eGrowth Marketing

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Tue, 31 Jan 2012 00:00:00 PST

eGrowth Marketing: The Numbers on Holiday Shopping
The Numbers on Holiday Shopping via eGrowth Marketing - Print (15%) proved a far more popular way to find ... http://t.co/edKSPsai

The Numbers on Holiday Shopping

noreply@blogger.com (eGrowth Marketing) — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 20:05:00 +0000

Print (15%) proved a far more popular way to find holiday shopping deals in 2011 than Facebook (3%) or Twitter (1%), according to a survey released in January 2012 by Crowd Science. The largest proportion of respondents said that visiting companies’ websites (24%) was their favorite way to find deals, although the same proportion said they had no preferred method. Email newsletters were cited by 13% of respondents, ahead of talking with friends and family (9%) and online flyers (5%).

Although 23% of the consumers surveyed said they preferred to conduct all of their holiday shopping online, they were outweighed by the proportion (35%) that did not prefer to do so. Those aged 24 or younger were less inclined to prefer online shopping for the holidays, as compared to older shoppers.

Additionally, 1 in 5 respondents cited an anxiety about security when buying online. The concern over online safety was more pronounced among lighter internet users (less than 24 hours per week) compared to their more experienced counterparts.

17% of respondents admitted to doing nearly all of their holiday shopping at the last minute. Among the 43% who denied being last-minute shoppers, women were more prominent than men (51% vs. 38%). According to survey results released in December 2011 by PriceGrabber, , with men more likely than women to do so (11% vs. 8%).

Other Findings:

Only 15% of respondents to the Crowd Science survey said that the holidays are their favorite time to shop in person, compared to 47% who disagreed. The negative sentiment was more pronounced as time progressed, with disagreement climbing from 45% before Thanksgiving to 49% as the holidays approached.
4 in 10 anticipated spending about the same amount during the holidays as they had the year before. Those who indicated they would spend less traced more to lower income households. As the holiday season progressed, the study found a 5% point increase in those anticipating spending more: the week of Thanksgiving, 17% said they would spend more, rising to 22% as the Christmas holiday drew closer.

About the Data: The Crowd Science findings were gathered from a random sample of 1,756 respondents from November 16-28, 2011, and 3,545 respondents from November 29-December 29, 2011.

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Sun, 29 Jan 2012 00:00:00 PST

Links for 2012-01-27 [http://t.co/iahuPCfa] via eGrowth Marketing - - eGrowth Marketing: Market Research Found ... http://t.co/uyv3Mu9U

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Sat, 28 Jan 2012 00:00:00 PST

eGrowth Marketing: Market Research Found Influencing Purchase Intent, Brand Loyalty
Market Research Found Influencing Purchase Intent, Brand Loyalty via eGrowth Marketing - 62% of global ... http://t.co/AGQp0Wre

Market Research Found Influencing Purchase Intent, Brand Loyalty

noreply@blogger.com (eGrowth Marketing) — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 21:33:00 +0000

62% of global consumers say they are fairly or very likely to purchase a brand’s product if the brand asks for their opinion in a study, compared to just 3% who are not likely to do so, according to a survey released in January 2012 by Cint. The majority of respondents (56%) also say they feel more loyal to the brand if it takes the time to ask them their opinion, more than double the proportion who say their loyalty is not influenced (24%).

7 in 10 Confident Brands Will Act

Data from the survey indicates that 69% of consumers believe that brands act on the market research results they receive, while only 7% believe they do not. An even greater proportion (77%) think that brands are now listening to what consumers want more than they were 10 years ago, with those respondents citing increased market competition (55%), an economic climate that causes brands to research more (24%), and customers’ declining loyalty to brands (16%) as the main reasons why.

Retail Stands to Benefit Most

Meanwhile, a plurality of respondents say that the retail sector (41%) would most benefit from communicating with customers more regularly. A smaller proportion believe the banking (14%), travel (11%), and mobile technology (11%) sectors could gain from increased customer communications.

According to a December 2011 report from RSR Research, most global retailers believe that focusing more on customer rather than product (61%) and better targeting through more detailed customer preferences (59%) are highly valuable marketing opportunities.

Other Findings:

7 in 10 respondents to the Cint survey said they are willing to spend 10 minutes or less responding to a given survey, with the majority of those wanting to spend 1 to 5 minutes. Roughly 1 in 5 said they would spend more than 15 minutes.
Money incentives (55%) would make most consumers more inclined to carry out market research for a brand, followed by a free product (34%).
More than half of the respondents said a smartphone application is their preferred way to participate in market research. One-third voted for online participation, while SMS (5%), traditional mail (4%), face to face (4%), and telephone (1%) participation proved far less popular.

About the Data: The Cint findings are based on a survey of 1,193 consumers worldwide.

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Tue, 24 Jan 2012 00:00:00 PST

eGrowth Marketing: Consumers Prefer Direct Mail to Email
Consumers Prefer Direct Mail to Email via eGrowth Marketing - (Marketing Charts, January 2012) Almost 3 in ... http://t.co/5zL5VAhU

Consumers Prefer Direct Mail to Email

noreply@blogger.com (eGrowth Marketing) — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 23:30:00 +0000

(Marketing Charts, January 2012) Almost 3 in 5 American consumers report that they enjoy getting postal mail from brands about new products, compared to just 43% who say they enjoy getting emails from brands on new products, according to a study released in December 2011 by Epsilon Targeting. Data from the “2011 Channel Preference Study” indicates that a similar gap exists for Canadian consumers: 66% enjoy being notified about new products via postal mail, compared to 55% who report that enjoyment from receiving marketing emails about new products. Notably, the preference for direct mail extends to the 18-34-year-old demographic in both the US and Canada.

The percentages refer to the proportion of the respondents agreeing with the relevant statement based on top 2 selections on a 5-point scale.

