Category: Mobile

The (successful) marketing landscape is changing because the consumer and their behavior are changing. No longer does a person see a commercial on television, in print, or hear one on the radio and act. Intrusion marketing has seen its day.

Now the STDs that I am talking about are likely not the ones that first came to your mind. I am talking about Social, Timing, and Data. Let me put it to you this way. Remember the commercial for Trident gum that stated “4 out of 5 dentists recommend Trident for their patients that chew gum?” What if a brand could plant in your mind, “4 out of 5 of my friends prefer ?” Which is more compelling? Which is more worthy of having influence on your purchase decision?

Point number 2 … what if you were shopping in a store and you received a promotion that was based on your shopping history. The example I love to give is as follows … Say you were shopping at the Gap. You get a text message (or promo delivered by an app) that offers you 20% off of underwear. Now that offer will either make you happy or weird you out – simply based on purchase history. Do you buy underwear at the Gap? Totally relevant store promotion if you have purchased underwear there, and on the flipside, the promotion might give you the shivers if you never thought of the Gap as a place to purchase underwear.

So the new marketing landscape is a combination of getting referrals and word of mouth marketing from your trusted network, and getting timely, relevant information based on accurate and well interpreted data. STDs – social, timely, and data. Let’s work STDs in reverse order.

First data … companies need to collect important data such as customer preferences and purchase history. Most people have strong and understandable privacy concerns. But it is up to each company to prove to their target audience that they are going to use customer data in a fashion that is protective and beneficial to their customers. There is a point where brands can build the reputation of “you provide the right feedback and information to us and we will make it worth your while.” Collect data in a non-corporate way and explain your brand’s use. Don’t put this use information in “Terms and Conditions” that no one bothers to read. As you collect information (including purchases) give immediate feedback on how the data will and will not be used and reinforce that customer data is protected and not shared.

Once you start to collect appropriate, relevant information, you are now in the position to provide individualized, timely information and promotions. This helps to make your consumer feel like they are the brand focused customer. Not some speck in a mass of marketing advertisement. This will help to further the relationship between your brand and your audience. I cannot emphasize enough how important this aspect is to the new marketing landscape. Timeliness and relevance spawn brand action and brand action should be the marketing objective.

We’ve addressed “data” and “timely” … now on to “social.” As you provide timely relevant information, keep the conversation going. Stay social. It will build a deeper relationship with your audience. Identify your power users, participants, and communicators. Build one-to-one conversations and relationships with them. This is the start to acquiring advocates and strengthening your word of mouth marketing.

When you put social, timely, and data (STDs) all together, you will find that 4 out of 5 friends recommend your brand not only to those that ask, but unprompted in forums, platforms and networks. And that is the power of STDs in the new marketing landscape. Don’t be afraid of STDs. Embrace them.

Make It Happen!
Social Steve

The goal of the “Summer Sale” initiatives by the USPS has been, since inception, to drive additional advertising mail volume (or at least halt the steady decline in advertising mail brought about by postal rate increases) through pricing incentives. The question is: How effective have these efforts been in achieving this goal?

This year’s incentive is a 3% reduction of postage costs for all mailers who apply a 2D (QR) bar code to all pieces in a mailing. The big, additional gain to the mailer, as we see it, is the opportunity for customers and prospects to scan this bar code with their mobile smartphone, which will then take them to a mobile commerce site (or other destination preferred by the mailer) enabling an additional non-invasive, zero-cost , multi-channel touch to the mailers marketing programs.

Based on responses to a recent poll we conducted, only 46% of responding catalog mailers will take advantage of this discount, and just 18% are taking advantage of the decreased rates to increase circulation.

We didn’t ask “why” to the low participation rate, but some responders volunteered reasons, and we have some, too. For one, this new summer sale was just approved in April leaving some mailers already “locked in” for print and name quantities for this summer. (Shifting mail into the discounted rate time period is not allowed by Summer Sale rules.) Secondly, for some catalogers, the cover “real estate” for QR codes on this summer’s books presents a timing challenge for catalog creative work. Another reason is that setting up an appropriate destination site was going to be problematic for those just getting into mobile commerce, given the compressed timeline for execution. Lastly, all pieces in a mailing need to carry the code to get the discount, requiring all co-mail pool participants use the 2D code for any to get the discount.

