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Wise Foods’s Scan It To Win It Sweepstakes (Promo Magazine)

Posted: 03/31/2011

The 2009 launch of Wise Foods’s first sweepstakes generated 37,000 opt-in email addresses to its database. Last year, the company ran the same program during the same time frame and added another 20,000 addresses to its list. "The biggest chunk of our yearly database has come through this one promotion," said Kevin Foltz, marketing manager for Wise Foods. Designed to capture return visitors, this year, the 90-day sweepstakes is being tied to Wise’s 90th birthday celebration. The company promotes the sweeps via its Website and Facebook page, on partner Coupons.com Web pages, through text messages and banner ads and via in-store displays and header cards.

Industry: Marketing, Design, & Interactive Communications, Retail & Products
Topic: Business Intelligence, Content Strategy, Experience & Interaction, Marketing Communications
Region: North America
Audience: Business to Consumer, Peer Groups & Communities

Creating Intelligent Hyperlocal Campaigns (BrandWeek)

Posted: 03/31/2011

You’ve heard it before: to be an effective marketer you have to reach your audience with the right message at the right place at the right time. With this most basic of marketing principles in mind, more and more businesses are turning their attention to hyperlocal advertising and marketing. As technology continues to evolve, it is easier than ever to pinpoint a customer’s exact location. Pair that with the consumer’s growing interest in being tapped for local marketing and you have a powerful combination. The Mobile Marketing Association found that most mobile users are “interested in allowing their phone to automatically share their location in exchange for perks, such as free use of mobile applications and mobile coupons.” The key is to tap into your current customer base and make your move before your competitors to ensure the most success.

Industry: Marketing, Design, & Interactive Communications, Retail & Products, Telecommunications
Topic: Business Intelligence, Content Strategy, Experience & Interaction, Marketing Communications
Region: Global
Audience: Business to Consumer

Email Remains Key Tactic To Boost Engagement In 2011 (BtoB Online)

Posted: 03/31/2011

According to StrongMail’s 2011 Marketing Trends Survey, which collected responses from 925 business leaders, 50 percent of those surveyed said their marketing budgets will increase this year, 43% of budgets will remain the same, and 65% said they plan to increase email spending. Ryan Deutsch, VP-strategic services at StrongMail, said “If someone receives 15 emails from you and doesn't open any of them, [the email server or ISP] might start blocking subsequent emails,” he said. Therefore, it’s just as important to design you emails according to who is opening them as it is to target those who aren’t. Often, all it takes is sending out an offer they can’t refuse. Designing a compelling welcome series can go a long way in communicating the value of your communications.

Industry: Marketing, Design, & Interactive Communications
Topic: Business Intelligence, Content Strategy, Experience & Interaction, Marketing Communications
Region: Global
Audience: Business to Business, Business to Consumer

Facebook Gears Up For Major eCommerce Drive (BusinessWeek)

Posted: 03/03/2011

In an effort to convert more of the social network’s 500 million users into regular online shoppers, Facebook is now wooing big business. Facebook has added e-commerce features designed to “attract users, keep them logged-on longer, and generate higher advertising sales,” thereby attracting major brands to sell their products and services through the social networking site. Helping with the effort are companies like Minneapolis-based Alvenda and San Francisco-based Payvment, whose technologies have allowed the company to integrate a retail component into Facebook pages and facilitate payment. David Fisch, who runs the newly formed commerce partnerships group at Facebook, hopes the effort may turn the company into an online shopping alternative. More than half of the top 25 retail sites, including retail competitors like eBay and Amazon, have linked their sites to the social network in the past year, Facebook says.

Industry: Marketing, Design, & Interactive Communications, Retail & Products, Technology, Consulting, & Professional Services
Topic: Business Intelligence, Content Strategy, E-Commerce, Experience & Interaction, Marketing Communications, Technology Implementation
Region: Global
Audience: Business to Consumer, Peer Groups & Communities

The Social Factor For Online Retail (New Media Knowledge)

Posted: 03/03/2011

New Media Knowledge recently reported that social networks are responsible for directing 13 percent more traffic to online retailers than they did in 2009. “As more time is being spent on social networking sites, we are seeing retail brands tapping into the power of social media to drive online traffic and sales,” said Robin Goad, Research Director, Experian Hitwise. The competitive intelligence research company says that while Facebook, YouTube and Twitter dominate the social sphere, others sites such as Vimeo, Badoo and tumblr have increased their online traffic by 50% or more in the past year. “It is important that retailers understand which social networks their customers and potential customers are using,” Goad told NMK. What about mobile? “Successful retailers will be those that support their customers across multiple channels depending on the scenario – allowing customers to add items to wish on the go, integrating location based services to provide (opt in) special offers and discounts, mobile price comparison via photo or barcode recognition,” Goad said.

Industry: Marketing, Design, & Interactive Communications, Technology, Consulting, & Professional Services
Topic: Business Intelligence, Content Strategy, E-Commerce, Experience & Interaction, Marketing Communications, Technology Implementation
Region: Global, Europe
Audience: Business to Consumer, Peer Groups & Communities

Build Strong Opt-In Databases To Deliver Value For Customers (BtoB Online)

Posted: 02/17/2011

As business to business (B2B) customers increasingly demonstrate a willingness to share more information, the maxim “you get what you give” has never rung more true. By handing over mission critical information, customers expect to receive more targeted communications that reflect conspicuous value and benefit. Marketers, in turn, get the chance to drive up both response and revenue by directing their communications toward the rich databases they are accumulating. Here are the key steps to consider to encourage your customers to become part of any preference-profiling activities your company engages: First, build trust by using your customers’ information responsibly; next, confidentiality is a must – ‘responsible’ use means no sharing or renting information, ever; and finally, your value proposition must be clear and compelling.