Direct Mail Preferred in All Categories

Consumers in the US and Canada prefer postal mail to email in all industry categories studied: among American consumers, some of the largest disparities in preference are seen in the sensitive health (41% vs. 8%), prescription (37% vs. 9%), insurance (36% vs. 9%), financial services (36% vs. 8%), food product (31% vs. 10%), and household services (25% vs. 7%) categories, although these consumers are twice as likely to prefer receiving retail information by postal mail than email (25% vs. 12%). Much of this is related to privacy concerns: 37% of US consumers feel traditional mail is more private than email, and just 8% feel that the internet is “more anonymous.”

3 in 4 Americans Overloaded With Emails

75% of US and 61% of Canadian respondents to the survey say they get a lot more emails that they do not open, while 65% of American and 52% of Canadians say they get too many emails in one day. According to a November study from MarketLive and the e-tailing group, 39% of consumers would like to receive emails weekly from retailers with whom they have opted in, more than double the proportion indicating the second-most preferred option, twice a month, and triple that of the third-most preferred choice, 2-6 times a week. In fact, more consumers would prefer to receive emails on a monthly basis (13%) than on a daily basis (8%).

In addition to email overload, the Epsilon study also shows that the perception that reading email is faster has declined among US email account holders to 45% in 2011 from 47% in 2010, suggesting that clogged in
boxes are draining time.

Newspapers, Company Sites Most Trusted in US

Newspapers and company websites are the most trusted sources of information for US consumers, rated by 21% of respondents as a top 3 box score on a 10-point scale. Brochures/flyers/direct mail (16%) and TV (15%) follow relatively closely, with email (10%) and social media channels trailing far behind: less than 1 in 10 Americans point to Facebook (8%), blogs (6%), YouTube (6%), Twitter (6%), and other social media sites (6%) as trustworthy sources.

Among Canadians, TV (21%) is perceived to be the most trustworthy source of information, ahead of newspapers (16%), brochures/flyers/direct mail (15%), and company websites (13%).

Other Findings

34% of US consumers who prefer email over mail cite “saving on paper” as the main reason, up from 21% in 2010. The top reason for preferring email is the ability to choose which information is sent (42%), slightly ahead of the ability to print the information to keep if desired (41%).
Among US consumers who prefer postal mail, the leading reason is that it is perceived as more private if sent through the mail rather than sent by email or online (37%), while roughly one-third say they already get too much email.

About the Data: The Epsilon study is based on completed responses of 2,226 U.S. consumers and 2,574 Canadian consumers to an online survey conducted in August 2011. A 15-minute questionnaire was presented to respondents aged 18 and older.

Links for 2012-01-20 [del.icio.us]

Sat, 21 Jan 2012 00:00:00 PST

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Fri, 20 Jan 2012 00:00:00 PST

eGrowth Marketing: Buzz For Your Business
Buzz For Your Business via eGrowth Marketing - http://t.co/JPupDFvf

Buzz For Your Business

noreply@blogger.com (eGrowth Marketing) — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 18:02:00 +0000

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Thu, 19 Jan 2012 00:00:00 PST

Links for 2012-01-17 [http://t.co/iahuPCfa] via eGrowth Marketing - - eGrowth Marketing: Blog Rise as Content ... http://t.co/xFBP0tsf

Blog Rise as Content Marketing Tactic

noreply@blogger.com (eGrowth Marketing) — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 13:30:00 +0000

(Marketing Charts, January 3, 2012) 65% of B2B marketers use blogs for content marketing purposes, trailing articles (79%) and social media (74%) as the most widely used tactic, but representing a 27% increase from 51% of respondents in 2010, according to [download page] a December 2011 study by MarketingProfs and the Content Marketing Institute. Data from “B2B Content Marketing: 2012 Benchmarks, Budgets & Trends” indicates that a majority of B2B marketers also use eNewsletters (63%), case studies (58%), in-person events (56%), videos (52%), and white papers (51%), with the latter two tactics increasing from 41% and 42% of respondents in 2010, respectively.

By contrast, print magazines have experienced a drop in popularity, falling to 31% of respondents from 42% in 2010. Similarly, print newsletters are now used by only 1 in 5 B2B marketers, down from 25% last year. Overall, content marketing adoption remains steady at 90% of marketers.

Bigger Companies Use More Tactics

This year, the largest companies (those with over 1000 employees) report using 9 content marketing tactics, compared to 6 for the smallest companies (those with fewer than 10 employees). The largest companies also report a higher adoption rate for most tactics: this year, the most notable differences lie in their their use of white papers (67% of the largest companies versus 35% of the smallest companies); webinars (60% of the largest companies versus 28% of the smallest companies); and microsites (54% of the largest companies versus 16% of the smallest companies). However, medium-sized companies are more likely than the largest to use articles and social media (not including blogs).

Twitter Leads Overall SocNet Growth

74% of B2B marketers say they use Twitter to distribute content, up 35% from 55% of respondents in 2010. The next most-popular site for distribution is LinkedIn, which grew 39% from 51% to 71% of respondents. Facebook follows closely with 70% adoption, up 30% from 54% last year, while YouTube posted even more impressive growth, up more than 47% from 38% of marketers in 2010 to 56% this year.

Mixed Feelings On SocNet Effectiveness

Just half of the B2B marketers who use social media tactics believe them to be effective, though, trailing other tactics such as articles (51%), microsites (56%), and blogs (58%). In-person events (78%), webinars (70%), and case studies (70%) are seen as most effective by those who use them, while roughly 3 in 5 who employ videos, eNewsletters and white papers are confident in their effectiveness.

Information about how B2B and B2C social marketing practices differ is available at MarketingVox.

About the Data: A total of 1,092 B2B marketers worldwide (the majority from North America) responded in August 2011 to the MarketingProfs survey, which was mailed electronically to a sample of marketers from among members and subscribers of MarketingProfs and the Content Marketing Institute. The marketers represented a full range of industries, functional areas, and company size.

Internet Sales Tax

noreply@blogger.com (eGrowth Marketing) — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 17:49:00 +0000

The problem of how to tax and collect sales tax in an ecommerce environment is plaguing every stakeholder. As varied as the problem is mirrors the solutions proposed.

