My panel is titled “Beating Amazon with Inspiration-Based Commerce? Yes, It’s Possible!”  I’m looking forward to discussing strategies for driving discovery and inspiration with my esteemed panel of speakers including Kobie Fuller, Chief Marketing Officer, REVOLVEclothing.com, David Towers, Vice President of Ecommerce, Wet Seal and David Weissman, President & Co-Founder, Little Black Bag.

We’re also sponsoring the event and will be releasing the results of  a very thought-provoking survey at the show. Check it out and get your voice heard: https://aytm.com/r2593e8!

If you’re planning to go, drop me a line so we can set up time to meet. Also, feel free to hit me up for a friend-of-inSparq promo code.

See you soon!

Veronika

If the answers to the above questions are yes, then you should consider applying to inSparq as a Junior Account Executive. You will learn from two of the leading business development executives in the industry:

• How to get a meeting with a top executive or CEO.
• How to effectively do sales and marketing to crush your numbers
• How to methodically sell and position yourself as a leader in an industry.

You will learn the tools and strategies to sell effectively and be a dealmaker. This position is like getting an MBA in business development.

Through this position, you will have a chance to work closely with the company’s founders Veronika Sonsev and Richard Hecker. Collectively, they have closed hundreds of deals, generating over $500MM in revenue. Deals they’ve done span from advertising sales to strategic partnerships to M&A transactions. They have bought and sold companies, led financings, and closed multi-million dollar customers.

About You:

• You know how to tell a story and have great presentation in all forms of communication.
• You have experience selling (at least 1 year).
• You have sold into decision makers previously (recruiting experience a plus).
• You are fearless and are comfortable with cold emails and cold calling.
• You have an understanding of sales psychology.
• You are organized and highly detail-oriented.
• You have a demonstrated history of hard work and hustle.
• Prior sales, consulting, or banking experience required.

In your cover letter, please include your answers to the following questions:

1. What does social commerce mean to you?
2. What value do you see retailers gaining from inSparq?
3. Tell us about your greatest sales achievement.
4. What is the best deal you’ve ever done? It could be a lemonade stand.
5. How would you approach an executive at a company via a cold email? How would you research, reach out, follow up, and sell?

If this sounds like an opportunity for you, send your email and cover letter to Orian Breaux at jobs@insparqinc.com. We look forward to hearing from you.

1) InSparq’s Live Pinboards Bring A Fancy, Social E-Commerce Experience To Any Online Retailer via TechCrunch

Here’s to some shameless self-promotion. InSparq was featured this past week in Tech Crunch!

2) Why Sharing Is The Best Way To Measure A Web Sites Value via Business Insider

They say sharing is caring, so share on our social savvy mavens!

3) With Chirpify, You Can Now Buy Products On Facebook via Fast Company

Shopping is becoming as easy as commenting “buy.”

4) Brands Wasting Their Digital Ad Dollars, Study Finds via Ecommerce Times

Consumers trust their friends’ recommendations on products rather than advertisements.

5) Pinterest Debuts Style Makeover With Fresh New Look, Tighter Backend via Venture Beat

Tis’ the season to revamp our closets and step out in style. Pinterest did just that.

If you listen to the likes of venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, physical retail as we know it is on a slow march to obsolescence, with the world today in a “pre-death” state of good-but-transitory traditional businesses sitting alongside more exciting e-commerce developments that point to the future. One such company working in the latter category is Insparq, a social commerce platform provider that develops features for online retailers such as sharing widgets, on-site live Pinboards and analytics to measure how all of that and more are performing to help sell things.

Insparq is by no means the only company working in this space. Just yesterday, we covered Piqora— the new name for Pinterest/social media analytics provider Pinfluencer — which also was launching a picture-based service, calle Gallery, to help Pinterest-ify retailers’ web sites. There are many more where that came from.

The crowded nature of the space is not something that deters Veronika Sonsev, the CEO and founder of Insparq: “I think it validates the market that so many doing this,” she told TechCrunch in an interview.

Social commerce can mean a lot of different things — Chirpify would say it’s about being able to purchase goods directly from place of social interaction (eg a tweet or status update); others believe it relates to any purchase spurred by a social interaction; meanwhile, Facebook might argue that it’s about using a social network to send gifts.

In Insparq’s case, it means using social media tools to help discover things, making it the next generation of search. “If you’re on the web, it’s really easy to search for specific products that you want, like the Samsung Galaxy S 4, and find the best price online. But the next challenge is discovery. Knowing I want an outfit for Friday or a gift for my dad, but not knowing what to get, that’s the thing that’s missing.”

