Walgreens Makes Strides with Location Based Marketing
Are the days of paper circulars advertising deals from local drugstores and supermarkets becoming a thing of the past? Quite possibly, if more retailers follow Walgreens’ lead in making circulars a completely mobile experience.
Of course, we’re all familiar with receiving deals via email advertising, but Walgreens has taken it one step further by making coupons available via mobile app check-in. In an article from adage.com, the company’s use of LocalResponse to find public check-ins at stores is profiled. While there are many companies offering deals exclusively through foursquare checkins, LocalResponse allows the drugstore chain to find any public check-ins (foursquare, Yelp, Twitter, etc) and send responses to the customer. It’s an interesting use of location based marketing – and could have widespread effects on the industry if successful.
Clever New Visa Campaign Tells You Who to Take to the Super Bowl
On the heels of American Express’s successful partnership with foursquare, Visa has developed a clever campaign with Facebook and the NFL. The You + Ten Facebook Draft application has just been launched to promote Visa’s current contest offering one cardholder a trip to Super Bowl XLVI with 10 of their friends.
The app grabs key data from a user’s Facebook page, including recent interactions, tagged friends and frequent commenters to create a “Draft Class” – the 10 friends he or she should take if they won the contest. It comes complete with a draft video unveiling the picks that can be shared with friends.
One of the most important aspects of any social media campaign is engaging potential customers. Visa’s campaign creates a fun way to keep their contest (and thus their brand) in customers’ minds. While obviously not every company has the power to partner with the NFL, even the smallest businesses can find ways to be unique and engaging.
New domain extensions open a world of possibilities…and potential problems
When developing a new website, think your only choices for domain extensions are .com, .net or a handful of others? Think again. Starting this month, you will be able to apply for any extension you can dream up. Starting an online shoe store? You could be www.greatheels.shoes. Make the world’s best pretzels? You could be the owner of www.salty.pretzels. The possibilities are endless.
Having a custom domain extension will not come cheap – it costs $185,000 just to apply. For some, it may be a worthwhile investment, as it provides an opportunity to control a branded space and may have some benefits for search engine rankings.
ICANN’s decision to allow for these new extensions, called generic top-level domains (gTLDs), is not without its drawbacks, however. A recent article in internetretailer.com discusses the potential issues with opening up limitless domain possibilities, including potential for consumer confusion and even fraudulent sites. New gTLDs may mean that companies have to undertake quite a bit of expense to protect their interests across a huge range of extensions.
American Express & Foursquare Create one of 2011’s Best Social Media Partnerships
One of 2011’s more engaging campaigns was American Express’s partnership with location-based social networking site foursquare. Featured in iMedia Connection’s Best Social Media Campaigns of 2011, this program allows users to access special discounts by connecting their American Express cards to their foursquare accounts. When foursquare users “check in” at participating businesses, they are offered credits for making purchases in that establishment.
A key difference between this campaign and other location based coupon campaigns, is that the discounts are automatically triggered – as long as the person pays with American Express. This eliminates the potential hassle of trying to redeem mobile coupons, a problem that has plagued similar efforts.
Throughout the year, American Express’s campaign expanded significantly, including the successful “Small Business Saturday” program, where users were offered a $25 credit for frequenting small businesses on November 26.
Mobile Ad Spending on the Rise
As smartphone and tablet adoption rises throughout the United States, mobile advertising becomes an increasingly important platform to pursue. It seems more and more marketers are beginning to realize this, as US mobile ad spending is expected to increase to $1.8 billion in 2012, according to a study by eMarketer.
Particularly interesting is the focus on local ads – those geotargeted to a user’s location. Spending on these types of ads is expected to overtake that of national ads by a 2:1 margin as quickly as 2013.
Access to the mobile web is quickly becoming commonplace, and as this happens mobile advertising will start to become a necessity. In 2011, there were nearly 100 million mobile internet users in United States — that’s a lot of potential customers! Consumers expect to be able to shop from a variety of devices, and it is important for marketers take notice of this trend and create campaigns accordingly.
Facebook Advertising Pays Off
If you haven’t yet dipped your toes into the ocean of Facebook advertising, now may be the time to start. TBG Digital, a global marketing company specializing in Facebook advertising and social media, recently released their Global Facebook Advertising Report, and the results are quite promising.
After examining 255 billion impressions across 216 Facebook advertisers, TBG found improved ad performance in nearly all areas. Click Through Rates saw an 18.5% increase across five major markets (US, UK, France, Canada and Germany) from Q2 to Q3, while Cost Per Click decreased by 10.8%. Sponsored Story ads, which display friends’ recent interactions with brands in the form of advertisements, were found to have improved effectiveness.
As businesses get ready for the new year, now is the time to start thinking about new marketing campaigns. Including Facebook in your efforts is not just a good idea, it is becoming increasingly necessary to compete in the social media marketing sphere.
Don’t Let the Tablet Revolution Leave You Behind
Although the idea of incorporating tablets into marketing strategy is still a foreign concept to many business owners, it is becoming an increasingly important approach to consider. According to a Nomura Securities International forecast, 52 million tablets will sell in 2011 – a number that certainly shouldn’t be ignored. Furthermore, tablet penetration is expect to double next year, making these devices an important aspect of any company’s digital strategy.
Marketing for tablet users is fundamentally different from marketing for mobile devices such as the smartphone. While smartphones are largely on-the-go devices, tablets tend to be at-home devices. Users are more likely to thoroughly explore content, providing an opportunity to fully engross consumers in the brand. To succeed, marketers need to develop a tablet strategy that takes advantage of this unique medium and incorporates it into an overall digital marketing plan.
Reaching Your Customers Via Email Without Fear of Spam
You’ve created a great email marketing campaign. You’ve written engaging copy and created an offer you know your customers won’t be able to refuse.
