Almost a third of non-life insurance customers in Yorkshire and the Humber have swapped their providers in the last year to save money, a survey has found.

Results for a YouGov online poll show that 31 per cent of consumers in the region have swapped insurance providers for non-life insurance policies while 28 per cent say they are more likely to use a price comparison website than 12 months ago. Both figures are close to the national averages (34 per cent and 32 per cent respectively).

On a positive note, fewer consumers say they expect to make spending cuts at their next renewal date than last year. Twelve months ago, 13 per cent of consumers with non-life insurance policies said they would consider stopping their contents insurance when it was next up for renewal compared with only four per cent planning that this year.

Also, 11 per cent of consumers were considering stopping their payment protection insurance and 13 per cent their travel insurance, however only six per cent and seven per cent respectively would this year.

From these figures it looks apparent that consumers are beginning to show some confidence in the economy and the recovery in general. However it doesn’t mean that we should be anymore creative in our approach to engaging with these customers.

Consumers may seem more committed to keeping their policies, they have not shown loyalty to their insurer, with over one third nationally (34 per cent) having changed insurer in order to save money. The increased movement in the insurance market is undoubtedly due to the rise in popularity of price comparison websites.

The ice cream brand has decided to cut its monthly newsletter because the feedback it received from customers suggested that the majority would prefer to be contacted on social media sites. Email marketing has long been established as one of the most effective digital marketing channels and has become a standard marketing channel for most brands.

In a move away from established practice, Ben & Jerry’s plans only one email update to customers each year. Instead, Facebook and Twitter profiles will be used to engage and build relationships with customers on an ongoing basis.

Its final email invited them to connect with the brand on Twitter and Facebook.

For certain brands this could well become an effective channel to form relationships with customers, particularly with the younger audience who are beginning to view email very differently. This will only increase as email integrates with social media, take Microsoft who this week announced a Facebook plugin for Outlook and mobile platforms develop further applications in this area.

In another sign that we may have seen the worse of the recession out, online retail sales increased 22% over the past year, the highest rate of increase for over two years.

The latest IMRG Capgemini e-retail Sales Index results revealed online sales saw a total spend of £4.5bn in May, an equivalent of £73 for every person in the UK.

According to the report, online shopping increased by 3% compared with April this year, with many online retail categories impacted by the World Cup.

Alcohol sales jumped 23% in May, and electrical goods by 13%, as people sought to upgrade their TVs ahead of the tournament. Clothing also rose by 32% over the past year, boosted by sales of sportswear.

In line with IMRG predictions, the UK e-retail market has grown 14% YoY.

Knowing the tortore we have gone through and still go through with compliance departments when developing both on and off line camapiagns for clients this has not really come as a surprise.

The Financial Services Authority (FSA) has said that banks and financial services companies must comply with advertising rules when using Facebook and social media such as iPhone apps.

 The FSA issued the warning after conducting a study examining how financial serices companies communicate with consumers which found some use of social media channels lacked compliance with industry rues.

Companies posted Twitter updates or commented on discussion forum threads without the proper disclaimers and risk warnings, the FSA says, and engaged in promotional behaviour without complying with all the FSA’s rules.  The FSA studied 30 Twitter and Facebook pages and followed companies’ behaviour on financial forums.”Throughout the review we identified good and poor practice among firms who had adopted the use of new media to communicate financial promotions,” an FSA statement says. “Some promotions lacked risk warnings. Other promotions, while not very specific about products or services, nevertheless went beyond the definition of ’image advertising’.”

The watchdog warned companies that all their communications will come under scrutiny.

“Firms may not have considered these factors to meet the definition of a financial promotion and therefore have not applied the relevant communication rule,” the regulator says. “Our rules cover all communications by regulated firms to clients, not just promotional ones. The rules for non-promotional communications are fairly high-level – the main rule is that communications must be fair, clear and not misleading.”