LIVE PINBOARDS™

If Piqora’s Gallery is a way of adding a Pinterest-like feature to a site aggregating information about how much buzz a particular product is generating on different social networks, then an Insparq Pinboard is more like a real-time Fancy experience about what’s happening on the site itself: using APIs for a site’s whole product catalog, it tracks and shows how many people are buying items at a given moment, with top items rising to the top, and then it lets you buy it right there.

“It gives you a similar sense to what you get when you’re in a store,” is how Sonsev describes it. I think of it also as a little like the Home Shopping Network, where you can see the purchases rack up at the bottom of the screen. You can also share a link to that item with your contacts on Facebook, email, Twitter and Pinterest.

(Incidentally, the use of the word ‘Pinboard’ is intentional: On Insparq’s product page it’s trademarked. Sonsev tells me in fact that the trademark is still pending. If approved, it could be interesting, considering that Pinterest has specifically outlined that it doesn’t want partners and others using variations on ‘pin’ in the names of their services.)

Here is what a pinboard from one current customer, C. Wonder, looks like:

Insparq’s Live Pinboards were launched at the end of February, and so far Sonsev says that the results have been “pretty incredible.” People visit the Pinboards three to four times per week and they spend two minutes per average while there. The click-through-rates on products has been over 15%; compare this to traditional digital ad units, which get CTRs of less than a single digit. Most importantly, Sonsev says those Pinboards are typically seeing twice the rate of conversion seen on the sites overall — meaning that Insparq’s twist on social commerce could be a keeper.

Longer term, Insparq plans to add other features to the Pinboards, such as the ability for retailers to feature certain items, and it will also be adding in more features — although she wouldn’t specify what — to encourage more interactivity. (I suggested “competitions or gaming elements,” and she said these might be two.) The Pinboards are already built with responsive design but Sonsev says there will be more mobile-specific elements in the coming quarter.

Insparq is currently angel-funded — with the amount of backing and names of backers undisclosed — but Sonsev, who prior to this was an executive a mobile advertising company Jumptap and before at at AOL, says that the company is currently in the process of raising a Series A round.

1)   There’s No Such Thing As A ‘Digital Marketing Strategy’ Anymore via Business Insider

Marketers agree that social media cannot be a stand-alone entity any longer. It needs to be intertwined into a brands general marketing strategy.

2)   Hashtags May Be Coming to Facebook via Mashable

Facebook may include hashtags into the social network. They don’t provide character limits. Will this be a cool grouping tool or hashtag mayhem?

3)   How Will Pinterest’s New Analytics Tool Impact Brands’ Content Strategies? via Econsultancy

Social Media Experts weigh in on the merit of Pinterests new analytics tool, and it’s impact on brands’ content strategies.

4)   The Truth About SXSW by New Yorker Cartoonist Shannon Wheeler (Exclusive) via Venture Beat

Grumpy Cat takes over SXSW 2013!

5)   How McDonald’s uses Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Google+ via Econsultancy

An interesting case studying looking into how the world’s largest chain of hamburger fast food restaurants deals with social media.

1. Hashtag Your Products on Instagram via Practical Ecommerce

2. Google Glass:  Is G-Commerce Next? via Get Elastic

As a novel device that’s expected to run apps and connect to the Internet, the natural curiosity is what potential it holds for digital marketers and ecommerce. Is G-Commerce on the horizon?

3. inSparq Powers Real-Time Social Discovery on Major Retail Sites with Launch of LIVE PINBOARD via inSparq 

inSparq (www.insparq.com), the leading provider of social commerce technology, today launched LIVE PINBOARD, ™ its popular real-time social discovery solution with the addition of several enhancements focused on usability and design.

4. Facebook’s New Ad Tool Targets You Online and Off  via Ecommerce Times

5. How “digital” fits into today’s retail organization via Shop.org

How to organize e-commerce within a retail company isn’t an easy question to answer.

For Immediate Release

inSparq Powers Real-Time Social Discovery on Major Retail Sites with Launch of LIVE PINBOARD

Product officially launches “out of beta” with slick new design and layout

New York, February 26, 2013 –  inSparq (www.insparq.com), the leading provider of social commerce technology, today launched LIVE PINBOARD, ™ its popular real-time social discovery solution with the addition of several enhancements focused on usability and design.

In beta since November 2012, inSparq LIVE PINBOARD enables retailers to showcase a dynamic feed of products that are trending in real-time, optimizing social product discovery and empowering customers to gain validation from other users on purchase decisions.  As a result, retailers are increasing shopper engagement and average order values.

