Online Marketing To Add To Your Holiday Sales

[By Sarah Faglio]

The holidays are a hectic time of the year - for both customers and businesses.  While customers look for gifts to buy their loved ones, companies try and offer the best deals and stand out among their competition.  Companies use various marketing strategies to make sure that they take advantage of this profitable time of the year to drive sales towards their business.  It is important to increase their sales during these few months in order to gain the business in a time when masses of people are looking to buy.  The Internet has become a vital marketing tool for businesses who want to add to their holidays sales this year.

According to Deloitte's 25th Annual Holiday Survey of the 2011 holiday season, respondents' holiday spending intentions have improved.  The number of respondents who expected to spend more or the same amount as last year has risen 11 percentage points from last year's survey.  Also, expected sales on gifts is up 3% from last year, representing the first increase since 2004.  The survey also reports that respondents admit that technology has facilitated their decisions around whether and what to purchase. 

While in-store purchases make up a large part of holiday sales, online purchases have contributed to additional business that have been considered quite profitable for retailers.  During the second week of December, a total of $6.3 billion was spent online, which brought the total spend for the holiday season to $30.9 billion as of that week.  This is a 15% increase compared to the same period last year.  The top days for online holiday business surpassed last year's sales: 

• Cyber Monday (12.2.11) had $1.25 billion in sales, 27% increase compared to last year.  
• Green Monday (12.12.11) had $1.13 billion in sales, 19% increase compared to last year.  
• Free Shipping Day (12.16.11) had $1.07 billion in sales, 14% increase compared to last year.

Top 10 Strategies to Enhance Your Online Sales

1. Offer discounts for online purchases.
2. Send out targeted e-mails, to those who voluntarily provided their e-mail addresses, to advertise online sales.
3. Hold contests for free giveaways.
4. Provide free shipping for orders over a certain price.
5. Create clear navigation bars divided up into specific categories and search options to make it easier to explore options and find products of interest.
6. Use payment and money transfer services, like PayPal, to provide safety and security for customers' personal credit and debit card information. 
7. Use online shopping carts to make it easier for customers to view all their purchases before they check out.
8. Display product reviews under items to provide research to help customers make purchasing decisions.
9. Provide full descriptions for products so users are not left with any questions about the product.
10. Optimize keywords on website pages to attract and and convert the most targeted prospects. For example, by adding the phrase, "holiday gifts" or "great gifts for mom" to your page you are able to attract users searching for that term.

Online marketing and website optimization have significantly contributed to businesses' sales.  By using various marketing strategies, with a focus on top holiday shopping days, your company may be able to boost their sales and overall reach to potential customers.

SPAM: Seeing People Avoid Marketers

[By Sarah Faglio]

When e-mail first started being used by the public, it was seen as a convenience by many who wanted to stay in touch with people, whether it be business or personal.  It was favored over direct mailing since it was free and the message was instantly sent to someone's inbox. This new means of sending messages allowed companies to share updates or sales to customers instantaneously as well as not having to spend money on postage and paper for direct mailings.  Customers would opt-in to these company e-mails by willingly providing their e-mail addresses.  However, many companies send unsolicited e-mail messages to consumers, better known as SPAM.

The first SPAM e-mail was sent on ARPAnet (or the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network, the network of government and university computers that preceded the Internet) on May 3, 1978 by Gary Thuerk to all 600 ARPAnet members.  He was a marketing manager for Digital Equipment Corp. that wanted to publicize open houses that would be unveiling the company's latest computers.  More spammers have arisen since 1978, clogging users' e-mails with messages that they are uninterested in.  According to the Message Anti-Abuse Working Group, the amount of SPAM e-mail was between 88-92% of e-mail messages sent in the first half of 2010.

There are a number of ways that people avoid SPAM mail, in addition to filters put into place by e-mail administrators.  E-mail accounts now have mail filters that not only allow users to organize incoming mail into different folders but directs all SPAM mail to a designated folder separate from the inbox.  These users may automatically delete a marketing message or avoid them completely by unsubscribing to them - blocking any further e-mail messages.

Despite its annoyance, the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 declared SPAM to be legal as long as it adhered to certain specifications.  The Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing (CAN-SPAM) Act required the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to stand by rules that prohibited the sending of unwanted commercial e-mail messages (messages whose primary purpose is to advertise or promote a commercial product or service).  These detailed rules also restricted the sending of unwanted commercial e-mail messages to computers.  It prevents states from enacting stronger anti-spam protections and prohibits individuals from suing spammers.  However, in the same month that the act went into effect, less than 1% of spam e-mails sent to U.S. users' inboxes actually adhered to the rules of the CAN-SPAM Act.

 Spammers collect people's e-mail addresses without them knowing or voluntarily providing it. They get e-mail addresses from chatrooms, websites, customer lists, newsgroups and viruses that harvest users' address books and are sold to other spammers.  When consumers voluntarily provide their e-mail addresses, this shows that they are both interested in your company and will therefore not delete your messages since it is wanted and anticipated.  By focusing your e-mail campaign to a targeted audience, you are preventing wasteful mass sending of SPAM e-mail to uninterested users.

Telemarketing: Is Anyone Picking Up Anymore?

