An interesting piece of quantitative research that seems contradictory at first, but on reflection could be ground-breaking.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Length: 7 pages

Promotions are more popular than ever, have wide appeal, and drive purchase and awareness – a welcome revelation for marketers struggling to create relevance with ad-weary consumers. Online promotions are particularly good tools for targeting valuable customers and enabling more interactive, relationship-based promotions strategies. As promotion use grows more sophisticated, Forrester expects that promotions will join the online marketing suite, print promotions providers will retrench, and marketers will leverage Social Computing technologies to guide their promotions strategies.

Source: Forrester: Interactive Marketing All Forrester Research

Key findings are that consumers are becoming more attuned to promotions, and particularly from their current provider. They are skeptical of promotions from others.

This seems to be a counterbalance to the impact of too many ads, and in recognition that even though most online folks find ways to ignore ads, they still need stuff. And one way to sort through the marketing garbel is to focus on price points. In particular price points from your current provider, with whom you already have a relationship.

Relevance to Bankwatch:

For all the talk of contextual, subliminal, google style marketing, this suggests old style (targetted) promotion to your own customers is a safe bet, and will in fact encourage loyalty.