Is Your Marketing Ready for the E-commerce Surge?

Pandemic lockdowns across the nation have turbocharged e-commerce, with online sales growing by triple-digits. Is your marketing ready? Most marketers are not, according to a recent Profitero and Kantar survey of 200 brand executives, which found that only 17% believe their organizations are leading competitors in e-commerce. E-commerce marketers need to quickly prioritize strategies, advises a recent post by Forbes magazine’s CMO Network contributor Sarah Hofstetter. A problem identified by the Profitero and Kantar survey, for example, is that only 11% of organizations have functional-level e-commerce goals in place. Hofstetter urges making e-commerce a part of everyone’s job, from building e-commerce KPIs into bonuses to content accountability on retail websites to overcoming silos with cross-functional goals. Next, marketers should boost online profiles and product discovery efforts. That includes targeted SEO and SEM, strong ratings and reviews, engaging targeted content, and aligned multichannel outreach. Third, shift from offline to speedier online tactics, such as algorithmic matching of competitor price changes and real-time tailoring of product assortments and promotional strategies by audience. Fourth, boost online agility. Note that 63% of brands do not test and optimize their content to improve sales impact (Profitero and Kantar survey). So brands that digitally test new products, new traffic-generating variables and new marketing messages gain an edge. Janet Balis, a principal of Ernst & Young LLP, recently penned a Harvard Business Journal article offering more advice.The nuances of creative messaging have become more delicate, she notes, warning that while exploitative brands will not fare well, organizations that promote doing good, from food bank donations to repurposed manufacturing, can enhance brand image as long as contributions are seen as material and not solely for commercial benefit. Next, since the mix of preferred media platforms has changed, marketers may want to modify the media mix, for example with more ad-supported premium video streaming for spiking digital entertainment, or ads around peak news consumption. Finally, marketers will want to put a greater emphasis on behavior trends and response tracking to better adapt messaging and targeting. Small, less sophisticated retailers can take advantage of Google tools, such as using Google Trends, Google Alerts  and retail-category metrics for Google Search and Shopping campaigns to spot shifts in demand. They can frequently update Google Ads, customer-facing websites and Buyer Profiles on Google Maps and Search, and can enable automatic item updates in the Google Merchant Center to keep product data current. For more, see https://www.acculist.com/has-your-marketing-adjusted-for-the-current-e-commerce-surge/

Promotional Products Face Changes, Challenges

Promotional products suppliers and distributors have been able to ride corporate buyers’ profits to an average 1.3% annual growth rate in the last five years through 2019, reaching $17 billion in U.S. revenues this year, per IBISWorld market research. But a number of challenges, requiring innovative solutions, lie ahead. Continuation of the tariffs imposed in the U.S.-China trade war are likely to have a direct impact on the promotional products market, where the vast majority of products come from China, creating rising product prices and uncertainty. One of the options that some companies are already taking is a shift to sourcing from countries outside of China, such as Vietnam, per the Advertising Specialty Institute (ASI). Meanwhile, the promotional products market is facing competitive challenges from the entry of big online competitors such as Amazon. Market execs have told ASI that they believe the e-commerce power threatens to potentially cut out suppliers and distributors by positioning itself as the lowest-cost provider from a product and freight perspective. Their worries include Amazon opting to partner with only select suppliers and distributors; selling direct through its platform; and/or using its search presence for rankings that create winners and losers, and force up advertising expenses for all. Finally, the potential of an economic slowdown or even recession has some nervous. ASI recently interviewed 10 leading suppliers and distributors in the promotional products market for their visions on handling such challenges over the next 5-10 years. The good news is that all foresaw continued growth, albeit with increasing consolidation and online dominance. Among their predictions is that technology will be a key driver of every aspect of how buyers select and purchase products, of fulfillment and delivery, and of customer service through the order life cycle. Second, e-commerce will be the standard, benefiting big online players that provide fast, accessible solutions and inexpensive drop-shipping for some clients, as well as a suite of features to meet the complex needs of other more sophisticated clients. In that expanded digital environment, data management and analytics will loom large, tracking orders in production, materials used, items ordered, customer profiles and contacts, etc. Up against Amazon, personalized customer experience will be key to making an e-commerce presence into a true online buying experience. Competition will also drive the growth of creative promotional agencies that are not price-focused but seek to help clients build brand name. For more on leadership predictions, see our website blog post at https://www.acculist.com/promotional-products-market-faces-new-challenges/