Here is the most comprehensive following, state by state, of the "how to retail tax" problem at Commission Junction.

Luxury Brands Might Fare Better as Facebook Storefronts

noreply@blogger.com (eGrowth Marketing) — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 23:44:00 +0000

(Marketing Vox) Facebook storefronts have not been a leading source of e-commerce transactions, despite the platform's huge user base.

Only 20% have purchased something directly within Facebook, according to a study released by ThreatMetrix in partnership with the Ponemon Institute.

A separate study, by Oracle, found that 34% of American and Canadian consumers say they would never purchase products via a retailer’s Facebook page, compared to 19% who said they would (9%) or already have (10%) done so.

Industry Executives Doubtful about Social Commerce
Talk that social commerce has not been successful thus far, despite the hype surrounding it, is growing. Jonathan Johnson, president of Overstock.com, an online retailer, told the Financial Times, that "the commercial aspect of social media is overhyped and no one’s really caught that rabbit yet."

Bill Bass, who runs Fair Indigo and ecommerce operations for the Charming Shoppes chain, told Storefront Backtalk that to date no one has cracked the code on how social media impacts retail. "There's every reason to believe that consumers do not make their choices of where to buy things based on the number of "likes" on a retailer’s Facebook page," he said.

"Also, there is no proof that "likes" have a high credibility with prospective customers."

Luxury Brands May Succeed
However, there is the possibility that luxury brands—which, ironically, were hesitant to develop social media channels for a long time—may succeed where other brands have failed.

One reason brands’ Facebook retail endeavors have not succeeded is that consumers do not trust these particular storefronts, according to the ThreatMetrix study.

However, luxury brands have a different—more personal and one-on-one–relationship with their consumers, which lends itself to trust. It may be they can succeed where other Facebook retails storefronts, have not succeeded as much as the industry had hoped.

A test of this theory is underway: a number of high profile brands launched Facebook storefronts in recent months, Women’s Wear Daily reports.

Gilt Groupe launched its Facebook store in August with a Facebook store. Oscar de la Renta became the first luxury brand to launch an F-commerce initiative entirely on the social medium. In May, Bulgari launched a Facebook storefront with jewelry retailing for $12,000 and up.

"Almost 100 percent of brands cite Facebook as a source of upstream traffic," Scott Galloway, New York University marketing professor and co-founder of NYU think tank Luxury Lab told WWD. He pointed to another luxury brand, Burberry, noting that it is getting more traffic from Facebook than Google. "All of this [Facebook] traffic and investment is leading toward commerce."

Apple Insider: Rumor iPhone Made Up 66% of AT&T Store Sales, Android 9%

noreply@blogger.com (eGrowth Marketing) — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 13:00:00 +0000

A new report claims Apple's iPhone comprised 66 percent of all device sales at AT&T's corporate retail stores in December, while Android is said to have taken an 8.5 percent share.

The Mac Observer cited a source inside AT&T on Friday as indicating that the company's stores sold 981,000 iPhones between Dec. 1 and Dec. 27. By comparison, 126,000 Android devices were reportedly sold during the same period.

Basic feature phones apparently performed better than Android at the stores, as 128,000 units were sold during December. Research in Motion's BlackBerry devices continued to languish, with just 74,000 sold this month. Microsoft's Windows Phone 7 fared even worse.

According to the report, the numbers only include AT&T's corporate retail stores, not authorized resellers, online sales, telephone sales or other retail outlets.

Of course, the iPhone's performance at AT&T corporate stores doesn't on its own reflect the device's overall market share. Given that AT&T was the original partner for the iPhone, Apple's handset has long been the best-selling phone on the network.

Recent third-quarter figures from comScore reveal that Android has reached a 46.9 percent share of the smartphone market, compared to Apple's 28.7 percent.

The publication was unable to confirm with Apple's PR department the numbers provided by its source, as the company declined to comment. AT&T did, however, reveal earlier this month that it expected to have its best quarter ever for smartphone sales because of "strong" performance of the iPhone 4S. The wireless operator sold six million smartphones in the first two months of the fourth quarter and is expected to handily beat its previous quarterly sales record of 6.1 million smartphones.

The iPhone accounted for 56 percent of AT&T's smartphone activations in the third quarter of calendar 2011, even as some customers held out for the iPhone 4S.

Apple CEO TIm Cook said last quarter that he is confident the company will "set an all-time record for iPhones" during the December quarter. The iPhone maker has guided for $37 billion in revenue during the period and is expected by some analysts to surpass the $40 billion mark.

Social Media Performance Seen Correlating With Voting Intention

noreply@blogger.com (eGrowth Marketing) — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 13:30:00 +0000

A strong, positive correlation has been found between overall social media performance and voting intention amongst Iowans, according to January 2012 analysis from Sociagility, which applied its brand-focused PRINT algorithm to front-running Republican candidates and compared its data with polling data from Public Policy Polling. In fact, the strong correlation between social media performance and voting intention amongst Iowans (0.83 out of a possible 1.0 maximum) was almost matched by the correlation (0.82) between a candidate’s PRINT score for Facebook and national voting intention.

The PRINT index measures social footprint based on 5 attributes: popularity; receptiveness; interaction; network reach; and trust.

Obama Sports Most Fans

With more than 24.3 million Facebook fans, President Barack Obama easily leads all 2012 presidential candidates in fan volume, according to a January 2012 infographic from Socialbakers. Mitt Romney trails in distant second (1.3 million), followed by Ron Paul (0.7 million), Michele Bachmann (0.5 million), Newt Gingrich (0.2 million), and Rick Perry (0.2 million).

Rick Santorum and Jon Huntsman have the least amount of fans, each with less than 50,000.

