Notes From A Mobilized Marketer - When Mobile and People Do Good

Often dubbed the most personal device, mobile phones can also be among the most useful for serving others. The latest example is the Be My Eyes app that finds volunteers to view and provide information on photos or video taken by sight-impaired people.

Following a test in Portland, Ore., Starbucks Mobile Order & Pay will soon be available in over 600 stores in Pacific Northwest. The promise is that you get to order ahead of time and pick up with little to no delay.

Starbucks’ innovation has already made it the leader in sales at brick and mortar locations. The company says that it is averaging more than seven million mobile transactions in stores each week.

Meanwhile, a Deloitte study says in-store mobile payments overall are set to rise 1000% in 2015.

The National Hockey League will broadcast live GoPro footage during games.

Google may be close to launching its own wireless service using Sprint and T-Mobile.

Many envision a shakeout of mobile wallet players in 2015. The first domino? Amazon is said to be folding its app beta.

42% of shoppers would share mobile information for text messaging offers, per IBM. Yet we are still, after all these years, needing to convince marketers of the opportunity.

NBC will stream the Super Bowl, but not to all smartphones since Verizon owns the rights.

Intel generated $2.1 billion from the Internet of Things in 2014.

Tweet of the week from Laptop Magazine editor in chief Mark Spoonauer @mspoonauer – “Dear wireless carriers. Stop changing your plans every day. It's getting confusing for us, nevermind everyday shoppers.”

Last year, 38% of all online advertising was delivered on a mobile device: Borrell.

By 2019, the firm expects it to be 70%.

Facebook is nearing 1 billion mobile users worldwide, with much of the growth coming in developing countries on lower-end phones.

Retailers with the biggest share of mobile traffic tend to be in athletic apparel, footwear & cosmetics, says research for the 2015 Search Marketing 500.

Mobile accounts for nearly half of the paid-search ad spend, according to Marin Software.

A new survey by Harris and Dell finds tablets boost employee productivity by 20%.

Notes From A Mobilized Marketer - Are You Ready For Some Football and Mobile Shopping?

We know where our eyes are on Sundays – watching the National Football League. But what about our fingers? It turns out that they are on our mobile devices making purchases happen.

Surprisingly, the most mobile shopping happens on Sunday and on Amazon, according to Opera Software. How does that compare? Desktop traffic to e-commerce sites tends to peak on Mondays and remains stronger during weekdays than on weekends. The day with the lowest mobile shopping traffic is Friday.

Has the Internet of Things made your 2015 marketing plan? Projections are huge for 2020 and 2025. Oh, I get it - nudge you around 2018.

Cyber Monday tablet users averaged $121.49 per order, per IBM.

Smartphones, which have lagged behind tablets in terms of mobile commerce, are making more of an impact as the year comes to a close. The majority (66%) of travel and retail (53%) mobile transactions now come from smartphones, according to Criteo, a performance marketing company.

High-end brick and mortars like Nordstrom are quite crowded these days despite the fact that 45% of affluents plan to all their holiday season online: eMarketer.

26% of people who call their cable companies are asking if they can cancel TV service, says Marchex. If your experience is like mine (yes, Comcast, I’m talking about you), it’s because of outages, overbilling, and a disregard for what matters – dependability.

43% of U.S. consumers know Apple Pay but only 3% have used it, reports Kantar. Security concerns remain.

“Responsive” is a marketer’s watchword for 2015 or so says eMarketer. I thought that happened in 2013.

Amazon and Sears have been known to change prices on 15 to 20% of their products at least once a day, according to 360pi.

Next year, Iowa will allow the use of the mobile app version of a driver’s license as a replacement for a paper license.

United attendants will get the iPhone 6 Plus models to serve customers in-flight. Will they need to keep them in airplane mode?

Instagram is now bigger than Twitter with 300 million monthly users.

There are 4700 app downloads from iTunes every minute, Oracle reports.

I spent lots of time in airports last week. There were no sightings of fingers triple-tapping on feature phones. It felt like a milestone moment.