Will this Summer Sale produce results that will lead to the USPS goal of increasing advertising mail or at least reducing its volume decline? Maybe… maybe not… But this latest USPS effort, for those who participated, may tell us much about the benefit of providing customers and prospects an opportunity to try mobile commerce in an easy to execute manner, right from their catalog. Let me know your thoughts on this topic…and stay tuned for the results at summer’s end…

If anyone of sound mind has a good reason why this shopper should not unite with this product, let him or her come forward and say so (by mobile phone) or forever hold their piece.

Smart phones and the transparency they are beginning to afford shoppers are quickly changing the retail landscape.

Not long ago it would have been unthinkable to try to steal a shopper from your competitor’s brick and mortar aisles, but alas the technology gods have placed the Internet literally in shopper’s palms and transformed the rules of the game in two critical ways:

1. Reversing a trend retailers have enjoyed for years, shoppers have gained an information advantage and, 2. Retailers have even greater time-sensitive geo-targeting possibilities (this will be the topic for a follow up post).

First, let’s admit that for many years retailers enjoyed the advantage of information control over shoppers and, once they were captive in-store or on a particular website, conversion was often a foregone conclusion.

This is obviously no longer the case – a recent article in the Wall Street Journal detailed what some of this might mean and got me thinking about what exactly retailers need to fear about this transformation, and, more importantly, what they need to do about it.

One shopper I know, let’s call her my wife, recently used her iPhone to query the price of a new release video at her favorite mass discount store. She found it at a nearby specialty store and, after she checked out was willing to walk an extra block to save $4.

She went against her store brand preference and both stores lost – the first on a high demand, high margin priced product, the second on a loss leader with no other product sale to cushion the discount. All for $4.

With considerations for brand, scale, locale, assortment, pricing strategy, timing and a host of other inputs retail marketing is complicated. Those retailers not executing the basics well should be terrified – they will not last as the penetration of smart phones and other information “screens” persists, which it is and unboundedly so.

So it seems that although the Internet has largely rendered geography irrelevant the age-old adage of putting the right product in front of the right person at the right time (and place) and at the right price is still the way to win and keep customers.

Technology cannot replace the basic fundamentals of retailing. The good news is that a well planned and executed promotional calendar will still drive both loyal and new customers to retailers with a strong assortment and a positive shopping experience in all channels and these new trends in technology will only strengthen those best performing the basics.

Often times our clients want to represent data visually either on internal dashboards or with client facing graphics.   We have produced any number of such chart applications in the past and typically leveraged pre-built or custom Flash based charting solutions.   The JS charts didn’t look very good, the interaction (rollovers, etc.) wasn’t very rich, and the animation was often jerky if not unsupported altogether.   The static images generated by server side packages lacked the interactivity and animation of the Flash versions.   The Flash charts required no server side work, they could be “plugged into” a page, “styled” to look like the site, and fed their data with XML (either static or dynamic).   A good example of a flash based charting solution we have leveraged many times is Fusion Charts.

The landscape does seem to be changing somewhat.   This is due to 3 contributing factors:

#1 – HTML 5 allows for a lot of visual animation that negates the need to have flash on a page at all – even for somewhat complicated animation effects.   We recently completed a demo for AMD at CES that had amazing visuals with a storm of pictures flying around to form a composite image that was all HTML 5 and JavaScript – a feat previously unachievable.

#2 – JavaScript charting solutions are becoming more and more prevalent, robust, and work well on a growing number of browsers.   As a matter of fact, Fusion Charts now has a non-flash fallback to its Flash charts that are all HTML 5 and JavaScript.   There is a great summary of JavaScript based charting solutions that are available now.

#3 – The rise of iDevices – pods, pads, phones are all the rage these days and don’t support flash.  Whereas Flash used to be installed on a higher percentage of browsers than allowed for JavaScript, the introduction of these Apple devices and their stated lack of support for Flash has turned that equation on its head.   With more and more people visiting on these devices JavaScript has now become the common denominator more than flash.

What does this all mean?   Our recommendations are nowadays usually to use either a hybrid (flash if you’ve got it, otherwise JS or pure HTML and JS charts for our clients.  Certain visualizations and charts (maps with zooms for instance) may still not be there with JS and HTML, but for the vast majority of charts and graphs, flash only is no longer the only viable option.

iPhone apps might be the hottest thing to hit marketing since “viral videos.” But like viral videos, iPhone apps aren’t the right solution for every marketing goal. Before getting started, consider these six reasons to build an iPhone app:

Reason #1:  iPhone users are your target audience.
Of 300 million Americans, about 7 million use iPhones. If your company’s target audience is aligned with iPhone users, great. However, if your audience represents only 10% percent of typical U.S. consumers, then your iPhone App audience might be only 700,000 users.

