Marketing

Today it’s Black Friday, the unofficial start of the holiday shopping season. It's also the day many retailers use to offer special promotions and spectacular discounts to their customers. It started in the United States, as a lot of non-retail employees have both Thanksgiving and the day after off, and went for shopping on this Friday. But as American retailers have expanded their business to Europe, Black Friday is embraced by an increasing number of European retailers.

Otto is experimenting with interactive video clips on YouTube. Viewers can purchase the products that are presented during the pre-roll video advertisements with one simple mouse click. They will be directed to the relevant product page on Otto's French subsidiary 3Suisses.

Dutch marketing agency Shop2market expands its international focus, opening an office in London. By adding a UK-based team the company is actively looking across the border, since it also has offices in The Netherlands and France. In the UK, Shop2market has clients such as Made.com, Dune London, Bottica and Cotsworld Outdoor.

An online store that claimed to ‘deliver anywhere’ in its TV ad, lost a battle started by a costumer living on the Scottish Shetland Islands who complained the ad is misleading because the company refused to deliver to the Scottish Island.

Germany's phenomenal 7-1 victory over Brazil during the semifinal of the World Cup 2014 of course made many Germans very happy. But we’re wondering if this also counts for some retailers, who initially thought they offered a fun promotion, promising customers a discount for every goal scored. Seven German goals made up for some pretty business-damaging discounts…

Facebook is a very popular social network amongst European online retailers. Except for the United Kingdom, where online retailers are more active on Twitter. But Twitter is however still less popular in the UK than in other countries like Germany or Spain. These two countries have the most social media savvy online retailers, as 90% of them are on Facebook and 80% are on Twitter.

Interbrand published its 'Best Retail Brands' list for the fourth time and this year it seems that Hennes & Mauritz (H&M) is Europe's most valuable retail brand. The original Swedish fashion company is ranked as the top retailer in Europe with 13.11 billion euros. The world's most valuable retail brand is Walmart, which has an estimated brand value of 95.15 billion euros.

European online retailers aren’t that popular or active on social networks like Facebook and Twitter, when compared to American e-retailers. But it seems that it helps to sell clothes online, as six of the ten most liked online retailers on Facebook in Europe sell primarily apparel.

We all know Facebook, Twitter and Google+. But what about the local social networks in Europe, like Hyves, Tuenti or Yonja? Say you want to expand your ecommerce business to Spain, do you know on which social network you can reach the youngsters? We do! Let’s have a look at some popular social networks in Europe.