Trigger Happy: Ways To Create Successful E-Mail Campaigns (Practical eCommerce)

Posted: 02/03/2011

When it comes to e-mail campaigns, there are a handful of strategies to use that can help capitalize on the power of triggered mailings, which have a proven track record of phenomenal response and conversion rates. The best approach is to begin with the simplest e-mails proven to elicit conversion, and then scale up the campaign to include more nuanced and complex e-mails. Here are six proven examples that can help your company establish a personal connection with your customers: (1) Welcome e-mails; (2) Reorder or order reminder e-mails; (3) Birthday or special-occasion e-mails; (4) Transactional emails; (5) Abandoned cart e-mails and (6) Abandoned site browse or search emails. All these examples offer the marketer’s toolbox a number of ways to create and maintain long-term relationships with customers and stimulate repeat business at the same time.

Industry: Marketing, Design, & Interactive Communications, Retail & Products
Topic: Business Intelligence, Content Strategy, E-Commerce, Experience & Interaction, Marketing Communications
Region: Global
Audience: Business to Consumer

Building A Brand Story Greater Than The Sum Of Its Individual Parts (New Media Knowledge)

Posted: 01/20/2011

Rather than providing a plethora of tactical solutions, today’s abundance of marketing channels may simply overwhelm marketers. Standard targeted marketing used to be a relatively simple game of point-and-shoot at three main channels (TV, print and direct mail) to cover all bases. Now, with the addition of social media platforms, mobile marketing, web, and email to the traditional channels, adopting a successful strategy can get confusing. Aim the same message at all the channels and the results can be downright disastrous. Multi-channel marketing offers marketers a mechanism to “pull all these conversations together and build a brand story that is greater than the sum of the individual parts” so marketers can keep their eyes on the prize: customer engagement and action. The key is to understand and respect the characteristics of each channel and then execute each according to how it works uniquely for your brand.

Industry: Marketing, Design, & Interactive Communications, Technology, Consulting, & Professional Services
Topic: Business Intelligence, Content Strategy, Experience & Interaction, Marketing Communications, Technology Implementation
Region: Global
Audience: Business to Business, Peer Groups & Communities

Social Globalization; Global Socialization (Practical eCommerce)

Posted: 01/20/2011

Social media has established a stronghold that reaches around the globe. Social networking, blogging, microblogging, social bookmarking and video sharing bring people closer together than ever. Companies like Dell attribute mass profit directly to campaigns using social media, including the $3 million the company earned through incentives offered via Twitter. Still, in light of the rapidly increasing internet population of non-English language speakers, one question that remains is how the foreign language internet pieces into the social media puzzle? With most Internet users living abroad, how can smaller companies incorporate international social media strategies into their bag of marketing tricks? According to Practical eCommerce, a company’s foreign language social media strategy should consider the most popular platforms within its target demographic, in addition to streamlining efforts to mesh with other global online marketing practices.

Retailers Dial-In To Smart Phone Shopping Trend (CRM Daily)

Posted: 01/04/2011

With one-third of mobile phone usage to be “smart” this holiday season (Nielsen), retailers are getting dialed-in to e-commerce. The 21 percent increase over last year indicates that retailers can no longer rely on independent strategy for their retail outfits, whether they are bricks-and-mortar stores, Web sites or mobile shopping channels. Heather J. Brunner, chief operating officer of Austin, Texas-based Bazaarvoice, said a phone is "just a mini-computer, and our challenge now is to transfer the Internet experience to a much smaller screen." For instance, outdoor brand Patagonia recently launched a new application that suggests similar items and price ranges while customers browse. In-store, the app will recommend complementary items based on the tag’s bar code. Companies like Neustar are working on types of “second-generation” bar codes for smart phones that are square rather than rectangular while Pronto, a company owned by New York-based IAC, plans to launch a mobile app for product price alerts.

Industry: Marketing, Design, & Interactive Communications, Retail & Products, Technology, Consulting, & Professional Services, Telecommunications
Topic: Business Intelligence, Content Strategy, E-Commerce, Experience & Interaction, Marketing Communications, Technology Implementation
Region: Global
Audience: Business to Business, Business to Consumer

‘Tis The Season For Cultivating Brand Loyalty (Ecommerce Times)

Posted: 01/04/2011

Remarketing often proves to be the silver lining during the holiday retail season, driving both sales and profitability. In fact, dollar for dollar, remarketing delivers the highest returns compared to alternative marketing techniques, especially when used in tandem with display marketing campaigns. Successful marketing entails knowing how to reach the right people at the right time with the right offer. This makes remarketing ripe for the picking, especially considering the advances today’s technology allows for like analyzing consumer behaviors and reaching out directly to consumers. When it comes to marketing plans, remarketing demands foresight and planning to get it right. The keys to success include placing as much weight on page views as click thrus. Other success factors including figuring out exactly how much to budget for remarketing (based on hard data) and focusing on calendar events like Black Friday and Cyber Monday, as well as major holidays.

Shoutlet: One-Stop-Shop For Social Media Management (Ecommerce Times)

Posted: 12/16/2010

Shoutlet’s social media management application now features CRM functionality. The app is designed to let customers monitor and manage multiple accounts and brands with additional functionality that eases the process for companies to post and monitor responses to content. Given the number of users that use social media to complain about a service or product, or get help, one of the app’s most powerful features is its collaboration component. One such collaboration feature includes the ability to tag a prospect or commenter and then forwarded it internally for someone within the organization to take care of. "Let's say a company has several customers talking about or complaining about a certain issue," President and COO Aaron Everson said. "Shoutlet can tag all of those commenters and send them to someone for follow-up or assistance." The company intends to enhance functionality even further by increasing its reach to mass influencers and adding a mobile component.

Industry: Marketing, Design, & Interactive Communications, Retail & Products, Technology, Consulting, & Professional Services
Topic: Business Intelligence, Content Strategy, Experience & Interaction, Marketing Communications, Technology Implementation
Region: Global
Audience: Business to Business, Peer Groups & Communities

Google Goes Fashion Forward (CRM Daily)

Posted: 12/16/2010

Google is going fashion forward with the debut of Boutiques.com, which offers shoppers a personalized shopping experience. The launch is as much about technology as it is e-commerce. Using computer-vision and machine-learning technology, Boutiques.com visually analyzes consumers' fashion tastes in order to match them to other styles they might be drawn to. "These days, bloggers, stylists and everyday fashionistas are expressing their sense of style online. We invited them to create boutiques so people could shop their diverse styles," Google Product Management Director Munjal Shah said. "But you have a unique and independent style, too, so Boutiques also lets you build your own personalized boutique and get recommendations of products that match your taste." The site offers a variety of search options, allowing consumers to filter results by genre, silhouette, pattern, color families, and sizes, or even view matching outfits when they search for specific items.