Market Trends Bolster Food Gifting Growth

One of AccuList USA's areas of specialization is the food and wine gift market, so we keep an eye on emerging trends. In fact, food gift sales will approach $20 billion in 2018, up 4% over last year, per the “Food Gifting in the U.S.: Consumer and Corporate” report for 2018-2020 by research firm Packaged Facts. Marketing dollars will naturally focus on year-end sales, since, while consumers and businesses are giving food baskets across a wider variety of occasions today, Christmas is still the food and wine gifting mainstay. More than half of the 130 million consumer food gifters purchasing in the last 12 months bought during the winter holiday season. So how can food gift marketers keep overall sales growth going strong? One key factor will be continued innovation that creates exclusivity and artisanship, avoiding the commoditization that drains profit with discounting, notes the report. To support that kind of brand power, marketing efforts will need to embrace the kind of story telling that creates a sense of authenticity and uniqueness and builds a gourmet brand image. Food gift marketers also need to continue expanding gifting occasions beyond holidays, not only for consumers but also for the lucrative corporate market, by pushing work anniversary and thank-you gestures as examples. Finally, while the food gifting market is heavily dependent on older, high-income consumers, tapping into millennials will require a more omnichannel approach that takes into account millennial ordering preferences, stresses the Packaged Facts report. An omnichannel wooing of millennials will combine direct mail/catalogs with e-mail, social media and e-commerce strategies. While traditional direct mail continues as a workhorse, a strong online presence and SEO strategy is especially essential. Luxury biscuit gift company Biscuiteers provides an example of how it matters: The company increased their website traffic from new customers by 90% and SEO revenue by 77% in 6 months by optimizing category landing pages for different types of food gift buyer and season. E-commerce goes hand-in-hand with a good e-mail strategy. For example, the venerable Hickory Farms brand decided to improve the quality of its customer data and create a more agile e-mail campaign process to trigger consumer journeys and automated e-mail sends. E-mail inbox placement this year rose to 94%, almost 10% above industry standard, plus e-mail list growth improved. Hickory Farms CMO Judy Ransford explained to CMO magazine that the smarter list management "helps us deliver e-mails at the frequency customers want, and to make sure the content quality is better. This year we’ve seen a huge improvement and not such high attrition rates as a result." Social media also has become a must-have for food gifting via leading platforms like Facebook and Instagram for consumers and LinkedIn for corporate prospecting. For more, including Top Ten Reviews' ratings of the best gift baskets of 2018, see the full post at http://www.acculistusa.com/new-marketing-trends-bolster-food-gifting-growth/

How Paid, Earned & Owned Media Drive Success

When budgets are tight, it's tempting to focus on earned and owned media over paid media promotion. But marketers need to know the growth penalty of that strategy. Brands that use paid media typically grow three times faster than those that rely on owned and earned media alone, according to recent international research from the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising (IPA), as reported by The Drum. At the same time, paid media is more effective when coupled with earned and owned media. IPA research shows that owned media, which includes brand websites, blogs and social media sites, typically increases the effectiveness of a paid ad campaign by 13%. Meanwhile, earned media, which includes online mentions, shares, re-posts and reviews, increases the effectiveness of a paid campaign by a larger 26%. The IPA examination of media marketing further finds that emotion is a vital ingredient to success, and that television advertising continues to be the most powerful in delivering emotional engagement. Researchers report that adding television advertising increases a promotional campaign's effectiveness by 40%, for example. The growing use of video-on-demand and online video has turbocharged video impact: IPA's research shows a 54% increase in the average number of "very large" business effects from adding television and online video together. For more on balancing paid, earned and owned media, as well as brand-building vs. targeted sales promotion, see our post: http://www.acculistusa.com/creating-powerful-synergy-with-paid-owned-earned-media/

