Is women part of your target demographic? What Women Want Consumer Survey compared responses about Internet marketing techniques from women with children and women without children? As you might expect, their points of view are very different.

Email Preferences

In general, moms are very open to receiving email with thirty five percent responding that they would like to receive information relevant to their lifestyle and twenty one percent saying that they are willing to receive anything. Only twenty percent of moms did not want to receive emails. Women without children, on the other hand, were less likely to be open to email with thirty five percent rejecting any email at all and only seventeen percent fully open and thirty percent willing to look at relevant emails.

Effective promotions

Moms like online samples! Forty seven percent of moms welcome samples and think they are effective in promoting brands versus thirty eight percent of non moms. Both groups rated samples as the most effective promotion techniques compared with all other options such as coupons, banner ads, emails and so on.

However, coupons are not far behind in terms of preferred strategies. Forty percent of moms and thirty four percent of non moms welcomed coupons as brand promoters. Although non moms are pickier about what they are willing to read, they rated emails slightly higher than moms for promoting brands (thirteen percent versus nine percent).

One message that we see frequently is that no one seems to be influenced by banner ads with only four percent of the total group finding them effective.

The data element that may make you think again about the energy you are putting into blogging is that it rates even lower than banner ads in terms of effectiveness at an average three percent rating.

Preparation

Before you can begin to think of how to use this information to improve your marketing, you need to be certain that you are actually collecting this information from people who are on your email list. If you have it or can get it, terrific. If not, you will need to stick with the top two approaches since both are reliably effective with both groups.

Samples
Distributing samples can be a costly proposition, e.g., sample manufacture and packaging, shipping and handling and so on. However, if you can get a huge boost in conversion as this data suggests, it may well be worth it. Of course, you need to sell a product that can be adapted to a sample strategy. Appliances cannot be easily be sampled out but clothing is a possibility. You could, for example, send a fabric swatch sample or, if you have distinctive trims, send a button or piece of lace to show quality or originality.

Coupons
Coupons are obviously a draw for everyone in these belt tightening economic times. Other research has suggested that if you offer coupons, be sure they do not expire too quickly. Give them at least a nine month window for usage. Although this advice is contrary to the notion that you use a time limited coupon to close the sale, analysts have found that if you lengthen the effective time, the conversion rate goes up appreciably.