M-commerce – coming soon to a location near you

Coming to a shop, restaurant, cinema, carwash, hair salon….the rise and rise of hyper local, m-commerce consumer offerings….

New York – A Carrabba’s Italian Grill executive at the Mcommerce Summit: State of Mobile Commerce 2011 conference said that offering a mobile incentive via an SMS or location-based services campaign is key to engage new and exisiting consumers.

The Italian concept restaurant chain is using mobile Web sites, SMS messaging and location-based social media to help drive acquisition, engagement and activation. During the “Carrabba’s Italian Grill: How mobile enhances the restaurant retail experience” keynote, the executive discussed how the company is exploring mobile display and search, as well as customer relationship management.

The conference was organized by Mobile Commerce Daily.

“For me to ask someone to give me their email address requires a certain amount of trust,” said Jamie Miller, brand marketing manager of Carrabba’s Italian Grill, Tampa, FL.”

“To turn around ask someone for their telephone number requires a heck of a lot more trust,” he said.

Leveraging that trust to communicate with customers in a meaningful way is a central focus of the chain’s mobile strategy.

In addition to the personal nature of mobile, other reasons for its attractiveness to Carrabba’s is the number of tools mobile offers as well as its immediate, hyperlocal and addictive nature.

Loyalty tie-in
“If our Staten Island location wants to address peak hours, we can deploy mobile tactics to specifically drive this,” Mr. Miller said. “That hyperlocal nature is very important to us.”

To drive customer acquisition, Carrabba’s uses any real estate it has, including check presenter inserts and banners in restaurants to communicate about its mobile program.

It is also leveraging its loyalty program, which has more than one million members, to send emails inviting members to experience Carrabba’s mobile Web site.

The company polled its loyalty program members about what components of a mobile Web site are most important to them.

Location information was the number one response, followed by menu information and mobile ordering.

The mobile Web site serves as the hub of Carrabba’s mobile activity.

The chain focuses on ways to provide users a reason to visit the site and then provide content that will motivate them to visit a restaurant.

“I wanted to enhance our user experience with our mobile Web site, making it quick and easy for customers to get the information they want,” Mr. Miller said.

Since the launch of the mobile Web site, Carrabba’s has seen a 22 percent increase in overall Web site traffic, including 76.3 percent new visitors to mobile site.

The chain’s SMS program started with 12 restaurants.

The company sent a text message with an offer once a week to those in its mobile database.

This was done to engage with these customers and learn from them.

“I really wanted to learn things like what offers drove them and what time to end out messages,” Mr. Miller said.

There was a 68 percent redemption rate of deployed offers.

Carrabba’s built a mobile database for each of its locations.

This enabled the company to create offers that address the needs of specific locations, whether it is to drive Sunday sales, bar sales, off-peak sales or catering.

The program was then expanded to include engagement messaging in addition to offer messages, with offers going out once a week.

The offers are sent to recipients weekly messages and asks them what their favorite dishes are.

One of the goals of these efforts was gain insight into whether it was discounting people who are already coming into a location or bringing in incremental visits.

Respondents to a poll asking customers about this indicated 73 percent a mobile offer drove an incremental visit.

“This shows we’re providing value to customers as well as to each one of our locations,” Mr. Miller said.

Foursquare builds relationships
Carrabba’s mobile efforts also include a partnership with Foursquare, which was introduced last year.

According to Mr. Miller, the goal with Foursquare is to reward silent, but regular customers.

The company introduced an offer providing a complimentary dessert offer to each Carrabba’s “Mayor.”

This resulted in 22,401 check-ins.

The offer was later changed to a loyalty special offer, giving customers a complimentary appetizer on every fifth check-in with the purchase of an entrée. There were 28,956 check-ins with the new offer.

“Foursquare is a conversation starter and relationship builder,” Mr. Miller said.

Source: http://www.mobilemarketer.com/cms/news/content/9940.html

The A-Z of Location Based Marketing

 

26 key elements inside this wide and complex channel that you probably need to be aware of. A  mixture of trends, platforms, strategy and more, avoiding simply listing the main players in the market that everyone knows about.