Digital Lead Gen Forecast to Dominate Sales Funnel

Marketers consistently say quality lead generation is their top challenge, but the path to success can get lost in today's complex multichannel environment. A 2016 marketing forecast by Salesforce Principal of Marketing Insights, Matthew Sweezy, opines that marketers should recognize a fundamental sales funnel shift: 60% at the middle of the sales funnel must now be devoted to digital rapport-building and lead generation, leaving 20% of the funnel for traditional marketing at the top and 20% for sales acquisition at the bottom. The new sales funnel reflects today's overconnected, multichannel marketing challenge. By 2020, there will be seven connected devices for every person on earth (Gartner Research) and the average person already sees 5,000 ads a day from all channels, not counting social (Yankelovich). Bombarded by digital marketing messages, 18% of the U.S. audience already uses digital ad blockers, per PageFair and Adobe, undermining paid ad strategies. Consumers are also disturbed by big-data privacy concerns, with a third of customers abandoning a brand after a data breach, per The Economist research, so reluctance to provide personal information threatens data-gathering and targeting. The key, says Sweezy, is to give digital customers what they want, which is useful information and trust-building self-discovery (it's made Google is No, 1 in search), noting that 73% of consumers say that getting useful information is the most important factor in selecting a brand. Personalized targeting with behavioral, psychographic and internal data is key, and automation is a useful engagement system, but marketers must work smart. Retargeting ads for a product after purchase of the product just makes customers four times less likely to purchase again. And engagement must be swift, with the average consumer taking only 0.05 seconds to determine content value and 70% switching sites/apps if they are judged too slow. To capture the new digital middle of the funnel, companies need to improve the customer digital experience and close gaps by making frequent, small and socially interactive gestures that keep the brand in front of potential buyers and build trust and engagement, concludes Sweezy. For the whole presentation, go to Salesforce's Pardot blog: http://www.pardot.com/blog/future-marketing-2016-slideshare/

13 Ways to Use Direct Mail in 2016 Marketing

Here's a New Year's marketing resolution that we would suggest: Make 2016 a year of direct mail successes. Unsure of how to get the most ROI from "snail mail" today? A recent Target Marketing magazine article by Summer Gould conveniently lists the most effective uses of direct mail--13 ways to leverage this powerful tool for effective acquisition, retention and brand promotion. Here are just the top five: 1) generate traffic to a retail location, website or event; 2) gather sales leads by targeting your most qualified, active audience with a high response tool; 3) counter competitive offers by reaching out to competitor's prospects without broadcasting your strategy; 4) boost customer loyalty with exclusive offers and rewards; and 5) turn customers into sales generators by garnering and rewarding customer referrals. The list includes ways to fit direct mail into partner marketing and multichannel marketing efforts, with e-mail, social media, mobile and more, and ends up at No. 13: build brand awareness with what research shows is the most trusted form of marketing. For all the ways to best use direct mail in your marketing plan, read the complete article at http://www.targetmarketingmag.com/post/13-ways-direct-mail-works-best/

Print Can Add Needed Punch to Marketing Plans

Printed material, including direct mail, keeps proving its worth to our clients in this digital marketing era. So our thanks to Jean Gianfagna of Gianfagna Strategic Marketing for a post summing up the reasons for print's continued marketing power. She cites six marketing advantages that make print a must-have for a smart marketing strategy: unlimited creative options, from formats to personalization to dimensional impact; effective branding via the unique impression created by physical materials; enhanced customer relationships from targeted, personalized loyalty, cross-sell and up-sell messaging; increased customer understanding with detailed product descriptions, comparisons and options that don't fit tight digital formats; durability, influencing decisions long after a tweet or e-mail has been discarded and forgotten; and engagement tapping multiple senses (visual and tactile, plus even scent and sound). That said, marketers can also squander budget on overdesigned, untargeted, ineffective print efforts. So Gianfagna adds some important advice on using print wisely: work closely with a printer before finalizing design to choose the most cost-effective materials and formats; be cautious with use of pricey print techniques, such as die-cuts, embossing and foil stamping; use quality data for targeted, correctly addressed direct mail; plus, when it comes to direct mail, keep USPS regulations in mind for lower postal rates. For more detail, go to http://www.gianfagnamarketing.com/blog/2015/10/29/6-reasons-you-still-need-print-in-a-smart-marketing-strategy/