Industry: Marketing, Design, & Interactive Communications, Retail & Products
Topic: Business Intelligence, Content Strategy, Creative & Design, E-Commerce, Experience & Interaction, Marketing Communications, Technology Implementation
Region: Global
Audience: Business to Consumer

Digital River Is Getting Social With Ecommerce (Electronic Commerce Guide)

Posted: 12/16/2010

Digital River, a global ecommerce service provider, recently launched SocialStream, a new social media tool. Using the tool, Digital River customers can rapidly set in motion new e-store promotions and then manage them over different Facebook and Twitter accounts. Ecommerce-Guide.com reported Jim Wehmann, senior vice president of global marketing for Digital River saying that “Social Stream lets marketers and e-store owners optimize social media campaigns with just a few clicks from within the standard Digital River interface they already know and use.” While SocialStream is certainly not the first ecommerce service offering of its kind, the package’s most significant advantage is that it provides e-store owners with access to social analytics. The ability to report critical commerce data relating to social media activities like unique clicks, conversions and revenue generated for each social campaign for each social account allows companies to validate the success of each campaign.

How Big Is Big? The Rise Of The Mobile Advertising Market (Marketing Vox)

Posted: 12/01/2010

eMarketer recently revised its assessment of the mobile ad market, predicting it will grow 79% to over $743 million this year alone – growing to more than $1.1 billion in 2011 and more than $2.5 billion by 2014. Based on these numbers, it’s safe to say mobile has been elevated to mainstream status. The report indicates that SMS is still the largest format, with an estimated tally of $327 million for 2010. Companies like Phizzle and Skycore are further enhancing their service offerings to engage audiences and allow increased functionality to their users, including enabling mobile marketers to run applications such as movie trailers sent with tickets or sports videos sent with tickets. eMarketer predicts that display formats will increase. Apple’s iPhone remains the top choice with 82.7% of marketers, but Android’s 9% increase since last quarter indicates it is quickly gaining traction. Other services new to the market include Opera Software’s Ad Marvel, Sprint’s Sprint ID and Burstly.

Industry: Marketing, Design, & Interactive Communications, Technology, Consulting, & Professional Services, Telecommunications
Topic: Business Intelligence, Content Strategy, E-Commerce, Experience & Interaction, Marketing Communications, Technology Implementation
Region: Global
Audience: Business to Business, Business to Consumer

Motricity Delivers User-Preferred Content On-the-Go (CIO Magazine)

Posted: 10/27/2010

Motricity recently launched mCore MobileCast, a service that allows wireless carriers and large companies to define content based on their smartphone users’ preferences. Requiring "zero touch" by the users, the cloud-based service takes a user’s location and prior usage into account before delivering audio, video, text and HTML5 content streamlined to the user’s preferences. For instance, a mobile user purchases tickets to a rock concert via a mobile device. Enter mCore MobileCast: The service ingests the concert data in combination with GPS data to disseminate auxillary information to the user, such as the concert's opening act, parking locations and even places to eat nearby. "All that information is in separate places today, but we aggregate it all up," said Jim Ryan, Motricity’s chief strategy and marketing officer. The company provides mobile infrastructure services to "hundreds of enterprises" and 10 major wireless carries, including the top four in the U.S., Ryan said.

Diaspora Code Released Publicly; May Improve Framework For Businesses (CIO Magazine)

Posted: 10/27/2010

A new project, called Diaspora, was recently released to public developers in hopes of bringing the project to fruition as a new social network – defined by community – that promises “the benefits of Facebook without the privacy concerns.” The project’s creators are at a standstill, stating, "We began the summer a list of technologies, and a few bold claims and the goal to make an intrinsically more private social network. The overwhelming response that we elicited made us realize that technology wouldn't be enough." The Diaspora project could prove useful in providing businesses with a framework for implementing proprietary, internal social networks without running the risk of divulging trade secrets or sensitive materials. With the goal to integrate Diaspora into Facebook, businesses also won’t have to sacrifice giving up the social network’s huge audience.

Industry: Technology, Consulting, & Professional Services
Topic: Business Intelligence, Content Strategy, Creative & Design, Experience & Interaction, Technology Implementation
Region: Global
Audience: Business to Business, Business to Consumer, Peer Groups & Communities

InterContinental Hotels Group Offers Hospitality With A Technical Twist (InformationWeek)

Posted: 10/14/2010

It’s easy to chalk IHG's, InterContinental Hotels Group, ubiquitous success up to one thing: customer loyalty. Tom Conophy, IHG's CIO, said the company’s core focus is on making customers "the center of our universe," and customer loyalty is vital to growth in the hospitality industry. The ever-growing hotel group, which owns seven hotel chains, including Crowne Plaza, Holiday Inn, and InterContinental Hotels, keeps its guest doors swinging by making business intelligence one of their core competencies. 200 million guest profiles currently occupy the company’s 25 TB database, with detailed information on 43 million loyalty plan members. The company currently receives 30 million availability requests per day, supported by its own proprietary search technology, the Bottom-Up Optimum Search Strategy(BOSS). "Search is the killer app for us," Conophy says, and with IHG’s iPhone app as the industry’s most downloaded, adding mobility is another success factor with a concept the group has named “Virtually Me.”

