Digital promotions plug in with consumers of today lead lifestyles that challenge marketers to influence buying behaviors using methods beyond traditional advertising from print, TV, direct mail and radio. Now, brands need to catch up with consumers on the go, and interact where buyers work, eat, play and shop. There are digital promotions that reach and influence every socio-economic bracket and every age group, from elementary schoolers to senior citizens:
* music downloads
* ringtones
* mobile content
* social Media, including facebook and Twitter
* eBook
* online and virtual promotions
* digital movie downloads
Here's what we know about consumers and digital promotions:
According to a recent Wall Street Journal article, consumers in the United States are still feeling the crunch of a challenging economy, and they desire to keep cash on hand by buying less but making more frequent trips to the store. While keeping a product's digital promotion in mind, consider these research findings:
* communications from the store or brand aid in the shopper's decision to buy
* if the digital promotion involves a product type that they normally buy, consumers are more likely to notice a previously-ignored product if it involves a digital promotion
* oftentimes shoppers make an unplanned purchase based on a digital promotion
* some consumers will even switch to a different product when enticed by a digital promotion
* sales increase when aided by promotions in general
Unfortunately, it's not enough use just any digital promotions provider in order to increase sales for your brand. How many of us have been excited to receive free music downloads from a box of oatmeal, only to find that the online redemption site only houses music from unknown labels with artists we've never heard of? How about the time we wanted to take advantage of a free eBook promotion, but could only do so if we entered our credit card for a "free" one-week subscription? Or we tried to redeem a free movie from a digital promotions site, and the download timed out? The result of these is a killed emotional connection with a potential long-term customer, and no brand can afford that.
So in crafting your marketing strategy that incorporates digital promotions, it makes sense to keep these in mind:
1. Develop a solid partnership with a digital promotions provider who has worked with campaigns of all sizes, in various industries, for brands large and small. Tapping into their knowledge and experience will bring ideas and tactics to the table that sometimes only an outsider can contribute.
2. Keep your digital promotions campaign affordable and within your budget. One of the best ways to accomplish this, while at the same time launching promotional campaign on a large scale, is to implement promotional risk underwriting. If this type of promotions insurance isn't available through your selected provider, keep looking.
3. Employ a turnkey digital promotions provider with the highest-quality technology available. Again, it’s about ensuring that your customers experience no difficulties in redeeming your offer. An online music download engine, for example, that isn’t both PC and Mac-compatible is poison to your brand’s image.
4. Tailor your brand's digital promotions toward your target market. Recent research data released by the Neilsen Group, for example, cites the Asian and Hispanic population as the groups who are buying the highest number of smart phones over the past year. These demographics, then, may be the best for digital promotions offering free mobile content including ringtones, wallpaper and games.
Brand loyalty and increased sales for your brand extend well beyond the instant gratification and perceived value from a consumer's initial redemption of digital promotions. Precise choosing of the product, digital promotion, and provider will ultimately lead to higher numbers at the cash registers - and on your financials.
Showing posts with label digital promotions. Show all posts
Showing posts with label digital promotions. Show all posts
Tuesday, March 1, 2011
Monday, January 17, 2011
What Does New Verizon iPhone Mean For Digital Promotions?
Digital promotions experts will call February 11, 2011 the day their industry got a big boost, the day Verizon began offering the iPhone 4 to its customers. This means that not only will the Apple operating system (OS) see an increase in market share, but it means that a lot of people will be buying their first-ever smart phones, switching over from the old standard flip phones.
Some experts believe that Verizon may sell as many as 13 million new iPhones in 2011. (1) This will be a big relief to Apple, because many industry experts were expecting the Android OS to surpass them in market share in 2011.
Digital promotions professionals should be heartened by the news, because it shows that digital promotions strategies will not only have a new channel, but many, many new subscribers. Here are a few predictions for what the iPhone will mean for them in 2011.
1) Digital promotions marketers should focus on the new iPhone users. While many of the 13 million will be people switching from AT&T to the Verizon, many more will be brand new smartphone users who are switching from the standard flip phone. Digital promotions campaigns should be geared toward new users, showing them the best ways to use their new phones, and taking advantage of a new user's willingness to try new technology. For example, a campaign that includes free gift cards to the iTunes app store would appeal greatly to a lot of new iPhone users.
2) Digital promotions marketers who are creating apps need to continue to develop for both the iPhone and Android platforms. While the two operating systems are currently running neck-and-neck (according to ComScore, Google currently has 26% market share, while Apple has 25% (2)), app developers need to focus on both platforms in order to reach large portions of their audience. (Blackberry still owns 33.5% of the market share, although it has dropped 4% in two months.)
3) Digital promotions developers need to consider HTML5. This is the new html coding language that promises to replace Flash and Javascript. HTML5 is platform-agnostic, and web-based, which means anyone can use an HTML5 site, including Blackberrys and the Windows mobile operating system. Using HTML5 for digital promotions will save the cost of developing apps (which can be as much as $50,000 for a single app on one platform), but will allow the campaign to be accessed by anyone on any operating system, including laptops.
4) Traditional digital promotions properties, like wallpapers and free song downloads, will become even more popular. Rather than listen to songs on an MP3 player, smart phones have MP3 capabilities, where people can listen to music and watch videos on their mobile phones. Now, customers can redeem their free songs, movie downloads, and wallpapers directly from their mobile phones, using an app or a company's digital promotions page.
5) Digital promotions should be more locally-focused. Google recently announced they were focusing all their development attention on mobile usage for 2011. Google has already begun offering voice search with Google Maps and a turn-by-turn GPS navigation system (still in beta), and pulling local search results into Google Places from review sites like Yelp and UrbanSpoon. This means local retailers and restaurants should begin using digital promotions to increase traffic and sales to take advantage of the multitudes of new smart phone users.
The new iPhone-Verizon deal spells all kinds of new opportunities for digital marketers. With an expected 13 million new iPhone users in 2011, it is also safe to assume the Android platform will continue to grow as well. By focusing on brand new users, making digital properties available to all platforms, and focusing on local mobile marketing, digital marketers will see some amazing successes in 2011.
1) http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/11/01/10/verizon_may_spend_more_than_5_billion_subsidizing_iphone_sales_in_2011.html
2) http://comscore.com/Press_Events/Press_Releases/2011/1/comScore_Reports_November_2010_U.S._Mobile_Subscriber_Market_Share
Some experts believe that Verizon may sell as many as 13 million new iPhones in 2011. (1) This will be a big relief to Apple, because many industry experts were expecting the Android OS to surpass them in market share in 2011.
Digital promotions professionals should be heartened by the news, because it shows that digital promotions strategies will not only have a new channel, but many, many new subscribers. Here are a few predictions for what the iPhone will mean for them in 2011.
1) Digital promotions marketers should focus on the new iPhone users. While many of the 13 million will be people switching from AT&T to the Verizon, many more will be brand new smartphone users who are switching from the standard flip phone. Digital promotions campaigns should be geared toward new users, showing them the best ways to use their new phones, and taking advantage of a new user's willingness to try new technology. For example, a campaign that includes free gift cards to the iTunes app store would appeal greatly to a lot of new iPhone users.
2) Digital promotions marketers who are creating apps need to continue to develop for both the iPhone and Android platforms. While the two operating systems are currently running neck-and-neck (according to ComScore, Google currently has 26% market share, while Apple has 25% (2)), app developers need to focus on both platforms in order to reach large portions of their audience. (Blackberry still owns 33.5% of the market share, although it has dropped 4% in two months.)
3) Digital promotions developers need to consider HTML5. This is the new html coding language that promises to replace Flash and Javascript. HTML5 is platform-agnostic, and web-based, which means anyone can use an HTML5 site, including Blackberrys and the Windows mobile operating system. Using HTML5 for digital promotions will save the cost of developing apps (which can be as much as $50,000 for a single app on one platform), but will allow the campaign to be accessed by anyone on any operating system, including laptops.
4) Traditional digital promotions properties, like wallpapers and free song downloads, will become even more popular. Rather than listen to songs on an MP3 player, smart phones have MP3 capabilities, where people can listen to music and watch videos on their mobile phones. Now, customers can redeem their free songs, movie downloads, and wallpapers directly from their mobile phones, using an app or a company's digital promotions page.
5) Digital promotions should be more locally-focused. Google recently announced they were focusing all their development attention on mobile usage for 2011. Google has already begun offering voice search with Google Maps and a turn-by-turn GPS navigation system (still in beta), and pulling local search results into Google Places from review sites like Yelp and UrbanSpoon. This means local retailers and restaurants should begin using digital promotions to increase traffic and sales to take advantage of the multitudes of new smart phone users.
The new iPhone-Verizon deal spells all kinds of new opportunities for digital marketers. With an expected 13 million new iPhone users in 2011, it is also safe to assume the Android platform will continue to grow as well. By focusing on brand new users, making digital properties available to all platforms, and focusing on local mobile marketing, digital marketers will see some amazing successes in 2011.
1) http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/11/01/10/verizon_may_spend_more_than_5_billion_subsidizing_iphone_sales_in_2011.html
2) http://comscore.com/Press_Events/Press_Releases/2011/1/comScore_Reports_November_2010_U.S._Mobile_Subscriber_Market_Share
Friday, December 24, 2010
Digital Music Promotions Prove Valuable Brand Promotions Deliver Long Term Customer Loyalty
Digital music promotions are as powerful and wide-reaching as they are evergreen. They give your company a multi-faceted promotional tool with which you can leverage popular artists to grow your brand and excite your target market. Because new artists are continuously catapulted into the spotlight, your business has access to an unlimited resource of popular music. You can harness this resource to meet an unquenchable consumer demand. In doing so, you'll improve your brand and create a surge in product sales.
Below, we'll give you a comprehensive preview of digital music promotions. You'll learn how they work and the unique promotional advantages they offer your business. We'll also describe how to use digital promotions to deliver a memorable impact at a surprisingly low cost. Lastly, we'll explain how you can tailor digital music promotions to form a seamless fit for your target audience, regardless of your marketing objectives.