Obama Takes Half of All Interactions

Meanwhile, President Obama also holds the largest share (50%) of all likes and comments on Facebook, with Ron Paul (18.7%) and Mitt Romney (10.3%) the only others to hold double-digit share. Rick Perry (6.2%) and News Gingrich (5.7%) round out the top 5 by share of total interactions, with Michele Bachmann (5.6%) close behind. Total interactions is defined as all likes and comments from a candidate’s posts plus all likes and comments from people’s posts on the candidate’s page.

Measuring the candidates at different dates throughout December 2011, Socialbakers found that President Obama’s page had 87,000 likes and 16,000 comments, compared to Mitt Romney’s 26,000 likes and 2,600 comments, and Ron Paul’s 22,400 likes and 3,000 comments.

Paul Leads Republicans in Viral Reach

Ron Paul dominates the Republican field in viral reach, which is calculated as the total number of likes and comments multiplied by the average number of friends per Facebook user. With 65 million, he easily outpaces Romney (35 million), Rick Perry (21 million), and Newt Gingrich (20 million). President Obama leads all candidates with 173 million.

About the Data: The Sociagility PRINT study was conducted December 21. Socialbaker tracked 10 million Facebook Pages and Places and billions of individual user interactions between December 1 - 31, 2011. Measurements are taken as averages for given days and computed from the company’s social media analytics solution, which uses public data published by Facebook users on open and public fan pages.

9 Trends Reshaping Risk Software

noreply@blogger.com (eGrowth Marketing) — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 13:00:00 +0000

(Bank Technology News, January 1, 2012) That the market for risk software for the banking industry has never been stronger is a bit ironic, given that the stagnant economy and regulatory uncertainty continue to paralyze banks' efforts to take the very risks they're paid to take on loans to businesses and consumers. But banks are expected to spend 7% more on risk technology this year than they did last year, according to IDC Financial Insights. The firm predicts that worldwide financial services information technology spending on risk management technology will exceed $74 billion by 2015. The analysts expect IT spending on risk management to top 15% of total IT spending in financial services in 2012.

New regulations calling for stronger risk controls and reports, such as Dodd-Frank and Basels II and III, are a big driver. "In the big picture, Dodd-Frank has huge implications for banks' technology spending," says Jaroslaw Knapik, senior industry analyst, banking technology at Ovum. "Right now, banks are preparing the foundation for future changes." For instance, Knapik sees some larger banks upgrading their core banking systems to adjust to new risk rules.

Banks are generally unhappy with their current risk technology. Only 9% of community bank executives (at companies with less than $100 million of assets) think their risk management technology is effective, according to a survey of the American Banker Executive Forum conducted in August (in partnership with Total System Services, Tata Consultancy Services and Jack Henry). Large banks are more satisfied: 48% believe their risk technology works; among midsize banks the rates were in the low 40s. To close this gap, 72% of all banks plan to increase their spending on risk management technology in the next 12 months, according to the survey, which polled 303 U.S. retail bank executives.

These investments will be guided by several trends in risk management approaches.

TREND No. 1 Adoption of enterprisewide risk management software among smaller banks. Such software gathers risk data from different parts of an organization to provide an enterprisewide view of risk. A survey of the American Banker Executive Forum found that large banks are saturated with ERM - 87% of banks with more than $10 billion of assets have enterprise risk management software. Among banks with less than $100 million of assets, only 24% do. However, 36% of small banks plan to introduce an ERM program in the next 12 months.

The market for enterprise risk management and infrastructure solutions as defined by IDC Financial Insights (hardware, software, internal and external services) is $2 billion-plus and is expected to grow more than 8% per year through 2015. "Firms continue to want to chop down the silos and provide more information across disciplines," says Michael Versace, research director of IDC.

"There's an evolution toward personal accountability and responsibility of board members," says Todd Cooper, vice president and general manager - enterprise risk and compliance at Wolters Kluwer Financial Services. "It's part of the need for an organization to be a good steward of all its investors' and customers' funds. This has been coming in the U.S. since the Enron and WorldCom scandals. The financial crisis and Dodd-Frank put an increased emphasis on the ability for an organization to wrap its arms around what its true risk picture looks like. Federal regulators insist that banks effectively manage risk and have programs and technologies that demonstrate their mastery of the situation."

BANK DOING THIS: Blue Hills Bank of Hyde Park, Mass., is using Wolters Kluwer ARC Logics for Financial Services to measure, monitor and manage risk across all of the bank's business lines.
TECH PROVIDERS: The large business intelligence software companies, e.g., International Business Machines (OpenPages), Oracle and SAS, all provide ERM software to large banks. For smaller banks, MetricStream and Wolters Kluwer's ARC Logic are among the options.

TREND No. 2 Adjustment of credit risk models for procyclicality - in other words, the impact of the distressed economy. Procyclicality is a fancy word for the way the actions of policymakers and businesses to adjust for a recession often make the downturn worse.

The financial regulations of the Basel II accord have been said to cause procyclicality because the agreement requires banks to increase their capital ratios when they face greater risks. Basels I, II and III all require banks to calculate risk weightings for all their assets - including consumer and commercial loans - under various economic scenarios to determine how much capital they need to set aside in case of default. This can cause banks to lend less during a recession, which can aggravate the downturn.

"When the economy gets worse, risk gets worse, and when the economy gets better, risk profiles and risk levels improve," says Andy Jennings, the chief analytics officer and head of FICO Labs. "One of the drawbacks of the way we model risk today is that it amplifies both cycles." As risks increase, banks' capital requirements increase when it's too late to make a difference. "You have to put capital away when times are good, not when times are bad," Jennings points out.

This vicious cycle has thrown the normal use of credit scores and credit risk modeling into confusion. Today a credit score of 700 might mean a customer has a 1 in 20 chance of not repaying. If the economy were to get worse, the odds would change to 15 to 1 or something like that. "The problem arises, how do you predict what that the odds ratio might be under a given set of economic factors?" Jennings says. New or modified credit score models can help. The catch? Someone in the bank has to take a stand on what the economy will do - the models cannot forecast the future.