Industry: Marketing, Design, & Interactive Communications, Retail & Products, Technology, Consulting, & Professional Services, Telecommunications
Topic: Business Intelligence, Content Strategy, Creative & Design, E-Commerce, Experience & Interaction, Marketing Communications, Technology Implementation
Region: Global
Audience: Business to Consumer

Building Best-Run Businesses With SAP’s Targeted Analytic Applications (InformationWeek)

Posted: 10/14/2010

The demand for domain-specific business insight led SAP to launch ten SAP BusinessObjects analytic applications. The customer-centric, problem solving apps include Sales Analysis for Retail; and Trade Promotion Effectiveness and On-Shelf Availability apps for consumer products firms, whose very names reveal how the development process was led by insight from key constituencies within SAP’s customer and industry bases. "These apps attach the knowledge workers to the action so they can make better decisions and help their company become a best-run business," said SAP co-CEO Bill McDermott. While designed with the SAP core customer segments in mind, the apps do not depend on pre-existing SAP deployments so that they will reach across to non-SAP customers, as well. Backed by Sybase mobile technologies, the apps promise benefits like reports and metrics; rapid deployment and actionable analytic insights. Plans to support the apps with mobile are expected to be fulfilled by the end of 2011.

Industry: Technology, Consulting, & Professional Services, Telecommunications
Topic: Business Intelligence, Content Strategy, Experience & Interaction, Technology Implementation
Region: Global
Audience: Business to Business, Business to Consumer

Chatter Mobile: Saleforce.com’s Answer To Enterprise Collaboration (Intelligent Enterprise)

Posted: 10/14/2010

Salesforce.com recently announced Chatter Mobile, a smart-phone application designed to bring CRM-centric, social-networking-style collaboration to Smartphones by the end of 2010. The Web 2.0-styled consumer app lets Saleforce’s Chatter users collaborate with people at work while on-the-go and in real-time. Similar to following Facebook friends and interests, Chatter enables users to subscribe to and "follow" feeds related to their business, as well as keep tabs on what customers and prospects are saying on public networks like Facebook and Twitter. Partners and customers can also "Chatterize" vertical and custom applications through the Force.com development platform. The free service is featured within the company’s cloud-based sales and service applications, which could help a mobile salesperson stay on top of what matters most as they are heading to meet with their clients.

Industry: Marketing, Design, & Interactive Communications, Technology, Consulting, & Professional Services, Telecommunications
Topic: Business Intelligence, Experience & Interaction, Technology Implementation
Region: Global
Audience: Business to Business, Business to Consumer, Peer Groups & Communities

Shazam! How One Company Plans To Change The Advertising Industry (.net)

Posted: 09/30/2010

Shazam CEO Andrew Fisher recently sat down with Oliver Lindberg to discuss why the company chose to charge for the popular mobile music discovery app and how the company plans to change the face of advertising as we know it. While Facebook may be the most downloaded iPhone app in the US, Shazam is Europe’s frontrunner. The app, which identifies a piece of recorded music via a mobile’s mic, tallied 50 million users across all platforms in October with the goal to double that number by the end of the year and reach 300 million users by 2015. Users are apparently willing to pay the price: the London-based start-up introduced a paid-for version of its iPhone app – Shazam Encore – with a limited free version offering five tags per month for new users. The service offers unlimited tagging, faster performance and a range of extra features such as music search and geo-location ticketing.

Top Tips To Evaluate Online Ad Value (Internet Evolution)

Posted: 09/30/2010

When it comes to online adverstising, what is the best way to sift through the massive amounts of quantitative information available (impressions, clicks, repeat visits, context, etc.) to determine if a campaign has made any qualitative progress? According to one author, the best way is to follow six simple steps to gain measurable success: (1) Return on Investment (ROI) which, in essence, measures what you get vs. what you give; (2) Branding/awareness, which focuses on cultivating loyalty from existing clients vs. attracting new ones; (3) Positioning/SOV (share of voice), which focuses on edging out the competition; (4) CTR (click-through rate), although this dominant metric is slightly giving way to Engagement, it remains the best way to measure a campaign’s success; (5) Engagement, which is evidence that “the user did something more meaningful than clicking,” such as leaving a comment or playing a game; and (6) “Learning,” which means paying attention to all the different variables that could eventually play a role in future campaigns.

Industry: Marketing, Design, & Interactive Communications, Technology, Consulting, & Professional Services
Topic: Business Intelligence, Content Strategy, E-Commerce, Marketing Communications
Region: Global
Audience: Business to Business, Business to Consumer

The Domino Effect: Popular Pizza Company Taps Into Social Marketing (ClickZ)

Posted: 09/16/2010

On the heels of a 61 percent increase in online sales in the UK and Ireland from the same period last year, Domino's is singing the praises of Facebook and Foursquare promotions. The global pizza chain credits growth in web-based sales (jumping from 26 to 33 percent this year) to its social media marketing tactics – which include cultivating a strong presence online with both a global Facebook page and individual local pages, as well as securing 531 Twitter followers and launching Foursquare’s geo-location service. "We've had nearly 10,000 check-ins since it launched from around 3,500 unique visitors," Georgina Wald, spokesperson for the London-based division, said. The company has also enjoyed recent growth in sales by turning their attention to search marketing.

Industry: Marketing, Design, & Interactive Communications, Retail & Products
Topic: Business Intelligence, Content Strategy, E-Commerce, Experience & Interaction, Marketing Communications, Technology Implementation
Region: Europe
Audience: Business to Consumer, Peer Groups & Communities

Asian Persuasion – Social Media Marketing In Japan (ClickZ)

Posted: 09/16/2010

Before MySpace and Facebook were even a glimmer in the virtual eye, Japan had Mixi – one of the country’s most popular SNS (social networking sites). While businesses in the U.S. are really only just beginning to tap into social media as a viable marketing tool, savvy businesses in Japan have been on the social bandwagon for more than 10 years, using platforms like Mixi, Gree and 2channel. Japan’s preponderance of social media might even prompt some to say that Japan was the genesis for social media marketing. The country’s rich social media platforms include: general social networking sites; video and photo sharing sites, social bookmarking sites; blog network sites, mini-blogging sites and micro social networking (SNS) sites. With most services available for both PC and mobile (unlike the U.S. where mobile is just gaining traction), mobile is already a key part of the countries inhabitants’ online lives.

