Couponers (and Marketers) Beware

The daily deal extravaganza may have finally met a plateau but online coupons are still alive and (sometimes) well. With the proliferation of digital couponing, new branches are developing, particularly aggregators like RetailMeNot.com. So as marketers are building discount strategies, consumers are able to arm themselves with more information, broader access and targeted finds.

Continue Reading »

Avoid Letting Email Become a Lost Channel

Let’s face it, email has gotten sloppy. In a fight to stand out from unsolicited spam, you would think marketers would be using all the latest technologies and taking an optimized approach to converting emails to sales. But, as you can see from your own inbox, many marketers are either on auto-pilot and use one voice for all people, or are confused about the length, frequency and voice so they just end up missing the mark on all three.

Continue Reading »

Easing Pain in the Consumer Journey

My local gym is always running some kind of crazy discount for enrollment. And I can always look at this month’s (or week’s) promotion and blow it off, knowing another deal is coming. It’s hard to know, from a price-conscious standpoint, the best time to make a long-term commitment because they’re constantly repackaging the same discount, or even out-bidding themselves for my business. In a similar instance, I bought concert tickets with a loyalty-based “early bird” discount, only to find out that a deeper discount was advertised to the general public just a month later. Really? Are we expecting consumers not to notice or react to our marketing misgivings? And are we brands really expected to keep up?

Continue Reading »

It’s Not You, It’s Me: Marketers Giving Automation the Brush-Off

The appeal of automation makes sense: in a time where marketers are held to high standards and spread thin across an increased workload, anything you can set and forget is a welcome time saver. What companies didn’t predict, though, was how much time is attached to establishing automation. And while there are risks involved in automation’s perceived easy button, companies are still embracing it in droves. So how do marketers keep from blowing it?

Continue Reading »

Moving Past the Mobile One-Off

Try leaving home without your mobile phone. Odds are, it’s uncomfortable. These little computers haven’t just edged their way into our daily routines, they have become our tether to the outside world. Marketers, well aware of the value of reaching people literally in their pockets have responded with a resounding strategy to move the sales needle: one offs!

Continue Reading »

A/B Testing on Steroids: A New Approach to Messaging

As published by Direct Marketing News

Continue Reading »

Marketing Needs the 5th P

Why Payment Now Belongs with Product, Price, Place and Promotion as a Key Decision Lever
Since the 1960s, - the smartest of marketers have developed an offer taxonomy based on the 4 Ps—product, price, place and promotion. For years these 4 Ps have helped us marketers measure, classify and optimize different offers against one another based largely on these trigger points, allowing for an organized and optimized marketing mix that drives revenue with the most efficiency. And that taxonomy-- or process of determining how all the offers from brands should be broken down into distinguishable pieces, has held its grip on the marketing industry.

Continue Reading »

Facebook Digs Deeper into Privacy Concerns

According to a post in the September 23rd issue of the Financial Times, Facebook is partnering with a “controversial” data company called Datalogix that can “track whether people who see ads on the social networking site end up buying those products in stores.” Of course, this announcement has raised concerns with privacy advocates who have continually been concerned about marrying online profiles and presence with offline data since the purchase of Abacus (a Datalogix competitor) by Doubleclick (an online ad-serving company later bought by Google) in the late 90s.

Continue Reading »

5 Reactions to Facebook’s “Page Post Targeting Enhanced”

Facebook creates so much news that it’s easy to miss a new set of features aimed at marketers- even when those very changes can have big implications on how brands speak to you on the social platform. Last week, nestled between the social buzz of the Olympics and ups and downs of its stock price, the social network rolled out a bevy of new ways for marketers to take advantage of things such as your age, interests, gender, relationship status and more to inform how they ‘speak’ to you.

Continue Reading »

Stick a Google-Shaped Fork in Barnes & Noble

Everyone hailed the Nook as smart business. Now, thanks to the very same company that powers the Nook, it’s going the way of disco -- fun while it lasted, but an impractical long term way to groove.
The hype around Google’s new Nexus 7 tablet is mostly surrounding its threat to Amazon, and while there may be merit there, the striking first casualty is Barnes & Noble. With brick and mortar bookstores and physical reading of books declining in favor of e-readers, Barnes & Noble announced plans earlier this year to this one from Peter Svenson of the Huffington Post, I am convinced that the Nexus 7 will provide me a far better experience than my Nook or a continued relationship with Barnes & Noble would. Here are my top 3 reasons as follows:

Continue Reading »

About this blog

At Pluris, we believe that we all can do a better, more efficient job at marketing to our most important customers. On this blog, we'll discuss how strategy, database management, offer optimization and analytics can help us all be better marketers. Sometimes, we may just talk about sports.

Subscribe to Email Updates

New Call-to-action