●Teen Trends (Marketing Pilgrim)
Today’s teens may be uber techno-savvy but maybe not to the extent we think. A recent Teen Topix study released by OTX, a research and consulting firm, found that, on average, teens aged 13-17 spend 11.5 hours online with 45% spending eight hours or less online. However, when teens do log on, they like to shop. More than half (58%) of teens have made a purchase online. On average, teens that make purchases are spending $46 per month, and 26% of teens are spending $50 or more.
Not surprisingly, clothes and music represent their two key purchase categories. The study also serves up some interesting stats about teen preferences:
----82% of teens would rather shop in a store than online
----74% of teens would rather give up television than the Internet for a week
----63% of teens would prefer to get their locker vandalized than their personal homepage or profile
----71% of teens would prefer to give up cell phone texting than Internet access
----81% of teens would prefer to watch a full-length program on TV than online
●Zappos Serves Up Another Zinger (Brand Autopsy)
Would you voluntarily leave your new job if offered $1,000 bucks? That’s the question online shoe retailer Zappos is asking its new call center employees In one of its most innovative moves to date, Zappos offers its “Quit-Now” bonus to one-week old employees as a sort of litmus test to determine whether the employee possesses the level of commitment they’re looking for. Known for its high-energy culture, Zappos gets that it’s not for everybody and wants to learn sooner than later whether new employees are a bad fit. About 10% of new call-center employees take Zappos up on its offer.
●The Conversation is King (Customers Rock)
Relationships are the new currency in today’s social media world so marketers need to change their approach if they want to effectively engage customers. Not only will they need to start participating in social conversations (or risk the loss of brand equity), they’ll also need to effectively manage and measure them. Brian Solis, Principal of FutureWorks, offers up his own formula for measuring the relevance of customer conversations:
---number of average daily relevant convesations per community
---multiplied by the number of relevant communities
---multiplied by 20 (minutes required to research and respond and also monitor for additional responses), variable +/- dependent on the case
---divided by 60 (minutes)
---equals the amount of time (and resources and associated costs) required depending on internal labor and external consulting fees
Based on the research results, you c an measure the average frequency of relevant conversations, identify the more active hubs and communities and the context of the conversations in order to determine time and resources required.
●New Email Client Tool (B2B Email Marketing)
Fingerprint is a new tool introduced by Litmus that helps you identify which email clients your email campaign recipients are using. Add an image tag to your email and you'll be able to get a better idea of whether you should be designing your emails for Lotus Notes, Gmail in Firefox or Internet Explorer or via iPhone applicatons.