Industry: Marketing, Design, & Interactive Communications
Topic: Business Intelligence, Content Strategy, Marketing Communications, Technology Implementation
Region: Asia Pacific
Audience: Business to Consumer, Peer Groups & Communities

Get The Scoop: Ben & Jerry’s Launches Sweet Twitter Campaign (Promo Magazine)

Posted: 09/16/2010

This summer there was a new way to get the latest scoop, and this time it wasn’t breaking news – it was free samples of ice cream from Ben & Jerry’s. Led from destination to destination by consumer tweets via Twitter, the “Scoop Truck” went on a sampling tour of New York City in June and July. While the initial campaign plan left one weekday open to a virtual “see-which-way-the-tweets-blow-the-truck” kind of spontaneity, by the end of the nearly two-month tour nearly half of the sweet stops were those requested by the 3,000 local followers the tour handle @benjerrytruck amassed. Responses to outgoing tweets yielded anywhere from five to 100 responses. Although followers will still be able to get the latest scoop through Twitter and view images of the happy samplers on Flickr, the next tour is aimed Boston, where stops will be announced primarily via Facebook.

Industry: Marketing, Design, & Interactive Communications, Retail & Products
Topic: Business Intelligence, Experience & Interaction, Marketing Communications, Technology Implementation
Region: North America
Audience: Business to Consumer, Peer Groups & Communities

Voices From The Crowd: Crowdsourcing May Be Ineffective Tool for Government (Fast Company)

Posted: 09/02/2010

Can the rise of crowdsourcing sway public policy? According to a Fast Company article, government should stick to the polls rather than relying on crowdsourcing platforms like IdeaScale, which allows the public to raise its collective voice and vote on ideas from state budgets and federal transparency to health care priorities and education. Government 2.0 crowdsourcing is an ineffective tool because it’s not reflective of the entangled way new public policy is brought to fruition – officials can’t simply tap into public opinion and then implement those ideas into law, no matter how popular they are. The article suggests that “what the government needs isn't more lofty suggestions ("End the income tax!"), but grounded ideas on how to actually get things done in Congress.”

Industry: Marketing, Design, & Interactive Communications, Technology, Consulting, & Professional Services
Topic: Business Intelligence, Experience & Interaction, Marketing Communications
Region: North America
Audience: Business to Consumer, Peer Groups & Communities

Kitty Crowdsourcing? New Service Helps Businesses Collect And Rank Innovative Ideas (Fast Company)

Posted: 09/02/2010

When Princeton sociology professor Matthew Salganik came across KittenWars.com, he knew he found a valuable model for his own crowdsourcing website, All Our Ideas, which merges sociology and computer science techniques to enable organizations to collect ideas and rank them more effectively. A virtual idea factory, the service allows users to launch their own question and answer websites. If neither answer presented is acceptable to visitors, they can simply add their new ideas to the mix. Those new ideas then get filtered into the voting pool. Salganik explains, “If you ask for suggestions, especially online, you may get thousands of ideas that can take weeks to sort through. On the other hand, if you use a survey with preset questions and answers, you can get lots of data but few new ideas." The service is already gaining traction with organizations like Princeton’s class of 2008 student government, which used the tool to pinpoint the most pressing issues on undergrads minds.

Industry: Marketing, Design, & Interactive Communications, Technology, Consulting, & Professional Services
Topic: Business Intelligence, Content Strategy
Region: Global
Audience: Business to Business, Business to Consumer, Peer Groups & Communities

Pulling Klout: Website Helps Users Measure Their Social Influence (CNN Money)

Posted: 08/19/2010

Users can now discover their social “Klout” by numerical rank by inputting their Twitter name into Klout.com. The San Francisco-based social media start-up is shoring up its position to become the online standard for measuring social impact by partnering with Virgin America to offer a hand-picked group of “influencers” a free flight from San Francisco or Los Angeles to Virgin America's newest destination, Toronto. Here’s how the new type of marketing campaigns (implemented by brands like Starbucks and Cover Girl) work: (1) Users accept product offers; (2) In return, Klout requests for disclosure of the freebie; (3) Klout measures some two dozen variables, including the number of times their comments are retweeted, the size of their Twitter audience, and the influence of those followers, to come up with a numerical value and ranking on a 0-to-100 scale.

Industry: Marketing, Design, & Interactive Communications, Retail & Products, Technology, Consulting, & Professional Services
Topic: Business Intelligence, Content Strategy, Marketing Communications, Technology Implementation
Region: Global
Audience: Business to Business, Business to Consumer, Peer Groups & Communities

What's In A Name? The Term Cloud Computing Breathes New Life Into An Existing Technology (Forbes)

Posted: 08/05/2010

In an industry where fancy buzzwords abound, "cloud computing" really signifies more of a generational evolution than a new technology. While there may be some hype related to doing business "in the cloud," on-demand, internet-based computing leverages the same technology companies like Google and Amazon pioneered and perfected through trial and error. Now, companies can access even more highly evolved programs like Google App Engine and Apache Hadoop - as well as a steadily increasing list of other options - to write their own data center infrastructure applications. In a virtual world where complete computer security is always somewhat questionable, the flexible and economical strengths of cloud computing remains very attractive to corporate computing operations. The end-goal is to partner with trustworthy, security-focused services that respond to and eliminate threats as they are exposed.

Industry: Technology, Consulting, & Professional Services
Topic: Business Intelligence, Technology Implementation
Region: Global
Audience: Business to Business

Creating One-To-One Conversations: Customer Data Required (BtoB Online)

Posted: 08/05/2010

E-mail marketers are keeping costs low and continuing to invest in e-mail, according to interactive agency Razorfish’s “2010 Outlook Report”, released on May 24. E-mail marketing use is changing; said Joe Mele, Razorfish’s managing director of media and marketing, “We’re definitely seeing a move to one-to-one marketing. Marketers are using the channel as a personalization space to do quite a bit of targeted advertising.” To accomplish such personalization and expand e-mail marketing, Mele suggests texting and reaching out to salespeople for specific data to customize ads down to the offers, messaging, images and design. “Texting is as addressable as e-mail but able to take on a more intimate feel,” Mele said.

