Q&As

Rewards program members were more likely to spend a greater amount of money in the past six months across 11 retail categories, including home improvement, electronics, grocery and book stores, according to a recent study conducted by Maritz Research, a market research firm.

McDonald’s has selected 25 consumers from around the world as its newest stars to feature on its packaging as part of the company’s first-ever online global casting call. Some 13,000 consumers from more than 100 countries around the globe submitted …

Eddie Bauer is the latest brand to join forces with supermarket coin changing machine company Coinstar, Inc. offering gift card and eCertificates in exchange for loose change.

Starbucks is giving consumers a new taste for their palates in its stores— The popular coffee chain will market a new book this fall, For One More Day by Mitch Albom. The new product category is the latest effort by Starbucks to reach consumers via …

Visa USA is offering small-business owners a hand in its first-ever national promotion aimed at small businesses. The sweepstakes, Hired for You, has an unusual grand prize: The winner gets an employee for a year, and $50,000 in Staples gift cards to …

The Women’s National Basketball Association’s (WNBA) Los Angeles Sparks team isn’t just serving up points on the basketball court anymore. It is engaging fans in a new loyalty program that lets game attendees earn points to redeem rewards.

By now, most marketers are clear on the need to improve their marketing effectiveness measurement. Unfortunately, the question of how still lingers broadly.

Justification is the name of the game when it comes to determining a direct marketing budget. It’s no longer good enough to make generalizations about how much revenue you’ll make or what the margin contribution to your bottom line will be. Today, management wants to know what the ROI is going to be before releasing funds. And they want to see detailed proforma metrics as the justification, regardless of the size of the program.

Online retailers will pull back from the physical world and move to the virtual one this December holiday season. And as they do, the metrics they use to evaluate their demand generation efforts have evolved.

(Promo) Thanks to improving data tracking tools, bean counters in the finance department might become defenders of marketing budgets during belt-tightening periods.
According to a study released last month by the Association of National Advertisers, 64% of self-described “successful” marketing program leaders engage a cross-functional team to keep marketing accountable. (MarketingROI, July 27, 2006).