BANK DOING THIS: Raiffeisen Bank International is using FICO's economic impact service to overlay macroeconomic information on top of its traditional credit scoring system, adjusting risk scores based on recent and projected economic conditions.
TECH PROVIDERS: FICO (economic impact service) and SunGard (Ambit credit portfolio).

TREND No. 3 Looking beyond the credit bureau report to assess consumer creditworthiness. As the pool of potential borrowers with pristine credit records has dwindled, and 25% of U.S. adults don't even have a credit report, banks have begun considering alternative and/or additional types of data, such as rental records.

One idea banks are toying with is that of incorporating social media data into assessments of credit risk, for instance, by considering the credit scores of a person's friends in addition to that person's own score.

However, information posted on social media is not always 100% accurate. Under the Fair Credit Reporting Act, banks have to be able to verify customer data. "If I went on LinkedIn and said I have a PhD in astrophysics, which is not true, a number of people might comment on that, but the bank would still need to check that," Jennings points out. "This is not a cure for credit histories. We're inching our way in this direction."

BANKS DOING THIS: Lenddo (an online microlender) uses information about Twitter and Facebook friends in assessing consumer credit risk and the online bank front-end Movenbank is said to be working with the social media influence ranker Klout on a similar approach.
TECH PROVIDERS: Credit Karma, Experian, FICO, L2C and LexisNexis Risk Solutions.

TREND No. 4 The use of new methods of calculating product pricing based on risk. Given the changing patterns in creditworthiness and default rates, some banks are reconsidering the way they price their credit lines. If a bank increases a customer's credit line and that person's balance goes up, more capital needs to be allocated. By feeding the capital requirement into the pricing engine, banks can better allocate capital between competing objectives - expanding the portfolio versus being profitable given the cost of capital.

BANK DOING THIS: Scotiabank is considering the cost and impact of capital requirements in its lending and trading decisions using Algorithmics software (see sidebar on page 25). Samsung Credit Card in Korea is using FICO's decision optimizer to model its card portfolio and make pricing decisions.
TECH PROVIDERS: Algorithmics, FICO and SAP.

TREND No. 5 Risk model validation. Another trend, driven not just by Basel, but by the intensified scrutiny of banks in general in the aftermath of the financial crisis, is the validation of risk models and reporting on the use and effectiveness of models across the organization.

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency issued a paper in April about best practices for model validation in banking. "Banks rely heavily on quantitative analysis and models in most aspects of financial decision-making," the OCC said in its report. "They routinely use models for a broad range of activities, including underwriting credits; valuing exposures, instruments and positions; measuring risk; managing and safeguarding client assets; determining capital and reserve adequacy; and many other activities. ... The expanding use of models in all aspects of banking reflects the extent to which models can improve business decisions, but models also come with costs. There is the direct cost of devoting resources to develop and implement models properly. There are also the potential indirect costs of relying on models, such as the possible adverse consequences (including financial loss) of decisions based on models that are incorrect or misused. Those consequences should be addressed by active management of model risk."

BANK DOING THIS: First Gulf Bank uses Standard & Poor's risk solutions to validate its probability of default ratings models.
TECH PROVIDERS: IBM SPSS, S&P (risk model validation service) FICO (model central) and Quantifi.

TREND No. 6 Creation of keep-it-simple dashboards for bank board members. "The information for the board members has to be packaged in the right size for them," Cooper says. "One of the fascinating things about working with banks is every bank has a slightly different way of making money, even two retail banks that are relatively the same asset size in adjacent counties have specialties and a different customer base.

Therefore the risk picture changes a little bit and the type of information the top of the house would want to track would be slightly different."

If top executives and board members look at the numbers and realize they're more exposed than they expected on the operational risk side, for instance, they can decide to hold on to more capital to offset that risk. "They can tune the organization through a stricter set of controls automatically distributed through the organization, they can change policies and procedures and distribute them automatically and they can start to steer this ship in a different direction," Cooper says.

BANK DOING THIS: Security National Bank in Laurel, Neb., gives top executives loan dashboards using WebEquity Solutions software.
TECH PROVIDERS: WebEquity and Wolters Kluwer.

TREND No. 7 Real-time and intraday risk monitoring, alerts and reports. "Basel II put forward the idea that the requirements for stress testing and shock testing on portfolios are not a midyear exercise but something that needs to be more real time," Versace says. "Basel III reinforces that with a stiffer capital reserve requirement. We think that will drive more investment to the analytic platforms, improving the timeliness and frequency of capital adequacy reporting, and giving rise to new technology stacks coming to market from the likes of Oracle, IBM, HP and even VmWare (with Gemfire). These risk analytic stacks are well tuned to meet new reporting requirements."

Continuous monitoring of key risk indicators lets employees tune their behavior and self-correct, creating a feedback loop that results in an overall better risk picture for the organization. Real-time monitoring could cover attempts to access an online banking system or downtime for customer-facing Internet services, for instance.

BANKS DOING THIS: JPMorgan Chase has implemented a high-performance computing system to calculate real-time credit risk using field-programmable gate arrays developed with Maxeler Technologies. (FPGAs are an example of specialized hardware being used to conduct data-intense risk analyses at high speeds; graphics processing units are another.) British Arab Commercial bank recently installed IBM's real-time business analytics system; it no longer needs to rely on spreadsheets and human input.
TECH PROVIDERS: HP, IBM, MathWorks (working with Nvidia on high-speed risk calculation engines), Oracle, Sybase, SAS and VmWare.

TREND No. 8 The bringing together of different risk systems, such as commercial loan risk and trading risk or fraud and anti-money-laundering.

"There's a strong movement to merge those systems to have similar underlying technologies, business process and workflow," Knapik says. "It makes sense and increases efficiency." In some cases, it saves money. "If you manage to consolidate your data sources, it's much easier to use analytics and reporting rather than having data in different point solutions," he says. "It's much easier to handle for the operational manager who needs to report for various areas, not just fraud, but also anti-money-laundering and credit risk."

