New York SBDC Research Network

From eMarketer : Growth of the private-label market in recent years has been driven by demand from lower-income shoppers as well as budget-conscious millennials. But these products are attracting wealthier consumers, creating yet another challenge for national brands. According to an IRI survey released last week, over half (52%) of consumers with household income of more than $100,000 said they expect to buy more private-label products over the next six months. For those earning $55,000 to $99,000, 62% planned to do the same. Those percentages are still smaller than the responses among consumers making less than $35,000 and millennials in general (76% and 74%, respectively). However, the private-label buying plans among the more affluent were higher compared with previous findings, according to IRI.

From Verizon : For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. Newton’s Third Law of Motion As a college student, I majored in physics where the Laws of Motion and the Laws of Thermodynamics provided a reliable framework for explaining how things work. With a basic understanding of these laws, one can make reasonable predictions about the behavior of things in the everyday world. Who knew, though, that these laws could also be relevant in explaining behavior in the world of a customer experience professional? The behavior of most interest to businesses in today’s digital economy is customer loyalty. They talk about it in employee webcasts. They track it on social media. They report on it in scorecards with metrics like churn, repeat purchases, and average revenue per user (ARPU). And in doing so, they completely miss the point. To put it in Newton’s parlance, loyalty is not an action, but a reaction.

From MarketingProfs : Businesses depend on email as the glue that pulls marketing tactics together, yet many otherwise-savvy marketers misuse email in a way that ultimately alienates customers. Years ago, one-size-fits-all communications worked fine, and you might well have created one email for everyone and sent it once a week. Though it still happens, it's no longer the norm now that merchants can take advantage of more sophisticated customer intelligence. Attention to the details can pay off. Email the right message to the right people, and you'll engage and delight your customers while driving more opens, clicks and sales.

You’ve successfully launched your business, and built up a solid—if small—customer base. Starting small has its benefits; after all, it allowed you the opportunity to cultivate a loyal relationship with your customers. By now, you’ve had time to work out any kinks, and you’re confident that your product or service is truly the best your business can offer. Now, you’re eager to expand and grow your business. But, growing your customer base is much easier said than done. How do you get more customers for your business? I asked the Young Entrepreneur Council for their input, as well as Palo Alto Software’s Caroline Cummings and Tim Shoemaker. From marketing tactics to better networking, try these tips and watch your customer base grow quickly. Read more from Bplans

Consider the following email marketing statistics from a recent consumer research study of British consumers: The average person's inbox has 260 unopened emails, 56% of which are from brands. 60% of those people who never open brand emails admitted they would if the subject line were personalized. The above facts tell us that consumers find impersonal marketing communications—let's call it "brand spam"—irrelevant as well as annoying. Often, unread emails from brands are those the consumer initially elected to receive, a process we call "self-selecting." Self-selecting is defined as ignoring emails originally requested but no longer relevant by the time they reach the individual's inbox. The solution to eliminating brand spam is to provide greater context for improved personalization. Read more from MarketingPros

Employees and even executives sometimes start to think about their customers with an "us vs. them" mentality, particularly in times of stress—during, say, the busy holiday season or when a customer has a complaint. That's a dangerous mindset, especially if it becomes habitual. Competitive advantage these days demands customer-centricity. The more customers your organizations can engage meaningfully—especially those who care enough to tell you how to do things better—the better off you'll be. Social media, where you can see eye to eye and develop interactive relationships, is a terrific venue for doing that. And if you use it not just to engage but also to empower, you'll transform a customer from someone who likes your product to someone who feels like a part of your product. That's an important shift, because the latter customer is the one who is far more likely to find every opportunity to tell people, online and off, why they think what you do is so g...

The disability community comprises nearly one-fifth of the American population and constitutes an untapped consumer market worth over $220 billion in discretionary spending. Further enlarging this market are families, friends, communities, employers, and service providers of people with disabilities. Like other niche markets, the disability community responds positively to companies whose marketing approaches are empowering and address their needs and interests. NOD offers consultations and training for businesses and marketers who wish to tap into this increasingly powerful consumer sector. More from The National Organization on Disability . Many companies ignore this growing demographic in their promotional events or ad campaigns, often because they’re worried they’ll do it wrong and offend someone in the process. That’s a mistake, Nadine Vogel says, as people with disabilities – and especially parents of special-needs kids – would appreciate the attention. Vogel, who has two s...

From Arizona State University : A new customer-rage study shows more American consumers than ever are dissatisfied with the products and services we buy. Also, despite companies’ big-money efforts to create customer-care programs, we’re less happy with the service received when we complain. The study shows 56 million American households experienced at least one problem during the past 12 months, and about $76 billion in revenue was at stake for the businesses involved. "The moral of the story: Don’t invest in improving your customer service unless you’re going to do it right," says Professor Mary Jo Bitner, executive director of the Center for Services Leadership at the W. P. Carey School of Business at Arizona State University, which helped design the survey. "If a company handles your complaint well, then you typically become a more loyal customer. However, if they don’t, then you become 12 percentage points less brand loyal than if you never complained at all....

