According to a Nov. 20 article in The Wall Street Journal, eBay Inc. is going to leverage the technology they acquired with the six-week-old purchase of Bill Me Later by testing a holiday credit line for consumer users of their PayPal service. Each consumer in the PayPal system will be allotted credit based on an assessment of their finances.
Like with Bill Me Later, people who use the credit will not have interest accrue on their account for a few months. PayPal was to begin the service on Nov. 21, according to the article.
What does this mean for online marketers? Read more…
Teens are using social network sites, video-sharing sites, online games, iPods, and mobile phones. That’s no news flash.
What’s new is a study of 800 interviews with youth and their parents that has shed light on why young people use digital media. Here are the major findings:
Read more…
For our money, PETCO has always done a good job with their online marketing, specifically in email. And that’s part of the reason why it was intriguing to see their most recent email campaign where John Lazarchic, Vice President of Ecommerce, for the pets products eretailer, penned a short letter truly in the form of a personal email. Read more…
Discounts abound at eretail sites this holiday season. The New York Times dubbed the price slashing “holiday price wars” in an article on November 19. The article’s desperate tone underlines what many of us already know: The holiday shopping season is going to be rough.
Every consumer is looking for a discount, which doesn’t bode well for premium brands. Price drops and coupons can diminish a brand’s boutique image. But some marketers are finding a way around this quandary. Read more…
Discounts abound at eretail sites this holiday season. The New York Times dubbed the price slashing “holiday price wars” in an article today. The article’s desperate tone underlines what many of us already know: the holiday shopping season is going to be rough.
Read more…
Marketers can’t afford to offend the powerful force that is the mom blogosphere. The recent Motrin mommy mess-up is a testament to that. Read more…
Am I the only sports fan to notice how more and more TV analysts in the niche are talking about individual athletes’ and sports teams’ as “brands”? Of course, they have always been, quote-and-unquote, brands. That’s real-world talk among marketing professionals.
But to protect the fans (or “customers”) from the game of marketing, this stuff was not supposed to be discussed in public. At least, that is the way it used to be. Yet, times have changed. Read more…
The BlackBerry Bold has been unveiled, and many folks compared it at launch to the iPhone. For what it’s worth, I think that’s a good thing for BlackBerry marketers.
Because, no matter the brand, smartphones are not going anywhere.
There will be more brands entering this particular technological fray; some might actually outdo both the iPhone and the BlackBerry Bold. And they will drive the wireless market further into the future.
Before you know it, the smartphone will be akin to the television set in the late 1970s. Absolutely everyone will have one, and the picture will likely be in color (if not high-definition).
Of course, they will be more affordable than ever, too.
As you might have read in an earlier blog, I have been looking for a marketer who has tested mobile-dedicated links and landing pages in their emails. Well, I have found one.
Stay tuned for a how-to article in the coming weeks. You’ll learn that marketing to smartphones now is a no-brainer – if you want to get ahead of the competition.
When the economy is down and your budget is slashed, you might be forced to prove every investment. Your CEO or manager might want to see the ROI of every effort — from direct mail to responding to comments.
And who can blame them, really? Times are tight. All signs are pointing south. They want to make sure that money isn’t being wasted. You might feel the same way: you don’t want to waste part of a shrinking budget on anything that’s not guaranteed to work.
But that might not be the best way to market. Alan Scott, CMO, Dow Jones certainly doesn’t think so. Scott’s strategy is to measure every investment and interaction with the customer that he can, and to make sure overall revenue numbers are solid, he says. Getting too granular in your ROI analysis can become a distraction.
“It’s very difficult to understand the cause and effect of every individual component and make a meaningful decision,” he says. “I heard at a conference not too long ago, someone said ‘What’s the ROI of putting on pants?’ Your probably could calculate it somehow. But you have to do it [anyway].”
That’s a great line: “What’s the ROI of putting on pants?” Remember it when you’re thinking of changing a successful marketing plan just because you cannot calculate the return on every portion of it. If it works overall, why change it? Granted, it’s worth the time and effort to tweak and test, but don’t slash and burn your pants because you’re not sure how much money they make.
The BlackBerry Bold has been unveiled, and many folks compared it at launch to the iPhone. For what it’s worth, I think that’s a good thing for BlackBerry marketers. Because, no matter the brand, smartphones are not going anywhere.
There will be more brands entering this particular technological fray; some might actually outdo both the iPhone and the BlackBerry Bold. And they will drive the wireless market further into the future. Read more…
