â–¶ E-mail Marketers Missing Measurement Opportunities: According to the ERoi study of the trends and use of e-mail analytics, marketers “are taking an extremely careless approach to e-mail marketing” based on the finding that 18% of those surveyed do not track e-mail campaign results. Among the additional findings:
Reasons given for not tracking normal site conversions:
• 43% don’t know how
• 5% don’t have the budget
• 14% don’t have the time
• 38% cited other reasons
The departments with which marketers share e-mail analytics:
• Executives: 74%
• Corporate marketing: 61%
• Advertising/PR: 43%
• Direct sales: 31%
• E-Commerce: 24%
Source: ERoi
â–¶ Social Media Rankings Show Big Winners: The latest BurrellesLuce study of media rankings revealed significant jumps for some social networks, while the list of most-read blogs remained relatively unchanged since last year’s report. The findings include:
• Twitter recorded the most dramatic gain in the social-network rankings between January 2008 and January 2009, jumping to third from 22nd and ranking just below Facebook (#1) and MySpace (#2);
• Flixster, a community based on consumer-generated movie reviews, landed in the fourth spot, having risen from 16th; and,
• Among top 25 sites that moved more than 10 spots was Ning, which rose from 23rd to 12th.
As for the highest-ranked blogs, the following rounded out the top five:
1. Huffington Post
2. Engadget
3. TechCrunch
4. Gizmodo
5. Boing Boing
Source: BurrellesLuce
â–¶ Boomers’ Digital Consumption Outgrows Gen Y-ers’: Accenture’s lastest Consumer Electronics Survey revealed that Baby Boomers are embracing new tech applications 20 times faster than Gen Y-ers. The study revealed that the former demographic:
• Increased reading blogs and listening to podcasts by 67% year over year—80 times faster than Gen Y;
• Increased usage of social networking sites by 59%—more than 30 times faster than Gen Y (2%); and,
• Increased watching/posting videos online by 35%, while Gen Y usage decreased 2%.
Source: Accenture
â–¶ Marketers Lag in Shift Online: New global research from the IBM Institute for Business Value reveals that digitally savvy consumers are shifting their media habits to online consumption much more quickly than expected, and marketers are struggling more and more to catch up. Among the findings:
• Between 2007 and 2008, the proportion of consumers saying they used social networking tools soared to 60% from 33%;
• Mobile Internet nearly tripled to 41%;
• Access to mobile music and video quadrupled to 35%;
• 80% of the ad executives interviewed expect the industry to be at least five years away from being able to deliver cross-platform advertising, encompassing sales, delivery, measurement and analysis;
• Interactive, measurable formats like the Internet and mobile are expected to account for 20% of global ad spending by 2012; and,
• Some 63% of the global CMOs interviewed said they expected to increase interactive and online marketing spending in 2009, while 65% will cut back on traditional advertising.
Source: IBM Institute for Business Value
â–¶ Social Media Spending Expected to Increase: A survey of 145 global interactive marketers by Forrester Research confirmed that social media as a marketing tool is on a rise, finding that:
• More than 50% of surveyed marketers said they will be increasing their spending on social media marketing in the coming months;
• 43% expect spending to stay the same;
• 5% expect investment in social media to decrease; and,
• 45% pull together funding for social media projects as needed while 23% scrape together funds from wherever possible to pay for various social media efforts. PRN
Source: Forrester Research