by Jake Bailey, Chief Evangelist, RichRelevance
A tremendous shift is taking place in online advertising right now. Google is pushing its display capabilities to new levels, Project Devil at AOL is bringing art back into advertising and organizations like the Interactive Advertising Bureau are pushing the industry to innovate with new ad formats. However, regardless of creative execution, the holy grail of advertising is the ability to reach the right person with the most relevant story — whether it’s through rich media or custom sponsorships — at the right time. At the end of the day, ads have one simple goal: to influence and drive purchases.
Just like the popular children’s gamebook series from the 1980’s “Choose Your Own Adventure,” the world of QR marketing offers many paths to choose from, and is fraught with both landmines and opportunities. As a follow up to my recent post on QR codes, I put forth seven quick tips for you to consider, as you embark on your own 2D marketing adventure!
The virtual goods market is expected to exceed $2 billion this year. Are you ready to make the most of this hot e-commerce trend? We spoke with Suchit Dash, Co-Founder and VP, Product at Ifeelgoods to get his perspective.
LivingSocial, the daily-deal site and Groupon competitor, has started a pilot program that lets customers use their smartphone’s location-sensing abilities to find deals around them.
The service, called LivingSocial Instant, launched today and is initially available only in some neighborhoods of the company’s home base of Washington, D.C. Customers who update LivingSocial’s iPhone or Android app today will see a new category called Instant Deals.
Most of us who manage marketing campaigns in ecommerce get caught up in the daily grind of writing ad copy, tweaking creative, and managing ad spend. If you’re running direct marketing campaigns (search, affiliates, display, comparison shopping, etc.), you’re likely to be highly focused on measuring ROAS, number of new customers, or AOV.
While these tactics are valuable for building a solid customer base, none of them sufficiently address an equally important challenge: managing the customer life-time-value (LTV). Within most marketing channels, ALL customers/orders are created equal, which means you’re paying the same amount to acquire customers–regardless of quality. The best way to approach this problem is to ask a simple question: “which customers are going to keep me in business for years to come, and who’s sucking cash from my bottom line?” In other words, what’s a given customer’s true lifetime value, and how is s/he driving the future of my company? In this case, it’s more than likely that the 80/20 rule applies to most companies.
In the late 90’s, a feisty startup called Digital Convergence Corporation rolled into market, delivering free barcode scanners to subscribers of Forbes, Wired and Parade. These scanners, called CueCats, were kitty-shaped (no, really – shaped like a cat – so, CueCat – get it?) devices that plugged into a computer. With a simple swipe, magazine readers had the “luxury” of accessing more advertising or editorial content … online. Each swipe was tracked, relaying gender, email address and ZIP code to advertisers without permission. And swipers couldn’t opt-out.