'Eye on Australia' report from Sweeney and Grey provides view of where consumers are at - today

Australians are exiting the recession with a growing sense of optimism.

That’s one of the major findings from the 19th annual ‘Eye on Australia’ report released at the beginning of May.

The ‘Eye on Australia’ report tracks and identifies trends in consumer attitudes across metropolitan and regional areas. It provides detailed insights on how Australians feel about work, life, environment, spending habits and the economy.

The report is jointly put together by agencies Grey Advertising and Sweeney Research. The survey questions were asked in February 2010 and they show some amazing swings since a year earlier. (Whether response would be different now, three months later, is anyone’s guess).

Unemployment and job security concerns have dropped considerably, from 33% in 2009 to just 20%, while the proportion of Australians concerned about the economic outlook is dramatically lower – at just 25% compared with 36% last year.

The report indicates that back in February this year Australians were defiantly optimistic in the face of economic gloom and that as the recession was receding, economic anxieties were receding with it.

Overall, the results show that Australians are largely upbeat about the economy, with fewer financial concerns than a year ago. Personal finance worries decreased from 46% in 2009 to 33% in 2010, while more than half the people questioned say that the economic situation is improving. GFC concerns have halved from 44% to 22%.

The reduction in economic concern is reflected by the ‘satisfaction with life’ responses. Almost half of the respondents said that they were ‘extremely’ or ‘very’ satisfied with life today. And 75% said that they were enjoying their work.

You could probably conclude that the survey answers are indicative of a ‘don’t worry, be happy’ attitude.

However, there is one exception to this overall trend. Twelve months ago, 45% of women aged 45–56 years were ‘extremely’ or ‘very’ satisfied with life. One year on, and that number has fallen to only 31%.

The women in this age group are mostly the ones running established families. While the majority of Aussies are less concerned with their finances, the women in this age bracket (traditionally big shoppers) are still carrying the burden of worry. And it’s not just worry about their own finances; it’s the finances of their elderly parents and their children as well.

More information about the report can be obtained from Grey Advertising, Level 5, 470 St Kilda Road, Melbourne VIC 3004. Phone 03 92081931. www.grey.com.au

Generating leads from your site

When you visit a website and click on a link to get information, do you expect the information to be free and with no registration requirement?

Almost always the answer is ‘yes’.

Yet, for the marketer, giving away free content without getting a contact is not a great way to collect leads.

So what’s the answer?

Maybe an option is to ‘step’ the offer. In other words, you can offer a teaser, such as an excerpt of a white paper. And for this, no registration is required.

Then, once your site visitors become intrigued by the free content, they'll be more willing to provide data for lead generation.

To get the full white paper, they have to register.

You can let them click right through to the excerpt from the white paper, but inside the white paper is a link to a landing page where they can go and get the full white paper. In that case, they do have to pay for it ... with name and email address.

Email and social media must work together - Forrester

A Forrester report released on 13 May 2010 pushes the thought that email marketers must integrate social media into their campaigns to stay relevant to consumers.

Forrester says that such integration will create new opportunities for email list growth, extend campaign reach, and harness social insights to inform targeting.

The process of integrating email with social media should be more than sporadic coordination of campaigns.

With prospects and customers interacting with companies and brands largely on their own terms, marketers will achieve better results through the integration of their communications and channels. That's the overarching message in the Forrester report that was produced by research executive, Shar VanBoskirk .

In her report, “How to Integrate Email with Social Media”, VanBoskirk points to some significant benefits of tightly aligning email and social media, including better open, click-through and conversion rates; better email list growth; and increased campaign reach and influence through viral activity.

VanBoskirk advises marketers to adopt three specific tactics for integrating marketing efforts across email and social media:

1. Drive email subscriptions within your social media presence: place email registration boxes, or links to your email registration page, on your company blog, discussion forum or Facebook page. When you do this, people can sign up for this contact as they become more engaged with your brand.

2. Encourage subscribers to share email content: apparently, very recent Forrester research is finding that people are now beginning to share email content with friends via social sharing tools. The suggestion is that we should support this trend and benefit from it by not only placing "share with a friend" icons and links in your email, but at the top of your email layout.

3. Leverage social media content for more relevant emails: as with all campaigns, relevancy is what prompts engagement and response. Forrester urges marketers to increase the attractiveness of emails by incorporating user-generated content from social media presence.