Uplift Modeling: The Upside to Marketing (Ecommerce Times)

Posted: 07/08/2010

The key to spending a lot less on marketing while receiving better sales results may be uplift modeling. Specific customers have specific wants and needs; uplift modeling uses intelligent predictive analysis to target relevant needs specific to certain customers. Uplift divides customers into segments, allowing companies to focus solely on the “Persuadables”- customers likely to respond to being contacted through marketing outreach tactics and begin or renew their purchasing as a result. Time and money isn’t wasted on “Sure Thing”, “Lost Cause”, and “Sleeping Dog” customers- those who always buy, never buy or just don’t want to be bothered. Uplift modeling saves valuable company time and money, while avoiding the negativity associated with uninterested customers.

The Winning Combination: Tracking Preference and Behavioral Data To Improve Email Campaigns (BtoB Online)

Posted: 06/17/2010

Want to increase your business through more successful email campaigns? All it takes is an effort to track customer behavioral data, which will make you better aware of your customer’s needs. Asking yourself if links are being clicked on, if emails are being opened, forwarded, or sent to the junk mail folder is beneficial. Monitoring your website to find out which customers are viewing your Web site and adding various links to your emails to track what customers are looking for will help you better understand their wants and needs. Collecting and analyzing your customer data will put you on the right track to increasing the success of your business.

Industry: Marketing, Design, & Interactive Communications
Topic: Business Intelligence, Content Strategy, Marketing Communications
Region: Global
Audience: Business to Business, Business to Consumer

Tailoring To Customers Both On And Offline (New Media Knowledge)

Posted: 06/17/2010

Customers’ purchasing patterns are easily tracked online allowing website display of offers and promotions specific to customers based on their online buying behavior. Even with a unified marketing strategy, the challenge is to maintain consistent customer experiences across online and offline shopping. Monitoring offline shopping experiences can be done with real-time vouchers, coupons, and customer recommendation and review forms. Merging online and offline customer data will allow businesses to successfully retain and cater to their customers anywhere.

Puzzling Together Business Data: Salesforce.com Buys Jigsaw (CRM Daily)

Posted: 06/17/2010

Salesforce.com’s purchase of contact provider Jigsaw makes it even easier to access, create, and even clean up contact information for businesses all over the globe. Salesforce.com chairman and CEO, Marc Benioff, said it will be “as easy as Wikipedia to source data, as easy as iTunes to buy data, and as easy as Facebook to stay updated as the data changes.” Boasting a 1.2 million member count and a database with 21 million professionals working at 4 million companies, Jigsaw describes its role as “collecting, refining, managing, protecting, and organizing the global list of people in business – so you don’t have to.” Through the use of Jigsaw’s cloud platform, new applications can also be created by software vendors to better use business contact information.

Industry: Technology, Consulting, & Professional Services
Topic: Business Intelligence, Experience & Interaction
Region: Global
Audience: Business to Business

If At First You Don’t Succeed: Give It Another Go (Ecommerce Times)

Posted: 05/27/2010

A new Google feature is giving advertisers another go at customers they may have baited, but didn’t fully hook with a purchase. Tested in beta last year, the “remarketing” feature is now available throughout the Google Content Network (GCN), including on YouTube. Although remarketing is not a novel idea, it does help marketers limber up their campaigns. The feature can be tied into search campaigns, leveraged with targeted messages across different Web pages or run simultaneously with other remarketing campaigns. Here’s how it works: companies drive traffic to their Web site via search ads and then retarget those same customers with customized ads as they browse other sites across the GCN. Remarketing is an often underutilized yet successful tactic – only 31 percent of marketers surveyed by Advertise.com and the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (SEMPO) have tried it yet 53.1 percent of those enjoyed great success with it.

Industry: Marketing, Design, & Interactive Communications, Retail & Products
Topic: Business Intelligence, E-Commerce, Experience & Interaction, Marketing Communications
Region: Global
Audience: Business to Business, Business to Consumer

Nokia’s “Design By Community”: Hope For Next-Gen Smartphone? (Mobile Magazine)

Posted: 05/13/2010

Former king of the mobile technology hill, Nokia, recently unveiled “Design by Community”, a project intended to tap into the psyche of the techie community and recapture the keys to the kingdom. Nokia’s plan of attack is to use its new website to solicit consumer feedback regarding characteristics smartphone users would most like to see in the next generation of smartphones. Nokia amassed thousands of votes about design parameters in the first round of voting. Future reconnaissance rounds will seek information about characteristics, including: shape, materials, connectivity, video and features like camera. The voting system will reject configuration ideas that are too out-of-the-box or not creative enough. Nokia does not have plans to bring the winning creation to market. They will, however, incorporate them into a design concept.

Industry: Marketing, Design, & Interactive Communications, Telecommunications
Topic: Business Intelligence, Creative & Design, Experience & Interaction, Marketing Communications
Region: Global
Audience: Business to Consumer, Peer Groups & Communities

Filling The Gap With Enterprise-Wide Business Intelligence (CIO Magazine)

Posted: 04/29/2010

With multiple clothing brands to manage, including Old Navy, Banana Republic, The Gap and online retailer Piper-Lime, senior vice president of IT for The Gap, Michael Jones understands what it takes to operate a successful business intelligence project. Jones recommends that organizations adopt a single enterprise-wide data warehouse rather than operating separate data marts for each individual project. With one single system, Gap managers can mine data and reports across all of its brands and 3,100 globally dispersed stores. "Our challenge is to try to provide information across an entire enterprise," Jones said. With ten years of experience in enterprise-wide BI, the company has aligned data from all of its units into one data warehouse which allows it to answer a total of 96 questions, significantly more than if it operated single silos. While the cost of setting up a comprehensive data warehouse is higher, Jones claims the added flexibility is well worth the extra cost.

Industry: Retail & Products, Technology, Consulting, & Professional Services
Topic: Business Intelligence, Technology Implementation
Region: Global
Audience: Business to Business

Tapping Into Customer Life Cycle Via Emails (BtoB Online)

Posted: 03/04/2010

Experian Marketing Services’ “The Remarketing Report” recently reported significant findings regarding the efficacy marketers experience when they send targeted emails to their customers based on where they are at in the sales cycle. From responding to new customer sign ups to bringing them back from the brink of abandoning their shopping carts, marketers that send emails when a targeted event occurs expereince as much as double the open rates and quadruple the click-through rates when compared to other email campaigns. Such campaigns not only influence consumer purchasing habits through cross-sells and up-sells, they also help build customer loyalty. The report clearly demonstrates that, when handled with care, marketers benefit from building campaigns around your visitors’ and customers’ life cycle events.

