Mad Men, Web geeks and the SEC

Your next annual report must have marketability, usability and compliance

The three worlds of advertising, Web site usability, and the Securities and Exchange Commission have collided. The result is a puzzle, and the public companies who can successfully fit the pieces together in 2009 will capture prospective investors while living up to the spirit of new SEC rules.

Award-winning Annual Report designed by Ervin | Bell

The high-end printed annual report is poised to become more focused as a long-term shareholder retention tool, and is increasingly valuable as a sales tool as well. Promoting your company to potential investors and analysts, however, necessitates not just any HTML annual report, but a well-executed one. Because the prospective investor has a low level of motivation, you have a very short period of time to provide what they’re looking for, link them strategically along your IR site and collect their email address.

The shared story below, Reflections on 2008 Annual Report Season, renders a verdict on the failure of companies over the past season to execute annual reports that reflect modern models of investor relations. It was filed by blogger Dominic Jones of IR Web Report.

read more | digg story

B-to-B marketers still taking advantage of pre-Web 2.0 tactics

Social media, or ‘Web 2.0′ is not quickly catching on in practice. B-to-B marketers see those tactics as less measurable than more conventional digital lead generation, BtoB magazine reports. With all the talk about social media, however, there are still many small and not-so-small companies out there who still need to embrace the digital lead generation tactics that pre-date the Social Media rage.

read original story from BtoB | digg story

Email marketing has grown up as the novelty has worn off

Email is an excellent medium for the agent or dealer audience. They are willing 'brand participants.'

The blogger’s opinion in the shared post below is consistent with our own observations concerning the role of email marketing in today’s media mix. It is true that email has increasingly become an effective retention tool, while it has declined as an acquisition tool.

There are ways, however, to leverage email as a medium in your customer acquisition efforts. In particular, sponsored ads within existing email newsletters can bring relevant content to an audience already loyal to the sender, thereby providing reach to new potential  subscribers. Publishers who sell ad space in their email newsletters are on to this, and that can be a good alternative.

clipped from www.e-consultancy.com The use of email marketing to drive customer acquisition is in significant, and terminal, decline. email is not a customer acquisition tool. In fact it never has been, but in the early years of the media, the novelty of receiving email meant that acquisition and lead generation emails were opened and clicked on. Any email marketer who thinks that consumers expect and deserve regular, mass email marketing will find their reputation and results flowing rapidly down the toilet. Email marketing is a retention tool, and used cleverly it is the ‘killer app’. Cold emailing as a core business proposition just doesn’t work because the need to flog as much data as possible is totally contrary to email marketing’s core requirements – targeting, relevance and quality.