How Digital Music Promotions Work
Digital music incentives are delivered to your customers online through customized landing pages and branded music stores. The digital music promotions are launched by distributing promo codes and website URLs in-pack, on-pack, through email, text messaging, signage, custom-branded cards, and other platforms. You can customize your marketing campaign to control its reach into your target market.
When your customers visit the website URL listed on your promotion, they'll be able to choose from a library of popular artists and songs. Once your customers select their downloads, they are prompted to enter their promo code.
You'll enjoy a tremendous level of flexibility in customizing your digital music promotions. You can broaden your music library to include millions of songs, or tighten it according to your audience and marketing objectives.
Harnessing The Advantages Of Music Promotions
Because the landing pages to which your target market is driven can be customized with your company's logo and artwork, your digital music promotions dramatically improve brand recognition. And because music has such universal appeal, it is one of the most potent levers for increasing customer loyalty.
That is merely scratching the surface of their potential.
When your target audience arrives on your customized landing pages, you'll have an opportunity to introduce them to new products your company is launching. You can also require them to provide personal information prior to downloading songs. That allows you to build a valuable database that you can leverage for future marketing campaigns. While digital music promotions can be harnessed to generate a boost in immediate sales, their potential effect on your business's bottom line extends much further.
Digital Promotions: High-Performance Promotional Impact & Low Cost
Digital promotions have quickly evolved into a multi-billion dollar industry. Companies have realized digital music promotions and other digital incentives can broaden their marketing reach at a remarkably low cost. Promotional incentives can be delivered online to mobile devices, through email, or customized landing pages. Given the high-performance impact of these promotions, the cost of distribution to a massive audience is exceptionally low.
Tailor Digital Music Promotions To Your Audience
Your target market can likely be broken down into tight segments. You can launch digital music promotions that cater specifically to each of these segments, according to their taste in music. The tighter your focus, the higher response you'll enjoy.
For example, suppose you're promoting a brand that appeals to multiple age groups. A younger audience may be motivated by digital music promotions highlighting alternative rock and hip hop artists. An older audience might be more willing to respond if offered classic rock songs. Still other segments of your target market may be motivated to respond by digital music promotions featuring Latino artists. Each market segment represents an opportunity to refine your focus and tap into a targeted pool of consumers.
Entertainment Promotions Leverage High-Profile Contentdigital music promotions are merely one of several types of entertainment promotions that can help drive your brand. Entertainment that has been created to promote high-profile content such as films, video games, television shows, and CD releases can be licensed and offered as digital incentives. That allows your company to benefit from the top of mind awareness enjoyed by these entertainment properties. Imagine launching digital music promotions for your brand that ride on the coattails of the latest Hollywood blockbuster or CD release.
Executing digital music promotions For Your Company
You can penetrate new markets, invigorate your current customer base, improve brand recognition, and spur long-term sales by launching customized digital music promotions. Your entire campaign can be designed as a turnkey solution. There's no need to host the music library on your site. Nor do you need to take an active role in driving web traffic to your branded landing pages. The delivery and fulfillment of your digital music incentives are also handled as components of the back-end system.
If you are not already leveraging Digital Music Promotions to reach more deeply into your market, now is the time to do so.
Below, we'll give you a comprehensive preview of digital music promotions. You'll learn how they work and the unique promotional advantages they offer your business. We'll also describe how to use digital promotions to deliver a memorable impact at a surprisingly low cost. Lastly, we'll explain how you can tailor digital music promotions to form a seamless fit for your target audience, regardless of your marketing objectives.
How Digital Music Promotions Work
Digital music incentives are delivered to your customers online through customized landing pages and branded music stores. The digital music promotions are launched by distributing promo codes and website URLs in-pack, on-pack, through email, text messaging, signage, custom-branded cards, and other platforms. You can customize your marketing campaign to control its reach into your target market.
When your customers visit the website URL listed on your promotion, they'll be able to choose from a library of popular artists and songs. Once your customers select their downloads, they are prompted to enter their promo code.
You'll enjoy a tremendous level of flexibility in customizing your digital music promotions. You can broaden your music library to include millions of songs, or tighten it according to your audience and marketing objectives.
Harnessing The Advantages Of Music Promotions
Because the landing pages to which your target market is driven can be customized with your company's logo and artwork, your digital music promotions dramatically improve brand recognition. And because music has such universal appeal, it is one of the most potent levers for increasing customer loyalty.
That is merely scratching the surface of their potential.
When your target audience arrives on your customized landing pages, you'll have an opportunity to introduce them to new products your company is launching. You can also require them to provide personal information prior to downloading songs. That allows you to build a valuable database that you can leverage for future marketing campaigns. While digital music promotions can be harnessed to generate a boost in immediate sales, their potential effect on your business's bottom line extends much further.
Digital Promotions: High-Performance Promotional Impact & Low Cost
Digital promotions have quickly evolved into a multi-billion dollar industry. Companies have realized digital music promotions and other digital incentives can broaden their marketing reach at a remarkably low cost. Promotional incentives can be delivered online to mobile devices, through email, or customized landing pages. Given the high-performance impact of these promotions, the cost of distribution to a massive audience is exceptionally low.
Tailor Digital Music Promotions To Your Audience
Your target market can likely be broken down into tight segments. You can launch digital music promotions that cater specifically to each of these segments, according to their taste in music. The tighter your focus, the higher response you'll enjoy.
For example, suppose you're promoting a brand that appeals to multiple age groups. A younger audience may be motivated by digital music promotions highlighting alternative rock and hip hop artists. An older audience might be more willing to respond if offered classic rock songs. Still other segments of your target market may be motivated to respond by digital music promotions featuring Latino artists. Each market segment represents an opportunity to refine your focus and tap into a targeted pool of consumers.
Entertainment Promotions Leverage High-Profile Contentdigital music promotions are merely one of several types of entertainment promotions that can help drive your brand. Entertainment that has been created to promote high-profile content such as films, video games, television shows, and CD releases can be licensed and offered as digital incentives. That allows your company to benefit from the top of mind awareness enjoyed by these entertainment properties. Imagine launching digital music promotions for your brand that ride on the coattails of the latest Hollywood blockbuster or CD release.
Executing digital music promotions For Your Company
You can penetrate new markets, invigorate your current customer base, improve brand recognition, and spur long-term sales by launching customized digital music promotions. Your entire campaign can be designed as a turnkey solution. There's no need to host the music library on your site. Nor do you need to take an active role in driving web traffic to your branded landing pages. The delivery and fulfillment of your digital music incentives are also handled as components of the back-end system.
If you are not already leveraging Digital Music Promotions to reach more deeply into your market, now is the time to do so.
Wednesday, November 24, 2010
The Digital Promotional Incentive of Music Download Promotions Gains Loyalty of Gen Y
Digital Promotions are creating customer loyalty of generation Y. These promotional incentive campaigns provide mobile users with immediate gratification and instant rewards. These promotions include effective brand promotions of music download promotions, skins promotions, mobile promotions. Reach Gen Y through digital incentives and you will create customer loyalty forever.
Sunday, November 14, 2010
Digital Promotions Incentives of Music Download Promotions and Mobile Promotions are Gaining Loyalty
Design your digital incentive promotion with the newest music, ringtone, and branded content. Hip Digital Media, the leading digital promotions firm, joined forces with Promotional Currency, merging digital content, entertainment licensing and proprietary risk coverage models to deliver turnkey, fixed-cost solutions for the promotional marketplace.
Music download promotions are popular promotional incentives. Consumers like them because digital music has broad appeal and is easy to download and enjoy. Promotional marketers like music promotions incentives because digital music is easy to distribute and helps consumers personalize a brand. Companies are able to increase sales and customer loyalty by using music download promotions as a consumer incentive.
Mobile promotions leverage the rapid market penetration of mobile devices. With mobile phone penetration approaching 90% in the US, mobile promotions allow you to engage consumers nearly anywhere and anytime. Through powerful digital incentives, such downloadable content, instant win games, and mobile coupons, your company can create excitement, drive traffic to an event or store, build an opt-in database, and ultimately improve customer loyalty and generate sales.
Mobile promotions are an effective way to leverage your traditional marketing channels such as print, broadcast and out of home signage. Not only do they allow you to deliver digital incentives quickly and easily to consumers' mobile devices, but they allow you to provide instant gratification to consumers.
There is a reason digital incentives have become a must-have promotional marketing strategy. They Work. What other incentive offers instant gratification for consumers, carries high perceived value that transcends demographics, and costs virtually nothing to deliver?
Digital incentives such as music download promotions, ringtone promotions, mobile promotion, skins promotions and online instant win games and sweepstakes are powerful, multi-pronged promotional marketing tools build customer loyalty and drive sales.
These promotional incentives must be redeemed online or via a mobile phone. They can also be used to generate website traffic, build customer databases and promote repeat sales. These promotional incentives are redeemed online or via a mobile phone and can also be used to generate website traffic, build customer databases and promote repeat sales. Digital promotional incentives are delivered through a unique promo code and URL or mobile phone short code (SMS). They can be distributed in-pack, on-pack, via a custom-branded card or even virtually, making them ideal for practically every application.
Entertain your consumers with promotional incentives of music download promotions, mobile promotions, and skins promotions to differentiate your brand and boost sales through increased brand interest and customer loyalty.
Thursday, October 14, 2010
Digital Music Promotions Reach Gen Y & Boost Marketing Conversions
Digital music promotions reach active consumers, increase marketing conversions of these consumers, and increase sales. Gen Y is online. They are also active retail consumers. This group is a sought after demographic of 10-30 year olds, because they have more discretionary spending than their parents have. They communicate on mobile devices and marketers are finding it very difficult to reach them through traditional media channels. They interact with each other through social media applications and are speaking with each other about your products and services. The sooner marketers learn to join the conversation, the better for the brands they represent.