 

A … is for Apps

Apps are important and have proved to be a game-changer for geomarketing. 29% of mobile owners use location based apps on their phones more than once a day and 27% use them multiple times on a weekly basis. This is expected to dramatically increase in the future.

B … is for Businesses

Get your business online! Google Places should already be a staple part of of any SME/SMB company’s online marketing presence. Even enterprises with localised offline stores can jump on board to reach out to a local audience.

C … is for Campaign

Location-based marketing can take many forms so you need to think about your objective and then build a strategy around this. Will a quick PR campaign achieve your goals, or would you be better off finding a more long-term approach?

D … is for Directory

Getting listed in local directories is being overlooked a lot at the moment, in favour of more sexy kinds of geomarketing.

I still think there’s enormous value (especially for smaller businesses) in getting onboard with niche sites such as Yelp or TopTable. It’ll also help improve search visibility, which is an important factor, considering that more than 20% of search queries have a localised intent.

E  … is for Engagement

If you’re going to have a geo-based mobile application, you have to make it engaging for your audience. If not, it probably won’t work, especially when you consider that it has to compete with millions of other apps to stand out.

It’s generally the same for any wider campaign: if it doesn’t get people wanting to be involved, you’re likely not to meet your objectives.

F … is for Foursquare

I said I wouldn’t mention too many location-based services, but to ignore Foursquare would be silly. The platform has seen great uptake amongst users and brands have been quick to wade in.

There are a lot of great case studies of smart, creative campaigns floating around.

G … is for Gowalla

G was pretty hard, so I had to use this one. Gowalla is pretty similar to Foursquare: It’s a location-based social network that users can connect to and check-in based on their physical location.

In return virtual rewards are collected, which can then be redeemed for real-life rewards like cinema tickets.

H … is for Hotpot

Google is seriously throwing itself into localised content and search results. Hotpot is a new UGC local recommendation engine, Here’s a good explanation as to how this works.

It still seems to be developing, but may well gather momentum in the near future.

I … is for Information

A lot of users are looking for information from local businesses: where a store is based, opening times and more. Don’t withhold this from them!

Ensure that they have access to as much information about your company as possible across as many touchpoints you can manage.

J … is for JiWire

JiWire is a smart location-based advertising company, which uses free wifi hotspots to serve up relevant display ads.

It’s quite a new company, but an innovative approach means that it is blazing a trail across location-based marketing.

K … is for Knowledge

Before embarking on any form of geomarketing, you need to arm yourself with knowledge to help you understand your goals – at marketing and business levels – and to plan around these.

Who are your main audience? What are their behaviours? What do you want them to do? The questions that need to be asked will go on for a long time, but once you full know what the answers are, the rest should fall into place.

L … is for Latitude

Google Latitude is a location-aware mobile app. It allows the user to share their location on Google Maps with selected people to whatever degree they want: eg. Street, city or country levels.

It can be turned on and off at will, so gives a large amount of control. While this on its own is arguably nothing special, it has an open API that marketers can take advantage of.

M … is for Mobile

Without a doubt, mobile handsets are changing the location-based marketing game. The flexibility and potential now offered by smartphones means that the only real limit is creativity. (And budget).

N … is for Nice-to-have

You need to question whether having some geomarketing capabilities are essential or just nice-to-have.

What’s more important: allocating resources to ensure that your chain of offline stores can be found in the results of user’s local search queries, or setting up a Foursquare campaign?

O … is for Objective

What do you want from your location-based activities? Branding? Increased awareness? Sales? Leads? Once you understand this, figuring out the best strategy to achieve it should be pretty easy.

P … is for Places

What kind of list would this be without mentioning Facebook Places? Places lets users check-in to Facebook using a mobile device and share their location with their social networks.

Recent developments have seen partnership deals with the likes of Starbucks, Debenhams, O2 and Yo!Sushi.