Knapik also sees banks trying to obtain a similar user interface for different types of risk systems. "The major reason is long-term, it's a lower cost of ownership if you have the same business intelligence tools being used for credit, market or operational risk and similar reporting templates."

BANKS DOING THIS: Capital One is at the end of a three-year project merging antifraud and anti-money-laundering systems to achieve cost reduction and efficiency. Citigroup is going through a consolidation of 20 antifraud systems. Scotiabank is bringing together risk data from its capital markets and commercial loan areas to provide a more complete view of risk (see sidebar).
TECH PROVIDERS: IBM/Algorithmics, Oracle and SAP business objects

TREND No. 9 Bigger risk data sets leading to the use of performance- enhancing technologies such as in-memory computing. "The whole issue of large data is becoming key," says Steve Wilcockson, financial services manager at MathWorks. "We've got to hold a lot of data, the more granular and fine-grained it is the better. This presents difficult problems for vendors."

"One thing that's getting a lot of support is the integration of in-memory computing with traditional database technology," Versace says.

BANKS DOING THIS: None on the record, but vendors say banks are testing this technology.
TECH PROVIDERS: Oracle (Exalytics) and SAP (HANA).

Top 10 Concerns of U.S. Executives

The Economist Intelligence Unit and Lloyd's of London conducted a global survey of risk attitudes among 500 c-suite and board executives in August 2011. Among U.S. company heads, the following were the most worrisome risks:
1.Loss of customers/canceled orders (this ranked third among global executives).
2.Reputational risk (sixth globally).
3.Changing legislation.
4.Price of material inputs.
5.Fraud and corruption.
6.Talent and skills shortage (including succession risk).
7.Rapid technological changes.
8.Cost and availability of credit.
9.Corporate liability.
10. Theft of assets/intellectual property.

Color Research

noreply@blogger.com (eGrowth Marketing) — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 15:44:00 +0000

There is a lot written about how colors impact marketing - and there is also very little. Many companies spend exorbitant amounts of money on color research - but may or may not share their results publicly.

Here are a few sites that we watch for 2012 color tends and analysis:

Pantone
Colour Lovers
Color Matters
Colour Assignment - older site but good, basic information

And - we follow clothing fashion color trends. While the colors change more rapidly, when a trend stays for longer than a season and flows into housewares - that is a trend especially B2C businesses should be using.

Happy Holidays from eGrowth Marketing!

noreply@blogger.com (eGrowth Marketing) — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 16:37:00 +0000

Happy Holidays from eGrowth Marketing

Add Google AdSense to Your Blog

noreply@blogger.com (eGrowth Marketing) — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 17:57:00 +0000

Dot the "i's", Cross the "t's", and Lock Down Your Website Policies

noreply@blogger.com (eGrowth Marketing) — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 15:34:00 +0000

Every website should have stated company policies. And - year end is an excellent time to take care of this detail. Make sure to post the reviewed date on your site. This tells Google that you are current and spot checking your information. Google does track the incremental changes to a page. Google also tracks the dates on pages as well. A savvy site owner uses this to advantage!

If your site is ecommerce, your credit card processing compliance reviews this annually as well. When your bank and processing company checks your site, it is impressive to them that there is a current check occurring.

Company Policies

Any company policy should be posted and reviewed annually for accuracy. Policies should include but not limited to:

Shipping Policy
Return Policy
Cancellation Policy
Warranty
Disclaimers
Sales Tax

Privacy Policies

Every website should have a Privacy Policy. Especially since this is critical if you do government work, publish a newsletter or want to assure customers you don't resell their information. Also, a good Privacy Policy is just very easy content to come by. But, do not take this policy lightly and follow what you publicly post.

Auto-generate a Privacy Policy Sites to review -

OECD Privacy Statement Generator

Direct Marketing Association (need to set up account)

Free Privacy Policy

Disclosure Policy - for Blogs

Why Black Friday and Cyber Monday Record Breaking Sales Are Not Reliable Positive Economic Indicators

noreply@blogger.com (eGrowth Marketing) — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 16:30:00 +0000

Black Friday and Cyber Monday 2011 Sales Results

(About.com)After Black Friday and Cyber Monday 2011 turned in record-breaking sales numbers, immediately all sorts of inferences and conclusions were being made about the U.S. economy as a whole. And since the Black Friday, Thanksgiving Day, and Cyber Monday 2011 shopping sales numbers were positive, the economic conclusions drawn were positive too.

It's always nice to focus on the positive aspects of things, but what does or doesn't happen on the most heavily discounted days of the U.S. retail industry sales calendar hardly serves as a reliable indicator for the U.S. economy as a whole. If anything, the frenzy of consuming Black Friday deals and Cyber Monday discounts just goes to show what great lengths U.S. consumers will go to for freebies, deals, discounts and coupons, no matter how real or perceived the bargains actually are. In a good economy where people felt stable and secure about their personal finances, U.S. consumers wouldn't shop around the clock from Thanksgiving Day through Black-Cyber weekend because they wouldn't be so desperate.

It is, however, always good to focus on the positive, so here's a summary of some of the best news about Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

Black Friday Weekend Sales Results According to the National Retail Federation (NRF):

$52.4 billion was spent over Black Friday weekend
226 million shoppers were in stores or on websites making purchases over Black Friday weekend
Thanksgiving, Black Friday and Cyber Monday shoppers spent an average of 9.3% more in 2011 than the same weekend in 2010

Black Friday, Thanksgiving, and Cyber Monday Online Sales Results, According to market research firm ComScore:

$816 million was spent online on Black Friday 2011, which was a 26% increase over black friday 2010
$479 million was spent online on Thanksgiving Day 2011, which was an 18% increase over Thanksgiving Day 2010
Year-over-year Cyber Monday sales were up 22% in 2011, when compared to Cyber Monday 2010

Cyber Monday 2011 Results According to IBM Smarter Commerce:

Year-over-year Cyber Monday sales were up 33%
The average purchase amount was $198.26, 2.6% higher than the Cyber Monday purchase average for 2010