Industry: Marketing, Design, & Interactive Communications, Retail & Products
Topic: Business Intelligence, Experience & Interaction, Marketing Communications
Region: Global
Audience: Business to Consumer

Shop Online with Time Inc’s StyleFeeder (Internet Retailer)

Posted: 02/18/2010

Time Inc. has announced its acquisition of StyleFeeder.com, a social shopping site. The acquisition is aimed at increasing Time Inc.’s revenue from referring consumers to online retailers, Fran Hauser, who oversees digital strategy for a group of Time Inc. magazines including InStyle and People, tells Internet Retailer. StyleFeeder offers over 14 million products from well-known retailers including Target and Macy’s and provides a customized shopping experience using a shopper’s location, shopping history, and various filters like product price, brand, color, and attributes. Hauser says, “If you look at apparel and accessories, that market is a $26 billion market. We feel that shopping is really an extension to what InStyle does.” While StyleFeeder will improve InStyle’s current shopping engine, Hauser intends to feature StyleFeeder’s use throughout InStyle’s web site, in addition to other Time Inc. magazines.

Industry: Marketing, Design, & Interactive Communications, Retail & Products
Topic: Business Intelligence, E-Commerce, Marketing Communications
Region: Global
Audience: Business to Consumer

Market Intelligence the Smartphone Way (CRM Daily)

Posted: 02/04/2010

Context-aware software tries to connect the real world with the vast stores of information about places in a virtual world: the Internet. The technology channels the knowledge amassed to provide useful tools to the smartphone user. Consumers gain more control over their buying experiences and save time when they purchase from vendors who have critical insight into their shopping habits. The software’s diverse industry applications include retail, business management, hospitality, and food and beverage. Research firm Gartner projects the market for this technology will grow to $12 billion by 2012, with Google standing in prime position to address and profit from the new wave of demand. Other companies that stand to benefit are Nokia, Cisco Systems, Avaya, large telcos like China Telecom or potentially even social networks such as Facebook, Gartner says.

Industry: Marketing, Design, & Interactive Communications, Retail & Products, Technology, Consulting, & Professional Services, Telecommunications
Topic: Business Intelligence, Experience & Interaction, Marketing Communications, Technology Implementation
Region: Global
Audience: Business to Business, Business to Consumer, Peer Groups & Communities

New Runa Software Helps Convert Customers Into Sales (Electronic Commerce Guide)

Posted: 02/04/2010

A huge challenge for e-commerce retailers is getting visitors to actually click through to purchase items. Runa, a company specializing in conversion marketing, is helping companies capture and convert Website vistors into paying customers before they abandon the process entirely. After tracking a variety of “actionable analytics” including key words, transaction history, profile information, products viewed and search patterns, Runa drums up a new dynamic sale price that evolves from the merchant’s criteria and shopper’s preferences. Price is typically the deciding factor for whether consumers follow through with transactions, so the new deal is only revealed once the shopping cart has been abandoned. Retailers can then expect to turn up to 15% of “recapture” offers into sales. Since the dynamic special offers are only revealed to visitors that abandon their carts, those paying full price from the get-go never even get wind of the deals.

Industry: Marketing, Design, & Interactive Communications, Retail & Products, Technology, Consulting, & Professional Services
Topic: Business Intelligence, E-Commerce, Experience & Interaction, Marketing Communications, Technology Implementation
Region: Global
Audience: Business to Business

Opening the Line of Communication with Feedback-Form Analytics (Electronic Commerce Guide)

Posted: 02/04/2010

We’ve all heard of shopping cart abandonment. Until now, companies have had no way of knowing if this so-called digital window shopper’s syndrome was due to Web glitches or other, more personal, reasons. Kampyle is changing that by offering on-demand feedback-form analytics so companies can improve their turnover rates by learning more about their customers. The customizable forms promote open communication between customer and company by directly asking customers relevant questions to reveal why they chose not follow through with their purchases. The software also features “smart pop-ups” that can be personalized to appear when the visitor clicks off the site. Easy to implement, companies can have the service converting clicks into sales in as little as five minutes.

Industry: Marketing, Design, & Interactive Communications, Retail & Products, Technology, Consulting, & Professional Services
Topic: Business Intelligence, Creative & Design, E-Commerce, Experience & Interaction, Technology Implementation
Region: Global
Audience: Business to Business

eBags’ Sales Spike Due To More Targeted Advertising (Internet Retailer)

Posted: 01/21/2010

Thanks to revved up sales starting Cyber Monday, reasonable product prices and some savvy marketing, eBags reported a 40.3% increase in holiday traffic over 2008. eBags, a leading online retailer of bags and accessories, also reported a 32% increase in sales, enjoying four of its top five best-selling days in its 10-year history. Peter Cobb, co-founder and senior vice president of marketing, attributes the boon to eliminating inefficient keyword spending and launching personalized e-mail marketing campaigns. Based on shoppers’ previous purchases, eBags offered products its customers really cared about, resulting in a 25% increase in email returns. The online retailer ramped up the campaign by establishing firm targets for sales resulting from particular keywords, resulting in a 45% increase.

Industry: Marketing, Design, & Interactive Communications, Retail & Products
Topic: Business Intelligence, Content Strategy, E-Commerce, Marketing Communications
Region: Global
Audience: Business to Consumer

Google’s Real-Time, User-Driven Display Ads (Ecommerce Times)

Posted: 01/21/2010

Google is paving the way toward revolutionizing online display advertising. The search engine leader’s acquisition of startup Teracent promises to significantly boost Google’s display ad prowess by tapping into machine-learning algorithms able to produce and personalize the ads in real-time. The user-driven ads can be optimized based on influencers like location, time, language, Web-specific content and past performance of similar ads. Proving that what’s good for Google is good for online display advertising in general, the new technology combats the somewhat antiquated, inflexible packaging of display ads and makes them more dynamic and customizable. Giovanni Calabro, vice president of user experience at Siteworx, told the E-Commerce Times, "Instead of merely selling a package, Google can offer a product based on an understanding of who is coming onto a site.”