Along with measuring your business traffic and conversion, success also relies on customer retention to complete the big picture. You may be getting attention, turning visitors into users or paying customers but are you able to keep them around month after month? Or are they leaving after one experience or one transaction? If you want to build a sustainable and scalable business, you need to cut down on churn, the rate at which people are discarding your products and services. To do so, calculating your customer retention is the first, and important, step in this process. First, retention refers to a certain point in the customer lifecycle and it can come at different points for different businesses More from Evergage HERE .

From CBS News MoneyWatch : In its 13 years, my company has been unusually fortunate in that we have had -- as hard as it may be to believe -- only two or three bad debt write-offs (for very small amounts) and perhaps four or five credit card chargebacks (money taken back by card issuers, typically due to customer disputes or fraud). Other than that, our receivables have always been current. I attribute this partially to good luck, but mostly to careful, disciplined processes and practices, from making open-account decisions, to manually reviewing any suspicious credit card charges before shipping (obviously not possible for all businesses), to being willing to pass up any order if we are concerned about getting paid. Unfortunately, it happens that right now we are dealing with our first-ever serious collection challenge, for a relatively large amount of money, from an otherwise great and longtime customer.

"Don’t you love when someone remembers your name? Make an effort to remember your customer’s name when working with them. They will appreciate your extra effort to make them feel important." This site asks: What’s your trick to remembering your customer’s name? Among the good ideas: 1. Stop telling yourself that you are bad at remembering names 2. Repeat their name 4-5 times during your first conversation 3. Use a mnemonic device to associate their name with something else 4. Practice

A fan of the hit series Mad Men? Based on an advertising agency on Madison Avenue in the 60's, check out some lessons from the show that would be useful for business owners: Don’t depend on one customer for all or your major part of your business: In the episode the newly formed company which is a small business faces the loss of the client “Lucky Strike” brings home the horror of a business losing their biggest customer. Ideally the best strategy could be to continue to get more new customers so that your entire business is not dependent on one customer. Take risks. Don’t be afraid to let a client go under compelling circumstances: I am not 100% sure about this so I hope you can give me your experiences. In the series when the company decides to go after the business of American Airlines they decide to drop another profitable existing client. If you are a proponent of a “bird in hand is worth two in the bush” then you would be cautious with this. Offline networking and s...

Many firms assume that customers can do just one thing of real significance: buy their products and services. It's time to seriously challenge that assumption, as many companies are doing by looking to customers to fuel their growth engines. Facebook, for example, has close to 1 billion customers who don't pay a cent. Yet the company is receiving valuations of $50 billion and more — despite having just 3,000 or so employees — because of the extremely high-potential, non-purchasing value such customers provide. In a phrase, Facebook and other forward-thinking companies look to their customers to grow their businesses. This isn't genius at work. In fact, entrepreneurs like Mark Zuckerberg and Marc Benioff of Salesforce.com, are simply recognizing — and acting upon — entirely obvious realities about customers and their desires and competencies, choosing to leverage these rather than fight against them, as so many firms do. Here are five examples: Customers know more abou...

From Debbie Bermont at ConnectItNews If your company is dependent on larger sales from fewer customers, then you could put yourself at financial risk by taking on the wrong customer. One of the most common mistakes business owners make is to accept money from anyone who is willing to pay for their product or service -- even if the customer is not the ideal fit for their business. Whether you're a startup or a large corporation, taking on a new customer who doesn't match your ideal customer profile can be a big mistake. Here are seven situations that indicate you should say no to new business. If you don't heed this advice on when you should turn down new business you will be in serious danger of having a database of customers that can take your business into bankruptcy.

A Startup.Biz article outlines five recommendations for "coupon success." Number one - naming a specific product or service - is extremely important. If a company is trying to offer $10 off a new $50 service, for example, and customers only know about a $150 service, the coupon is likely to be ignored. Possibilities that lie in the opposite direction are even worse. If people apply the coupon to a $15 service, the company will probably lose money. It risks being overwhelmed by bargain shoppers and losing more solid customers, too.

A blog I read recently led me to an article on the SpecialtyFood.com website. It's called "Striving for Third Place," and, no, it's not an essay that is promoting mediocrity. While the article targets businesses in the food industry, the ideas it puts forth can be implemented in a variety of retail & service stores. The article posits that the "first place" in a person's life is home, while the "second place" is work. The "third place" is that public spot where people gather and interact with such regularity that they become part of the business' very fabric. There are several suggestions here on how entrepreneurs can help establish their businesses as a third place. These are ideas on how to generate repeat customers, but, in a larger sense, these are ways to better integrate the business as part of a larger social structure in a neighborhood. Right after college, when I was adrift in Albany, I found myself routinely visitin...