Foursquare and AmEx Advance LBS Marketing – What Else is Possible?

The location based services leader Foursquare has teamed up with American Express to offer Groupon-like discounts to users who check-in at participating retailers, such as $10 for the price of $5. In effect, the hope is that this type of real-life connectivity will draw more interest from retailers looking to increase customer engagement and encourage trips to their locations by leveraging LBS.

Early feedback on the benefits and functionality appears very positive, particularly from consumers. The potential applications for this type of LBS-payment duality are virtually limitless, and could be particularly interesting for grocery retailers looking to drive increases in customer traffic and encourage consumers to explore new areas of their store. Imagine a grocer offering a promotion where shoppers earn $5 in their personalized digital wallet, to be used at that grocer any time they chose, for checking in at the store and scanning the barcode of a certain product or group of products on promotion. With Accelitec software much of this is possible today, and could be a very powerful way for brands and retailers to cooperate in the launches of new products, while simultaneously rewarding their customers and driving loyalty to the brands and retailers alike.

Starbucks Launches Mobile Payments App

Big news this week as Starbucks coffee drinkers can now use their smartphones as a payment method at nearly 6,800 of the Seattle-based coffee shops nationwide. The app allows users to attach Starbucks giftcards to a user’s Blackberry or iPhone and then scan a barcode on their phone at the point of sale, and can also be charged with value via PayPal or any major credit cards. The message coming out of Starbucks HQ seems to be that they’ve opted for a barcode-based payment system today, but are planning to take this technology in some pretty interesting directions, such as Near Field Communication (NFC) in the future. Starbucks also has the ability to add value to its customers reward cards for taking surveys, and will now presumably be able to complete this entire process of presenting a survey offer, accepting customer responses, adding value to the customer loyalty app and accepting payment all on a single smartphone. The functionality being utilized for this rewards app is very similar to the Digital Wallet software available from companies like Google and Accelitec, and the fact that Starbucks has now taken the lead should serve as sign to other brands and retailers that now is the ideal time to be targeting customer loyalty by creating and launching rewards applications for smartphones.

Facebook Messages Raising the Bar for Relevant Messaging

Facebook has released a beta version of a new form of messaging to a select few of its 500 million users that has important implications for the digital communication methods of retailers. The new platform allows easy filtering of Facebook messages, SMS, MMS, and emails within a personalized “social inbox” tied directly to each user’s Facebook friends. This platform puts a new premium on the delivery of promotional messages that are relevant, timely, and valued, and those retailers who miss the boat will risk losing the communication channel with their users. The traditional methods of mass-messaging to any email address or phone number on record will no longer be effective; the time is now for retailers to start using point-of-sale software capable of collecting and synthesizing data about their customer preferences and segmentation.

Facebook Adds Deals in Effort to Make Places App Relevant

Looking for ways to increase their penetration in Location Based Services (LBS), Facebook announced yesterday that they’ve added an application called Deals to their platform. Currently only 4% of online adult Americans use LBS applications to let their friends know where they are throughout the day. As an incentive, Facebook has teamed with 21 businesses (so far) to offer deals to users who check-in to certain locations around their cities; Gap is offering  a free pair of blue jeans to the first 10,000 people who check-in at a Gap location on November 5, 2010; Macy’s is giving shoppers 20% off for checking in; REI, Starbucks and 24 Hour Fitness are all offering to donate money to various charities for every check-in at their locations. These rewards are clearly more pragmatic and meaningful than the badges and titles that users on Gowalla and Foursquare have competed for up to now, and should provide greater incentive for the general public to at least start considering the use of LBS. Ultimately, Facebook needs to remove as many barriers-to-use of this LBS functionality as possible; the most powerful delivery method of these rewards will be the user simply collecting and storing their credits in a digital wallet, as opposed to “proving” that they’ve checked in to a store clerk before they can claim their discount at the point of sale. The user could then simply check-in at various locations and the store would instantly recognize their account and provide discounts automatically. What do you think about Location Based Services? Do you use them currently? Would you check-in for a free pair of Gap blue jeans?

7-Eleven Road Trip Rally Connects Brands, Retail and Social Media

This past May, 7-Eleven launched a social media campaign called The 7-Eleven Road Trip Rally, which featured 2 teams racing across the United States for 3 weeks to the Indy 500. They were only allowed to make pit stops at 7-Elevens, and the webisodes all featured challenges that highlighted the brands and goods sold at their stores nationwide. 7-Eleven hired Blip.tv to essentially put together the entire project, and they in turn outsourced the creative content and production of the short films to Happy Little Guillotine Films. Viewers were able to watch up to 5 new webisodes per week, as well as track the teams in real-time on their trips across the country.

By combining reality TV content with social media, 7-Eleven and their partner brands were able to post entertaining videos with their products and services cleverly layered into the content. The next step in the process of engaging viewers with this creative new form of advertisement is making the reality-based webisodes more interactive for everyone watching at home; allow everyone to vote for their favorite team on Facebook and give the winning team extra money to spend during their pit stops; poll viewers on Twitter to decide what they want the next challenge to be; enable everyone watching to “recommend” products for the racers to try at their next stop and reward the people at home with free products/promotional offers from those brands. This hybrid platform of social media and reality TV has virtually limitless potential for brands and retailers interested in product placement – the only question is who will take the next step?