Cyber Monday 2011 Internet and Mobile Shopping Results According to IBM's Cyber Monday Benchmark Report:

11% of shoppers used a mobile device for their Cyber Monday shopping, an increase of 3.9% over Cyber Monday 2010
6.6% of all Cyber Monday purchases made on Cyber Monday 2011 were made from mobile devices
The Apple iPad was the mobile platform which generated the largest number of retail sales on Cyber Monday
The percentage of sales from mobile devices was higher on Black Friday 2011 than on Cyber Monday 2011 (9.8% and 6.6% respectively)
Online shopping peaked at 2:05 PM EST on Cyber Monday (during regular working hours for most)

It is important to remember that "Cyber Monday" is a shopping event that was fabricated just 6 holiday shopping seasons ago. And when considering the impact that mobile devices and mobile shopping apps are going to have on the future of the U.S. retail industry, it's important to remember that it wasn't that long ago when "Internet shopping" was considered to be novel, new, and slightly dangerous.
It's not too difficult to get a vision of the cyber future of the U.S. retail industry. It's just a question of how willingly retailers are going to let go of the traditional brick-and-mortar past in order to move into it.

Insights for 2012

noreply@blogger.com (eGrowth Marketing) — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 16:47:00 +0000

Recently, we had the opportunity to hear Dan Weber from Peak Pathways speak at the Omaha Empowerment Breakfast.

Get inspired for 2012:

Plan for 2012 with Lead Indicators, not Lag Indicators.
Notice what you care about. Plan for those.
Have a clear vision.
Change = Rational + Relational (Not necessarily Emotional).
Don't just prepare a number budget. Prepare a life budget.
R = C x A

Results = Capabilities x Actions
This should be squared

Use Slow Time To Build Content Inventory

noreply@blogger.com (eGrowth Marketing) — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 17:45:00 +0000

Interesting concept. Use a seasonally slow time to build content for busy times. The month of December is either a very busy month or a very slow month. Does not matter, the concept is relevant just plug in to the specific business cycles.

eGrowth Marketing recommends building content "inventory". If content is viewed as an asset or a production valued product or as a necessary business practice, then content will have appropriate weight and completion expectation in the company processes.

Develop Content In House

Assign the task of developing content to specific people in the company. They may be the best writer or the most knowledgeable or have the best skill sets to complete. The key is to assign the task with specific outcomes.

Develop "Go To" Resources

Find quotes and facts that pertain to your business or product. Trivia that educates. Factoids that amuse. Or time sensitive information that informs.

Sample sites:

Birthday, Fun Facts, Silly Quotes and Today in History - All on the front page!

Funky Facts - with great combinations and graphics. From penguin facts to swimming pool trivia. (Old site - http://funky-facts.blogspot.com/)

Amusing Facts - good site search engine. Easy categories with lots of quick facts.

Content for Factual Resources

Seek credible resources.

Industry sources.
Association sites.
Local Chamber of Commerce.
Polling or Opinion sites.
National news resources.
Google news feeds on a keyword.

Content drives the Internet. Relevant, fresh and timely information is key. Change content, inform and create a content brand!

New Google Analytics

noreply@blogger.com (eGrowth Marketing) — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 23:23:00 +0000

Google launched their new Analytics. Upside is more integration of social media, social media engagement and PPC tracking.

Check out the Real Time (beta). Freaky cool especially for ecommerce stores.

Twitter Demographic Keywords Reporting Tool!

noreply@blogger.com (eGrowth Marketing) — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 13:30:00 +0000

Love Twitter. Love better the demographics available on Twitter. Another easy demographic tool is Tweet o Life -

Social Media Statistics

noreply@blogger.com (eGrowth Marketing) — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 15:10:00 +0000

RSS Feed Tool For Websites

noreply@blogger.com (eGrowth Marketing) — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 18:28:00 +0000

Haven't used yet. But on our list of software to buy and try.

The Future of Google+: Social Network or Search Enhancer

noreply@blogger.com (eGrowth Marketing) — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 15:05:00 +0000

(Gini Dietrich, Spin Sucks) I’ve been thinking a lot about Google+ since they launched their business pages last week.

You see, it was announced at the same time that Joe Thornley, Martin Waxman, and I were recording Inside PR. So we all happened to be on the page watching it happen in real-time.

Google+ announced at 1 p.m. CT and, by 1:11 (yes, just 11 minutes later), Toyota already had more than 3,000 followers.

We asked one another the question, “How is that possible?”

While we talked, I began to dig. The Muppets had more than 6,000 followers and Pepsi was nearing 2,000.

Sure, it makes sense that a social network with 41 million users could attract that many followers. But these are brand pages. And they collected their followers in less than 15 minutes.

Slate had something to say on this in their article, “Google+ Is Dead,”

Considering Google’s marketing muscle—it hasn’t been shy about directing Web searchers to Google+, and everyone who’s logged in to a Google account sees the Google+ toolbar at the top of every Google page—it would be a surprise if Google+ didn’t have so many users.

Here is what I think is going on:

Google has been working with companies, behind the scenes, to build their brand pages and collect followers through search and employees, so at launch the perception is everyone is flocking to Plus.

Google has paid brands (both company and personal) to jump to Plus and bring their networks with them.

Google is less concerned about having a social network and more concerned about improving search and giving us, as individuals, customized information.

Google is counting “users” as those with Gmail addresses and not necessarily those who have signed up for Plus.

The interesting thing is, after more than a week, Toyota and Pepsi have both stalled in their growth. The Muppets have nearly 30,000 followers, which isn’t surprising when you can Hangout with Miss Piggy and Kermie.

Google+ isn’t dead, nor is it a Facebook killer.

Google+ is built for search and, the best way to do that, is to invite us into a social network where we post information about ourselves that the behemoth can then use both for good (for marketers) and for evil (for consumers).

They can’t crawl Facebook, but they sure can crawl their own social network.