Reason #2:  Your audience will discover your app.
There are over 150,000 apps in the iTunes App Store. These days app shoppers have no way to find an app, unless news sources write about it, or it becomes popular enough to make the iTunes hot list. You’ll need a way to make your audience aware of your app, like direct marketing, and link directly to its iTunes Store page.

Reason #3:  Your audience wants your app.
Most apps sell fewer than one thousand copies – because most apps are useless. But, if you can create an app that fulfills your audience’s existing mobile needs, you’re ahead of the curve.

Reason #4:  You can build your app within 90 days.
If you have a great app idea and don’t build it within 90 days, somebody else will. There’s no scientific reason for this parallel-idea phenomenon, but it’s reality. So, build your first version fast, then plan on releasing updates as you add additional features.

Reason #5:  Your app will be hard for others to replicate.
If your app is successful, other developers will copy your app and try to steal your audience. Consider creating an app that leverages your company’s proprietary data, or is so technically-advanced that most developers don’t have the ability to copy it.

Reason #6:  Your audience will use your app more than once.
Most iPhone apps are only used once. 95% of iPhone apps are used for less than fifteen days. Conversely, the best apps are used over and over. Every time your app is used, it offers brand-impression value, and the opportunity for users to show it to friends, thereby promoting it virally – which is the ultimate goal of any app.

In summary, iPhone applications offer an incredible opportunity to marketers, but make sure the development time and money invested in your app is well-spent.

Having a mobile strategy and presence does not need to be a difficult proposition. Sometimes the simplest tools can add big benefit. In a recent article on the website Mobile Marketer, Dan Butcher identifies the six trends affecting mobile marketing and commerce.

The trends are:

• increased Smartphone sales and usage
• dramatic increase in mobile Web usage
• mobile commerce adoption grows
• mobile search becomes essential
• multichannel marketing mix expands
• market fragmentation continue

To anyone who has an iPhone or other Smartphones, these trends seem obvious as we reflect on our own behavior and map them back to consumers at large.

Mobile strategies are multifold and depend on your business, marketing, and revenue goals. But as marketers, we must understand the need to respond to these trends and to use the platform to meet our objectives. This will not always involve the development of a ground-breaking strategy or the launch of an iPhone app that is featured in the store, but can be as simple as enabling our current sites to be useful and readable in a Smartphone’s form factor.

Strategies will evolve as we understand user behavior and must take into account how, when, and where consumers interact with their devices. Much as TV marketing strategies are different from online/web/pc-based strategies, mobile device users have different goals and must be communicated in a unique way.

Apps are a key element of mobile marketing, but are still very nascent as marketers understand how to interact with consumers.  For now, utility is the name of the game. Top apps (as is true with websites) make it easier for consumers to do something, not just to be entertained.

The lowest hanging fruit is to launch a mobile-enabled version of your site or elements of your site. With the proliferation of Smartphones, more consumers are using their mobile devices to visit websites for commerce and information. Thus, it should be an integral part of all marketing efforts to have a web presence which allows consumers to interact with the brand in a manner specific to the smaller real-estate available on the browser.

A great example of this is the mobile version of the VW site. This site simplifies those tasks which a mobile user would be most interested in: reviewing car models, finding a dealer, and contacting road-side assistance. This is all designed for the form-factor of the phone and offers a very unique and valuable experience to the consumer, which is a different from the experience of going to the main VW website from a Smartphone.

The trends will only continue as the adoption of mobile is ramping faster than desktop internet did and will be bigger than we think.

JCPenney recently began testing POS mobile coupon redemption in the Houston metro area, claiming to be one of the first U.S. retailers to instate such a program. Accessible to consumers through the mobile coupon fulfillment service Cellfire, these coupons can be scanned directly from the phone screen at the register.

In an article published on mobilemarketer.com, Dave Owens, the development director for emerging digital media at JCPenney, talks about the company’s mobile initiatives. From the source:

“We recognize that this is where the customer is ultimately going, and we want to make sure we’re there and ready when the adoption curve ramps up. Mobile is a convenient way for consumers to shop JCPenney and redeem coupons and we want to support that need. The biggest thing is immediacy, because it puts the consumer in control. Its a competitive advantage to have a coupon right on her phone, which provides true immediacy and a discount offer she didn’t have to plan for.”

