Why The Coolest Things Often Aren't What Many Marketers Think

The effects of the South By Southwest flu have surely passed for those who spent early March sleep-deprived in Austin. But what about the malady that manifests itself in a marketer chasing shiny objects?

It happens every year. Pragmatism gets left at home, replaced by the expectation that the “cooler than cool” folks at SXSW will see “cooler than cool” technology and services. Then, they will bring those “solutions” to their marketing programs and all will be cool.

Except consumers are anything but cool early adopters.

So just what are our target audiences responding to in the real world?

Yard signs.

And messages on printed receipts.

Before you say that those are uncool, let me explain.

Jack Dorsey, founder and CEO of Square and co-founder of Twitter, is one of those cool dudes who you see in Austin. Of all things, he sees the printed receipt as underused and a next-generation point of engagement with consumers.

“What if we see the receipt more as a publishing medium — a product unto itself that people actually want to take home, that they want to engage with, be fully interactive with?” Dorsey said earlier this year at the National Retail Federation’s annual expo. ”What can we do with this everyday tool?

“What can we build into this canvas that’s actually valuable, that’s independent of the product you just sold? What can you give in this communication channel, this publishing medium, that people want to engage with?”

One answer is a text to win call to action on receipts that leads to more sales and additions to a brand’s mobile permission-based databases.

Here’s how it worked in practice:

A large quick service restaurant did a text to win contest in Los Angeles and New York (about 1,200 locations in each city). Los Angeles included a text messaging call to action via SmartReceipt and got approximately 17,000 entries. New York did not and had about 1,900.

The opportunity was there to invite engaged consumers into a mobile loyalty club for ongoing interaction.

Another wise use of receipts was by a restaurant owner in Orlando, Fla. whose problem was that he was “losing his shirt” when the location went to 24 hours of operation and few came in during overnight ours. By the third week of including the hours on the SmartReceipts, he was making money.

Here are marketing guru Mitch Joel’s views on the subject:

“Sales receipts may not be the next great marketing disruption, but thinking about better ways to blend a traditional form of communication that consumers are already accustomed to with technology is a surefire way to make marketing better, more interesting and, when done well, perfectly disruptive.”

Few would call yard signs disruptive, but those who use them to push a product or service have put a stake in the ground and made the tactic a keeper.

In an analysis that I did of a group of businesses employing yard signs to build awareness for their mobile VIP club, 96 percent saw increases in the number of opt-ins. All but two saw double-digit growth and one third saw a boost of at least 50 percent.

Interest in growing or rebuilding databases increased late in 2013 when changes to the Telephone Communications Protection Act (TCPA) forced businesses to ensure that they had “written prior consent”. This caused businesses to look to new – or old – ways to get a loyal following.

"Everyone should get a drive-thru sign," said Amanda Anderson, marketing director at Chick-fil-A Cornelia, GA.

Perhaps.

Savvy marketers who I interviewed for my Mobilized Marketing book believe the key is to combine new technology and ideas with what has proven to work.

“You know, I am not smart enough to tell you about major game changers,” said digital marketer Mario Schulzke, who runs the popular IdeaMensch site offering useful insights from entrepreneurs and others. “But I can tell you there will be a revolution of incremental innovations that are about to take place.

“Do what feels right. Build a marketing program around tactics that make sense for you. I have many clients who are overwhelmed by Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare and the like. But when we talk about creating content that provides value to existing and potential customers, they get that. Having a roundtable discussion on Twitter is no different than going to a networking meeting. Crafting a Webinar and capturing leads via email is no different than speaking at your local Lion’s Club.

“Do what makes sense to you, and always think about the value you provide to your audience. Focus on the fundamentals. Respectfully communicate with your customers via all channels. Don’t pretend to be something you’re not, and do the right thing.”

Added longtime Microsoft marketer Barbara Williams:

“I don’t know if innovation comes in new technology or combining what we have already in meaningful ways. People were throwing things against the wall. But when you think about it more strategically and think about the customer journey and that funnel or whatever shape you want to give it, you’re going to start combining things in different ways that ultimately will create something new but components of it are known and exist today.”

(first appeared on imediaconnection.com - http://blogs.imediaconnection.com/blog/2014/04/06/why-the-coolest-things-often-aren’t-what-many-marketers-think/

SMBs Will Use Data If It’s Manageable Rather Than Big

Several posts in recent days point to the SMB’s need to use data to stay competitive and even win.

In the IBM Five in Five list, a prediction was made that local retail would close the data gap with online retail.

First off, as marketers, the last thing we want to offer an SMB is big or even Big data. Big sounds too big for this audience given all that these business owners have on their to-do lists.

But that’s not to say that obtaining, analyzing, and acting upon data are too much to ask for a small or medium-sized business.

Let’s call this type of data manageable.

I’ve made a marketing career of understanding the customer and acting upon data. It’s about to become much, ummm, bigger for me as my company, Mobivity, looks to close on the proposed acquisition of SmartReceipt, Inc., a marketing solutions company whose software products transform traditional retail transaction receipts for Subway, Baskin-Robbins, Dairy Queen and others into engaging "smart" receipts that feature coupons and special offers for consumers.

It’s our belief that SmartReceipt's printed receipt data yields highly sought-after individual, actionable purchase history which in combination with Mobivity's current SMS and Stampt mobile loyalty app can be monetized and leveraged by SMBs and others who need to make an impact at the individual location.

What that would mean for SMBs is a manageable initiative that results in the crafting of specialized offers, coupons and messages based on actual individual purchasing histories.

Benjy Boxer recently wrote on forbes.com that “although we mostly hear about Amazon and other online retailers stealing market share from local retailers, online commerce still only represents 6% of all commerce in the U.S.”

That makes not the data, but the opportunity, bigger than big.

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This post was written as part of the IBM for Midsize Business program http://Goo.gl/t3fgW, which provides midsize businesses with the tools, expertise and solutions they need to become engines of a smarter planet. I’ve been compensated to contribute to this program, but the opinions expressed in this post are my own and don't necessarily represent IBM's positions, strategies or opinions.