Smart phones are becoming a way of life. Nearly every coffee shop is providing free wifi to its customers, and many restaurants are following suit. The ubiquity of wireless and smart phones are making digital promotions easier for marketers to launch and providing a strong avenue to reach the coveted Generation Y demographic.
Digital music promotions gain brand loyalty of Generation Y. Investing your promotions budget into a digital music promotion will guarantee you customer loyalty. Traditional promotional incentives do not compare to digital music download promotions. Try earning Gen Y customer loyalty by investing in plastic pens , hats other promotional merchandise. Most customers will not keep their pens, but they download your music giveaway, save it to a mobile device and every time they hear the song you gave them, they will remember your brand. To follow are ideas to deploy these promotions and increase marketing conversion rates.
Social media is an active channel to distribute these promotions. Increase conversion rates by promoting the music giveaway on Facebook, Twitter, email, and a blog with links back to the promotional incentive. The viral marketing aspect of social media will increase campaign activity.
Create a promotional incentive with purchase promotion, by giving away a free music download card, free ring tones, or free wallpapers, when customers spend a set amount of money. Put the entire music promotion on a mobile supported website, and let customers download it via their smart phones.
Or create a free music promotion that rewards customers for referring their friends. With every referral you receive, the customer receives a free music download. Follow up with additional customer rewards programs.
Digital music promotions increase activity on viral marketing and grass roots marketing efforts. Use your music promotion campaign to ask customers and fans to post "like" a Facebook page, tweet a code via Twitter, or complete a marketing survey. Give them a free music download whenever they perform the requisite number of social media tasks..
Promotional incentives including digital promotions provide increased retail store traffic. Give away a music download is customers enter your store at a specific time. This is especially a great way to promote a bar or club that has a specific band or DJ coming to town. For example, you could give away one or two of their songs if people check in on the night they're playing.
Digital music promotions reach almost every audience. Gen Y is actively responding to music promotions, but other consumers do as well. The love of music spans all generations. If you are looking to reach your customer, boost marketing conversions, and increase sales, deploy digital promotions. Releasing these promotions through online applications, social media, and text campaigns will provide increased brand exposure, and boost marketing conversions. The outcome of reaching this active, loyal consumer will be a pleasant surprise and you may even learn something from them about your brand.
Smart phones are becoming a way of life. Nearly every coffee shop is providing free wifi to its customers, and many restaurants are following suit. The ubiquity of wireless and smart phones are making digital promotions easier for marketers to launch and providing a strong avenue to reach the coveted Generation Y demographic.
Digital music promotions gain brand loyalty of Generation Y. Investing your promotions budget into a digital music promotion will guarantee you customer loyalty. Traditional promotional incentives do not compare to digital music download promotions. Try earning Gen Y customer loyalty by investing in plastic pens , hats other promotional merchandise. Most customers will not keep their pens, but they download your music giveaway, save it to a mobile device and every time they hear the song you gave them, they will remember your brand. To follow are ideas to deploy these promotions and increase marketing conversion rates.
Social media is an active channel to distribute these promotions. Increase conversion rates by promoting the music giveaway on Facebook, Twitter, email, and a blog with links back to the promotional incentive. The viral marketing aspect of social media will increase campaign activity.
Create a promotional incentive with purchase promotion, by giving away a free music download card, free ring tones, or free wallpapers, when customers spend a set amount of money. Put the entire music promotion on a mobile supported website, and let customers download it via their smart phones.
Or create a free music promotion that rewards customers for referring their friends. With every referral you receive, the customer receives a free music download. Follow up with additional customer rewards programs.
Digital music promotions increase activity on viral marketing and grass roots marketing efforts. Use your music promotion campaign to ask customers and fans to post "like" a Facebook page, tweet a code via Twitter, or complete a marketing survey. Give them a free music download whenever they perform the requisite number of social media tasks..
Promotional incentives including digital promotions provide increased retail store traffic. Give away a music download is customers enter your store at a specific time. This is especially a great way to promote a bar or club that has a specific band or DJ coming to town. For example, you could give away one or two of their songs if people check in on the night they're playing.
Digital music promotions reach almost every audience. Gen Y is actively responding to music promotions, but other consumers do as well. The love of music spans all generations. If you are looking to reach your customer, boost marketing conversions, and increase sales, deploy digital promotions. Releasing these promotions through online applications, social media, and text campaigns will provide increased brand exposure, and boost marketing conversions. The outcome of reaching this active, loyal consumer will be a pleasant surprise and you may even learn something from them about your brand.
Thursday, September 30, 2010
Hip Digital Promotions Incentives
Design your digital promotions with the newest digital media content, including digital music, digital download promotions and ringtones of your customers' favorite artists. Hip Digital Media, the leading digital promotions firm, joined forces with Promotional Currency, specializing in promotions including promotional risk coverage to prevent over redemption on promotions. These two digital music powerhouses joined forces to merge digital content, with entertainment licensing, and proprietary risk coverage models, to deliver turnkey, fixed cost solutions for the promotional marketplace.
Digital Promotions Are Gaining Customer Loyalty
Digital promotions can go a long way in earning customer loyalty, which is very important to your business. That's because return business is going to be much more profitable than your new business.
It can cost five times as much to find a new customer than it does to keep an old one. It also takes a lot less effort to keep old customers than it does to find new ones. Plus, if you can convert returning customers to raving fans, you'll have people telling their friends about your business. You just don't get that word of mouth marketing by trying to gain new customers; it comes from the customers who are loyal to you and your brand.
But while most companies will use discounts and special offers to maintain customer loyalty, digital promotions make it possible for you to increase sales and keep your pricing at its current level, which can boost your profits even more.
That's because when you offer a discount, the savings comes off your profit margin. A 10% discount could be as much as a 20% or even 30% cut into your profits. But digital promotions will be much cheaper, cut into your profits less, and encourage customer loyalty in a way that a coupon just can't.
So, not only have you reduced the value of your product, you've just told your customer, "it's really not worth as much, and in fact, we overcharged you by 10% earlier." You also haven't done anything to earn their loyalty. You haven't done anything to make them love you, tell your friends about you, or come back again and again.
Digital promotions are a lot like a frequent buyers program ("Buy 9 items, and your 10th is free"). These programs are wildly successful, and customer loyalty marketers love them. That's because they compel the customer to return several times, until they make enough purchases to get their free item. (Coupons don't do that.)
Your digital promotions can be more along the lines of "buy 10 items, and get 5 free ringtone downloads," "refer 5 friends, get a free wallpaper," or even "upgrade to our premium membership, and get a free skin for your iPhone or Droid." You can tie your digital promotions into any fulfillment condition you want: purchases, references, upgrades, you name it.
The great thing about digital promotions is that 1) they only cost you the number of songs, which can be less than $1 per download, or the cost of the skins, which can be less than $7, depending on the provider.
Another great thing about a digital promotions campaign is that you can easily measure the ROI of the program. Whenever someone completes their condition — buy the 9 items, refer the 5 friends, etc. — you can determine who did it, when they downloaded their digital content, and how many more times they met the conditions to get more content.
You can also examine all this data to determine who your best customers are, who your most profitable customers are, who brings in the most new customers (and how much they spent), and even your most popular digital promotions content.
You can also test your digital promotion campaigns. Do some A/B testing of two different campaigns, and compare their success rate. You can test the different times of year, or the different levels of difficulty of fulfillment, or even compare it to two different types of giveaways, and use that data to see what kind of digital content your customers would like to "win" in the future.
Digital promotions campaigns are an excellent way to gain customer loyalty, while preserving your profit margin. You can tie the digital promotions directly into sales, it has a higher perceived value, you can measure your ROI, and even use it for market testing. It's the perfect marketing solution.
-Julie Ann Ross
It can cost five times as much to find a new customer than it does to keep an old one. It also takes a lot less effort to keep old customers than it does to find new ones. Plus, if you can convert returning customers to raving fans, you'll have people telling their friends about your business. You just don't get that word of mouth marketing by trying to gain new customers; it comes from the customers who are loyal to you and your brand.
But while most companies will use discounts and special offers to maintain customer loyalty, digital promotions make it possible for you to increase sales and keep your pricing at its current level, which can boost your profits even more.
That's because when you offer a discount, the savings comes off your profit margin. A 10% discount could be as much as a 20% or even 30% cut into your profits. But digital promotions will be much cheaper, cut into your profits less, and encourage customer loyalty in a way that a coupon just can't.
So, not only have you reduced the value of your product, you've just told your customer, "it's really not worth as much, and in fact, we overcharged you by 10% earlier." You also haven't done anything to earn their loyalty. You haven't done anything to make them love you, tell your friends about you, or come back again and again.
Why Digital Promotions Will Outperform Coupons
Digital promotions are a lot like a frequent buyers program ("Buy 9 items, and your 10th is free"). These programs are wildly successful, and customer loyalty marketers love them. That's because they compel the customer to return several times, until they make enough purchases to get their free item. (Coupons don't do that.)
Your digital promotions can be more along the lines of "buy 10 items, and get 5 free ringtone downloads," "refer 5 friends, get a free wallpaper," or even "upgrade to our premium membership, and get a free skin for your iPhone or Droid." You can tie your digital promotions into any fulfillment condition you want: purchases, references, upgrades, you name it.
The great thing about digital promotions is that 1) they only cost you the number of songs, which can be less than $1 per download, or the cost of the skins, which can be less than $7, depending on the provider.
You Can Measure the ROI of Your Digital Promotions
Another great thing about a digital promotions campaign is that you can easily measure the ROI of the program. Whenever someone completes their condition — buy the 9 items, refer the 5 friends, etc. — you can determine who did it, when they downloaded their digital content, and how many more times they met the conditions to get more content.
You can also examine all this data to determine who your best customers are, who your most profitable customers are, who brings in the most new customers (and how much they spent), and even your most popular digital promotions content.
You can also test your digital promotion campaigns. Do some A/B testing of two different campaigns, and compare their success rate. You can test the different times of year, or the different levels of difficulty of fulfillment, or even compare it to two different types of giveaways, and use that data to see what kind of digital content your customers would like to "win" in the future.