Comparative shopping. Coupon hunting. Customer service and product reviews. Location-based offers. As the real-time realities of a mobilized world settle in, this sort of instant gratification from retailers will become the norm. Read the full article here.

A couple weekends ago I attended  preDevCamp San Francisco down at Palm’s Sunnyvale offices.

The event gave an opportunity for interested developers to get up to speed on the development for the phones, along with some prizes, pizza & presentations.

To summarize what it’s like developing for the phone, it’s JavaScript. They have a preference for the Prototype framework, which I found a little surprising since development on the framework has been slow the last few years.

The application is structured to provide JavaScript classes called assistants which correspond to the particular pieces of the application, stage, scene, or application. The flow is fairly routine, and the emulator works well. Besides the tight coupling of Prototype, the development was pretty straightforward.

I was impressed.

By the end of the day myself and another developer were able to build a fully functional video poker clone. Not bad for 5 hour sprint, I’d say.

During the applications presentation, a number of  apps that developers had obviously been working on previously were demonstrated. There was a nifty scientific calculator, and a scrabble/boggle mashup game, and a hold-em/scrabble game.

One thing that may be missing so far seems to be the graphics library. There was talk of the HTML5 Canvas tag support being pretty rough, and no other way to do in-depth graphics, so for hard-core game development, that is going to be a problem.

Overall, it seems Palm has a nice platform, in the MojoOS, for developers out there.

With over one billion iPhone apps downloaded to date, it’s no wonder brands are itching to get facetime with consumer smartphones. Tom Martin, President of Zehnder Communications, wrote an article for Ad Age that asks a critical question: Should these branded apps be toys or tools?

While the safe and obvious answer would be “both”, Martin takes the stance that practicality should trump novelty every time. From the source:

Toys (read game-type applications) don’t really do anything to sell your product. And in the case of those silly Facebook apps that let me toss a sheep or buy someone a beer, my total interaction time with the app is mere seconds. Is that really helping to convert me or reinforce my loyalty to your brand? I think not.

Martin goes on to explain that tools don’t get tossed aside. People don’t get bored with tools. They provide solutions, not distractions.

Take the highly practical Bank of America’s ATM locator. Or Kraft’s iFood Assistance app, which sold for 99 cents and made the iTunes Top 100 Paid Apps list. And let us not forget the infamous Burger King “Whopper Sacrifice” Facebook app, which turned out to be one of the most controversial (and innovative) coupon delivery methods of all time.

While this all sounds well and good, the life expectancy of apps is still frighteningly short. According to a report earlier this year from Pinch Media, only 5% of those who downloaded a paid app were actively using it 20 days after purchase. The fall-off was even steeper for free apps. Add an incredibly crowded app marketplace to this consumer finickiness and odds for success start to drop.

So brands are left wondering whether they are “sinking the boat” on bad bets or “missing the boat” by letting opportunities pass by. I say build something practical and let the market tell you if it’s a tool or just another toy.

Even in these slash-and-burn times, rays of hope exist in this business. AdAge wrote an article today that took an optimistic look at online coupons, marketing analytics, mobile, and more. A patchwork from the source:

Online Coupons According to ComScore, coupon sites were the fastest-growing online category in November by traffic, up 32% from October to 35.6 million. Coupons.com got about a quarter of that, or 8.5 million visitors, up from 8 million in October and 6.5 million a year ago. The company has seen its redemption rates increase 1% to 17% in the last year. (A newspaper coupon’s average redemption rate hovers around 1%.)

Marketing Analytics Speaking to analysts in November, Nielsen CEO David Calhoun said he still can’t hire enough analysts to keep up with demand, which is increasing, thanks to the economy. “There is a lot of attention being paid to market-share shifts, pricing analytics, the kinds of things that can sort of keep everybody’s heads above water during this tumultuous time,” he said.

Mobile Location-based advertising (Loopt in partnership with CBS will launch its advertising platform this year), in-game mobile advertising and mobile-video services are examples of emerging areas…According to estimates, mobile marketing will grow from $708 million in overall revenue this year to $2.2 billion in 2012—a compound annual growth rate of 26%.

Coupons. Analytics. Mobile. Three of our very favorite subjects. Good to know we’re onto something.