A few more important points

Ok, I promise to keep it brief this time. Bullets are my life…

From Forrester report, “Using Promotions to Cut Through Ad Clutter”

• Consumers go to great lengths to avoid ads. From 2002 to 2004, their attitudes toward advertisements plummeted as their drive to block ads increased.

• We asked North American online consumers how they heard about the last promotion they used. Responses included both online and offline channels- 20% heard about the last promotion they used through an ad on the site where they were shopping, 14% heard through an email from a retailer, and 16% heard about the last promotion they used through a print ad
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• We asked online promotions users how frequently they participate in different online activities. 11% said they read blogs once a week or more frequently. Additionally, 6% of online promotions users are interested in reading blogs from their favorite marketers, and 9% are interested in receiving RSS feeds.

• Product awareness and promotions to drive purchases used to be separate functions. In the online
  environment, these two functions are now closer together.

• While demographics provide some insight into the promotions and channels that are preferred by different segments, marketers prefer behavioral targeting because it generates more click-throughs and conversions.

• One of the largest challenges today between marketing and IT collaboration is how to make sense of increasing volumes of customer data. The Marketing Technology Backbone — a technology infrastructure that supports an integrated approach to marketing strategy, development, delivery, and measurement across the marketing mix — helps ameliorate this issue.

• Current efforts of “customer listening” fall short and should be replaced by Social Computing tools that involve consumers in the innovation process in more spontaneous and continual ways. Brand monitoring