Marketing research and insights news and information. This issue's keywords: promotional e-mails; free-trial customers; consumer trust; American children
A retailer's repeated same-day mailing of a special offer had a higher transaction rate than the first mailing, shows a study by Experian Marketing Services, Nottingham, U.K.. . Also, revenues per e-mail were 29 percent higher for second mailings than first mailings. The same-day repetition apparently did not bother the recipients, as unsubscribe rates remained steady at .03 percent for both e-mails. The study, Q4 2014 Quarterly Email Benchmark Report, was based on activity on the Experian Marketing Services network.
Customers attracted by free trial offers form a different relationship with a company than regular customers, leaving more quickly than regular customers but being more responsive to marketing efforts, according to a study by Massey University marketing professor Harald van Heerde in New Zealand. Van Heerde examined data from 16,512 customers of a European digital TV provider and found that half of the free-trial customers left the within two years, making their usage only one-third as long as regular customers. To encourage their remaining longer, he recommended that companies keep customers informed about their usage levels, reminding them of the value they are getting from the service. "Customers need to be shown how much they have used the service to cement its relevance to them," he said. The study estimated that a free trial offer needed to attract almost 2.5 times the number of new customers that would ordinarily be expected to join to make the offer financially worthwhile. Van Heerde's paper, "The Challenge of Retaining Customers Acquired with Free Trials" was included in the Journal of Marketing Research.
A GfK study has found that people in Canada and The Netherlands are most likely to trust other people. The new research reveals that 85 percent of Canadians trust people completely or generally, which puts Canada and The Netherlands tied as the countries most trusting of people. Canadians place the highest trust in trades (such as plumbers and electricians), who scored 82 percent. Canada's other highly trusted institutions include military/army (trusted completely or generally by 82 percent of Canadians), police (80 percent), justice system/courts (75 percent) and public administration and authorities (68 percent). The Internet (trusted by 40 percent of Canadians) and large companies/international corporations (32 percent) both lost trust in 2015, dropping 10 percentage points each compared to 2013. Both are viewed as less trustworthy than media (53 percent), church (55 percent) and government (62 percent).
Less than half of U.S. adults believe American children are healthy, receive a good education or are safe, according to a survey by the American Humane Association, Washington, D.C., in partnership with Chicago researcher Fieldwork. Men tended to voice more optimism than female respondents when asked to agree or disagree with statements of "children in America are safe" or "children in America are physically healthy," with 63.8 percent agreeing to the first and 31.9 to the second, while only 34 percent of women agreed to the first and 17 percent to the second. Formerly high-profile issues of violent video games and kidnapping have been replaced, with concerns about texting while driving, the absence of good adult supervision or positive attention and illicit drugs being mentioned most frequently. The survey was administered to 100 adults, 18 and older, with respondents representing a geographic cross section of American households.
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