The regulator also questions whether Twitter is an appropriate medium for financial firms to comminucate on at all. “It is important to consider whether a channel is a suitable method for the type of communication. For example, Twitter limits the number of characters that can be used, which may be insufficient to provide balanced and sufficient information,”

“It is important to consider whether the risk information could be displayed prominently and clearly using this media channel,” said the FSA. “Promotions and communications made using new media must meet the requirements for stand-alone compliance.”

A recent BBC news article about the British Library highlights the problems they are facing trying to archive the internet due to an absurd legal situation. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8535384.stm

This bring up the old adage that everything you put on the web COULD be there forever, so always be careful of what you say. They are looking to store everything from personal websites to blogs, but is it right that everything should be automatically archived, or should they have to asked your permission first? leave us a comment and let us know what you think.

 Visit the UK Web Archive and see if anything you have done is in there for future generations: http://www.webarchive.org.uk/ukwa/

September’s mail order and online sales rose 11.9 percent on last year 

Retail sales also did well last month – 2.8 percent up on last year, the highest year-on-year growth since April according to the British Retail Consortium.

I’ve always thought that we’d come out of recession quickly and that there would be a surge from build up of demand where people would make the purchases they had been putting off whilst listening to the doom merchants.

On-line sales being up nearly 12% is quite a figure, bearing in mind that we’ve only just paid for the summer holiday and looking forward to Christmas expense.

Over recent weeks we’ve noticed that many clients have moved from saying ‘we’re doing alright but we’d better be careful because we don’t know what next month will be like…‘we’ve got some of the budget back that was taken away earlier this year and we need to generate leads/sales/activity before the year end’

Time to get busy!

Phil

The popular social networking website accounted for 14.5% of all UK Internet page views during September 2009, equivalent to 1 in every 7.

During September Facebook was the second most visited website in the UK after Google UK but because users view a much larger number of pages per visit, Facebook is the clear leader in terms of page views, receiving more page views than Google UK, eBay UK and YouTube combined. With UK Internet visits to Facebook increasing by 86.1% between September 2008 and September 2009. 

Although it has fallen somewhat off the media radar in favour of Twitter recently, Facebook remains far and away the most popular social networking website in the UK, accounting for almost half (49.2%) of all UK internet visits to a social networking website. The web monitoring company Hitwise showed that its average visit time increased from 19 minutes 59 seconds in September 2008 to 26 minutes 14 seconds during September 2009.

Coupled with the targeting opportunities available through their advertising platform, brand and product pages and linking with client websites and microsites, the joined up thinking that was missing is now here. With some brand groups attracting in excess of half a million followers it offers brands unprecedented access to their core advocates.

Introducing further features such as Facebook applications further allows brands to virally spread their messages. If you’d like to talk through the opportunities Social Networking could offer your brand, please feel free to email steve@pcdagency.com

Steve

Graph showing changes in marketing spend by category

Marketing spend fell for the eighth consecutive quarter but nearly half of companies surveyed are seeing improved prospects, says the latest IPA/BDO Bellwether report.

The Bellwether report says that while budgets dropped once more in Quarter 3 it was the smallest reduction in more than a year. The proportion of respondents reporting a decline in budgets eased to 28% while the number reporting a rise moved up to 13%.

The report finds that business confidence is on the rise with respondents saying that the degree of optimism in regard to financial prospects for their own companies was at its strongest since the final quarter of 2006, with 47% seeing improved prospects.

As excepted, among companies surveyed, only internet advertising was the only category to see an increase in spend with marketing budgets rising for the first time since Q2, 2008. The steepest cut in spend came for the “all other” category, which embraces PR, events and sponsorship.

Cuts in main media advertising were the smallest for six consecutive quarters. Spend was also cut for direct marketing and sales promotion, though both saw only modest falls.

The research found that the retail, travel and entertainment sectors saw increases in spend, with the steepest falls seen in financial services, IT and computing, and industrial sectors.

After a period of dramatic falls across virtually all sectors, it has meant a rude awakening to both marketing departments and agencies alike, what long term impact this will have on the industry is anyone’s guess.

The most important issue and that which will make the most difference are the strong rise business confidence, and the suggestion that we may see a rising GDP in Q3.

Steve