Based on feedback from established retail customers who have already deployed a beta version of the product, inSparq updated its layout and design to foster increased social engagement and interactions among customers.

A nominee for The 2013 eTail Best-In-Class Awards based in part to its deployment of LIVE PINBOARD, C. Wonder (www.cwonder.com) has experienced increased social engagement on its web site giving customers the opportunity to view, share and comment on real-time product feeds.

“LIVE PINBOARD is a big step toward making the user experience more social,” said Katherine Brodie, head of eCommerce of C.Wonder.  “The LIVE PINBOARD allows customers to discover our product assortment through other customers’ social & commerce interactions. With global visibility, it’s a popular feature on our site.”

“Today’s launch of LIVE PINBOARD represents a milestone moment in our company’s growth strategy and is a testament of our commitment to innovate and bring retailers and consumers together through the power of social commerce, “ said inSparq CEO Veronika Sonsev.  “We take great pride in listening to all our customers and are happy to come out of beta today with an updated look and feel that delivers on their needs.”

inSparq’s LIVE PINBOARD marks the latest product offering from the company’s flagship Social Commerce Suite, which includes its SOCIAL SHARING WIDGET, TELL-A-FRIEND and ACTIONABLE ANALYTICS solutions.  In all, the company has hundreds of retail customers deploying its products, including C. Wonder, Totsy and PetFlow, who was recently named No. 1 on Internet Retailer’s Social Media 300. 

Customers can request a demo of inSparq’s Social Commerce Suite at http://insparq.com/contact/.

About inSparq

inSparq (www.insparq.com) is a New York tech startup that is re-inventing how products are sold online.  Deployed across hundreds of retail sites, including C. Wonder, Totsy and PetFlow, inSparq’s innovative solutions drastically improve product discovery and social engagement.  As a result, inSparq’s flagship Social Commerce Suite bolsters social traffic up 300%, resulting in a 5-10X ROI for retail customers.

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1. Twitter for Ecommerce Merchants via Practical Ecommerce

Many retailers have discovered that Twitter is an effective way to communicate with their customers and prospects. A recent study for Twitter by Compete reported that Twitter users are more likely to buy online, versus the general public.

2. Google Glass Translate Feature to Help Shoppers Shop Abroad (Video) via Social Commerce Today

Shopping, in its most essential form is social –  one person buying from another  . But what if they don’t understand each other?

3. How Mobile Is Changing Ecommerce [Infographic] via Get Elastic Blog

Keeping with the mobile theme this week, our Friday ‘graphic by KISSmetrics rounds up some sweet stats on mobile Web usage.

4. Burberry Puts Digital Interaction Into Clothes via Digiday

Iconic British brand Burberry is giving shoppers personalized digital experiences with its latest season of clothing. For its special  “Smart Personalization” service, which is part of the Burberry Prorsum Autumn/Winter 2013 collection, the brand embedded scannable digital tags in its clothes and accessories. The digital tags can be scanned with a mobile device.

5. Twitter Is Testing A New Advertising Card For Lead Generation via TechCrunch

Twitter is testing a new ad unit that gives direct marketers a way to generate leads directly from tweets.

1. Checkout-less Commerce: Amex Lets You Pay With a #Hashtag via Get Elastic Blog

Until now, Twitter-commerce was only possible through referral links, with conversion rates somewhere around 0.5%. But Amex has come up with an innovative way to sell socially — without a checkout process. Amex Sync lets you buy with just a #hashtag.

2. 5 Ways to Use Social Media to Increase your eCommerce ROI via Commerce Innovations Blog

For savvy retailers, there is opportunity and ROI in encouraging, supporting and enabling consumers’ social tendencies.

Let’s take a look at five ways you can use social media to increase your ecommerce ROI.

3. Social Q&A – Social Commerce Done Right [Infographic] via Social Commerce Today

Like other social commerce technology, social Q&A helps socialises an otherwise solitary e-commerce experience, and does so by creating connections between customers.

4. Three New Technologies That Put Your Customers First via inSparq Blog

A major theme at NRF Retail’s Big Show this year was how to put your customers first. With more competition than ever before, creating personalized and tailored experiences for customers are sure-ways to capture their loyalty, drive up average order values and increase overall conversions.

5. Three examples of the psychology of social networks influencing user behavior via Econsultancy

So how do social media platforms impact consumer behavior? And how and why do social media networks such as LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter continue to influence user behavior?