Marketing Pilgrim

In an interesting look at the daily deal phenomenon that has everyone chattering in the recent past, some researchers have taken a look at whether daily deals influence how people do two things related to giving (at least in theory): holiday shopping and charitable giving.

First, eMarketer reports on data from another daily deal player, Eversave. Of course, we offer the usual “remember the source!” warnings since someone like Eversave has a vested interest in getting the word out to fight against the Google of the deal space, Groupon.

This first chart relates to how people may or may not turn to deal sites for holiday shopping.

There was a time when marketing men were like politicians. They had to shake hands and kiss babies, take district reps out for a lunch meeting and have dinner with the guy who could open up new territory but those days have gone the way of the piano lounge in the airplane. Now, we video conference with the reps, connect with customers by email and Facebook and use Linkedin to network with the guy who can help you open a store in Kansas.

Yeah for the internet! But Renee Huang of The Globe and Mail says that the internet is a poor substitute for the old fashioned meet and greet.

“Research in the business-to-business world suggests the No. 1 reason for selection of a supplier is the personality of the sales team or seller. This is above the technical specs, marketing form, anything else.”

Free shipping! Online retailers are shouting it from the rooftops and it could be the key to staying out of the red this holiday season. ComScore worked the numbers and discovered that unlike last year, the percentage of transactions with free shipping continued to rise after Black Friday. Last year, free shipping orders dropped to 45% late in November, but this year they climbed to 55.1%.

I do the majority of my holiday shopping online and I noticed this trend long before I saw this report. Nearly every online store I visited was offering free shipping on any size order. That’s not just a boon for people buying a whole sleigh full of presents from one retailer. A no threshold offer encourages people to buy small items that would have been too pricey with shipping included like a $5.00 pair of slippers from Kohls.

Marketing blogs don’t get to do a lot of “unboxing” videos, but thanks to a free gift from Google, I get to be one of the first bloggers to get my hands on the new Google Cr-48 Chrome Notebook.

As is tradition for this time of year, Google has released its annual Zeitgeist–the most popular search queries for 2010. Sure, there are other search engine “top query” lists, but we all know that Google is the king of search.

Something different this year: Google has an interactive map of searches and a pretty engaging video that sums up the year in search.

Apparently, Twitter would rather not be the target of Wikileaks supporters who have been taking down sites around the globe if there any indication of a slight against the document leaking entity. Who wouldn’t?

People have been wondering aloud for some time as to why certain things that are “popular” are not seen as trending in Twitter (an example is #iranelection). The Wikileaks concern has a lot of people talking but it’s not necessarily trending in Twitter. So the question is in the forefront again but this time Twitter is talking.

Twitter explains a little about their trending offering in their blog

This week, people are wondering about WikiLeaks, with some asking if Twitter has blocked #wikileaks, #cablegate or other related topics from appearing in the list of top Trends.