Among other things, MarketingSherpa’s annual email marketing study confirms that email marketing is ‘IN’ in 2009.
Based on the input of 1,763 Internet marketers, MarketingSherpa’s Email Marketing Benchmark Guide found that 60 percent of business-to-business marketers said they planned to invest more in email marketing to ‘house’ lists in 2009, while an impressive 29 percent planned to invest in rented lists.
Here’s more evidence that consumers use online product and service reviews to guide their online purchases. A recent report by Nielsen Online shows that a massive 81 percent of consumers read reviews before shopping online.
And, it seems, consumers tend to treat such reviews seriously. 71 percent of those surveyed by Nielsen said the reviews they read made them ‘more comfortable’ about buying a product.
A report published by Forrester Research and discussed in ReadWriteWeb indicates that company blogs are the least trusted sources of information among U.S. adults.
When asked ‘how much do you trust the following information sources?’ just 16 percent of the respondents to Forrester’s survey said they trusted company blogs. At the other end of the spectrum, 77 percent of people said they trusted email from people they knew.
What else is trusted or not trusted? Here’s the list:
I find these results fascinating. Among other things, the results indicate very clearly that the more you can become an individual (rather than a company or brand) your prospects ‘know’, the more likely they will trust you.
Source: Richard MacManus, “Report: Corporate Blogs Not Trusted”, December 10, 2008
A study by Synovate brings into question the idea that men and women aged 18-to-24-year-old are ‘immune’ to marketing messages or brands. In fact, people in this age group are quite enthusiastic about brands that are relevant to them.
Synovate’s June-July 2008 survey of young adults found that 28 percent of respondents had talked about a major brand on a discussion forum, 23 percent had put brand-related content on their instant messaging (IM) profile, and 19 percent had added branded content to their homepage or social networking site.
Furthermore, nearly 50 percent had clicked on online ads, and 18 percent had accessed brand and product information through a portal. Meanwhile, nearly 25 percent of 18-to-24 year olds had uploaded ads to social networks and online video sites in the past month.
Source: eMarketer, “Are Young Adults Really Brand-Resistant?” eMarketer, November 20, 2008
A poll by Zogby International indicates that the Internet is regarded as a more trustworthy source of news than television or radio.
Zogby surveyed more than 3,000 people in the two days after the US Presidential Election. It found that 37.6 percent of respondents considered the Internet the most reliable source of news, while 20.3 percent considered national TV news most reliable, and 16 percent said that radio was the most reliable source.
Do online shoppers prefer fixed-price third-party sites such as Amazon.com… auction sites such as eBay… comparison shopping sites such as Shopping.com, rebate sites such as eBates, or any other kind of online shopping channel?
Well, according to research by Piper Jaffray, no single mode of shopping dominates when it comes to online buyer preferences. Respondents to its study preferred fixed-price third-party sales most, followed by going directly to a retailer’s website, then search, auction and comparison sites… but not by significant margins:
Source: eMarketer, “Online Buyers Use Many Channels”, eMarketer, November 11, 2008
I’m not a huge fan of targeting prospects based on their “generation”. Call me old fashioned, but I would have thought that there are a range of better ways to target people than how old they are.
Really, you don’t want me to get started on the marketing to people based on whether they’re Baby Boomers, Generation X, Generation Y or some other broadbrush generalization about people based on their age.
But apparently some people do study these things, and for what it’s worth Charles Schwab has studied the online buying behvavior of Generation X (which it defines as people born between 1965 and 1981).
As reported by eMarketer, Charles Schwab’s survey of 2,000 Gen Xers reveals that they are well educated (28 percent have bachelor’s degrees or higher), debt-ridden (45 percent of respondents said they had too much debt to think about saving, with most being concerned about credit card debt, car loans and mortgages) and skeptical.
eMarketer’s conclusion is that Gen Xers seek value for money, and aren’t afraid to shop at discount or diverse stores to get it.
Source: eMarketer, “The Gen X Online Shopper”, eMarketer, November 10, 2008
A survey of around 200 respondents by copy editing service, GooseGrade has found that blog readers are somewhat turned off by typos, grammatical errors and poor writing.
Those surveyed - a diverse group of respondents who spent some time reading blogs but generally used “mainstream sources” for news - indicated that finding errors on blogs makes them less likely to share the content they find with others.
Specifically, spelling mistakes and grammatical errors harmed a reader’s opinion of a blog and their willingness to share the content on that blog with others. Interestingly, the survey also found that most respondents believed such errors to be common. Only 20 percent of respondents said it was “not often” or “never” that they found such errors.
Bottom line: try to write well, and strive to eliminate spelling mistakes and grammatical errors. (I will too!)
Sources: Marshall Kirkpatrick, “Errors By Bloggers Kill Credibility & Traffic, Study Finds”, ReadWriteWeb, October 30, 2008, GooseGrade Reader Perception Survey Results
Banner, rich media, text, video. Which type of ad format do you think gets the most clicks?
Well, you might be surprised - or not surprised at all - to learn that text ads get the most clicks according to a survey of 14,000 web users by iPerceptions.
The iPerceptions survey, conducted in August, found that 25 percent of respondents said they would be likely to click on a text link, compared with 20 percent who said they were likely to click on a right side banner, and just 12 percent likely to click on a top-banner.
Of those surveyed, only 11 percent said they were likely to click on video ad units, while 7 percent were likely to click on interactive units, and 4 percent were likely to click on interstitial ads.
Regular visitors to a website were the most likely to click on ads, with 33 percent of weekly visitors to a site prone to click on text ads, and 29 percent of daily visitors likely to do so. Only 15 percent of monthly visitors were inclined to click, while 17 percent of first-time visitors were prone to click.
Just one problem with this survey: it’s based on what people SAY they do, rather than what they actually do.
A new survey suggests that younger and lower income web users are more likely to click on certain ad formats than older and wealthier users.
A survey of 14,000 web users conducted by iPerceptions in August found that 31 percent of respondents under 25 said they were likely to click on a video ad, compared to 21 percent for those aged 25 to 24, and 14 percent for 35-to-44-year-olds.
What’s more, 36 percent of those who clicked on text ads had an annual income below $50,000. This finding coincides with similar research by Starcom and AOL which found that heavy clickers had a household income of less than $40,000.
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