Brand Marketers Are Ignoring Consumer Preferences

U.S. brand marketers model communications on a dictatorship rather than a democracy, consistently ignoring consumer preferences for channel and frequency, according to a recent study by MarketingSherpa. Indeed, the gap between consumer preference and marketer practice is often wide enough that many brands shouldn't be surprised at a profit-burning customer revolt. A useful infographic of research results, based on surveys of more than 2,000 consumers and 455 brand marketers, was recently created by Direct Marketing News magazine. Among the findings, although 54% of consumers say they prefer to receive promotions via print mail, only 19% of brand marketers send out print materials. Instead, 90% of marketers blast e-mails, even though only 60% of consumers say they want to get e-mail promos. And once they've chosen to woo consumers via e-mail, marketers time messages to suit themselves; 76% of companies base e-mail frequency on their own needs, even though only 24% of consumers want that brand-determined frequency. Of course, marketers are enticed by social media popularity, so 77% of those surveyed offer customers the opportunity to follow brands on social media. The problem is that only 20% of consumers want to receive company updates and promotions via social media. Similar overfishing of digital waters occurs with online ads, with 60% of marketers using online advertising, even though just 27% of consumers say they discover new products via online ads. For more details from the DM News infographic, go to  http://www.dmnews.com/infographics/marketers-ignore-consumers-right-to-vote-infographic/article/453627/

Direct Mail Still Key Insurance Acquisition Tool

In providing targeted lead lists to insurance marketers, we've seen the continued acquisition power of direct mail over the years, so it's nice to find an Insurance Journal article supporting our experience. Speaking to independent property and casualty insurance agents (but with arguments that apply to mailings for other insurance types), author Michelle Peel of IWCO Direct printing, cites four key reasons direct mail should be part of customer acquisition plans. No. 1, statistics show that consumers prefer direct mail for branded promotions, she notes, citing Experian's 2012 Channel Preference Study finding that 73% of Americans prefer direct mail for brand communications. And that preference extends across generations to include millennials, with 57% of younger buyers saying they have made a purchase as a result of a direct mail offer. Direct mail acquisition also continues to have a higher response rate than digital channels such as e-mail, per the latest Direct Marketing Association (DMA) data (1% for mail prospecting compared with 0.1% for e-mail). No. 2, creating the relevant, personalized and timely messaging that makes direct mail succeed is easier than ever with online marketing tools and templates from many insurance providers and, we would add, variable data printing to fill rental list data into custom-targeted, personalized creative. No. 3, the U.S. Postal Service is on the side of direct mailers and continues to develop products such as Every Door Direct Mail for blanket area coverage, as well as print-to-digital technology promotions of Quick Response (QR) code and Augmented Reality (AR) use. No. 4, direct mail drives traffic to online channels, too; Peel cites DMA data that 44% of mail recipients visit the company website, 34% search for the company online, and 26% save the mailer for future reference. Of course, using personalized urls (PURLs), QR codes and AR will further help boost online traffic. See http://www.insurancejournal.com/magazines/features/2015/03/09/359395.htm

Catalogs Continue As Key Retail Revenue Driver

Print catalogs still top retailers' marketing options in an omnichannel world, notes a recent post by Megan Conley, staff writer for Bigcommerce, an online shopping platform provider. Print catalogs are a big revenue driver for omnichannel operations, she argues, noting that 2014 consumers who received catalogs spent an average of $850 per year on catalog purchases, and that 31% of shoppers have a catalog with them when they make an online purchase, according to retail consultancy Kurt Salmon. In all, about 90 million Americans make purchases from catalogs per Direct Marketing Association data, and the number of catalogs mailed in the U.S. has increased 60% from 2007. That's one reason many major retailers have revived interest in their mailing lists, and Conley cites some well-known names: J.Crew, Patagonia, Restoration Hardware, Anthropologie, Athleta, West Elm, Crate & Barrel, Neiman Marcus, J.C. Penney, Bonobos, Sak’s Fifth Avenue and Chico’s. Catalogs also help identify the best customers and push them to use omnichannel outlets, increasing brand loyalty and awareness, she notes. She quotes Craig Elbert, Bonobos’s vice president of marketing: "We found that the catalog allowed us to tell a fuller narrative about the brand and our products in a way that we were struggling to do online. In all, our catalog customers tend to spend more. And our catalog customers who make purchases at our brick-and-mortar stores are our best customers overall." But many of the new generation of catalogs do look different from predecessors. They have become less product- and sales-oriented in favor of an aesthetic, lifestyle publication look. Susy Korb, chief marketing officer of Anthropologie, recently told the New York Times: "We don’t call it a catalog; we call it a journal. Of course, we’re trying to sell clothes and accessories, but it’s more to inspire and engage." For more, see the business2community re-post: http://www.business2community.com/marketing/direct-marketing-brand-association-and-revenue-why-a-catalog-might-be-your-next-best-marketing-bet-01283212

