. Really, it happens, it’s just just what some guy at a bar told you about being in a deleted scene in Star Trek (that’s just a pick-up line!).

One piece that hit the floor came from Steve Spangler of Steve Spangler Science. And it came from an ACCM session about social media. And if there was ever a reason why merchants should blog, it’s this figure right here: more

Geoff Batrouney of Estee Marketing Group was our guest Monday on MCM Radio, and you can listen to and download the podcast here.

So what did Batrouney have to say? Well, for starters, he says the list industry is not deal. Sure, some shops have closed up and there has been some consolidation, but merchants are still renting lists. As for who’s representing mailers on Capital Hill, Batrouney has a few choice words, too. But I won;t play spoiler, listen for yourself.

ACMA executive director Hamilton Davison will be our guest at 1 p.m. today on the first-ever episode of MCM Radio, Multichannel Merchant’s new Internet radio show, streaming live to your PC or Mac on BlogTalkRadio.com (and soon at MultichannelMerchant.com).

So why is Multichannel Merchant launching an Internet radio channel? We feel it will help us bring Multichannel Merchant’s coverage of today’s news stories to a whole new level. Not only that, we’ll bring in multichannel retail experts who will offer their tips and advice on everything from streamlining your costs to building a better Web site to keeping your operations under control. more