Free necklaces and shipping for holiday shoppers?
Retailers are so desperate this holiday season that they’re willing to lose money to get you to spend yours.Take online jeweler Stauer. It’s offering a $249 amethyst necklace for free — provided customers pay the $24.95 it costs to ship it. Stauer will lose money on the deal, but it hopes to reel in new customers who will buy other jewelry.
“In this economy, you have to be outrageous in your offers,” said Michael Bisceglia, the president of Stauer who found that more than a third of customers who took advantage of a similar deal on a $179 pearl necklace in 2009 bought additional items. “You have to shake up the world a bit.”
Not every retailer will go as far as giving away merchandise during the holidays, but many will offer profit-busting incentives. It’s a critical time of year for merchants, which can make up to 40 percent of their annual revenue in November and December. And they’re so worried that Americans are spooked by the weak economy that they’re willing to sacrifice profit for sales.
Nordstrom, for instance, is one of the first retailers to offer free shipping on most orders, no matter how small, even though it could wind up paying $3 to ship a $7 pair of socks. Furniture chain Raymour & Flanigan is allowing customers to go four years without paying interest on their purchases — the longest period it has ever offered — even though it will have to help cover a chunk of those charges itself. And Sears is not only offering to match the cheapest prices customers find online, but the department store chain is giving them an additional 10 percent off the difference.
“You may be making a $1 profit instead of a $3 profit,” Fiona Dias, chief strategy officer of members-only shopping service ShopRunner.com, said about retailers. “But you’re not losing a sale.”
Retailers are nervous about holiday sales because many Americans are cutting back on spending as they grow increasingly concerned about the stubbornly high unemployment rate, stock market turmoil and an overall fragile U.S. economy. In fact, a recent Gallup poll found that eight of 10 Americans think the country is in a second recession.
“Retailers are now scared because some believe they’re in a second recession,” said C. Britt Beemer, chairman of America’s Research Group. “And the second recession is hitting them in the biggest shopping season of the year.” Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by eBrand Media Research Department in Advertising, Marketing, Trend Tracker on October 19th, 2011
Why Twitter is not a social network! It is the telegraph of the internet.
A social network is characterized by a high degree of reciprocity. Take Facebook for example; there will not be anyone on your network that you have not accepted into it. If someone known to you sends you an invite you would most probably accept it. Also not many people who are unknown would actually send you an invite. Also most people in your network on Facebook are actually people you already know.
But Twitter is characterized by a high degree of non-reciprocity. Let me explain with an example. Kim Kardashian the reality show star has 10 million followers on Twitter but she follows only 140 odd people. Similarly Lady Gaga the most followed person on Twitter follows about 140,000 thousand and she has about 14 million followers. An analysis on others on Twitter shows a similar trend. As a matter of fact according to a research, I heard on a Freakonomics podcast 60% of the tweets on twitter come from roughly 20,000 followers, though Twitter has more than 200 million odd accounts.
Posted by Tom Polanski in Twitter on October 17th, 2011
Is Facebook killing your privacy? Some say it already has
Facebook has murdered privacy.
That’s not just the contention of privacy watchdogs. That’s Mashable’s Ben Parr wringing his hands.
“Facebook has finally done it,” Parr wrote. “It’s just a few updates away now from euthanizing the concept of privacy.”
Last week Facebook unveiled its dramatic redesign of profiles, a time line that charts in chronological order all the information users have shared on the service. Facebook also showed off new third-party applications that — when enabled — automatically share every action users take: every song they listen to, article they read and video they watch (not to mention every meal they cook and every jogging route they follow).
Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg calls it “frictionless sharing.” That kind of sharing is designed to get users to stick around even longer (something that Facebook already does so well that it’s got Google and other Internet players plenty worried).
“We’re at the point of no return,” Parr wrote. “Facebook’s passive sharing will change how we live our lives. More and more, the things we do in real life will end up as Facebook posts. And while we may be consoled by the fact that most of this stuff is being posted just to our friends, it only takes one friend to share that information with his or her friends to start a viral chain. Sharing with just your friends doesn’t protect your privacy. I know the people at Facebook will disagree and argue that users can control what is shared with whom. But this is simply an illusion that makes us feel better about all the sharing we have done and are about to do. We may not notice the impact on our lives immediately. But it won’t be long until your life is on display for all of your friends to see, and then we’ll all know what Facebook has wrought.”
Posted by eBrand Media Research Department in Advertising on September 26th, 2011
Bobwards.com chooses eBrand Interactive to increase revenue
Bobwards.com retains eBrand Interactive to boost revenue through better search engine marketing management
Los Angeles, CA–(eBizine)–9/26/2011-8:05 AM – eBrand Media, Inc. (EBM), a leading provider of digital advertising and marketing solutions to emerging and established businesses announced today that its agency division, eBrand Interactive, will manage a pivotal marketing channel for Bobwards.com.
“Bobwards.com struggled to define an online national presence because its previous SEM vendor relied mainly on branded terms and localized geo-targeting. This meant they hit return on ad spend goals but the volume of conversions were capped which negatively impacted revenue”, said Tom Polanski, EVP of Business Development at the eBrand Media Group.
“We’re excited to have the opportunity to show Bobwards.com what it has been missing; revenue from an escalation in the number of sales. Money that should have been going to company’s coffers was going to competitors instead due to the poor SEM management Bobwards.com had in place. The cost of opportunity lost.”
Mr. Polanski concluded with; “We’ll do so in a holistic, incremental, and performance based manner. The means used will include but not be limited to the following: automated bidding tools based on sophisticated recursive modeling and predictive analytics, keyword data-mining, progressive keyword growth, automated referrer culling, on the fly multivariate testing and custom created crawlers. Bobwards.com should see about a 33% percent lift in revenue in the first 90 days along with a significant increase in conversions.”
Posted by eBrand Media Public Relations Department in eBrand Interactive, eBrand Media on September 26th, 2011
“Greenbacks” more valuable than green products – Few will pay extra for green products
| Global Online Consumers | |
| Position | % of Respondents |
| Important for companies to have environmental products | 83% |
| Raw materials influence decisions on where to shop and what to buy | 76% |
| Will pay more for eco-friendly products | 22% |
| Source: Nielsen, Global Online Survey, Q1 2011 | |
Willingness to pay extra for environmentally-friendly goods is highest in the Middle East/Africa, where one-third of consumers are willing and lowest in North America, where only 12% of both Canadians and Americans say they will pay extra for eco-friendly products.
Posted by eBrand Media Research Department in Customer Centric, Trend Tracker on September 14th, 2011