Q … is for Question

As already mentioned, you need to question not only what you want from any location-based marketing, but also what your users want.

With the best will in the world, without understanding your main demographic, planning and execution of a campaign or programme can still go horribly wrong if not realised properly.

R … is for Rewards

It’s no secret that users love rewards and marketers are using this more and more. The likes of Facebook, Foursquare and Gowalla have all formed partnership deals with companies to reward users with physical products, based on ideas surrounding location loyalty.

S … is for Search

Two words here, really: Local search. You need to make sure you’re on it, for all the obvious reasons.

T  … is for Twitter

Twitter recently launched Twitter Places, which is the functionality to show the location of users as part of an opt-in process. If a user chooses this option, then all their Tweets are subsequently attached to publicly shared information about their exact location.

U … is for User experience

In the same sense as “Engaging”, geomarketing has to deliver a great user experience, particularly if it’s part of a campaign. Without good UX, users will quickly stop participating.

V … is for Voucher

As with rewards, vouchers are growing to become a large part of geomarketing. The clever chaps at Vouchercode show how this is best done.

W … is for WiFi

As wifi becomes increasingly free, it’s getting easier for users to share their location with their networks and to engage with geo-driven campaigns and marketing. Arguably, this has been a big driver of the increase of LBM, alongside smartphone handsets.

X  … is for X-marks the spot

Make sure your location is right! There’s nothing more frustrating for a user than to discover you’ve moved, but haven’t changed the details on search-based maps, for example…

Y  … is for Y-gen

Just something to keep in mind, but statistically, Generation-Y is more likely to share their location and engage with geomarketing.

Z … is for Zzzz

Location-based marketing has been around for a while, but it’s definitely here to stay, helped along by the user uptake of social media and mobile. If you snooze, you’ll lose.

Source: http://econsultancy.com/uk/blog/7292-the-a-z-of-location-based-marketing?utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter

Talking Music Making with Andrea from Digital Music Trends

Digital Music Trends – Episode 76.

#MIDEM MidemNet Wrap-up: Day One

Stuart Dredge has been typing his little hands off….

The first day of MidemNet is done, following a mix of panels, speeches and startling industry moustaches. Here’s a rundown of what we, the official Midem Blog and our event partner Digital Music News have been publishing. What did we learn from day one?

The silver linings of cloud music
The cloud music session was sparky, as Sony Music, mSpot, simfy and Catch Media debated the challenges and opportunities of the cloud. Catch boss Harry Maloney picked a fight with mSpot’s Daren Tsui over licensing (or the lack of it in mSpot’s case), while simfy’s Christophe Lange stressed the importance of user engagement in building a successful cloud offering. Meanwhile, Sony’s Thomas Hesse had a request for Apple. “If you’re an iTunes user now, wouldn’t it be nice if you could stream or re-download all the music you’d bought on that to all your devices. Wouldn’t that be fabulous? And we’d wholeheartedly endorse that…”
Liveblog – http://tinyurl.com/6j8cgqp

Vivendi boss expects Spotify US launch
Vivendi CEO Jean-Bernard Levy called for more anti-piracy legislation, had warm words for ISPs, and held UMG up as a model for cost-cutting effiency in his keynote. And Spotify? “We expect Spotify to be able to find agreements with all its partners that it could launch as early as possible in the United States, but there are other streaming and subscription services available to American consumers. At the end of the day, the market is very complicated…”
Liveblog – http://tinyurl.com/68r563p

OK Go going HTML5, while Imogen Heap gets crowdsourced
This morning’s artist panel saw OK Go’s Damian Kulash and solo artist Imogen Heap talking about their social media success. Heap is planning to write songs with the help of fans, who’ll provide the audio samples, lyrics and video. Meanwhile, OK Go is working on an HTML5 music video with Mozilla, the company behind the web browser Firefox.
Liveblog – http://tinyurl.com/6xqufhz

