Tired of carrying around those cumbersome, wallet-busting gift cards? Target wants to ease your burden by allowing you to keep their gift card right in your smartphone. The big box retailer just announced that customers can now access their gift cards right from their smartphones by presenting the digital bar code to the cashier at time of checkout.
Clearly this is a big step forward in m-commerce (as in mobile commerce) and a likely look at the shape of things to come. “There’s been such rapid growth in m-commerce in the last two years,” Ben Rushlo, senior manager of Internet technologies at Keynote, based in San Mateo, Calif., told Marketing Daily.
Each year, American Express sponsors The Customers’ Choice Awards to honor retailers who deliver top-notch customer service. For the third year in a row, L. L. Bean took first place. Check out this year’s other winners as just announced at the National Retail Federation’s Big Show.
From an early age, we’re taught that misspellings are a no-no. In school, they can lower your grade. In the professional world, they can mean missing out on an opportunity. But when it comes to your URL, you might want to consider registering one or several misspellings of your domain. Why? Because unlike your fifth grade English teacher, many of us are poor spellers.
Case in point: I have a friend who can’t spell his way out of a paper bag. One day he asked me to check his spelling on something and I came across the word “braw.” When I told him he spelled “bra” wrong, he replied, “Oh, did I leave off the ‘w’?”
He’s not the only one out there, which is why we need to anticipate how they might misspell our company names when doing a Google search.
For example, if your company is named Lemon Anchovies, we’ll assume your URL is LemonAnchovies.com. But you might also consider registering LemonAnchovees.com and maybe even LeminAnchovies.com. The cost of registering additional domains is little in comparison to the business potential of grabbing new customers. And really, just because they can’t spell, that doesn’t mean they can’t spend.
Facebook recently announced its newprivacy enhancementsthat may just make our information less private. Although there are new controls that allow you to limit who sees your personal information, posts, photos, etc., the change that’s causing blow back is due to a new category, called “publicly available information,” that is beyond users’ control. This new category includes a person’s name, picture and city, the list of their Facebook friends and the Facebook pages they have endorsed. As a recent LA Times editorial observed, “The friends list is particularly sensitive, privacy advocates note, because of the amount of personal information that can be gleaned from knowing a person’s associates.”
Why did Facebook do this? According to the LA Times, it’s simply good business. For them, not necessarily for you. Read the Op-ed piecehere.
The food trucks are taking over LA and we love it! Especially since we’ve partnered with many of them to bring traffic, prospects and PR to our client’s TLofts development in WestLA. The trucks stop by TLofts Monday-Friday, so come out and sample some of this gourmet street food. This link will take you to the weekly schedule.
For a primer on all the great truck food, check out this video from the folks at WunderBlog covering their recent truck tasting tour. Their first stop is at TLofts.
Trade shows are a great way to build business, network, and experiment with new cocktails. But they do require your time and money, so it makes sense to try to get the most out of your investment. In a recent post on Skyline Tradeshow Tips, Michael Flavin highlights five key strategies for increasing the effectiveness of your trade show participation.
Choose a trade show that offers the possiblility of success. This means rolling up your sleaves and doing some research. You’ll want to find out what shows will appeal most to your target, how many people have attended the show in the past, how well the show is promoted, related costs, etc.
Set your goals. What do you want to get out of the show you’ve selected? Are you there to make sales, build a database or just network? Decide on this prior to attending so you can determine afterward if the show was a success.
Put the proper people in place. All that money you spend on fancy booth graphics, the slick DVD and stylish brochure won’t matter if the people you have behind your table don’t know how to work the show. Make sure your people know how to qualify leads so they’re spending their time with viable prospects versus someone who just after a free key chain. Which brings up the next point…
Make your promos memorable. Really, how many key chains do you need? Consider doing something more conceptual that ties in to your product or service. And don’t rely solely on a giveaway to promote yourself. Prior to the show you should be contacting attendees/exhibitors via email or direct mail to let them know you’ll be at the show and why they should care. Many shows allow you to purchase a list of attendees for just this purpose.