Digital promotions campaigns are an excellent way to gain customer loyalty, while preserving your profit margin. You can tie the digital promotions directly into sales, it has a higher perceived value, you can measure your ROI, and even use it for market testing. It's the perfect marketing solution.
-Julie Ann Ross
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
A Mobile Promotion Without Promotional Risk
A Mobile promotion is an excellent way to reach today's Generation Y customers through modern technology. A recent report — that any mobile promotion professional should read — showed that global data traffic exceeded an exabyte of data in 2009. That's 1 billion GB.
All told, there are 4.6 billion mobile phone users around the world, with a penetration rate of 68 percent. This is why mobile promotion strategies are so important in today's marketing world. In fact, mobile promotions may be one of the best marketing tools to come along in decades.
A mobile promotion doesn't require the traditional process and costs we've become accustomed to paying. No shipping, no packaging, no worrying about what to do with thousands of leftover tchotchkes.
That's because a mobile promotion is digital. Now, instead of giving out swag, you can give customers music downloads, movie promotions, special ringtones, and mobile games. Now, rather than sending out direct mail to people who might not be ideal customers, you can send out SMS messages to existing customers and people who sign up for your text club — people who want to hear from you. Everything is happening virtually, which means you don't have to worry about storage space
Of course, before you go planning your next campaign, make sure you include promotional risk coverage in your budget.
Promotional risk coverage is basically promotional insurance that makes sure you don't overextend your marketing budget or get yourself into a lot of trouble.
Let's say you wanted to run a contest where someone could win $100,000. The odds of someone winning are pretty remote, but what would you do if someone did win, and you didn't have $100,000? That's where promotional risk coverage saves your bacon.
Promotional risk coverage is also helpful to mobile promotion campaigns. It protects your campaign from over redemption on special gifts and downloads.
Let's say you've arranged with a music label to offer 5,000 downloads of their artists' songs as part of your mobile promotion campaign. But the stars align for you, the promotion takes off, and you end up with 15,000 downloads.
In the first week. And you've got four more weeks to go.
Most people would shut down their campaign right there, desperately hoping to cut their losses. That's where promotional risk can save you. Since it insures against instances like this, you're covered. The music label will still get paid, you can allow the mobile promotion to go on, and you gain more customers than you ever imagined.
We saw this happen in 2009, when Indianapolis-based Marsh Supermarkets ran a coupon promotion on Facebook, where they gave a $10 coupon for any purchase of more than $10... including $10.01.
They had 2,200 fans on Facebook, so the promotion should have cost $22,000. But 45,000 people redeemed the coupon. Marsh canceled the promotion, which angered a lot of their customers, and they took a big hit in the media.
But the biggest hit was the $450,000 in over redemption of the coupons — $428,000 more than they had expected. While they did generate a lot of resentment on the part of their customers, that was minor compared to what they could have lost if they hadn't shut off the promotion.
While it wasn't strictly a mobile promotion, it was a great example of why someone needs promotional risk coverage. Imagine if the same thing happened to your mobile promotion campaign. What would you do if customers were passing the free download codes to their friends? Would you cancel the campaign? Would you risk the backlash from your loyal customers who didn't get a chance to redeem their songs, just because a few people ruined it for the rest of them?
So is it a matter of people being irresponsible and greedy? Or did a mobile promotion succeed beyond our wildest expectations, and we didn't plan accordingly? While we like to think it's the latter, it's still hard to plan accordingly. No matter how wild our expectations are, we can't always see every possibility. That's where promotional risk coverage would have saved our mobile promotion campaign. And our bacon.
All told, there are 4.6 billion mobile phone users around the world, with a penetration rate of 68 percent. This is why mobile promotion strategies are so important in today's marketing world. In fact, mobile promotions may be one of the best marketing tools to come along in decades.
A mobile promotion doesn't require the traditional process and costs we've become accustomed to paying. No shipping, no packaging, no worrying about what to do with thousands of leftover tchotchkes.
That's because a mobile promotion is digital. Now, instead of giving out swag, you can give customers music downloads, movie promotions, special ringtones, and mobile games. Now, rather than sending out direct mail to people who might not be ideal customers, you can send out SMS messages to existing customers and people who sign up for your text club — people who want to hear from you. Everything is happening virtually, which means you don't have to worry about storage space
Of course, before you go planning your next campaign, make sure you include promotional risk coverage in your budget.
Promotional risk coverage is basically promotional insurance that makes sure you don't overextend your marketing budget or get yourself into a lot of trouble.
Let's say you wanted to run a contest where someone could win $100,000. The odds of someone winning are pretty remote, but what would you do if someone did win, and you didn't have $100,000? That's where promotional risk coverage saves your bacon.
Promotional risk coverage is also helpful to mobile promotion campaigns. It protects your campaign from over redemption on special gifts and downloads.
Let's say you've arranged with a music label to offer 5,000 downloads of their artists' songs as part of your mobile promotion campaign. But the stars align for you, the promotion takes off, and you end up with 15,000 downloads.
In the first week. And you've got four more weeks to go.
Most people would shut down their campaign right there, desperately hoping to cut their losses. That's where promotional risk can save you. Since it insures against instances like this, you're covered. The music label will still get paid, you can allow the mobile promotion to go on, and you gain more customers than you ever imagined.
We saw this happen in 2009, when Indianapolis-based Marsh Supermarkets ran a coupon promotion on Facebook, where they gave a $10 coupon for any purchase of more than $10... including $10.01.
They had 2,200 fans on Facebook, so the promotion should have cost $22,000. But 45,000 people redeemed the coupon. Marsh canceled the promotion, which angered a lot of their customers, and they took a big hit in the media.
But the biggest hit was the $450,000 in over redemption of the coupons — $428,000 more than they had expected. While they did generate a lot of resentment on the part of their customers, that was minor compared to what they could have lost if they hadn't shut off the promotion.
While it wasn't strictly a mobile promotion, it was a great example of why someone needs promotional risk coverage. Imagine if the same thing happened to your mobile promotion campaign. What would you do if customers were passing the free download codes to their friends? Would you cancel the campaign? Would you risk the backlash from your loyal customers who didn't get a chance to redeem their songs, just because a few people ruined it for the rest of them?
So is it a matter of people being irresponsible and greedy? Or did a mobile promotion succeed beyond our wildest expectations, and we didn't plan accordingly? While we like to think it's the latter, it's still hard to plan accordingly. No matter how wild our expectations are, we can't always see every possibility. That's where promotional risk coverage would have saved our mobile promotion campaign. And our bacon.
Friday, March 19, 2010
Four Reasons Your Entertainment Promotions Should be Digital
Your entertainment promotions may run into some trouble if you're not keeping up with the times. If you're still handing out trade show giveaways like pens, hats, and coffee mugs, you're going to lose some of your street cred with your customers.
These days, your entertainment promotions need to include digital incentives like music downloads and ringtones. Here are four important reasons why you need to stop giving out the logoed apparel, the baseball caps, and the 1 GB thumb drives as promotional incentives.
This year was first time Generation Y outnumbered the Baby Boomers, 82 million to 78 million. These Millennials were born with a computer mouse in one hand, and a cell phone in the other. Their media consumption is more online than offline. They read their news online, they watch YouTube and Hulu instead of TV, and they communicate by texting on their cell phones. Some of them are so mobile, they don't even use email anymore.
This means if you want to appeal to Generation Y, your entertainment promotions need to be digital in nature: music download cards (plastic or digital), ringtones, free online movie rentals, etc. Any of these are going to appeal to Generation Y more than the typical knickknack brick-a-brack you find at every bank opening, community festival, or trade show.
Tie your entertainment promotions into both sales and just showing up. Give people a free song download for visiting your location, and five more for spending $50. Doing this will create both goodwill for your brand, and will give people the kind of incentive they really enjoy.
Back in 2009, broadband Internet access had reached 60% of American homes. Broadband means we can go online faster. Pictures and documents download faster, communication is faster, we can watch movies online, communicate via video. And best of all, music downloads faster.
When you consider that Generation Y are some of the biggest consumers of digital music, increased broadband makes entertainment promotions like music downloads a win-win situation for both the customer and the marketer. Why not take advantage of that with your next entertainment promotions campaign?
There are so many cell phones in this country, you'll have an easier time finding people who don't have a cell phone than trying to figure out who does. We love our cell phones. We trick them out, download all kinds of apps and ringtones, and even take pictures, record videos, and listen to music on them. And if you have the time, you can even talk to someone.
People love customizing their phones so much, they'll even pay money for snippets of songs for ringtones. They'll download wallpapers of their favorite brands. And they'll even buy skins to decorate their phones. So your entertainment promotions should take advantage of this cellular obsession, and start giving your customers what they want: a cooler phone than the ones their friends have.
If you're sponsoring a special event, include some digital swag in your entertainment promotions campaign. Let people download custom ringtones, special wallpapers, and even promotional apps.
Rather than paying for design, production, and shipping costs, a digital promotion can be done strictly via websites, SMS (text), email, and even Twitter. So if your budget is limited, why sink your shrinking dollars into preparing your entertainment promotions campaign?
Why not take those dollars and put them into increasing your number of giveaways, the scope, or even the promotion of the campaign itself? Why pay to ship 500 coffee mugs to a trade show, when you can collect business cards and send emails for free? Why pay for embroidery costs on 1,000 baseball caps when you can spend the extra money on giving away music or ringtones? By using digital promotions, you can remove all those costs associated with just preparing your promotion, and put them toward actually giving away the entertainment promotions swag.
--Julie Ann Ross
These days, your entertainment promotions need to include digital incentives like music downloads and ringtones. Here are four important reasons why you need to stop giving out the logoed apparel, the baseball caps, and the 1 GB thumb drives as promotional incentives.