Saul Klein gives Index Ventures’ view on music
Index Ventures has invested in firms including Last.fm, Songkick, SoundCloud, Sonos, DoubleTwist and RjDj. He talked about the company’s “Jekyll and Hyde attitude towards dealing with content owners”, praised startup culture in Europe (particularly London), and said music services shouldn’t get hung up on going global too quickly. “Look at Spotify in Sweden. It is the number one source of income for the labels, not just digital, but physical as well… Pick your market, win big and then go back and say ‘hey, what are you going to do for me now?’. Don’t obsess about this regional, global, intergalactic rights. Focus on a market, kill it, then go to another one!”
Liveblog – http://tinyurl.com/6hqpeow

Sony takes Music Unlimited more global (and to iPhone/Android)
Sony launched its Omnifone-powered Music Unlimited service last month in the UK and Ireland, but today it went live in France, Germany, Spain and Italy too. Sony Network Entertainment boss Tim Schaaff promised a US launch this quarter, and promised that it won’t be restricted to Sony devices, with plans to launch apps for iPhone and Android. The firm is certainly ambitious. “Our studies show that about 85-90% of the consumers aren’t really involved in the digital music revolution at all. That customer base is a customer base that Sony communicates to every day.”
Liveblog – http://tinyurl.com/6eaeh4f

Vodafone has 100k paying music subscribers
The Foursquare / Vodafone session was a big disappointment today: why no questions for Foursquare co-founder Naveen Selvadurai about, er, music? The audience were left to draw their own conclusions about how artists and labels can use the social location service. However, co-interviewee Lee Epting from Vodafone at least dished out some stats: “We are targeting one million paid subscribers for music in this calendar year, and in the UK we’re already in excess of 100,000…”
Story – http://tinyurl.com/6y5nc8p

Mark Mulligan thinks music services need more SPARC
What? Social, Participative, Accessible, Relevant and Connected. The Forrester analyst outlined the keys for success for new music services in his speech this morning. Also included: the claim that “YouTube is music’s killer app”; the fact that ownership matters much less to 12-15 year-old ‘digital natives; and that user experience is key. “Content is no longer king. Its throne has been taken by experience. Yet how many music services really focus on experience?”
Liveblog – http://tinyurl.com/657wqkg

Metric’s manager called for less doom’n’gloom
Crystal Math Management’s co-founder Mathieu Drouin predicted an industry shakeout this year, and criticised the woes around music sales. “We have to stop reading press about how bad the music business is. It’s a disruption that is not healthy for us… We have to just turn that noise down, because it really is misleading… Mindshare of the press is coming from people running multi-national corporations.”
Liveblog – http://tinyurl.com/6e8qr7o

Music Ubiquity talks are… ubiquitous
The five-minute talks in between sessions this year focused on music ubiquity, with Terry McBride, Gerd Leonhard and Ted Cohen among the speakers. McBride warned of the dangers of the ‘black cloud’ for artists, while Leonhard offered some examples of social commerce from outside the music industry. Meanwhile, Cohen warned the industry about dragging its heels (again). “What do music fans want? They want interoperability… We need to get to complete ubiquity. We need to start looking at the pie, not the platform.”
McBride – http://tinyurl.com/6abwr9h
Leonhard – http://tinyurl.com/6fr4txv
Cohen – http://tinyurl.com/67je2yv

ON DIGITAL MUSIC NEWS…
Tommy Boy’s Tom Silverman reckons Midem was 60% labels, 30% publishers and 10% other companies ten years ago. “Now, it’s 10 percent publishers, 5 percent labels, and 85 percent ‘other’.” Meanwhile, DMN has also picked up on the meme of Midem so far: Ted Cohen’s moustache.moustache. More seriously, it reflects the view of many audience members for the Licensing Crash Test session: “the licensing process in Europe – and worldwide – remains insanely complicated, and full of endless negotiations, demands, MFNs, and lurking litigants.  Just like before.  Just like ten years ago.”
Silverman – http://tinyurl.com/6zecp9s
Tache – http://tinyurl.com/6erdxos
Licensing – http://tinyurl.com/5rvtdep

It’s all about the mobile web – isn’t it?