So now it’s up to you to decide how customized you want your web experience to be and, based on that, what you +1, search, and post online.

Always be cautioned: The web is not Vegas…what happens here does not stay here.

What is Buzzdock?

noreply@blogger.com (eGrowth Marketing) — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 16:30:00 +0000

We added Buzzdock to Mozilla - and it rapidly adds to search capabilities! And, to anyone that has asked us "why use twitter?" - this is the perfect example of where results show as a tweet!

Buzzdock is the number one search enhancer on the web. With Buzzdock installed, you can search multiple sites at once, without switching between windows or tabs. Get all the search results you want with just one search. And it’s FREE to download.

How Buzzdock Works

Buzzdock is a dock that sits right below the search bar of your search results page. In addition to your regular Google, Yahoo, and Bing results, Buzzdock provides top search results from Twitter, Youtube, Flickr, eBay, and more. Just click on any of the website icons and Buzzdock will provide the search results.

It's All About the Sidebar. 30 Ideas to Make Your Sidebar Reader Valuable!

noreply@blogger.com (eGrowth Marketing) — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 18:38:00 +0000

What is a sidebar?

Some sites don't have sidebars. Or the sidebar may to the left, or the right, or both. On this blog, the sidebar is to the right.

If you choose to have a sidebar, it demands content to closely match the length of the page, style of the blog and achieve a value mission for the reader.

The sidebar is the perfect spot for instant messages, brag information or short snippets about your offerings. Change regularly and add new content or features to keep your reader engaged.

One caution - watch the widgets for speed of load. Not all content is created equal or fast.

Need ideas? Here are 30!

· Welcome Note and Thank You Note - well written and short
· Bio – of company or author of the newsletter
· Poll or Survey - Look at www.twtpoll.com, www.twtsurvey.com or others
· Contest – Make it at least 3 months.
· Coupons or Offers – At least 3 month.
· Related Posts - Links to pages with related content – Use pictures that look like ads.
· Image Rotator – Picassa works well.
· Feedback Form
· News Feed to industry source articles
· Testimonials or Customer Logos
· Humor – Caution!! Always think twice and have at least 5 people laugh.
· Look Up Widget – Vendor or other industry resource may already have one
· Associations - professional and local Chambers – logos and links
· Memberships - BBB or accredited. Logos with links to membership page.
· Affiliate Links - someone who gives you code to track the traffic to their site
· Newsletter Sign Up
· Mission Statement or History Statement of how we do business.
· Widgetbox or Springwidget – Design your own or use another developers.
· Authorized Reseller Badges – link to verification page
· Social Media – show followers or current content
· Validation Logos – for example, Authorize.net badge or SSL certificate
· Search box for site – Google has customizable version
· Contact information - if there is a specific contact you want to list on a page
· Subscription to a Newsletter
· Resources, Workshops and Learning Tools
· Job or Career – promotional picture to linked page
· FAQ - Rotate a common question and answer. "Did you know"
· Awards and Certifications
· PR and News - promotions, good deeds, employee thanks, service appreciation, etc.
· Employee of the Month – appreciation, tenure, etc.

Need more help? eGrowth Marketing can fill up the sidebar with interesting - and sales worthy ideas!

More Resources -

http://vandelaydesign.com/blog/wordpress/enhanced-sidebars-with-dynamic-content/ - Article

http://desktop.google.com/plugins/ - Google Widgets

http://widgets.yahoo.com/ Yahoo widgets.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_widget - Wikipedia about widgets. Reminder in there to check security of any "foreign" code.

Color for E Commerce

noreply@blogger.com (eGrowth Marketing) — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 15:35:00 +0000

Regardless of how we define commerce, almost every web site is selling something. It may be a one person accounting business, it may be a site that sells only tanning products or a much larger department store. Even educational sites could be considered commercial if they must generate advertising income.

A successful “store” has a simple formula. Initially, it must be accessible to everyone. It must be attractive and inviting. Once inside, the customer must be able to move comfortably through the store and find what they need. They must be able to examine the merchandise (or service) and get information about it. Finally, they must be able to successfully complete a purchase or procure a service.

For the first time in history, a flat surface electronically simulates a physical "bricks and mortar" store. In spite of the limitations of this digital medium of images and text, the same formulas for success apply — and even more so.

Color must function successfully on several levels simultaneously. First, on a technical level, the colors must be as accurate as the existing technology will allow, while, at the same time, heeding the rules of optics. Second, once a set of colors has caught and held the visitor's attention they must succeed in conveying appropriate information. Third, colors must function competently as the primary structural element in the store’s design — the web page layout. In this capacity, color must create appropriate spatial and navigational effects on the page and the site as a whole. Fourth, as the primary aesthetic tool, colors must create a sense of visual harmony, thus sustaining and enhancing the customers interest in the shopping experience.

Here are four formulas for success:

1. Convert images to the correct file format.
This not only delivers the best colors and the best images possible but it also lowers file sizes and shortens the download time.
2. Select the most appropriate colors by analyzing the store’s products or services and the target market. It is essential that colors bear some relationship — either symbolic or literal — to the product or service. Don’t try to reinvent the color wheel by using unusual colors.
3. Use color to create the most functional user-interface design. For example, use color to direct the eye to the most important areas on the page. The web designer must identify what ideal and normal sequences might entail: what the viewer should see first, where the eye should move next, and how much time the viewer's attention should be held by each area. Keep colors to minimum. "Signal detection" theory means that the brain is able to understand and organize information when a minimum of colors and shapes exists within the visual field. Too many colors and shapes make it impossible to focus and find anything.
4. Use color harmony principles to create a pleasant visual experience. In other words, all the colors of the web site— the navigation system, banners, buttons, and text — as well as the images of the merchandise (if they exist), must all work well together. Some common attribute must unify them.

In conclusion, consider this: Just as a store is constructed of solid matter, color is the basic building material of two-dimensional images and visual experiences. In the final analysis, color plays a pivotal role in the customer’s critical decision — to buy or not buy.