Foreword Online

Ideas, information and industry news for collegiate retailers



New Student Midnight Markdown

Posted by Lori Reese on 7/2/18 5:30 AM

The start of the school year is prime time to cultivate loyalty among new customers. Don’t wait until rush to reach out. Plan a treat for newcomers now that you can advertise during orientation and schedule early in the year.

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What’s the Deal With Live Streaming?

Posted by Liz Schulte on 6/28/18 5:30 AM

Live streaming is an addiction. It provides glimpses into the lives of others that evoke feelings of sameness between strangers. Last’s year’s top viewed live video was the lady sitting in her car wearing a Chewbacca mask while she laughed. Her video alone had over 160 million views, and she didn’t do anything but share her joy over a child’s toy. Businesses, big and small, have used live videos to give companies a human voice. Nearly every major social media platform now has a way connect with your customers live, but which one is the best?

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What Is Customer Service?

Posted by Liz Schulte on 6/27/18 5:30 AM

There are as many definitions for customer service as there are industries. The position has to be fluid enough to cover whatever needs to be done. However, defining expectations for employees helps them meet the business’ and customer’s expectations.

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The Social Media Balancing Act

Posted by Liz Schulte on 6/26/18 5:30 AM

Balancing social media with all the daily tasks you have often feels impossible. If you tilt one way, you end up falling into the social media blackhole and losing hours of your day when you should have been focusing on work. If you lean the other way, it is easy to neglect a valuable tool for connecting with customers. Life would be so much easier if you knew where and when you should post, but that’s just a dream … or is it?

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Three Ways to Connect With Students

Posted by Liz Schulte on 6/25/18 5:30 AM

Text messaging, email, website, phone, mail, apps, chat, social media, advertisements, in the age of information communication shouldn’t be difficult. The many options for how we speak with one another haven’t made communication simpler. Instead, they have created a cloud of noise that is difficult to maneuver through. How can you ensure your message reaches your specific audience?

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Career Matters

Posted by Lori Reese on 6/21/18 5:30 AM

Winning the heart of today’s student means showing you care about the two things: money and career.

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The Potential of Podcasts

Posted by Liz Schulte on 6/20/18 5:30 AM

What do you think of when you think of podcasts? Coming into this, I wasn’t a fan. Really, that’s probably not a fair statement. I simply never thought about them. I didn’t understand what podcasts provided. In my mind, I equated them with a morning radio show — I’d rather listen to music. Podcasts, however, are so much more.

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Barnes & Noble Education and Pearson Expand Relationship, Driving Access and Affordability at Campuses Nationwide

Posted by admin on 6/19/18 12:00 PM

June 19, 2018, Basking Ridge, NJBarnes & Noble Education, Inc. (NYSE: BNED), a leading provider of educational products and services solutions for higher education and K-12 institutions, today announced an agreement with Pearson to distribute Pearson rental titles at the Company’s 1,483 physical and virtual campus bookstores nationwide. The agreement will allow the companies to provide students, faculty and institutions with greater access to more affordable course materials.

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Reach Nontraditional Students in a Nontraditional Way

Posted by Liz Schulte on 6/19/18 5:30 AM

Connecting with nontraditional students can be a challenge. As they come and go, more disconnected from campus events than other students, your message can be lost. Many of these students have jobs, they might have kids and they are older. All of this contributes to making them feel disenfranchised on campus. Keeping this population of students in mind, here are a few ideas of how your store can engage with overlooked students.

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A Picture Is Worth a Thousand Words: Social Media and the Smartphone Camera

Posted by Liz Schulte on 6/14/18 5:30 AM

“Brevity is the soul of wit,” the loquacious Polonius famously spouted in Hamlet. This statement, originally fraught with irony, has been increasingly embraced by social media. Blog-like post length wasn’t uncommon on MySpace, Facebook favors shorter statuses but didn’t limit users, Twitter cut people off at 140 characters, and now pictures and videos often speak for themselves. Image dominance is evident not only in post engagement but also in the current race to win users’ smartphone cameras.

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