Our Blog is dedicated to spurring conversations about our industry. Every week our Brand Architects will share their views on an array of marketing topics. We’re glad you’re here, and hope you’ll keep coming back.
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This week's post was contributed by SolutionSet CEO, Tim Ross.
After steadily investing in social media strategies—including some 1,200-odd Facebook pages—the financial services industry dramatically reduced its social investments in 2012. While more than 20% of financial services institutions were investing in social at the end of 2011, as the first quarter of 2012 drew to a close that number plummeted to just 6%. This sudden drop was largely due to major public scrutiny of banks for everything from new fees to fraudulent actions, such as the UK’s Libor scandal.
According to Nielsen, 45% of marketers advertise on social networking sites. Another 23% plan to begin advertising on social sites within 12 months—and with just cause.
Social media is a marketing tactic. As such it requires forethought, strategy, metrics and integration.
Our blog recently hit the one year mark. We are so thankful for our readers who challenge us to create insightful content for A “Brand” New View. We hope to continue helping marketers—regardless of the channels or industry verticals they operate in—engage audiences and achieve strong results.
Numerous studies have revealed that social media impacts the bottom line for brands. The effect word-of-mouth recommendations have on consumer purchase behavior is proven. With social commerce and targeted advertising creating additional opportunities for brands to capitalize in this medium, creating the most effective social media posts for your brand is vital for engagement and marketing ROI.
Corporate recruiting, along with just about every other facet of our personal and professional lives, has changed as a result of social media. From the way employers share open positions to the means by which candidates seek recommendations, our behavior has evolved due to the influence of the social sphere.
Evolving channels are leading to evolving expectations by loyalty members. Your loyalty members now expect your brand to communicate with them across the channels in which they spend their time. In order to do this, marketers need to know everything they can about their customers. The more we know about our members, the more value we can provide them. This simple truth makes seeking and applying data the key to success.
Congratulations, marketers! We’ve made it through another holiday season. But before we ring in the New Year, we’d like to look back at the top stories of 2011. Below are what we think were the most interesting industry stories and trends of the year, all in tweetable format for your convenience.
As our US associates prepare to leave the office and join family and friends to celebrate Thanksgiving, many of us are reflecting on the past year and what we are thankful for this holiday season. It’s been a great year so far at Epsilon. We welcomed Aspen Marketing Services to our family, celebrated Alliance Data’s 10th anniversary on the New York Stock Exchange and expanded our international presence in Asia Pacific.
Labor Day has come and gone and at the end of August, an estimated 19% of retailers had begun their holiday marketing campaigns. Epsilon recently hosted a webinar, Socializing Your Holiday Planning 2011, aimed at helping these marketers integrate social media into their upcoming holiday campaigns while there’s still time to do so.