Using Direct Mail to Rev E-Commerce Results

E-commerce marketers who are smart about planting direct mail in their marketing mix can reap healthier results, points out a recent post by Ernan Roman Direct Marketing on CustomerThink.com. Mail has a unique ability to enhance the B2B and B2C customer experience with a physical "shareability" that digital channels lack, for example. The article draws attention to the History Channel's arty photo postcard promotion of its History Asia programming as an example. The channel estimates the mail campaign generated $1.2 million in PR value via professional interest, social media and requests for the actual art pieces featured in the postcards. Catalogs are another example of physical mail's ability to enhance customer engagement. That's why a major national retailer like Anthropologie uses catalogs as their principal form of advertising "to inspire and engage"(and drive sales). Indeed, direct mail can directly guide the e-commerce customer's purchase journey. For example, online men's retailer Bonobos added print catalogs after a series of successful tests, and now 20% of first-time customers place orders after receiving a catalog and spend 1.5 times as much as other new buyers. Plus, direct mail can be used to lengthen and strengthen online brand engagement, the Ernan Roman article notes, citing the example of Homebase, an online UK home and gardening retailer frustrated by the sales limits of its short spring gardening rush. By targeting high-value gardening customers with a well-timed 500,000-piece mail campaign, Homebase hoped to get customers to shop earlier and spend more. The mailing succeeded in getting customers to visit the site 33% more often and spend 20% more. For more details, read http://customerthink.com/myth-busted-how-direct-mail-can-actually-enrich-the-digital-customer-journey/

Innovative Logo Goes Viral for Sonos

Logos rarely go viral in a good way, but kudos to Sonos, a well-known wireless speaker company, for a new logo with a visual effect so hot that it's literally making waves in the digital space, per a Fast Company Design report by Mark Wilson. The logo radiates energy in a burst of lines that, when scrolled over, begin to vibrate as if emitting sound waves from the core. The "sound branding with a visual beat" captured the attention of the web tech pros of The Verge, who sent out a tweet that quickly went viral, notes Wilson. The logo is part of a rebranding effort meant to demonstrate the idea of "amplification," as Sonos seeks to reposition as an umbrella to cloud music services. The Sonos mobile app already manages other apps like Spotify and Pandora in concert, and the 2014 hiring of Microsoft's former head of Xbox, Marc Whitten, as Sonos chief product officer signals the company's ambitions. What makes the logo story more interesting is that the optical illusion was a "happy accident," according to its design team, who noted the animation effect during development and polished it. And the viral buzz came as a surprise to Sonos execs as well. "We didn’t know people were going to notice it so prominently," admitted Webb Blevins, vice president of brand design for Sonos, in the article. "We’ve done quite a bit of animation studies making that more prominent, but I thought, personally, it was going to go unnoticed." A happy marketing accident indeed! To see the new logo in action, go to
http://www.fastcodesign.com/3041367/sonoss-hot-new-viral-logo-was-a-happy-accident

Are Facebook, Twitter Brand Marketing Wastes?

