Thursday, September 13, 2012

Social Referral Traffic Trails E-mail and Search


Here's data that may cool the social marketing fervor: The performance of social media referral traffic lags far behind e-mail and search, per a report from cloud-based technology company Monetate. Monetate reports that, for the second quarter, the Average Order Value (AOV) of website traffic from search was $26.21 higher than traffic from social networks. Meanwhile, e-mail campaigns delivered a web traffic AOV that was $18.53 higher than traffic from social networking websites such as Facebook, Pinterest and Twitter. For more, see the btobonline.com report at http://www.btobonline.com/article/20120814/WEB07/308149992/report-email-and-search-trump-social-referral-traffic

Tuesday, September 11, 2012

Citing Direct Mail Rise, USPS Gives Success Tips


The U.S. Postal Service is happy to cite a report from the Magna Advertising Group that direct mail spending rose to $21 billion in 2011, up 2.9% from 2010. Tom Foti, manager of USPS Direct Mail and Periodicals, urges business mailers to jump on the bandwagon with the following praise of direct mail effectiveness: “Direct mail creates a one-on-one connection that’s hard for other media channels to match.The average household receives only two pieces of direct mail a day compared with 157 emails. It lets you incorporate coupons, reply cards, mobile barcodes — such as QR codes — URLs and other response mechanisms. Direct mail is a workhorse for generating leads, traffic and sales.” The pitch may be a bit self-serving for the cash-strapped USPS, but it is still good advice. Foti even provides five basic tips for direct mail success, including use of the Postal Service's new Every Door Direct Mail service, which allows mailers to reach every address in a neighborhood without the need for names or addresses. For more, see the release at http://about.usps.com/news/national-releases/2012/pr12_096.htm