Archive for September, 2010
Think you follow up on sales calls often enough? Probably not!
48 % of Sales People never follow up with a prospect
25% of Sales People make a second contact and stop
12% of Sales People only make three contacts and stop
Only 10% of Sales People make more than three contacts
2% of sales are made on the first contact
3% of sales are made on the second contact
5% of sales are made on the third contact
10% of sales are made on the fourth contact
80% of sales are made on the fifth to twelfth contact
Posted by eBrand Media Research Department in Strategy on September 30th, 2010
Proven Halloween Promos: 6 Ideas for Campaigns
by Adam T. Sutton, Senior Reporter
Halloween is coming up! Children will be marching up and down your block dressed as ghouls and goblins in a matter of weeks. You should start receiving party invitations anytime now.
For marketers, the lead-up to the haunting holiday can boost sales before the year-end crunch. And for the last two years the dark day has been a bright spot in a spooky economy.
Halloween retail sales reached a record-breaking projection of $6 billion in 2009, up 4.2% from $5.77 billion in 2008, according to industry market researcher IBISWorld.
Do you have any Halloween promotions planned for your email marketing? Take a look at six proven ideas we’ve pulled from MarketingSherpa case studies and how-to articles for some inspiration.
Posted by eBrand Media Research Department in Marketing on September 30th, 2010
Easy Newsletter Layout Tweak Lifts Clicks 190% – Just Add 1 Extra Button to Your Email
SUMMARY: Sometimes even the smallest change can make a world of difference in your email design. See how one publisher transformed a related stories link into a gray utility button and immediately saw a 190% increase in clicks and traffic is up 6% on a different landing page.
It’s an easy tweak that if you haven’t considered, you may want to test on your own newsletters.
CHALLENGE
“We had a great product, yet our data showed that readers were spending five minutes a day with us,” says Chris McNeilly, VP Technology, SmartBrief Inc. “We asked ourselves, ‘What can we do to get them to spend 10 minutes a day with us?’ We needed to build on the number of pages that were being viewed.”
Stickiness wasn’t the only thing that McNeilly wanted to bolster for the 1.2 million B-to-B emails they send daily. Improving clickthroughs, enhancing their search ranking and ramping up subscriber growth were also on the agenda.
In 2006, McNeilly and his team added a ‘Track this topic’ link into their newsletters that took readers to applicable news stories. While the hotlink immediately improved clickthroughs, McNeilly knew the feature wasn’t perfect. He wondered if the wording was right and if an actual button might increase clickthroughs even more.
Posted by eBrand Media Research Department in E-mail marketing on September 28th, 2010
Improving Customer Loyalty Tops Social Media Budgets
According to national survey results jointly released by COLLOQUY and the Direct Marketing Association, U.S. companies that use social media primarily to deepen customer loyalty spend almost twice as much on this emerging channel as competitors who use it for brand awareness, customer acquisition and other core marketing purposes.
Specifically, the survey results show the average social media spend for marketers whose primary objective is to obtain customer loyalty was $88,000 last year, compared to $53,000 for brand awareness and $30,000 for customer acquisition, the objectives that attracted the next highest spending levels.
Posted by eBrand Media Research Department in Customer Centric, Social Media on September 16th, 2010
eBrand Media is celebrating 5 years in business today!
By Tom Polanski, EVP, eBrand Media and eBrand Interactive
I’m going to keep this short. My partners and I started eBrand Media in September, 2005. Our first office was a dusty attic of an apartment building. We didn’t have any money other than our savings and credit cards. We did have, and still have, excellent reputations, and contentiously cultivated relationships with companies we care for and care about.
Although I am incredibly grateful for my team and for everyone who has contributed to our success; I must admit though that I have a special place in my heart for the companies that took a leap of faith and entrusted their business hopes and goals to us. I’m proud to be able to say publicly, and without fear of contradiction, that we haven’t disappointed anyone.
In particular, I extend my heartfelt thanks to Home Security Store for being our first client, and a client that has been with us for the whole journey.
Here’s to you and here’s to another 5 years of success and growth for us.
Posted by Tom Polanski in eBrand Media on September 13th, 2010