Facebook and Twitter are wastes of time and money for brand relationship marketing, concludes a report by Forrester Research. As a story in Fast Company magazine highlights, a recent Forrester study found that posts from top brands on Twitter and Facebook reach just 2% of their followers. Engagement was even worse; only 0.07% of followers actually interacted with posts. Fast Company cites this conclusion by Nate Elliott, vice president and principal analyst at Forrester: "It’s clear that Facebook and Twitter don’t offer the relationships that marketing leaders crave. Yet most brands still use these sites as the centerpiece of their social efforts—thereby wasting significant financial, technological, and human resources on social networks that don’t deliver value." So what's a better digital bet for relationship marketers? Try e-mail, which gets delivered more than 90% of the time compared with the 2% delivery of Facebook posts, Elliott advises. "If you have to choose between adding a subscriber to your e-mail list or gaining a new Facebook fan, go for e-mail every time," he writes. For the article, see http://www.fastcompany.com/3038801/brands-are-wasting-time-and-money-on-facebook-and-twitter-report-says

B2B Content Marketers Doubt Their Effectiveness

The Content Marketing Institute's latest survey of business-to-business marketers found 86% using content marketing, but only 38% believing they are actually effective at it. One reason respondents may doubt their success is poor tracking of content marketing ROI; just 5% consider their ROI tracking "very successful," while the majority (33%) rate ROI measurement efforts as merely "neutral." Another 10% rate tracking as "not at all successful," and 15% do no tracking. For those engaged in content-marketing results measurement, website traffic was the most common metric, followed by sales lead quality and conversion rates. As far as the type of B2B content marketing done, the most popular content (92%) was for social media (other than blogs), followed by e-newsletters (83%) and website articles (81%). What were the most important goals of content marketing? Brand awareness, lead generation and engagement led the list in the survey. The study also pegged 28% as the average amount of total marketing budget spent on B2B content marketing. Unsurprisingly, there was a correlation between perceived effectiveness and spending; those rating themselves as most effective allocated 37% of the marketing budget to B2B content, while the least effective cut their spend to 16% or less of the total budget. For more data from the survey, check out the marketingland.com report at http://marketingland.com/study-21-marketers-tracking-content-marketing-results-102263

These Smart Brands Offer E-Mail Success Lessons

We often pass along articles on common mistakes in e-mail marketing, but how about the positive lessons, the success stories? Kevin Ward, recently posted an inspirational piece for Business2Community about tips gleaned from six well-known brands' e-mail campaigns. All are producing e-mails that have personality, easy readability, user-friendliness, and attention-grabbing appeal  -- plus specific, well-executed tactics to stay ahead of the competition. For example, Ralph Lauren wins sales with its clear, targeted call to action. Amazon leads the field with personalization. Betty Crocker's recipe for success is warm Pinterest-style personality. ThinkGeek thinks about conversions with extra coupons and deals. Huckberry revs up the urgency with limited time offers for its deals. Crate & Barrel has lots to peddle but uses e-mail focus, with a single customer-driven product offer, to funnel sales. For e-mail creative examples: https://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/advisor/six-brands-doing-email-marketing-175149715.html

E-mail Beats Text in Tapping Luxury Brand Buyers

Luxury brands seeking affluent customers should favor e-mail over mobile text messaging, according to 2014 first-quarter data from the Luxury Institute. As recently reported by eMarketer, the Luxury Institute found that just 17% of U.S. affluent internet users, those with an income of $150,000 or more, had signed up to receive, or were somewhat to very likely to opt in to, text messages from a luxury brand. Even tech-savvy, affluent millennials were not interested in luxury brand messages popping up on their phones: Only around a quarter said they had or would be interested in receiving such communications, a percentage similar to Generation Xers. In contrast, 49% of respondents said they had opted in, or were somewhat to very likely to opt in, to receiving e-mails from a luxury brand. Luxury brand e-mails are likely to do even better with younger affluents, however. The overall e-mail acceptance of 49% was skewed lower by boomers (44%) compared with millennials (61%) and GenXers (54%). The study held another discouraging note for digital luxury-brand marketers: Digital generally doesn't appear to play a major role in U.S. affluent internet users’ shopping or purchase processes for luxury items. For example, only 22% of all affluent respondents (27% for techie millennials) said they researched luxury brands online and then purchased in-store. For more, see http://www.emarketer.com/Article/Affluents-Dont-Want-Texts-Luxury-Brands/1010867

