Traditional printed circulars have proven to be significantly more popular and effective among today’s shoppers than electronic-based direct marketing materials, according to a new Nielsen survey.

The market research company’s Evolution of Circulars survey, published last month, found that printed marketing materials such as direct mail, newspaper inserts, and in-store catalogues were the most popular of all retail-related direct marketing materials, with roughly 60 per cent of consumers looking at them once a week.

Additionally, the survey unearthed a surprise finding that direct mail is marginally more effective on the ‘Millenial’ generation than on the older Generation-X shoppers, confounding the common belief that the future of marketing will be solely online.

Taking in a sample number of 11,000 shoppers, the Nielsen poll also found that a whopping 90 per cent of shoppers surveyed wished to continue receiving paper-based marketing materials at home or in-store, while only 70 per cent expressed the desire for electronic messaging delivery.

One of the trends picked up in the survey was the shift of in-store marketing materials to mobile devices, with 18 per cent of shoppers using a mobile phone to see what’s available in-store and 33 per cent using a tablet device, with almost two-thirds of shoppers researching that information from home computers.

What the direct marketing industry can take away from this survey is the knowledge that, while digital and mobile marketing channels are well and truly on the rise, it will not be to the detriment of traditional channels, but in addition to printed marketing materials.

Source: Directmag

Topic: direct mail, email, Mobile, ROI, Social Media

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Well it’s “Christmas Eve Eve” (as some would call it) and we’re all still busy finishing up for the week.

2011 has been a year unlike any other for Christchurch. For those readers of this blog who are overseas, our City has faced many large earthquakes this year (as well as two heavy dumps of snow). We are now a city without a central business district, and Cantabrian’s have had to adapt extremely quickly to the rapid changes that occurred.

Fortunately for CQ, our building was relatively unharmed. Once we pushed the digital presses back into place and had the building inspected, we were back up and running a day or two later.

Our mission statement is “We love helping” and it was a privilege to be able to open our doors to five other business who needed temporary premises after the 22nd of February. We also found that old rules of business engagement were re-written, as we were also able to help companies that we would normally have been in competition with. This camaraderie was witnessed in business circles all over Christchurch and was wonderful to see on a city-wide basis.

It’s definitely a year that we won’t forget and will always look back on for many years to come.

It’s because of this that we would like to give a very special and heartfelt THANK YOU to our customers for your continued business this year. We hope that amongst all these changes, we managed to remain a constant and reliable supplier, who helped in giving you some peace of mind throughout the year.

And as I’m writing this we have just had another large aftershock. The first for a very long time. Staff are now ringing family to check on loved ones.

Let’s pray that 2012 is a lot better for Christchurch!

Topic: Our People

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