Generation Y Loves Digital Entertainment Promotions
This year was first time Generation Y outnumbered the Baby Boomers, 82 million to 78 million. These Millennials were born with a computer mouse in one hand, and a cell phone in the other. Their media consumption is more online than offline. They read their news online, they watch YouTube and Hulu instead of TV, and they communicate by texting on their cell phones. Some of them are so mobile, they don't even use email anymore.
This means if you want to appeal to Generation Y, your entertainment promotions need to be digital in nature: music download cards (plastic or digital), ringtones, free online movie rentals, etc. Any of these are going to appeal to Generation Y more than the typical knickknack brick-a-brack you find at every bank opening, community festival, or trade show.
Tie your entertainment promotions into both sales and just showing up. Give people a free song download for visiting your location, and five more for spending $50. Doing this will create both goodwill for your brand, and will give people the kind of incentive they really enjoy.
Increase in Broadband Boosts Digital Entertainment Promotions
Back in 2009, broadband Internet access had reached 60% of American homes. Broadband means we can go online faster. Pictures and documents download faster, communication is faster, we can watch movies online, communicate via video. And best of all, music downloads faster.
When you consider that Generation Y are some of the biggest consumers of digital music, increased broadband makes entertainment promotions like music downloads a win-win situation for both the customer and the marketer. Why not take advantage of that with your next entertainment promotions campaign?
Smart phones are becoming more popular
There are so many cell phones in this country, you'll have an easier time finding people who don't have a cell phone than trying to figure out who does. We love our cell phones. We trick them out, download all kinds of apps and ringtones, and even take pictures, record videos, and listen to music on them. And if you have the time, you can even talk to someone.
People love customizing their phones so much, they'll even pay money for snippets of songs for ringtones. They'll download wallpapers of their favorite brands. And they'll even buy skins to decorate their phones. So your entertainment promotions should take advantage of this cellular obsession, and start giving your customers what they want: a cooler phone than the ones their friends have.
If you're sponsoring a special event, include some digital swag in your entertainment promotions campaign. Let people download custom ringtones, special wallpapers, and even promotional apps.
Digital Entertainment Promotions Mean a Bigger Bang for Your Buck
Rather than paying for design, production, and shipping costs, a digital promotion can be done strictly via websites, SMS (text), email, and even Twitter. So if your budget is limited, why sink your shrinking dollars into preparing your entertainment promotions campaign?
Why not take those dollars and put them into increasing your number of giveaways, the scope, or even the promotion of the campaign itself? Why pay to ship 500 coffee mugs to a trade show, when you can collect business cards and send emails for free? Why pay for embroidery costs on 1,000 baseball caps when you can spend the extra money on giving away music or ringtones? By using digital promotions, you can remove all those costs associated with just preparing your promotion, and put them toward actually giving away the entertainment promotions swag.
--Julie Ann Ross
Using a Consumer Loyalty Program to Boost Sales
A consumer loyalty program can go a long way in helping you find and retain new customers, as well as keep existing ones. A consumer loyalty program tells your customers you value their business, and you want them to keep coming back.
Take the simple coffee card, for example. That's one of the easiest, most common type of consumer loyalty program you'll ever see. It's simple: buy 9 or 10 cups of coffee, and your next one is free. We've embraced this idea so warmly that we could float a battleship with all the free coffee we've drunk.
If you want your consumer loyalty program to be successful, it needs to be easy to use. If your customers buy a product X number of times, they can get the same product they're already buying.
A frequent buyer card is the best example of a consumer loyalty program, because it rewards customers for doing something they would normally do anyway. But it has the added effect of getting them to do it more frequently.
You can do this with music download cards or free ringtones. Give away one card or ringtone with every 10 items your customers buy, every 10 times they use your service, or every 10 friends they refer. Any kind of digital incentive can be marketed with a consumer loyalty program.
The thing we really like about a consumer loyalty program like music downloads is that they're hard for the customer to abandon. They'll think they can't give up my loyalty card once they've started it. They get the card for the first stamp out of habit. "I could quit any time. Maybe I'll try a different program and see if I can find a better one," they promise themselves. But they go back, because they don't have time, or because it's a habit.
Once they cross that threshold of three or four purchases on their card, they figure they might as well keep going. That other program will still be there. "I'll check it out next week, after I get this song. Once I hit seven or eight, I can see the finish line. It's just up ahead. A couple more purchases, and WIN! I get a free song!"
And anyone who knows anything about customer loyalty management uses this kind of marketing, and will try to give away a digital incentive, or even a few, to the really loyal customers. "Go nuts," they tell us. Because they know they've more than made up for the cost of the extra freebies by bringing them back 10 other times over the last few weeks. In fact, by offering a consumer loyalty program, they've probably brought the customer back a few more times each month than they might have otherwise visited. A real customer loyalty management pro will also know how to keep track of the average number of visits of their customers, and can track how effectively their promotions are increasing sales.
There isn't one.
Okay, there are a few, but it usually happens if the consumer loyalty program is not run properly. If you don't promote it to your customers. Or if your offer is too difficult — buy 100 songs in 30 days. Or the reward is not motivation enough — buy 100 songs in 30 days and get one free ringtone.
By making the reward seem worthless or cheap, or the purchases too difficult to reach, you can actually hurt the effectiveness of your consumer loyalty program.
You can find almost any kind of consumer loyalty program if you look hard enough. Look online, check out a few consumer loyalty program, case studies and digital incentive programs. And visit a local coffee shop and check out their program. Once you get your first cup, you'll be hooked.
--Julie Ann Ross
Take the simple coffee card, for example. That's one of the easiest, most common type of consumer loyalty program you'll ever see. It's simple: buy 9 or 10 cups of coffee, and your next one is free. We've embraced this idea so warmly that we could float a battleship with all the free coffee we've drunk.
Psychology of a Consumer Loyalty Program
If you want your consumer loyalty program to be successful, it needs to be easy to use. If your customers buy a product X number of times, they can get the same product they're already buying.
A frequent buyer card is the best example of a consumer loyalty program, because it rewards customers for doing something they would normally do anyway. But it has the added effect of getting them to do it more frequently.
You can do this with music download cards or free ringtones. Give away one card or ringtone with every 10 items your customers buy, every 10 times they use your service, or every 10 friends they refer. Any kind of digital incentive can be marketed with a consumer loyalty program.
The thing we really like about a consumer loyalty program like music downloads is that they're hard for the customer to abandon. They'll think they can't give up my loyalty card once they've started it. They get the card for the first stamp out of habit. "I could quit any time. Maybe I'll try a different program and see if I can find a better one," they promise themselves. But they go back, because they don't have time, or because it's a habit.
Once they cross that threshold of three or four purchases on their card, they figure they might as well keep going. That other program will still be there. "I'll check it out next week, after I get this song. Once I hit seven or eight, I can see the finish line. It's just up ahead. A couple more purchases, and WIN! I get a free song!"
And anyone who knows anything about customer loyalty management uses this kind of marketing, and will try to give away a digital incentive, or even a few, to the really loyal customers. "Go nuts," they tell us. Because they know they've more than made up for the cost of the extra freebies by bringing them back 10 other times over the last few weeks. In fact, by offering a consumer loyalty program, they've probably brought the customer back a few more times each month than they might have otherwise visited. A real customer loyalty management pro will also know how to keep track of the average number of visits of their customers, and can track how effectively their promotions are increasing sales.
The Downside of the Consumer Loyalty Program
There isn't one.
Okay, there are a few, but it usually happens if the consumer loyalty program is not run properly. If you don't promote it to your customers. Or if your offer is too difficult — buy 100 songs in 30 days. Or the reward is not motivation enough — buy 100 songs in 30 days and get one free ringtone.
By making the reward seem worthless or cheap, or the purchases too difficult to reach, you can actually hurt the effectiveness of your consumer loyalty program.
You can find almost any kind of consumer loyalty program if you look hard enough. Look online, check out a few consumer loyalty program, case studies and digital incentive programs. And visit a local coffee shop and check out their program. Once you get your first cup, you'll be hooked.
--Julie Ann Ross
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
Music Download Cards Promotion of Candlewood Suites
Music download cards are a great digital promotion to reach both Generation Y as well as Generation X and Baby Boomers. While many people think that only Generation Y uses digital media, there are plenty of Gen Xers and Boomers who love their MP3 players too. And they're buying music like crazy.
Hotel Stays = Music Download Cards
Holiday Inn brand, Candlewood Suites, used that knowledge to reach their own customer base by offering music download cards to their Holiday Inn Priority Club members. The typical Priority Club member tends to be people in their 30s and older, frequent business travelers, and probably still listening to the music they heard in high school and college.
They created an entire campaign of music download cards around Classic Rock songs — music of the Boomers and older Gen Xers — that would appeal to many business travelers: stay at Candlewood Suites Hotel, and for each night you stay (because business travelers stay more than one night), you'll earn Priority Club points, be entered for a chance to win a $1,000 Ticketmaster gift card, and get five free music downloads. One night, one card; two nights equals two music download cards.
Users could choose from the hit list on the custom landing page, or find their favorites on the entire catalogue. All they did is punch in the numbers on their music download cards, download their favorite songs to their MP3 players, and they were all set. Now, business travelers could be reminded of their youth, while making grown-up salaries.
Book Online More = Music Download Cards
They even sweetened the deal: book your stay online, get another card. This meant that if you were a frequent traveler, you got as many music download cards you could shake a mouse at.
The upshot of this is that by having guests book their suites online, they can reduce call center costs. And reducing call center salaries for the cost of giving away some music download cards means Candlewood Suites saw an immediate ROI, before the final sales figures were ever calculated.
Measuring the Effectiveness of Music Download Cards
If a company chooses, music download cards can also be tracked to individual users. Since each card is given a specific number, the analytics can show when a particular person uses one of their music download cards. They can also pinpoint how frequently a person stays, visits the corporate website, and whether the program increased their number of stays. Future promotions can target only those guests who stay a certain number of nights, or use specific features of the website.
