Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

For many, coupons have strange connotations. They're something moms cut out, or they're only used by poor folks or the elderly.

In reality, the opposites of these are true - coupons are incredibly popular among affluent folks and millennials (not to mention every other demographic), and they don't even have to be printed out anymore, so keep your scissors in the junk drawer.

As these statistics reveal, the coupon is still a driving force in commerce that connects people (and their wallets) to brands. People will never tire of saving money, and brands are always looking to bring in new customers. Mix in a decade-long struggling economy, and you have a savings-savvy mindset that isn't going away anytime soon.

Enjoy this collection of coupon stats, which we plan to keep updated with the most current and relevant research on an ongoing basis. If your company has completed research into these fields that we should include, please let us know....

A massive 89% of companies plan to compete primarily on the basis of the customer experience by 2016, which is a dramatic increase since 2014 (36%) and 2015 (58%).

It’s clear that companies are making customer interaction experiences a priority, and the trends we’ve identified will be critical if businesses want to stay competitive. Of note is that all these trends rely heavily on the cloud, analytics and big data. These now form the underpinnings of nearly all things customer experience-related and will continue to be key components of any successful customer engagement strategy....

Complacency is not an option in today's marketplace. Changeable buying behavior, channel and technology proliferation, data profusion—these are just a few of the realities marketers face today that necessitate transformation.  Whether it's improving on marketing strategies that work or taking an entirely new approach, marketers must shake up their practices in 2016.

Knowing where to start or what's most essential to improve on can seem overwhelming with so many possibilities. So, DMN asked 15 marketing leaders to provide insight into what they think should marketers do differently in 2016 to attract, convert, and retain more customers. Here, their advice....

Understanding the psychology of consumers at different moments is more effective than just knowing their demographics or interests. Timing is everything in advertising, and mobile can wait for just the right moment to reach consumers.

Here are examples of brands that have successfully used a moments-based approach to mobile advertising....

For much of the past 10 years, business has resembled a game of "catch-up". Each new wave of technological innovation has triggered new customer behaviors and expectations, causing businesses to constantly scramble to figure out how to be relevant. This era of disruption has, as often as not, caught business leaders in general, and marketers in particular, on the back foot. This uncomfortable situation looks like it's finally starting to change.

The Marketing Disruption II research highlighted 5 red flags that marketers need to address to deliver on this promise and become a true engine for growth...

The business world is a numbers game. How much of a profit can your business turn while still paying employees and covering expenses? That’s just one example of the numbers game.

Numbers also apply to your marketing campaigns. Pay Per Call campaigns work best when you fully understand the customer journey, from the moment a thought pops into their mind through to the final purchase. Here are five stats that will help you better understand the customer journey.

In this post, I’m going to show you 5 marketing tactics that are effective for most businesses.

The only catch is they can be difficult or scary to do.

I’m going to break them down as much as possible so that you can determine why they might scare you and what you could do to overcome that fear.

This is going to take a lot of honesty on your part, but if you’re willing to give me that, it could have a huge impact on the success of your marketing....

Marketers are constantly looking to better understand consumers and ultimately deliver an engaging experience. According to Q4 2015 research, many executives are using revenue metrics to quantify the success of customer efforts.

CMO Council looked at how marketing executives in North America quantify customer engagement success. More than a third of respondents said that revenue metrics, like customer lifetime value, revenues per customer and overall revenue increases, were the primary type of metric they used to measure consumer engagement.

Additionally, 30% of respondents said that campaign metrics, such as clicks, conversions, shares, traffic and web analytics, were the primary type of metrics they used. Fewer marketing executives said they relied on sales enablement metrics, service metrics and finance metrics to measure overall customer engagement success....

While psychology and marketing are two very different fields, that doesn’t mean that learning psychology can’t help you.

In fact, I think it’s one of the most important things a marketer can study.

In this post, I’m going to show you eight different psychological principles and the ways they can affect your sales.

To take it even further, I’m going to show you how you can apply each principle to your business....

All too often, e-retailers default to a flash sale when they want to boost limp sales. However, recent research has revealed that discounting can actually be a dangerous practice to your business’ profits, meaning that companies need to get to the root of their sales issues instead of relying on offering discounts.

As it turns out, discounting can cause your customers to devalue your product, and it doesn’t provide any long-term benefits. In fact, discounting can even be a slippery slope for businesses, snowballing until the companies are forced to offer discounts in order to get the same sales numbers they were previously getting. One study found that 81% of hoteliers are discounting more now than they were five years ago, and 75% said this had done damage to their brand.

Instead, e-retailers should step away from slashing prices and analyze what could be holding their sales back. Customers reported that they stopped buying because of shipping costs, not being ready to purchase, slow site speed, and a low-security site. By addressing these issues, you can increase your sales without resorting to discounts. For example, you might offer free shipping for orders over a certain amount, or you could add security logos to your checkout page to increase your customers’ trust in your website....

Customers want to feel how a product fits in their hand as well as how it fits into their lives. In short, they want to experience a human connection. Every step from the initial introduction of a product to the walk-through of its final setup needs to be engaging and (ideally) enjoyable both in-store and online.

Within the next five years, any vendor with a large offering of premium products will have to provide this immersive experience or risk being put out of business by companies that do....

Over the past 10 years, consumers have increasingly purchased brands from socially aware organizations.  With this shift, a huge emphasis has been placed on company procedures and sustainable practices. “Social responsibility has migrated from soft line to hard law,” says Paula Luff, Vice President of Corporate Social Responsibility at Hess Corporation.  

She is right.  It’s no longer an added bonus for a business to be socially responsible; it is what’s expected from society.  Companies must understand consumer demand for CSR-related information and develop an appropriateCSR strategy based on company branding and values.

The Better Business Bureau recently held their annual forum, “Transformers: How Corporate Responsibility Trends Are Changing Business Now” in downtown Manhattan. This session featured top corporate responsibility professionals sharing best practices and tactics to develop socially responsible programs based on the increased demand for this information from today’s consumers.

While the discussion was related to many elements of CSR programming and reporting, there were five key takeaways that every company should understand:...