Industry: Marketing, Design, & Interactive Communications, Technology, Consulting, & Professional Services
Topic: Business Intelligence, Content Strategy, Creative & Design, E-Commerce, Experience & Interaction, Marketing Communications, Technology Implementation
Region: Global
Audience: Business to Business, Business to Consumer

On-Demand Software Adds Flexibility to Direct Digital Marketers (Ecommerce Times)

Posted: 01/21/2010

The robustness of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) products positions them to effectively tackle emerging trends in direct digital marketing. The secret to their success? They share the same “it” factor ideals that often boost the best new businesses to the top of the rung: they are cost-effective, easy to implement and inherently scalable. On-demand products must seamlessly integrate between the three primary channels of direct digital marketing–email, mobile and Web–meaning developers must create software that is simultaneously heightened in usability and simple to implement. The bottom line is that the functionality and flexibility of SaaS and universal profile management systems enhance direct digital marketers’ own flexibility and success in their drive to leverage customer information and boost sales.

Industry: Marketing, Design, & Interactive Communications, Retail & Products, Technology, Consulting, & Professional Services
Topic: Business Intelligence, Content Strategy, E-Commerce, Marketing Communications, Technology Implementation
Region: Global
Audience: Business to Business, Business to Consumer

Buying Power: Facebook and Twitter Boost Online Sales (CRM Daily)

Posted: 01/21/2010

Taking “social shopping” to the next level, ComScore Inc. revealed that social media sites like Facebook and Twitter impacted 28% of buying decisions during the 2009 holiday season. ComScore Chairman and co-founder Gian Fulgoni said, "We are getting our first real glimpse at the impact social media will play on commerce as we enter the next decade." Retailers like J.C. Penney Co. and Eastman Kodak Co. leveraged the extended social reach enjoyed by Facebook and Twitter to entice bargain shoppers mining for deals. More and more, shoppers are tracking special deals from their favorite brands via social networking sites, reportedly 7% on Facebook and 5% on Twitter.

Giving Voice to Smartphones’ Other Applications (Marketing Vox)

Posted: 01/06/2010

The advent of smartphones has virtually made it obsolete to use mobile phones solely as phones. Current consumer uses of smartphones are exploding for non-voice communications like connecting to the internet, emailing and text messaging. Mobile Market View recently revealed a growing class of "heavy users" of non-voice communications. One example MarketingCharts wrote about was the percentage of users making more than 10 mobile internet accesses per week. The percentage continues to rise and currently represents more than one-fifth of all mobile users. This rise blows the door open for mobile advertising based on the exponential increase of commerical searches, particularly for local products. "Between waves one and three of Mobile Market View, consumers have basically doubled their use of the mobile platform for non-voice communications," said Rick Ducey, chief strategy officer, BIA/Kelsey.

Industry: Marketing, Design, & Interactive Communications, Telecommunications
Topic: Business Intelligence, E-Commerce, Marketing Communications
Region: Global
Audience: Business to Business

Watch Out iPhone – Dell’s Android Mini 3 Smartphone is Coming to China (Tech News World)

Posted: 12/17/2009

Dell is well-known for its PCs, but smartphones? That’s right. Dell’s answer to the iPhone, the new Android Mini 3, hits the global market in both China and Brazil in December with help from companies like China Mobile and Brazil’s Claro. Facing competition from a crowd of Android smartphones already on the market, Dell’s decision to focus its Mini 3’s release outside of the U.S. could prove to be a smart move. According to Gartner’s predictions, “[the Mini 3] could take the No. 2 spot in global marketshare by 2012, overtaking the iPhone.” Foreign consumers base purchasing decisions more on the brand’s name, which could position Dell to be first to market in China and Brazil. The technological goodies included in the Mini 3 are yet to be revealed. For now, consumers will have to wait until the smartphone is released.

Industry: Technology, Consulting, & Professional Services, Telecommunications
Topic: Business Intelligence, Technology Implementation
Region: Asia Pacific, South-Central America
Audience: Business to Consumer

Wharton’s Future of Advertising Project (Knowledge@Wharton)

Posted: 11/19/2009

According to Wharton School's SEI Center for Advanced Studies in Management, advertising has gone the way of the black and white television. Asking the question, “what will replace it?” Wharton’s effort is aptly named the Future of Advertising Project. Practicing what it preaches, Wharton is not only collecting case studies, data and fresh expert insight to identify best practices for the future; it is employing New Media techniques to expand its own audience. Wharton’s approach includes partnering on the launch of a new channel on Google's YouTube site called Fast.Forward. The site features short video clips called "quick perspectives" that elaborate on the future of marketing from executives, ad gurus and academic thought leaders. The project examines the creative combinations of old and new media that are defining the radical new terrain of advertising and expands it to a wider audience.

The Divide Among Us: The Classism in Social Networking (CNN)

Posted: 11/19/2009

A recent study by market research firm Nielsen Claritas Research points to a class divide online. The study finds that Facebook draws a more affluent crowd than MySpace, with nearly 23 percent of Facebook users earning $100,000+ a year compared to 16 percent of MySpace users. Twitter and LinkedIn draw an even more affluent crowd. 38 percent of LinkedIn users pull in $100,000+ per year. Ethnographer danah boyd witnessed a class divide emerge among American teens' use of social networks in a 2006 study. She uncovered a migration from MySpace to Facebook predominantly composed of the educated and the upper-class. Technology writer and blogger Sarah Perez says that people have a tendency to connect with similar people online as they do offline. Jason Kaufman, a Harvard research science fellow, says that with Facebook "The playing field is a lot more level in that you can find yourself having a wall-to-wall exchange with just an acquaintance. If you pick up the unlikely friend, not of your race or income bracket, the network may [help you]establish a more active friendship than if you met them in real life."

Industry: Marketing, Design, & Interactive Communications, Technology, Consulting, & Professional Services
Topic: Business Intelligence, Content Strategy, Experience & Interaction
Region: Global, North America
Audience: Peer Groups & Communities

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