However, you may have forgotten one treacherous roadblock in the world of email marketing: The dreaded spam filter. Your brilliant new campaign isn’t going to do you much good if your messages aren’t reaching your customer’s inbox.
AllPosters.com was experiencing precisely this issue. A piece from the November 2011 issue of Direct Marketing News discusses how the company went from over half of their messages being stuck in Gmail’s spam filter, to 100% deliverability to these recipients.
Known for being one of the hardest Internet Service Providers to deliver email messages through, Gmail has a very strict spam-filtering system. If a business finds their emails being marked as spam by some users, their messages become increasingly unlikely to be delivered to others.
After working with CheetahMail, AllPosters.com took several measures to see that their messages were actually being delivered. Removing all bounced Gmail addresses from their list and using a slower flow rate for delivery were important steps. The company also moved the unsubscribe button to the top of their emails to encourage those who no longer wanted to receive their mailings to simply opt out, instead of marking them as spam.
Utilizing these solutions, AllPosters.com was able to hit 100% delivery after about 6 weeks, proving that it is possible to combat spam filters if you take the right steps. If you devote time to considering these elements and implement the correct techniques when developing a campaign, you should be able to reach your customers without your messages being blocked.
TrueMailer adds Annual Event Triggering
If you are a customer of TruePresence (our Internet Marketing arm), you’ve no doubt heard of TrueMailer, our e-mail marketing service. TrueMailer provides an easy way to send hundreds or thousands of e-mails to your opt-in database. This is the best practice way to send e-mails to your clients, customers and potential customers as you are allowing one-click unsubscribes and using someone else’s approved gateway to send the e-mails.
So you can create a newsletter and send it out once a month.
What you might not know is that you can now create triggered e-mails. You add the subscriber’s birthday, for example. Then when the day comes up, a pre-set Birthday E-Mail goes out. Or perhaps an Anniversary of when that person became a customer. Thanking them for the purchase and reminding them to come back.
TrueMailer has a lot of neat features. Let us show you what you can do with this software to keep in touch with all your clients year-round.
New Client Website www.billfellows.com
The Spokes Agency proudly announces the launch of www.billfellows.com. Bill specializes in Consulting to the cleaning industry on Green Cleaning methods. He provides advice to building managers and cleaning organizations.
He needed a new website that would properly represent him and allow potential clients to easily see all the products and services offered. He also now has an ability to offer immediate Free and Paid downloads of information and manuals right from the site.
Another interesting feature is the persistent menu, that follows you as you scroll down the page.
Please take a look at www.billfellows.com and let us know what you think!
What Facebook knows and DOESN’T know!
For those of you interested in Internet Marketing, Facebook is the phenomenon to keep an eye on. With it’s growth to 700 Million users and its ability to target advertising, we’re seeing good results when using this platform.
If you’re interested in targeting people with an ad, it’s great ’cause we know how old you are, what sex you are and where you live. Why? Cause you told Facebook when you signed up. Yay! Except sometimes those rascally 12 -year olds decide to pose as 18 -year olds. Oh well, of course that’ll happen.
But did you know that NOT everything is target-able on Facebook? How about Household Income? Nope. No idea. Now, we can see if you’re a LIKE of the local Polo team or Country Club, but that’s a little harder to dissect than just saying “Show my ads to those high-income folks”.
How about OWNING your home? NOPE. Maybe you can see if they are a LIKE of Home Depot. But again, not quite the same.
Facebook is a very valuable platform and we have seen huge numbers of impressions generating CPC’s at about half the cost of Google . . . For NOW. But be aware that we don’t know everything about everyone yet. And that’s probably a good thing.
TruePresence Baltimore and The Spokes Agency In the News
Breaking – May 2, 2011 . . .
Check out Jeff Spokes answering the question – “What’s your main competitive advantage?” in the May, 2011 SmartCEO Digital Magazine (also in print).
Mobile – It’s the “year after” the “Year of Mobile”
As we’ve suggested in the past, it’s more than just “mobile is coming”. Mobile is here. Mobile Internet Marketing needs to follow.
We are talking to our clients about a multitude of issues. Here are just a few to keep in mind as you begin to put your strategy together:
Mobile Web. Should you have an optimized mobile site? Yes. Should you have a separate App for iPhone, Blackberry and Android? What about a tablet App for these platforms? The answer is maybe. Look at your website on a Blackberry, iPhone and Android. Is it instantly readable? Are the menu items that need to be accessed most near the top? If the answer is no, get your web “moblized”. Check for resources on the web like mobify.com that can help you take your site and “instantly mobilize it”. Or bring it to a developer to get a custom mobile site done. Either way, you’ll be happy you did later this year when everyone else is playing catch-up.
On the App front – if you have specialized things that you want to do and allow people to do when they’re not connected to the web – build an app. Only problem, right now they’re hideously expensive for the small business owner to dive into. If you have to do it, do it. Otherwise wait – maybe a new App-building program will come out in the near future to take care of this situation.
Finally, consider Internet Marketing for Mobile. How do you do this? Banner ads. Really. Tiny banner ads that drive traffic to your mobile site are converting at 2-3x the rate of banner ads on standard websites. Why? They can be targeted. People are out and about and ready to buy. One other way to grab attention for mobile users is QR Codes. Those small 2-D Bar Codes that can be scanned by phones. By the end of the year you will see them everywhere. And they will send you to a number of different places. Where it used to be hard to put a long URL in the hands of the consumer, now they just scan a code and boom, you’ve got ‘em where you want ‘em.
Lots to think about. Keep it top of mind, though – and then do something. It’s the year after the Year of Mobile (2010). You want to keep up, don’t you?