Posts Tagged Social Media
Retailers Tagging Social and Mobile as 2012 Targets
According to the report, “Surviving the Current Market Mania with a Solid 2012 Plan,” by Bronto Software, while traditional digital channels such as search and email continue to dominate retailer marketing spending, social and mobile channels are growing in importance.
| Use of Mobile and Social Marketing Tools (% of Respondents; November 2011) | ||
| Tool | In Use Now | Plan to Use in Next 6 Months |
| Facebook fan page and/or shopping | 87% | 8 |
| Twitter publishing | 82 | 8 |
| M-commerce site | 29 | 42 |
| Bar, codes, QR codes in traditional advertising | 38 | 31 |
| Mobile application | 19 | 27 |
| Collecting SMS opt-in (all channels) | 14 | 29 |
| Texting marketing messages | 7 | 29 |
| Texting transactional support messages | 6 | 26 |
| Source: The E-tailing Group, November 2011 | ||
Marketers are also seeking to improve data analytics capabilities to identify the most profitable channels and design the optimal marketing mix for driving engagement and sales. Important tactics include:
| Planned Improved Tactics | ||
| % of Respondents | ||
| Tactic | Critical | Very Important |
| Capturing phone numbers during call center transaction | 13% | 15% |
| Capturing phone numbers during online transaction | 10 | 16 |
| Capturing phone numbers during retail transaction | 3 | 12 |
| Executing email campaigns with SMS opt-in objectives | 5 | 9 |
| Executing traditional marketing or advertising campaigns with SMS opt-in objectives | 1 | 9 |
| Source: The E-tailing Group, November 2011 | ||
Posted by eBrand Media Research Department in Trend Tracker on December 8th, 2011
Lift, from Obvious Corp., a social network for ‘human potential’
The Obvious Corp. has announced Lift, its first start-up, and its not obvious as to what exactly Lift is.
Obvious — a San Francisco incubator started just about two months ago by Twitter co-founders Biz Stone and Evan Williams, and former head of product at Twitter Jason Goldman — unveiled the new project in a blog post Wednesday.
Lift, Stone wrote in the post, is an “interesting new application for unlocking human potential through positive reinforcement. We love this software for what it does, and because we’ve tried it and it works. Our plan is to build something extraordinary together.”
How will Lift positively reinforce, uplift, encourage, give an ego boost to its users? For now, Obvious and Lift aren’t saying.
The application is in a private alpha stage and “a long way from opening the doors,” said a separate blog post from Tony Stubblebine, who co-founded Lift with Jon Crosby.
Stubblebine is a former employee of Odeo, the podcasting company that eventually shifted gears to become Twitter after its side-project Twttr started taking off, and about a decade ago worked with Crosby. Crosby too has worked for various San Francisco start-ups, most notably Dave Morin’s social network Path.
Obvious, Stone said, is helping Lift with “strategy, design, funding, recruiting — in general, we’ll be helpful wherever possible. In exchange, Obvious will own some equity in Lift.”
The blog ReadWriteWeb reported that Lift is actually a revamp of a project that Stubblebine, Crosby and their one employee, student programmer Connor Montgomery, were working on earlier this year called Mibbles.
Mibbles, ReadWriteWeb said, looked and worked a lot like Twitter with users sending short messages to each other through an online social network.
“Back when it was called Mibbles, users joined multiple groups with names like Happydog (as in “I want to keep my dog happy”), Love or Home,” ReadWriteWeb said. “Then they gave themselves Awards when they achieved accomplishment leading towards the goals around which they were grouped around.
“The Mibbles team has been working with Obvious all Summer and the service itself appears to have been under active development since at least the spring. The website underwent a dramatic redesign to take on its snazzy new look just a few weeks ago, by which time it was already renamed as Lift.”
– Nathan Olivarez-Giles
Posted by eBrand Media Research Department in Guest Contributors, Social Media, Trend Tracker on August 25th, 2011
No Magic Bullet For Replicable Social Advertising Success
| Value of Social Advertising Over Next Two Years (% of Respondents) | |
| Value | % of Respondents |
| Very valuable | 60% |
| Valuable | 32 |
| Somewhat valuable | 8 |
| Source: PIVOT conference, May 2011 | |
Posted by eBrand Media Research Department in Social Media on August 10th, 2011
Which do you prefer? In person or virtual events?
The Professional Convention Management Association, UBM Studios, and the Virtual Edge Institute released a joint report, revealing the business motivations and social behaviors of attendees and exhibitors when participating in physical or online events.
Michael Doyle, executive director of VEI, says that “…Too often the argument centers on how face-to-face or virtual best delivers on an event experience… there are significant similarities… (but) fundamental differences… regardless of format… this report will help… look at the combined effect of wrapping a digital event strategy around physical events and meetings… ”
Regardless of format, people have the same drivers for attending an exhibit hall, seeing ‘what is new’ is the number one motivation by far. Gathering relevant product and company information as well as gaining access to subject matter expertise are all clustered in second place. Demos and application education are highly sought as well.
| Motivation Importance For Trade Show Attendance (% of Respondents) | ||||||
| Virtual Exhibition Hall | In-Person Exhibition Hall | |||||
| Not Motivate | Possible Motivate | Will Motivate | Not Motivate | Possible Motivate | Will Motivate | |
| Get company/product solution for review | 10% | 51% | 39% | 8% | 47% | 45% |
| See how company can help | 9 | 52 | 39 | 9 | 54 | 37 |
| See demo or product | 10 | 44 | 45 | 7 | 48 | 44 |
| Talk to sales person | 63 | 33 | 4 | 51 | 40 | 9 |
| See what is new | 5 | 41 | 55 | 1 | 28 | 70 |
| Talk to expert | 13 | 47 | 40 | 9 | 45 | 45 |
| Source: PCMA, UBM Studios and VEI Study, July 2011 | ||||||
Posted by eBrand Media Research Department in Mojo Social: Meet, Mix & Match on July 20th, 2011
Social Network Advertising Influences But Doesn’t Drive
According to a recently released report, a collaboration between Forrester Research and GSI Commerce, social media rarely leads directly to purchases online. Less than 2% of orders were the result of shoppers coming from a social network during the holiday shopping period between November 12 and December 20, 2010.
Addressing social marketing, Fiona Dias, executive vice president of strategy and marketing for GSI Commerce, says “… buying things from retailers is maybe 10th on the list of things they want to do on Facebook… from a retail and commerce perspective, social media seems to have no effect…”
She says, though, that social media outreach is somewhat effective for distributing news about short-term deals, as 5% to 7% of purchases are influenced by social media activity.
What does seem to work, says the report, is more traditional online marketing, including email and search advertising. Most consumers in the study were exposed to some form of marketing by the retailers before they made their purchase. 70% of transactions in hard goods categories (like lawnmowers) and 82% in soft goods categories (i.e. clothing) occurred after the consumers had engaged in some interactive marketing tactic before their purchase. 40% of hard goods transactions and 60% of soft goods transactions came to retail websites directly from email and search
| Transactions That Started With Search Or Email During Key Dates (Percent Of Transactions) | ||||
| Hard goods | Soft goods | |||
| Search | Search | |||
| Holiday (excluding key dates) | 22% | 17% | 37% | 23% |
| Thanksgiving weekend | 26 | 14 | 40 | 20 |
| Cyber Monday | 31 | 15 | 44 | 18 |
| Source: Forrester Research, Inc., May 2011 | ||||
Posted by eBrand Media Research Department in Social Media on May 11th, 2011