Business

Marketing is a major part of an annuity agent's focus when trying to identify potential clients, with many agents emphasizing home ownership, marital status, and other demographic cues to generate business. But recently, some annuity agents have taken to a different strategy: psychographic marketing.This type of marketing hones in on lifestyle, values, interests, and more personal information. This data is then combined with demographics to calculate the probability that a particular individual or household will conduct business with an annuity agent, according to Jeremy Rettich, the president of an insurance marketing organization in Tennessee. This helps agents narrow their list down to a manageable handful of prospects they can expect to attract. Rettich explains that the benefit of ...

As of 2013, the market for 3D printing expanded into a $3.7 billion industry, according to 3D printing industry analysts Wohlers Associates. Now a new report shows that 3D metal printing grew by 75% in 2013 as more manufacturers look to this latest technology to produce parts. For consumers and professionals alike, 3D printing is in demand for creating anything from toys to artificial limbs and organs, with the latter purpose becoming popular in the medical industry. Most of these 3D printers use polymers as their base to form plastic items. In 2013, the number of sold 3D metal printers, which can cost tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars, was 348, up from 198 machines sold in 2012. The recent growth in 3D metal printers is mostly attributed to commercial applications ranging fro...

Every recruitment agency works to find businesses the best employees. They utilize a number of methods to reach out to potential candidates, including online portals that make recruitment more efficient and effective. Recently, Workday, a human resources and financial applications provider, released a new cloud-based integrated system, Workday Recruiting, that manages several recruitment functions, as well as HR. The company has traditionally only provided several clients with HR systems to manage employee functions, but clients urged Workday to develop an advanced system that incorporates ways to view and manage potential recruits. As a result, the new human capital management applications are intended to benefit recruiters, managers, interview team members, and also potential candidat...

Investor faith in Twitter just keeps slipping. Since the beginning of the year, the little bluebird's stock prices have fallen more than 50%. As of today, stock values have slipped another 1%, leaving the company's worth at $32 per share. That's only $6 above what the company was originally valued at during its initial public offering in 2013.What's the problem? Why is Twitter stuck in a free fall? It's all about growth. At the end of Q1 2014, the company was estimated to have approximately 255 million users, well below Facebook's 1.4 billion. Up until recently, the comparison between the two was neither fair nor relevant, as they were completely different services. However, as Twitter continues implementing changes that make it more like Facebook everyday and the difference between platfo...

Moz.com, the website for an SEO and search marketing firm, recently conducted a survey of over 3,700 internet marketing consultants and specialists from across the globe to compare salaries for 2014. One of the most startling findings of this survey revealed a great disparity between the salaries of men and women who work in online marketing, and the breakdown of earnings may point to a disturbing trend when it comes to gender inequality among internet marketers.Moz's survey results stated that the average earnings for anyone working in the internet marketing industry was $65,766, based on their 3,700 respondents. However, men, who had an average salary of $68,785.11, earned significantly more than women, who brought in $57,438.14 annually.This wasn't the only startling fact when it came t...

One of the first surgeries treating scoliosis using the Magnetic Expansion Control device has been performed at Le Bonheur Children's Hospital earlier this week byJeffrey Sawyer, a pediatric orthopedic surgeon with Campbell Clinic. This was only the tenth surgery of its kind in the entire country since the U.S. Food & Drug Administration approved the Magnetic Expansion Control device (MAGEC). Scoliosis is a curvature of the spine usually occurring during the growth spurt before puberty. The cause of the most common type of scoliosis is still unknown, though many medical experts believe there are hereditary factors involved. Its symptoms include an uneven waist, uneven shoulders, one hip being higher than the other,and one shoulder blade appearing more prominently. Though it's typica...

Twitter announced Monday that it was adding a new feature, aptly titled 'Mute,' to the popular social media platform. 'Mute,' as the name implies, allows Twitter's 643 million active users to simply turn off tweets from friends, family, and celebs they're following. The benefit? Well, we've all had that awkward experience where we unfriend or unfollow someone on social media, only to cause them to have hurt feelings in the real world. 'Mute' allows you to shut off the annoying political rants and infinite stream of baby photos without alerting and hurting your friends. Is Twitter Creatively Bankrupt? For the most part, news of the update has landed with more of a thud than a splash! Over the last six months, the little-bluebird-that-could has released a number of updates to their servi...