User Interaction Improves Response
Finally, users were encouraged to vote for their favorite classic rock hit. The Beatles won with 3,096 votes, Led Zeppelin came in second with 1,595 votes, and Queen was last with 432 votes (despite the awesomeness of "Bohemian Rhapsody"). All told, the top 10 bands earned 9,755 votes. Or to put it another way, at least 9,755 people participated in the program.
How to Use the Data
Let's consider some possible future uses of this data. Claire spends six nights in Candlewood Suites over the summer, and she downloads a few Journey songs (among others). Next summer when Journey is back out on tour (yes, they still tour), Candlewood Suites can send Claire some notification emails when Journey is going to be in cities with a Candlewood Suites in them.
Carl spends six nights in Candlewood Suites and downloads songs by the Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, and The Eagles. When the Stones release their next album (no, they're not dead yet), they can offer it as a digital promotion gift to Carl if he stays for three nights at a Candlewood Suites next Spring.
While we're not sure of the final results, we do know that Candlewood Suites saw some great success with their music download cards program. With some careful planning and market research into your customer base, companies can increase (and easily measure) the ROI of a digital promotions campaign.
--Julie Ann Ross
Hotel Stays = Music Download Cards
Holiday Inn brand, Candlewood Suites, used that knowledge to reach their own customer base by offering music download cards to their Holiday Inn Priority Club members. The typical Priority Club member tends to be people in their 30s and older, frequent business travelers, and probably still listening to the music they heard in high school and college.
They created an entire campaign of music download cards around Classic Rock songs — music of the Boomers and older Gen Xers — that would appeal to many business travelers: stay at Candlewood Suites Hotel, and for each night you stay (because business travelers stay more than one night), you'll earn Priority Club points, be entered for a chance to win a $1,000 Ticketmaster gift card, and get five free music downloads. One night, one card; two nights equals two music download cards.
Users could choose from the hit list on the custom landing page, or find their favorites on the entire catalogue. All they did is punch in the numbers on their music download cards, download their favorite songs to their MP3 players, and they were all set. Now, business travelers could be reminded of their youth, while making grown-up salaries.
Book Online More = Music Download Cards
They even sweetened the deal: book your stay online, get another card. This meant that if you were a frequent traveler, you got as many music download cards you could shake a mouse at.
The upshot of this is that by having guests book their suites online, they can reduce call center costs. And reducing call center salaries for the cost of giving away some music download cards means Candlewood Suites saw an immediate ROI, before the final sales figures were ever calculated.
Measuring the Effectiveness of Music Download Cards
If a company chooses, music download cards can also be tracked to individual users. Since each card is given a specific number, the analytics can show when a particular person uses one of their music download cards. They can also pinpoint how frequently a person stays, visits the corporate website, and whether the program increased their number of stays. Future promotions can target only those guests who stay a certain number of nights, or use specific features of the website.
User Interaction Improves Response
Finally, users were encouraged to vote for their favorite classic rock hit. The Beatles won with 3,096 votes, Led Zeppelin came in second with 1,595 votes, and Queen was last with 432 votes (despite the awesomeness of "Bohemian Rhapsody"). All told, the top 10 bands earned 9,755 votes. Or to put it another way, at least 9,755 people participated in the program.
How to Use the Data
Let's consider some possible future uses of this data. Claire spends six nights in Candlewood Suites over the summer, and she downloads a few Journey songs (among others). Next summer when Journey is back out on tour (yes, they still tour), Candlewood Suites can send Claire some notification emails when Journey is going to be in cities with a Candlewood Suites in them.
Carl spends six nights in Candlewood Suites and downloads songs by the Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, and The Eagles. When the Stones release their next album (no, they're not dead yet), they can offer it as a digital promotion gift to Carl if he stays for three nights at a Candlewood Suites next Spring.
While we're not sure of the final results, we do know that Candlewood Suites saw some great success with their music download cards program. With some careful planning and market research into your customer base, companies can increase (and easily measure) the ROI of a digital promotions campaign.
--Julie Ann Ross
Monday, February 22, 2010
Why Digital Promotions Are Better for Trade Shows
Digital promotions are replacing — or should be — the traditional trade show tchotchkes and giveaways we've been subjected to over the years. Maybe it's because I'm in the digital promotions business, or because I've got enough cheap plastic pens to last two lifetimes, but I really think these digital promotion campaigns are going to be the wave of the trade show future.
For one thing, the effectiveness of digital promotions, like music downloads, ringtones, or even online gift cards, are easy to prove. Basically, I can track whenever someone downloads a song or ringtone using one of my promotions. In fact, I can tell you exactly who downloaded it and when. If it's someone important, I can know to the second when they accessed their digital promotion, and make the appropriate followup.
For another thing, I can target my digital promotions. Rather than buying 5000 flashlights and handing them out to anyone who walks past my booth, I can purchase the list of show attendees and send them an invitation to stop by the booth where they'll receive a free music download card. I can pick and choose who will receive my invitation, and then keep track of who stopped by.
Or I can come at this from the other end and email a special download to everyone who stopped by my booth. This way, I can send my giveaways only to potential customers, rather than giving one out to everyone who stopped by looking for a freebie.
Believe it or not, you're helping the environment by giving away digital promotions items. Rather than creating one more plastic widget (pollution), which needs to be shipped (oil and gas), and will sit forgotten until it dries up and you pitch it (landfill), a digital promotions campaign doesn't need any sort of offline promotion if you don't want it. You can promote your digital freebies by email, Twitter, and Facebook if you want. Or you can use offline promotional methods using some of the different green technology out there.
They also don't require a lot of distribution efforts. I can give out my digital promotions by giving away a stack of cards to people who visit my booth, or just by emailing everyone on my list. There are benefits to both. If I hand them out, I can talk to the people I'm giving them to. This lets me make a sales contact, and tell the person about my product or service. But emailing them is free, and a big time saver. Rather than giving the same message over and over to a handful of people, I can reach dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of customers. And best of all, by using variable data, I can keep track of who received it, took advantage of it, and then converted into a paying customer. Handing out 5,000 flashlights won't let me do it with the same accuracy and ease as digital promotions do.
Like I said in a previous postdigital promotions provide your customers instant gratification. People can redeem their giveaway immediately or at their convenience. They're also easy to redeem. They don't take up space in the customer's luggage, they're not forgotten or given away to their kids, where your customer never sees them again. If it's a song, they'll hear it on their MP3 player, and remember where they got it. If it's a ringtone, they'll think of you whenever their phone rings. Not like a stress ball, Frisbee, or funny hat, which I've seen at previous trade shows.
--Julie Ann Ross
For one thing, the effectiveness of digital promotions, like music downloads, ringtones, or even online gift cards, are easy to prove. Basically, I can track whenever someone downloads a song or ringtone using one of my promotions. In fact, I can tell you exactly who downloaded it and when. If it's someone important, I can know to the second when they accessed their digital promotion, and make the appropriate followup.
Digital Promotions are Targeted
For another thing, I can target my digital promotions. Rather than buying 5000 flashlights and handing them out to anyone who walks past my booth, I can purchase the list of show attendees and send them an invitation to stop by the booth where they'll receive a free music download card. I can pick and choose who will receive my invitation, and then keep track of who stopped by.
Or I can come at this from the other end and email a special download to everyone who stopped by my booth. This way, I can send my giveaways only to potential customers, rather than giving one out to everyone who stopped by looking for a freebie.
Digital Promotions are Green
Believe it or not, you're helping the environment by giving away digital promotions items. Rather than creating one more plastic widget (pollution), which needs to be shipped (oil and gas), and will sit forgotten until it dries up and you pitch it (landfill), a digital promotions campaign doesn't need any sort of offline promotion if you don't want it. You can promote your digital freebies by email, Twitter, and Facebook if you want. Or you can use offline promotional methods using some of the different green technology out there.
They also don't require a lot of distribution efforts. I can give out my digital promotions by giving away a stack of cards to people who visit my booth, or just by emailing everyone on my list. There are benefits to both. If I hand them out, I can talk to the people I'm giving them to. This lets me make a sales contact, and tell the person about my product or service. But emailing them is free, and a big time saver. Rather than giving the same message over and over to a handful of people, I can reach dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of customers. And best of all, by using variable data, I can keep track of who received it, took advantage of it, and then converted into a paying customer. Handing out 5,000 flashlights won't let me do it with the same accuracy and ease as digital promotions do.
Digital Promotions are Immediate and Efficient
Like I said in a previous postdigital promotions provide your customers instant gratification. People can redeem their giveaway immediately or at their convenience. They're also easy to redeem. They don't take up space in the customer's luggage, they're not forgotten or given away to their kids, where your customer never sees them again. If it's a song, they'll hear it on their MP3 player, and remember where they got it. If it's a ringtone, they'll think of you whenever their phone rings. Not like a stress ball, Frisbee, or funny hat, which I've seen at previous trade shows.
--Julie Ann Ross
Why Digital Promotions Are Better for Trade Shows
Digital promotions are replacing — or should be — the traditional trade show tchotchkes and giveaways we've been subjected to over the years. Maybe it's because I'm in the digital promotions business, or because I've got enough cheap plastic pens to last two lifetimes, but I really think these digital promotion campaigns are going to be the wave of the trade show future.
For one thing, the effectiveness of digital promotions, like music downloads, ringtones, or even online gift cards, are easy to prove. Basically, I can track whenever someone downloads a song or ringtone using one of my promotions. In fact, I can tell you exactly who downloaded it and when. If it's someone important, I can know to the second when they accessed their digital promotion, and make the appropriate followup.
For another thing, I can target my digital promotions. Rather than buying 5000 flashlights and handing them out to anyone who walks past my booth, I can purchase the list of show attendees and send them an invitation to stop by the booth where they'll receive a free music download card. I can pick and choose who will receive my invitation, and then keep track of who stopped by.
Or I can come at this from the other end and email a special download to everyone who stopped by my booth. This way, I can send my giveaways only to potential customers, rather than giving one out to everyone who stopped by looking for a freebie.