Follow up. If you put in the effort, you’ll likely capture some great leads during the show. But if you don’t follow up with them, it’s all a waste. This is where discipline really comes into play. Have a clear system in place for following up so after the show you’re ready to strike while the iron is still hot. Wait too long, and they may forget about you.
Media mogul Rupert Murdoch intends to block Google’s search spiders from indexing his News Corporation’s sites. As has been widely reported, Murdoch believes the time is right for people to begin paying for online content. He also feels that content aggregators have been getting a free ride by “stealing” content and it’s time for this practice to stop.
In this interview with Sky News’ David Spears, Murdoch explains the thinking behind his position.
Several months ago we posted about a new Pizza Hut iPhone app that let people order their pizza and play a pizza delivery inspired game right on their phone. According to a recent article in Mashable, the pizza maker has generated incremental sales of more than $1 million dollars since the app’s introduction. The app’s success has surprised many, including Pizza Hut’s own senior director of digital marketing, Bernard Acoca.
“We always saw a steady level of growth with our mobile business via our WAP site, but to be candid it wasn’t the explosive level of growth we’ve seen with the iPhone app. iPhone applications capture consumers’ imagination in a way that WAP sites simply can’t do, so the decision to expand to the iPhone was as good one for us.”
In addition to bringing in added revenue, the app has also earned one of the highest distinctions available; it’s been featured in an iPhone TV ad. Click here for the full story.
Oh sure, anyone can implement an effective email marketing campaign that offers great ROI. But what if you’re looking to tank your email campaign? Not so easy, is it? Don’t worry, Andrew Kordek from Deliverability.com has outlined nine basic steps guaranteed to sink your campaign. In a nutshell:
Boast to your subscribers about your prowess in email marketing. And do it often. They really care about this.
Forget about what your subscribers want; you’re in this to generate revenue. So, be sure to send them an email everyday and eventually they’re bound to buy something. Or opt out.
Remember, you’re not really sending emails or communications, your sending “blasts” and all that the name implies. Get those subscribers in your sights and blast and blast away.
You know all those white papers, articles and blogs that cover email marketing best practices? Print them out and turn them into paper airplanes. C’mon, no one knows better than you anyway.
People signed up for your email so they must obviously want it. They crave it. That said, don’t spend too much time thinking about what you send, they’ll be happy to get anything. They’re so needy.
Don’t waste money on an email expert to run your program since any bozo can do the job. No bozos around? Grab someone from the mail room; they’re experts with the mail, right?
Choose an email service provider based on the following criteria: A) they can send email, and B) they are the cheapest ones around. Don’t be bothered with trivial things like does their user interface and service support suck.
Never grow your list organically when you can buy a list with 4 million opt-in names for just $99. Hey, who doesn’t love a bargain?
And finally, be sure to let your CMO or president tell you how to run the show. Just because he or she does not fully understand what you do, that’s no reason to think they can’t do it better.
You’re not really going to use that old vacation photo for your Facebook profile, are you? Estee Lauder has a better proposition. Beginning October 16, the cosmetics company will offer free makeovers and photo shoots at select department store cosmetics counters to produce head shots women can use for their online profiles. The promotion will also include a giveaway of a 10-day supply of foundation.
This event runs counter to the cosmetic industry’s “gift with purchase” promotions, but the executives at Estee Lauder are viewing this as a way to bring a more contemporary image to the brand and perhaps attract a younger buyer as well. And, since the photos will have an Estee Lauder logo in the background, the company can likely expect to increase its brand presence on Facebook and other social sites.
Trade shows are a great way to build business, network, and experiment with new cocktails. But they do require your time and money, so it makes sense to try to get the most out of your investment. In a recent post on Skyline Tradeshow Tips, Michael Flavin highlights five key strategies for increasing the effectiveness of your trade show participation.
Several months ago we 
You’re not really going to use that old vacation photo for your Facebook profile, are you? Estee Lauder has a better proposition. Beginning October 16, the cosmetics company will offer free makeovers and photo shoots at select department store cosmetics counters to produce head shots women can use for their online profiles. The promotion will also include a giveaway of a 10-day supply of foundation.