Thursday, February 7, 2013

B2B Marketing Valentines Can Win Hearts & Profits

Are you sending valentines to your b-to-b clients this February? Valentine's Day isn't only a marketing boon for consumer purchases of flowers, candy and jewelry; it's an opportunity to exchange good feelings with, and profit from, business clients. For example, PostcardMania used a $3,000-cost Valentine's Day campaign of dimensional mail and social media last year to reap $120,000-plus in new revenue. The company mailed a package to their top 500 customers with a Valentine's Day card, wax lips and wax mustache, and an offer of a free copy of the CEO's book on postcard marketing to anyone who posted a picture of themselves in the wax facial disguise on the company's Facebook page. They not only gained 20 new likes and 18 picture posts on Facebook that Valentine's Day week, they also garnered 68 new orders from the 500 clients, orders worth $120,637 in revenue. If you missed the mark this Valentine's Day, you can still start planning for the next national holiday or special occasion. For some tips on how to leverage holidays for b-to-b, see the article by Sarah Kicinski, PostcardMania vice president of marketing, at http://multichannelmerchant.com/b2b/valentines-day-b2b-postcardmania-0204tpp9/

Tuesday, February 5, 2013

Catalogs Far Outpace Social With Holiday Shoppers

Traditional paper catalogs far outpaced social media as a holiday shopping driver, according to research by Baynote, a multi-channel retail solutions firm. Its "3nd Annual Holiday Online Shopping Survey" questioned 1,000 U.S. online holiday shoppers between Nov. 24 and Dec. 5, and found that print catalogs influenced twice as many consumers as both Pinterest and Twitter for both in-store and online purchases. Print catalogs also influenced 81.9% more in-store purchases and 42.9% more online purchases than Facebook. Social platforms were most influential with consumers between the ages of 25 and 34, while print catalogs were most influential among consumers 45 years and older. For more on the survey findings, see the multichannelmerchant.com report at http://multichannelmerchant.com/catalog/catalogs-influenced-holiday-shopping-more-than-social/