Believe it or not, you're helping the environment by giving away digital promotions items. Rather than creating one more plastic widget (pollution), which needs to be shipped (oil and gas), and will sit forgotten until it dries up and you pitch it (landfill), a digital promotions campaign doesn't need any sort of offline promotion if you don't want it. You can promote your digital freebies by email, Twitter, and Facebook if you want. Or you can use offline promotional methods using some of the different green technology out there.
They also don't require a lot of distribution efforts. I can give out my digital promotions by giving away a stack of cards to people who visit my booth, or just by emailing everyone on my list. There are benefits to both. If I hand them out, I can talk to the people I'm giving them to. This lets me make a sales contact, and tell the person about my product or service. But emailing them is free, and a big time saver. Rather than giving the same message over and over to a handful of people, I can reach dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of customers. And best of all, by using variable data, I can keep track of who received it, took advantage of it, and then converted into a paying customer. Handing out 5,000 flashlights won't let me do it with the same accuracy and ease as digital promotions do.
Like I said in a previous postdigital promotions provide your customers instant gratification. People can redeem their giveaway immediately or at their convenience. They're also easy to redeem. They don't take up space in the customer's luggage, they're not forgotten or given away to their kids, where your customer never sees them again. If it's a song, they'll hear it on their MP3 player, and remember where they got it. If it's a ringtone, they'll think of you whenever their phone rings. Not like a stress ball, Frisbee, or funny hat, which I've seen at previous trade shows.
For one thing, the effectiveness of digital promotions, like music downloads, ringtones, or even online gift cards, are easy to prove. Basically, I can track whenever someone downloads a song or ringtone using one of my promotions. In fact, I can tell you exactly who downloaded it and when. If it's someone important, I can know to the second when they accessed their digital promotion, and make the appropriate followup.
Digital Promotions are Targeted
For another thing, I can target my digital promotions. Rather than buying 5000 flashlights and handing them out to anyone who walks past my booth, I can purchase the list of show attendees and send them an invitation to stop by the booth where they'll receive a free music download card. I can pick and choose who will receive my invitation, and then keep track of who stopped by.
Or I can come at this from the other end and email a special download to everyone who stopped by my booth. This way, I can send my giveaways only to potential customers, rather than giving one out to everyone who stopped by looking for a freebie.
Digital Promotions are Green
Believe it or not, you're helping the environment by giving away digital promotions items. Rather than creating one more plastic widget (pollution), which needs to be shipped (oil and gas), and will sit forgotten until it dries up and you pitch it (landfill), a digital promotions campaign doesn't need any sort of offline promotion if you don't want it. You can promote your digital freebies by email, Twitter, and Facebook if you want. Or you can use offline promotional methods using some of the different green technology out there.
They also don't require a lot of distribution efforts. I can give out my digital promotions by giving away a stack of cards to people who visit my booth, or just by emailing everyone on my list. There are benefits to both. If I hand them out, I can talk to the people I'm giving them to. This lets me make a sales contact, and tell the person about my product or service. But emailing them is free, and a big time saver. Rather than giving the same message over and over to a handful of people, I can reach dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of customers. And best of all, by using variable data, I can keep track of who received it, took advantage of it, and then converted into a paying customer. Handing out 5,000 flashlights won't let me do it with the same accuracy and ease as digital promotions do.
Digital Promotions are Immediate and Efficient
Like I said in a previous postdigital promotions provide your customers instant gratification. People can redeem their giveaway immediately or at their convenience. They're also easy to redeem. They don't take up space in the customer's luggage, they're not forgotten or given away to their kids, where your customer never sees them again. If it's a song, they'll hear it on their MP3 player, and remember where they got it. If it's a ringtone, they'll think of you whenever their phone rings. Not like a stress ball, Frisbee, or funny hat, which I've seen at previous trade shows.
Saturday, February 13, 2010
Customer Loyalty Programs Using Promotional Risk Coverage
Your promotion budget can be fixed to increase customer loyalty with digital promotions including promotional risk coverage. It is worth the risk, but you don't have to take it. Promotional risk coverage protects your promotion budget from over redemption and assists you in fixing your advertising and marketing budget. Promotional Currency is THE leading digital promotions firm, merging digital technology, artist licensing and promotional risk coverage to deliver turnkey, fixed-cost solutions for the promotional marketplace. Ask us why you can afford large prize offerings including digital promotions on a budget. Fix your promotion budget with Promotional Currency, THE Digital Promotions Authority. http://www.promotionalcurrency.com
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
Brand Promotions Using Digital Media Reach Generation Y
Digital brand promotions are a great way to reach Generation Y. In fact, some Gen Y marketing experts will tell you digital brand promotions may be the only real way to reach them.
This is important, because Gen Y — born between 1977 and 1994 — are worth $200 billion in spending per year, and they affect another $300 - $400 billion in family spending (i.e. restaurants, clothing, and even cars). But they're ignoring ads on traditional media, choosing instead to consume media online and on their cell phones, the home of digital brand promotions. So they're not actually seeing your TV commercials, hearing your radio spots, or reading your newspaper ads.
This will actually make life easier for the brand promotions manager. As Generation Y consumes more media online, your digital brand promotions can be quickly created, easily tracked, and changed or dropped when you find something is working.
Gone are the days of traditional brand promotions through TV ads and radio campaigns, where you had to wait until the end of the sales quarter to see if your efforts had any effect. Gone are the days of guessing whether it was your billboards or the TV spots that resulted in the most sales. With digital promotions, you can get real-time results and see if people are buying, watching, or downloading whatever product or service you're selling. If they're not, change a few of the creative variables and see if that makes a difference.
Social media sites like Facebook and MySpace are a great way to reach Gen Yers and effective avenues to build a database for your brand promotions campaign. Purchase digital ads that are delivered to people who your target demographic. For example, you could promote an upcoming concert by selecting people between the ages of 18 - 24 in the cities on the tour. Brand managers collect names to build a marketing database, by offering social media users free music downloads or ringtones to people who register for the promotional giveaway.
You can further enhance your concert brand promotions by offering prizes or swag to the fans who promote the concert to their friends, asking them to forward it to their friends. Then, collect everyone's information, and you're also building a future contact list of fans where you can promote future concerts, upcoming albums, and merchandise. Gen Y is responding to digital promotions and prize offerings in a big way.
Text messaging is another great way to reach Generation Y, because they're texting like crazy. A recent report on NielsenWire says the average teenager is texting 3,146 times per month. So your digital brand promotions should include texting. Text promotions reach these consumers in their element.
Whether you're creating an opt-in text club, or including ads as part of a service, like sports scores or news updates, people are more willing to accept brand promotions messages as a part of a service. And the more useful your service is, the more often they'll see your ad. In fact, according to an article in the New York Times, during the 2008 NFL draft, Coors sent text messages about draft pick updates and put Coors branding on each message.
Generation Y is also skipping the TV in order to watch YouTube and Hulu videos instead. If you got the brand promotions budget for it, consider placing ads on Hulu videos, rather than buying a TV commercial. Since Hulu will only show 3 or 4 commercials per 30 minute show, people are more willing to sit through them, rather than getting up or flipping around. Several of our friends have watched shows on Hulu, and actually even taken the time to rate commercials, rather than ignore them.
In short, Generation Y is online, and they're responding to those brands that communicate directly with them. Rather than trying to reach them through traditional promotions, give digital brand promotions a try instead. Communicating with Gen Y through relationship marketing is a surefire way to reach them and get them to respond to you.
--Julie Ross, Rostin Ventures
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
Digital Promotions Including Promotional Risk Coverage Roll With The Moment
Your digital promotion budget solution to increase customer loyalty starts with digital promotions including promotional risk coverage. Promotional Currency is THE leading digital promotions firm, merging digital technology, artist licensing and promotional risk coverage to deliver turnkey, fixed-cost solutions for the promotional marketplace. Ask us why you can afford large prize offerings including digital promotions on a budget. Fix your promotion budget with Promotional Currency, THE Digital Promotions Authority.
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Sunday, January 10, 2010
Digital Promotions Creating Customer Loyalty of Gen Y Forever
Digital promotions continue to spur billions of dollars in annual sales for product suppliers. By offering promotional incentives, through mobile promotions, online promotions, music download promotions, and other custom promotions, companies can tap into a vast pool of consumers that would otherwise be all but unreachable.
Promotional Currency brings a powerful combination of brand promotions including promotional incentives, entertainment promotions, music download promotions, ringtone promotions, mobile promotions, online instant win games and artist licensing - offering brand partners the first one-stop source for all online promotions, wireless and digital promotions.
Thursday, December 3, 2009
Promotional Incentives Launch Products and Lift Sales Volume
Promotional incentives are a powerful marketing lever that brand advertisers can use to engage and excite consumers. They play a key role in launching new products, lifting sales of existing products, and cultivating customer loyalty. From the smallest "mom and pop" retail stores to the largest brands in the world, promotional incentives encourage people to experience products they might otherwise ignore.
Creative Ways To Leverage Promotional Incentives
Giving away free items is one of the most effective ways to stimulate a response from your target market. Nothing excites consumers more than the chance to receive something with a high perceived value for free. There are a variety of ways in which you can use free promotional incentives to motivate your audience to take action.
You can give your customers something for free in exchange for trying a new product or service. For example, Starbucks recently launched their Via brand of instant coffee and used promotional incentives to spearhead the effort. They organized a Via Taste Challenge to entice customers to try their instant brew. Customers in the Los Angeles area were asked to order a cup of Via. In return, they received a coupon that could be redeemed for any cup of coffee in the future.
You can also use promotional incentives to create a surge in sales volume around your brand. For example, Estée Lauder launched a promotion in October 2009 called "Your Beauty. Your Style. Your Profile." They invited women to visit participating counters and receive a free makeover and photo. The photos were emailed to women so they could be uploaded easily to dating and social networking sites. The Estée Lauder logo was in the background of each photo, strengthening their brand.