Loyalty Rewards Needed to Woo Millennial Shoppers

To win over the fickle millennial shopper, a loyalty rewards program is essential, at least based on a new report from Bond Brand Loyalty. As reported recently in Ad Age, Bond's fourth-annual survey of more than 6,000 consumers, found that 37% of millennials, defined as 20- to 34-year-olds, said they would not be loyal to a brand that doesn't have a strong loyalty program (compared with 30% of all respondents). And brand loyalty programs must keep competing to please these younger buyers: Of millennials surveyed, 68% said they change when and where they make purchases to get loyalty rewards, and 60% will switch brands if incentivized. No wonder loyalty programs are elbowing each other in a crowded field. On average, people are enrolled in 10.4 loyalty programs, according to the Bond study, although they are only active in 70% of them. Looking for loyalty rewards worth emulating? See the survey's top-ranked loyalty programs by company in each market category at http://adage.com/article/datadriven-marketing/dove-jetblue-top-loyalty-program-rankings/293499/

Social Media Still Lacks E-Commerce Sales Power

Social media, including Facebook and Twitter, face a long uphill battle in the e-commerce space when up against proven solutions such as e-mail and search, concludes a recent Ad Age article by Tim Dunn of the digital agency Isobar. One piece of evidence is global management consultant McKinsey & Company's 2013 survey finding that e-mail is 40 times more effective at acquiring consumers than Facebook and Twitter combined. McKinsey results also showed that the average order value prompted by e-mail is 17% higher than those prompted by social media. Consumers just don't head to social media to buy things; shopping and browsing products didn't even register as reasons for using Facebook in a recent survey by Pew Research. Dunn hastens to add that social interaction still has a place in the sales cycle, especially as consumers break down the distinction between content and commerce, and that the drive to interact can be harnessed by brands. He notes that fashion brand Free People's user-generated fashion showcase (called FPMe) not only drove passion for brand loyalists but also delivered a 42% increase in same-session sales conversion. However, Dunn advises marketers to exercise skepticism about using social to prompt immediate purchase and urges refocus on e-commerce basics, including touchpoint tracking, site experience and e-mail targeting. See the complete online post at http://adage.com/article/digitalnext/twitter-s-buy-button-a-gravy-train-brands/294031/

Celebrity Endorsements Don't Win Fans for Brands

Think a famous name touting your product or service will impress customers? Think again. Brand endorsements by celebrities and athletes are trusted less than all other methods of brand promotion, including digital ads, traditional ads and company-sponsored social media, according to a new global study by The Boston Consulting Group. Consumers put the most store in what family and friends say offline about a brand, followed by product reviews, expert opinions, and information from Google and other search engines. One reason trust matters: Brands that show their customers that they can be trusted are able to gather at least five to 10 times more information about customers to fill the Big Data marketing mill. Still, marketers must tread carefully because consumers are choosy about what info they entrust to companies, and financial and health data definitely rank higher on the privacy scale than brand preferences, age and gender. Millennials, despite a social sharing addiction, are about as concerned with data privacy as their elders. As a result, the data practices of financial institutions, social media, search-engine companies, and government arms garner more than twice the consumer concern than do branded manufacturers, airlines, hotels, cable providers or retailers offering loyalty cards. For more, see MediaPost's Marketing Daily story at http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/212917/endorsements-dont-earn-trust-for-marketers.html

Brands Test Postagram's Social-Direct Mail Blend

Hyatt hotels and Coppertone are two well-known brands testing a Facebook-enhanced platform called Postagram that prints personalized postcards. Through mid-August, the hotelier encouraged guests to personalize up to two complimentary postcards via a Facebook app that's available on Postagram and Hyatt House social pages. In five steps, lodgers could add a photo and a 180-character message to the postcard before entering the name and address of a friend and putting postal service delivery in motion. The Hyatt brand promoted the test of the blend of digital and old school direct mail via social media channels and printed materials in the rooms of the Chicago-based chain. Meanwhile, Coppertone also employed the Postagram platform, including a mobile app available on iPhones, to push branded postcards. Adweek quotes Matt Brezina, CEO of Sincerely, which owns the 2-year-old Postagram: "Most direct mail is boring stuff," declares Brezina. "What we are doing is different because it's personalized. What's more, it's personalized by someone the recipient actually knows. It's not just from some company." Brezina's San Francisco-based Sincerely operation markets a handful of gifting-oriented mobile/web applications and claims 2.7 million mobile users for apps like Popbooth, Ink, Sesame and Ship API. For the Adweek story, go to http://www.adweek.com/news/technology/hyatt-hotels-combines-facebook-snail-mail-150791