 [By Sarah Faglio]

Telemarketing is a means of direct marketing where salespeople call people in an effort to persuade them into buying their products or services.  This type of cold calling occurs when these sales people call people who were not expecting to be called.  Robocalls, or "automatic telemarketing," use voice broadcasting of recorded messages with an autodialer and a computer to deliver prerecorded messages to people's phones.  These calls are either placed from a company office, a call center or from home.  They also send messages through other forms of electronic marketing such as e-mail or fax,which is also considered spam mail.  Telemarketers call consumers to access their needs and motivate them to make a purchase from their company.

Call recipients are identified in a multitude of ways, such as past purchase history, previous requests for information, credit limit, competition entry forms and application forms.  Phone numbers are also purchased from a company's consumer database, association members, telephone directory or public list.  Telemarketers acquire these lists with the intent of finding people who are likely to purchase their product or service.  Techniques include surveying, or polling, the company's prospective or past customers to access consumer satisfaction with their product or service.

In the past few years, people started to get so annoyed with these calls that they purposely tried to avoid them.  Caller-ids on phones have let people view who is calling them before they pick it up.  This allows people the opportunity to ignore any calls from numbers they do not recognize as an effort to avoid speaking with a telemarketer.  In 1991, the Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991 (TCPA),established by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), restricted the use of automatic dialing systems, artificial or prerecorded voice messages, SMS text messages to cell phones, and the use of fax machines to send unsolicited messages.  In 2004, the National Do Not Call Registry, managed by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), gave U.S. consumers the opportunity to limit the telemarketing calls they receive.  Those who register are not allowed to receive calls from telemarketers (except from certain  non-profit organizations) from both interstate and intrastate callers.  This prevents commercial telemarketers from calling those who are on the registry, reducing the number of unwanted phone calls to consumers' homes.  In addition, many U.S. states have created "Do Not Call Lists" that allow people to add their numbers to a list that telemarketers are not permitted to contact.

Telemarketing has always been a nuisance to consumers, by calling them unexpectedly and interrupting their daily lives with products or services they may not be interested in.  As a marketer, you want to target your audience with more efficiency as a way to not waste valuable resources on non-customers and reach out to those who are potential customers.  In a society with caller-ids and Do Not Call registries, telemarketing has become a less valuable marketing strategy for companies.

Radio Advertising: Is Anyone Really Listening To You?

[By Sarah Faglio]

Radio transmission began in the late 19th century, when physicists started looking at how variations of electric current could be projected through space in the form of radio waves.  In 1896, Guglielmo Marconi received the world's first patent for his invention of a system of wireless telegraphy, which sends wireless communications over long distances.  Wireless telegraphy eventually led to the development of the widespread use of the radio. Radio broadcasting began in the early 20th century, with KDKA being the world's first commercially licensed radio station in 1920.  


Radio is available in AM and FM stations in commercial broadcasting, non-commercial educational public broadcasting and community radio.  Commercial broadcasting can be heard by audiences through portable radios, cars, online, satellite radio, and mobile apps.   

Radio broadcasting originally began without paid commercials, but as the communication medium's outreach grew and the cost of operating a radio station became significantly expensive, radio advertisements emerged in 1922.  These advertisements take the form of commercials, sponsorship/endorsement mentions and banner ads, except in the case of satellite radio that is substantiated by paid subscriptions from its listeners.  

Arbitron reports on radio audiences and provides ratings data of specific cities, to allow advertisers to select a specific segment of the listening audience and purchase radio airtime based on that target demographic.  According to a September 2011 report from Arbitron, radio has added an additional 1.7 million listeners since September 2010, aged 12+ tuning in on an average week.   The number of listeners aged 12+ listening to the radio each week has reached an estimated 241.4 million, representing 93% of the population aged 12+.  This growth in radio listeners is largely attributed to young demographics, with a growth of 80,000 listeners aged 18-34 since September 2010.  

However, despite this growth in radio audience, there are new technologies and public responses that have led to the Top 10 Drawbacks to Radio Advertising:

1. Messages are strictly audio and therefore have no visual support.
2. Listeners may "channel surf" to avoid having to listen to commercials.
3. "Ad clutter" prevents one ad from standing out from the others.  Multiple exposures are usually necessary for the message to be remembered.  
4. "Commercial clutter" is an excessive amount of non-program content, where the number of commercials sometimes irritates listeners to a point where they change the station or turn off the radio completely.
5. Messages are short and fleeting, making it difficult to attain listeners' attention as well as provide sufficient marketing messages.
6. Advertisements can only sell one idea (or product/service) at a time.
7. Messages cannot be reviewed by the listener, so if they did not hear a part of the message, they may be unable to react or follow-up.
8. A lack of "track-ability" in the advertisements prevent marketers from evaluating the effectiveness and reach of the message.
9. The ads have no tangible reference for listeners to go back to and look up the marketing message.
10. Many listeners who find ads to be annoying or intrusive, simply turn off the radio entirely due to their frustration of listening to these type of advertisements.  

Due to these disadvantages of radio advertising, a trend toward fewer commercials is arising, such as "commercial-free hours."  In addition to these perceptional drawbacks of listening to radio commercials, portable media players such as MP3 players and iPods, allow people to listen to music that they have compiled on their own.  These portable devices allow listeners to play a song of their choosing without having to listen to any advertising commercials.


While the number of radio listeners has increased, the effectiveness and reach of advertisement commercials has subsided.  What used to be a valuable medium of reaching a target audience,  has turned into a place where advertisements are avoided and may unproductive in its efforts.  With the ease of portable media players, radio stations are avoided all-together.