Using Promotional Incentives To Collect Customer Information
In the Estée Lauder example, the promotional incentives were emailed to women who received makeovers. That means in order to receive their digital photo, women had to provide a working email address. This mechanism helped Estée Lauder to create a database of customers to whom they could market their products in the future. For example, they can email these customers a targeted holiday promotion focusing on the products that were used during the makeovers.
Mobile promotions such as music download promotions can offer this same advantage. When consumers visit your customized landing page to download your promotional incentives (e.g. free music downloads), you can require them to provide their contact information. In doing so, you'll build a database of customers for future marketing campaigns.
The Advantage Of Delivering Promotional Incentives Online
When your promotional incentives are delivered online, your expenses are limited to whatever it costs to fulfill redemption. For example, suppose you're offering free music downloads to people who spend $70 at a certain clothing store. Provide a website address and promo code on their purchase receipt that directs them to your download site. They can redeem your promotional incentives online, which helps to minimize your costs while exposing customers to your brand and products.
Or, suppose you want to deliver a "buy three and get one free" promotion to customers' mobile devices. The cost of delivery is practically zero. The same is true for launching instant win games, skins promotions, offering free ringtones, and other digital promotional incentives. While the cost is low compared to traditional advertising channels, the impact on your audience is high.
Why Promotional Incentives Are Effective
Brand sponsors realized long ago that promotional incentives were a potent trigger for stimulating a response from their market. Each year, billions of dollars are spent to launch promotions that improve brand awareness, drive traffic and sales, and strengthen customer loyalty.
The reason promotional incentives are so effective is because people always enjoy the chance to receive free products they consider valuable. Whether the incentive is a free tank of gas, limited access to an online fee-based service, or free song downloads, consumers are happy to participate. In some cases, they'll increase their purchase order or buy new products in order to take advantage of a promotion. In other cases, they'll willingly exchange their contact information to receive your promotional incentives.
Your marketing campaigns are ultimately designed to sell your products. The challenge is to motivate your audience to buy them. Digital promotional incentives will excite your market, educate them about your products, and encourage their loyalty to your brand. And they'll do so at a lower cost than using other advertising channels. Now is the time to explore how promotional incentives can drive traffic and increase sales for your company.
--Cynthia Walker
Promotional Currency is THE leading digital promotions firm, merging digital technology, artist licensing and promotional risk coverage to deliver turnkey, fixed-cost solutions for the promotional marketplace. Promotional incentives such as music download promotions, ringtone promotions, mobile promotion, skins promotions and online instant win games and sweepstakes are powerful, multi-pronged promotional marketing tools build customer loyalty and drive sales.
Entertain your consumers with promotional incentives to differentiate your brand and boost sales through increased brand interest and customer loyalty.
Creative Ways To Leverage Promotional Incentives
Giving away free items is one of the most effective ways to stimulate a response from your target market. Nothing excites consumers more than the chance to receive something with a high perceived value for free. There are a variety of ways in which you can use free promotional incentives to motivate your audience to take action.
You can give your customers something for free in exchange for trying a new product or service. For example, Starbucks recently launched their Via brand of instant coffee and used promotional incentives to spearhead the effort. They organized a Via Taste Challenge to entice customers to try their instant brew. Customers in the Los Angeles area were asked to order a cup of Via. In return, they received a coupon that could be redeemed for any cup of coffee in the future.
You can also use promotional incentives to create a surge in sales volume around your brand. For example, Estée Lauder launched a promotion in October 2009 called "Your Beauty. Your Style. Your Profile." They invited women to visit participating counters and receive a free makeover and photo. The photos were emailed to women so they could be uploaded easily to dating and social networking sites. The Estée Lauder logo was in the background of each photo, strengthening their brand.
Using Promotional Incentives To Collect Customer Information
In the Estée Lauder example, the promotional incentives were emailed to women who received makeovers. That means in order to receive their digital photo, women had to provide a working email address. This mechanism helped Estée Lauder to create a database of customers to whom they could market their products in the future. For example, they can email these customers a targeted holiday promotion focusing on the products that were used during the makeovers.
Mobile promotions such as music download promotions can offer this same advantage. When consumers visit your customized landing page to download your promotional incentives (e.g. free music downloads), you can require them to provide their contact information. In doing so, you'll build a database of customers for future marketing campaigns.
The Advantage Of Delivering Promotional Incentives Online
When your promotional incentives are delivered online, your expenses are limited to whatever it costs to fulfill redemption. For example, suppose you're offering free music downloads to people who spend $70 at a certain clothing store. Provide a website address and promo code on their purchase receipt that directs them to your download site. They can redeem your promotional incentives online, which helps to minimize your costs while exposing customers to your brand and products.
Or, suppose you want to deliver a "buy three and get one free" promotion to customers' mobile devices. The cost of delivery is practically zero. The same is true for launching instant win games, skins promotions, offering free ringtones, and other digital promotional incentives. While the cost is low compared to traditional advertising channels, the impact on your audience is high.
Why Promotional Incentives Are Effective
Brand sponsors realized long ago that promotional incentives were a potent trigger for stimulating a response from their market. Each year, billions of dollars are spent to launch promotions that improve brand awareness, drive traffic and sales, and strengthen customer loyalty.
The reason promotional incentives are so effective is because people always enjoy the chance to receive free products they consider valuable. Whether the incentive is a free tank of gas, limited access to an online fee-based service, or free song downloads, consumers are happy to participate. In some cases, they'll increase their purchase order or buy new products in order to take advantage of a promotion. In other cases, they'll willingly exchange their contact information to receive your promotional incentives.
Your marketing campaigns are ultimately designed to sell your products. The challenge is to motivate your audience to buy them. Digital promotional incentives will excite your market, educate them about your products, and encourage their loyalty to your brand. And they'll do so at a lower cost than using other advertising channels. Now is the time to explore how promotional incentives can drive traffic and increase sales for your company.
--Cynthia Walker
Promotional Currency is THE leading digital promotions firm, merging digital technology, artist licensing and promotional risk coverage to deliver turnkey, fixed-cost solutions for the promotional marketplace. Promotional incentives such as music download promotions, ringtone promotions, mobile promotion, skins promotions and online instant win games and sweepstakes are powerful, multi-pronged promotional marketing tools build customer loyalty and drive sales.
Entertain your consumers with promotional incentives to differentiate your brand and boost sales through increased brand interest and customer loyalty.
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Digital Promotions Generate Exposure, Entice Customers, and Boost Your ROI
Digital promotions give you valuable exposure to your market without burdening you with the exorbitant costs associated with traditional advertising. You can leverage them to tap into a large consumer audience in order to promote your brand and products. The incentives can be used to educate people about your products, lift sales, and generate intense customer loyalty.
For example, digital promotions such as online gift certificates and customer loyalty programs can reward people for purchasing your product. That strengthens their loyalty to your brand. It improves the likelihood that they will continue buying your product in the future. Likewise, free music download promotions can entice people to try your brand. Whether you're promoting video games, clothes, or sporting equipment, every demographic loves music.
Digital promotions are a powerful marketing tool because they leverage a low-cost platform to deliver high-impact incentives to a hungry market. That provides an enormous boost to your ROI. Below, you'll discover the three top reasons to integrate digital promotions into your marketing strategy. You'll also learn one of the most unique advantages of using them.
3 Reasons To Leverage Digital Promotions
To be sure, digital promotions can lift product sales and drive brand awareness. They can also bridge the gap between you and your target audience, so you can educate them about the benefits of buying your products. But, it's important to highlight why digital promotions are so effective.
First, they are distributed online. That eliminates most, if not all, of the production and distribution cost. After all, what is the cost of emailing gift certificates to your customers? What is the cost of allowing consumers to download music and play instant win games on their mobile devices?
Second, digital promotions can be customized to fit your products, brand, and target market. For example, would you like to improve brand awareness by connecting your products to a big-box retailer? Would you like to target fans of jazz music? Would you like to give customers who have spent $200 on your products a "30% off" coupon? A solution can be tailor-made for your company.
Third, digital promotions offer a robust level of tracking capability. You can measure your redemption rate and determine which incentives are most likely to generate a response in the future. You can also identify which consumers are actually buying your products down the road. If they are not buying, remove them from your list.
Tracking Results From Your Digital Promotions
Being able to track the results of your digital promotions gives you an enormous level of control over your marketing. It gives you unique, detailed insight into what works - and what does not - for your market.
For example, suppose you're leveraging music download promotions to market an exclusive line of dress shoes. By tracking your metrics, you might discover that fans of country music are far more likely to buy your shoes than fans of other types of music. With that information, you can refine your digital promotions to specifically target country music fans.
This same level of tracking can be used to hone your mobile promotions and skins promotions. For example, you might find that consumers who redeem mobile coupons to certain big-box retailers are more likely to buy your products than those who frequent other stores. Or, you might discover that a specific age group is more receptive to your skins promotions. That demographic may provide far more brand exposure.
How Digital Promotions Attract Valuable Consumer Data
Savvy marketers and advertisers know the inherent value of a consumer database. The more points of data categorized within their database, the more tightly they can target specific market segments. They can design their promotions based on certain demographics, past purchase history, or response rates within various product categories.
Digital promotions give you the same opportunity to collect data from your audience. In fact, it's less costly and less complex than doing so through traditional marketing channels. If you intend to email gift certificates, you'll need consumers to provide their email addresses. If you're launching mobile promotions, you'll need them to provide their mobile numbers. And if you're letting consumers download free music, you can ask them to provide information about themselves prior to redemption.
Imagine the marketing flexibility you'll enjoy when you combine the tracking capability of digital promotions with a perpetually expanding consumer database. You'll be able to hone your future digital promotions and personalize them to individual recipients. In doing so, you'll trigger a larger response from each market segment.
Digital promotions remove the largest obstacles advertisers face in reaching a broad consumer market. You can leverage them to improve awareness of your brand, drive ongoing product sales, and dramatically boost your ROI.
--Cyndi Walker, Promotional Currency
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