Thursday, July 25, 2013

You Can Use Data to Win Hearts As Well As Minds

You can use cool data to create warmer feelings, and hotter sales, for your brand. In a recent Forbes.com On Marketing post, marketing expert Sandra Zoratti argues for developing a higher "EQ," or emotional intelligence, score to increase marketing effectiveness. She points out that emotional connections can be a more potent force in marketing than intellectual persuasion. In fact, experiments by a Nobel Prize-winning psychologist found people will purchase a product they know is inferior or overpriced if they like and trust the seller. So how do you tap into customer emotions to get them to like and trust you? By using that hard data and analytics to win hearts as well as minds, answers Zoratti. She cites the example of Royal Canin Canada, a pet food company. Via a "PetFirst" e-mail program, the company gathered info about the names, birth dates, breeds and weights of customers' cats and dogs. Royal Canin then combined that info with veterinary data to create personalized pet-care plans. The company used the data to not only win over customer minds with pet-specific nutrition knowledge but to win hearts with programs like pet birthday greetings. For more, see http://www.forbes.com/sites/onmarketing/2013/07/09/marketers-heres-how-to-use-data-to-win-hearts-and-minds/

Tuesday, July 23, 2013

In Online Sales Arena, E-mail KOs Social

Do today's online retailers find more paying customers from e-mail or social media? It's no contest according to recent research from Custora, a marketing data firm. Over the past four years, online retailers have quadrupled the rate of customers acquired through e-mail to 7%, while Facebook and Twitter barely register, according to Custora data from 72 million customers shopping on 86 retailer sites. Of course, organic search remained the largest acquisition channel, followed by cost-per-click (Google). Meanwhile, e-mail also leads social when it comes to the lifetime value of customers acquired. E-mail customers are almost 11% more valuable than the average customer, while Facebook customers are about average in terms of shopping and spending. In contrast, Twitter customers were 23% less valuable than average. For more, see the recent article from wired.com at http://www.wired.com/business/2013/07/email-crushing-twitter-facebook/