Business has always been a social affair. From the time the caveman tried to sell a stone wheel to his neighbor while visiting around the warming fire, folks have used social occasions to promote goods and services in an informal, friendly atmosphere. Today’s internet based social gathering spots accomplish the same goal. They are different only in that they are more powerful and further reaching.
Do you need to breathe new life and SAVE MONEY on your direct mail initiatives? Well, YOU CAN! The following programs from the USPS are designed to help you make good use of this important marketing channel.
Business has always been social. It has always been about connecting with partners, prospects, and clients. The rise of new online social tools only makes it easier to stay connected to what's happening in the world around you. Watch as Jasper goes over his 5 Tips for Social Success.
Let’s face it, print has become the Rodney Dangerfield of marketing channels – it gets no respect. Sure, website analytics, Email best-practices, and emerging channels like mobile and social are glitzy and exciting, but are they really better than direct mail? After all, shouldn’t the most important measurement of the success of a marketing channel be based on recipient preference?
According to a recent study by Chief Marketing Magazine, consumers say they like print. While the focus of marketers has been on digital marketing channels, “old school, expensive” printed direct mail has been under the radar getting the job done. According to the study, 6/10 Americans (and 7/10 Canadians) enjoy getting direct mail to learn about new products. This preference toward direct mail spans all industry categories and age groups, including the tech-savvy generation of 18-35 year-olds.
So lately I've been in the market for a new computer to replace the aging desktop I'm writing this article on now, and to expedite the process I installed a Newegg app on my Android phone. The app had this neat “Wish List” feature where I could put items in a wish list rather than in a cart, so that I can view, compare, and edit later on. After a few days of use I started to think that this was a pretty nice app. It had all the features that the full-blown web site has, but organized in a way that was easy to use and understand on a mobile device.
It’s not too often that a Sunday afternoon at the movie theater results in a business epiphany. But that’s exactly what happened to me at a recent viewing of Brad Pitt’s latest blockbuster, “Moneyball”. “Moneyball” is a dramatization of Michael Lewis’ 2003 best-selling book of the same name, which presented an inside look at the inner-workings of the Oakland Athletics font-office operations and the team’s General Manager, Billy Beane. The A’s, despite being one of the most cash-strapped organizations in the Major Leagues, were one the winningest teams in baseball in the early 2000s.
In his book, Lewis detailed the unconventional methods by which Beane assembled his rosters in those years. While other teams focused on more qualitative methods of player evaluation (“the ball really pops of his bat”, “he’s got a good ballplayer’s body”) and filled their front offices with scouts and ex-ballplayers, Beane surrounded himself with statisticians and economists. Beane and his cohorts sought to exploit market inefficiencies in player evaluation through advanced statistical analysis to find and sign undervalued players in order to allow themselves to be competitive within their (relatively) severe budgetary constraints. In 2002, the A’s supplemented their core of MVP shortstop Miguel Tejada, third-baseman Eric Chavez, and the terrific “Big 3” starting rotation of Tim Hudson, Mark Mulder, and Cy Young Award winner Barry Zito, with a brand of low-risk baseball that placed high-value on performance metrics such as on-base percentage and slugging percentage. That year, the A’s amateur draft strategy also reflected a similar philosophy and focused primarily on statistical analysis and undervalued college-level players. Beane’s strategy worked wonders; the A’s won 103 games (costing an average of $388,349 per win, whereas the New York Yankees would pay more than $1.2 million for each of their 103 wins that season) and enjoyed another trip to the post-season.
When we talk about modern web sites a phrase that gets thrown around a lot is Content Management Systems, or CMS, but have you ever wondered what exactly Content Management System is? Maybe you've wondered how your business or organization could benefit from using a CMS? Well in this article we'll walk you through what a CMS is, some common questions and answers, and the pros and cons of deploying a web site using CMS.
Organic Growth? SMS? ROMI? The Digital Marketing world has no shortage of acronyms and jargon. Here's a few of the more common terms to help you make sense of all the 'marketing techie talk'.
Ad Server – Database driven software that assists in the placement and management of advertisements on websites.
Auto-responder – A message (normally Email) that is pre-written and automatically distributes when triggered by some sort of activity. One common application of an auto responder is an order-confirmation sent to a consumer upon purchase from an e-commerce platform such as Amazon.
Recently, PrintInTheMix, published the results of a study detailing the influence of “Print, Digital, and Social [Medias] on Today’s Purchase Decision”.
The study broke the purchase decision process into three parts;
Quick, which item do more Americans use on a daily basis than a toothbrush? Here’s another hint; most of us have one of these within an arms reach 80% of our day. There’s probably one of these in your pocket or on your desk right now. You may even be reading this post on one. I’m talking about mobile phones.
The proliferation and advancement of mobile technology over the past several years is astounding. The amount of computing power we can hold in our hand greatly surpasses the amount of power contained in an entire building just a generation ago. Mobile devices (especially “smart phones”) are changing the way we communicate and interact with the world around us.
