STUDY: Noise, promotion and spam will reduce your Twitter followers
Following somebody on Twitter is always a small leap of faith. Sometimes it just doesn’t work out, for whatever reason.
A couple of days ago I created an online poll to try to identify the common reasons for unfollowing people on Twitter.
More than 500 votes have since been cast and as such we can now start to analyse the results.
What do you think of Econsultancy?
We'd like you to help us improve the content and services on Econsultancy, and boost the amount we donate to Save the Children at the same time.
Econsultancy's 2012 user survey is the first we have carried out since 2009, and we will donate £3/$5 for every completed response.
89% of UK consumers think the EU cookie law is a positive step, but is it?
89% of UK consumers think that the EU cookie law is a positive step, though 75% had not heard of the e-Privacy Directive before they were surveyed.
Funnily enough, a similar proportion of marketers (82%) in a recent Econsultancy/Toluna survey think the opposite and view the cookie law as a real threat to the web.
The stats come from a survey of 2,000 consumers carried out by eDigitalResearch and IMRG last month.
According to the IMRG's Andy Mulcahy, the directive provides "an opportunity for retailers to increase trust and loyalty through a clear, unobtrusive and customer-friendly cookie notification process".
I'm not so sure about that...
Email census: only 3% of companies optimise for priority inbox
Econsultancy’s Email Marketing Industry Census, sponsored by Adestra, has for the past five years been assessing how companies and agencies are adapting to meet the challenges and opportunities present in the email marketing channel.
With email being rated very highly as a channel for return on investment (second only to SEO), but the effectiveness of ‘batch and blast’ techniques decreasing, it is important that marketers stay ahead of the game to maintain its effectiveness.
Email Census shows link between email best practice and strong ROI
The results of our sixth annual Email Marketing Industry Census 2012, published today in association with Adestra, has shown that companies consider the ROI from email marketing to be higher than for most other digital channels including social media marketing.
In fact, in terms of the company respondents who said that email marketing was “excellent” or “good” for return on investment, email was higher than any other channel except SEO.
This year's study has also found that companies adopting best practice and using ESP platform functionality (beyond basic 'batch and blast'), are significantly more likely to see a strong financial return from their email campaigns.
How will you invest your 2012 marketing budget?
Econsultancy has launched its annual research aimed at uncovering where companies will be investing their marketing budgets in 2012. As usual, those taking the survey, sponsored by Experian Marketing Services, will get a free copy of the report when it is published early next year.
China: Is the East the new West for e-commerce?
China is a difficult market to currently crack for international businesses, but a shift appears to be happening, driven largely by e-commerce.
In association with Toluna, Econsultancy has carried out a survey of online consumer behaviour in the region to try to understand this further.
More companies are using mobile for customer engagement
73% of companies are planning an investment in mobile channels in 2011, with almost half planning to move into mobile commerce.
Econsultancy's Customer Engagement Report, which we produced in association with cScape, has some interesting findings on companies' use of mobile.
It seems that, as well as losing their fear of social media, more firms are coming round to the value of mobile.
Are etailers really this bad at delivery?
I was surprised by an article I've just seen in The Telegraph covering a Which? survey on deliveries by online retailers, which found that nearly 7% of customers were unhappy with deliveries.
According to Which?, almost 200 out of 2,500 customers surveyed reported some kind of delivery issues, and some of them are shocking. In one case, a laptop was thrown over a six foot wall, items were left in dustbins, while others were simply left carelessly in public view.
38% of visitors to e-commerce sites in research phase: survey
Of all visitors to e-commerce sites, 38.6% are there to research products and prices, and to gather information, though just 85% are able to complete this task successfully.
This is one if the findings of an iPerceptions e-commerce survey, suggesting that improvements in navigation and usability can have a significant impact on sales.