How to Build a Corporate Presence on Facebook

With social media now “fast becoming more popular than e-mail on mobile devices and more convenient for news consumption than the daily paper”, companies and organizations across all industries are competing for social media market share, whether they’re aware of it or not. Brands and Retailers are now able to post hi-resolution images on their pages, which can be very useful for a company looking to engage consumers; Travelocity has already taken advantage of the opportunity and appears to be getting very good feedback from its “Fans”.

Consumer Review/Event Groups and Live Chat Forums are also now possible on Facebook, thanks to the site’s “New Groups” feature. This functionality is practically begging to be leveraged by companies looking to survey, communicate and/or engage their fans. Facebook Questions also falls into this category as a way for companies to talk with consumers at a very base, one-to-one level.

The Golden State Warriors NBA team are a perfect case study in how to turn pedestrian email campaigns into powerful, social media events. Kyle Spencer, the team’s Marketing Director, sent out emails offering fans free tickets to preseason games if they’d log into their Facebook accounts and simply “Like” the team. In total, they sent out 2 emails and increased their visibility in social media by 20% (15k additional Facebook followers). These are some truly impressive results for a minimal capital outlay; with the enhancements being made to the site recently, the only thing standing between a company’s social media marketing efforts and success is its own creativity.

Bi-Lo Text Message Campaign Wins Big

Last weekend Bi-Lo sent out a College Football-themed text message promotion to 6,000 shoppers in Columbia, SC, prompting them with ways to throw a great tailgate or house party before the big University of South Carolina vs. University of Alabama game. Incredibly, these text messages were opened by 38% of the recipients, all of whom had opted into the mailing list, without offering any coupons or material discounts in their stores. It would be very interesting to look at what the great response in people reading the texts translated to in terms of promotion-related sales dollars, but the number of people who read the message highlights the power of relevant and timely interaction; when retailers can provide their customers with useful information, exactly when they need it, those customers are exponentially more likely to listen and react.

Is Brand Loyalty Evaporating Forever?

According to a recent study by Deloitte, consumers across the country have changed their buying habits and are now more focused on “cutting spending and saving money” than on shopping as a hobby or loyalty to their favorite brands. This trend has led several major corporations like AT&T and ING Direct to acknowledge the paradigm shift and implement new campaigns based around Customer Experience Management (CEM). One example of a CEM initiative at AT&T is customer service reps now answering calls with the phrase “How can I make you feel like a valued customer today?”, while ING Direct has “opened seven cafes around the country” where their financial brokers will whip up double-shot mochas and cappuccinos while servicing your portfolio; all of this is an attempt by companies to connect with their customers at a more meaningful, personal level. As these CEM programs evolve, it will be very interesting to see how consumer purchase histories and individual profiles are integrated into the process of personalized connections between shopper and brand.

Dunkin Donuts Using Facebook for “Ultimate Fan Promotion”

Dunkin Donuts has run marketing campaigns on Facebook in the past by asking their “fans” to design the perfect donut for a chance to win $12,000. This time the Quincy, Massachusetts-based company is seeking the “Ultimate DD Coffee Fan” by offering prizes to Facebook users who put together the best videos explaining why they love Dunkin Donuts coffee more than anyone else. The Grand Prize includes a trip for two to Costa Rica and 60 months of free donuts, with 10 First Prizes of 12 months of free donuts also on the table. The categories they’ve chosen to evaluate the submitted videos by are “Passion for the Dunkin Donuts Brand”, “Overall Video Appeal” and “Originality/Creativity”. This contest is just one piece of the overall efforts that Dunkin Donuts has put into their Facebook marketing campaign as they attempt to catch up to their “Ultimate Coffee-Grinding Rival” in social media; there are currently just over 2 million people who have “liked” Dunkin Donuts, compared to over 14 million for Starbucks. The fact that these promotions are becoming more widespread and a larger part of marketing for major companies is further confirmation that social media has evolved into one of the most powerful tools in a customer relationship management strategy.

Small and Mid-Size Grocers Slow to Adopt Social Media

Target, Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s and Walmart have all officially entered the arena of Social Networks in an attempt to boost their market share, and there’s still plenty of room for growth. With Walmart over 1.6 million Facebook followers, and Target with almost 1.8 million, the race is on to see who will be the Retail-King of social media. These large chains are fully underway in social media to gain exposure and build customer relationships, but mid-size and smaller grocers are strangely proving much slower to implement the technology.
Clearly there are some market-leaders when it comes to technology adoption outside of the major chains – Newport Avenue Market in Bend, Oregon and Granite Falls IGA Market in Washington state are two great examples – but the segment as a whole appears to be lagging behind their larger competitors. In an industry where smaller retailers are unable to compete with the big-boys on price or product selection, building and maintaining customer relationships should be priority number one; the vast majority of small and mid-size grocers are missing a great opportunity to connect with their customers through social media.