Ideas, information and industry news for collegiate retailers

Interact with your students even while they're away from campus and gain lots of new social media fans with a Spring Break Photo Contest. All students have to do is snap a photo in their school gear and submit it to your store for a chance to win great prizes. Just follow our step-by-step instructions below!

With technology at their fingertips and their nose to their phone, it can be challenging to get students to look up and pay attention to your marketing messages. That’s why, this month, we created an all-new marketing toolkit with Generation Y in mind.  

Inspire competition, promote a positive store image and give students an added reason to sell books at your buyback with a "Books for a Better Community" event!

There's more competition than ever before - so it's time to pull out all the stops when it come to advertising to your students! Because they're constantly connected to social media, your Facebook page is a great place to get the message out about upcoming events. That's why we created customizable 'Buy' and 'Sell' Facebook tabs for you to add to your page. They'll help you communicate your store's benefits to students during key time periods such as Buyback and Rush and even direct students to your website for more information! Best of all, there's no HTML knowledge required!

With so many consumer options available it can be difficult to keep students coming back to your store. For this reason, loyal customers are a retailer’s biggest asset when it comes to staying competitive, and rewarding these repeat visitors is essential to continued success.

Host a competition similar to the likes of ‘Top Chef’ for an event that benefits your store and local businesses but most importantly, engages students. Faculty and staff will cook a dish of their choice for a panel of “local celebrity” judges. Students can sit back and enjoy watching their professors get graded for a change!

Students, parents, alumni and staff will all be eager to show their school spirit in the days leading up to homecoming festivities.  Take advantage of this potential to increase in traffic in your bookstore by hosting themed events throughout the week and offering special savings.

Gaining your student’s loyalty from the first day of their college experience is essential to your store’s long-term success.  Acquaint students with the services your store has to offer, while helping them navigate the campus, through an interactive Scavenger Hunt.  At each location, students will find a QR code, scannable by a smartphone, revealing a clue to the next location.