Move Over Pinterest, Along Comes Polyvore [infographic. There was a lot of talk about Pinterest in 2012 regarding it possible impact on social commerce. One article cited a Blogher study, which said that Pinterest overtook Twitter in finding product information, finding out about new products and seeking advice and recommendations. A study from 8thBridge stated that, though Pinterest had some of the highest adoption rate among hot brands, it provided the lowest sales conversions. Still another asked the question of whether Pinterest could be the next social game changer. And, in order to take whatever advantage of social commerce it can, Pinterest recently launched business pages. But enough about Pinterest! Let’s talk about Polyvore, a fashion focused social discovery site that’s been making its own news lately.
CNET reported that Polyvore saw both record revenue and user growth in 2012. What factors attribute to Polyvore’s growth? It’s a community that not only loves to share, but shop online, as well. IKEA Klippbok: An iPad Scrap Book Tesco’s Michael Holmes on Staying Agile in a Changing Industry. Retail has always been a somewhat unpredictable business dependent on consumer behavior.
And it seems to become more so with the influence of technology and the economic turbulence. How does a large retailer like Tesco stay agile? When we succeed and we’re at our best, we look at the customer before we look at the numbers. When we’re less good, we chase numbers and the customer gets left behind. And when you chase numbers, you try to build on last year’s numbers. Last year, we had the worst floods in a generation in Thailand, and they were such stupendously environment- and business-affecting floods that the numbers went out the window. It’s interesting that you point to customer-centricity as being central to agility. Tesco has Britain’s biggest loyalty program, so we do collect more data about customers. We’ve got a relationship with Dunnhumby, which does data mining. Finally, much has been made recently of big data—the promise of very large data sets and new, powerful analytics. Mobile bridges gap between reaching users and driving foot traffic: Hill Holliday exec.
By Lauren Johnson July 17, 2012 NEW YORK – A Hill Holliday executive at the 2012 IAB Mobile Marketplace said that by using location-based search functionality, a recent Dunkin’ Donuts campaign saw 72 percent of users access map and directions features, which ultimately drove in-store traffic. During the “Mobile Success Stories: Leveraging Local” session, mobile experts spoke about three examples of campaigns that successfully used location to drive ROI and foot traffic.
Case studies from La Quinta Inn & Suites, Dunkin’ Donuts and Blockbuster were presented during the session. “We’re tasked with the challenge of bridging the gap between that search behavior that is so valuable to these brands with reaching someone that has shown that they are interested in the category and actually getting them in-store,” said Renee Robertson, associate media director of search at Hill Holliday, Boston. Additionally, 27 percent of users accessed the click-to-call features in the campaign. Final Take. Www.adweek.com/news/advertising-branding/hertz-learns-value-sharing-purchase-cycle-140842?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+adweek%2Fall-news+%28All+News%29. Travel is an experience people like to discuss with their friends as they share the details of where they’re going and how they’ll get there. Hertz knew customers’ social activity and conversations were impacting purchase decisions but the company didn’t know how much until now.
A new study for the car rental company shows consumers who engaged in social conversations around Hertz were 30 percent more likely to make a purchase than those who didn’t engage in social conversations. The research, conducted by social media platform ShareThis and Omnicom’s OMD media unit, looked across 11.5 million users and 3.2 million travel category URLs. It examined Hertz customers’ pre-purchase behaviors such as content viewing, searching and site visitation and determined the impact of social behaviors such as sharing and clicking on shared links in the process of purchase consideration. AmEx Adds Personalized Offers to iPhone App. Last year Facebook shuttered its deals business in an apparent forfeit of the market to Groupon among others. But since closing its first day of trading at $26.11 per share, Groupon’s stock has plummeted to $9.90 as of Friday’s close. And the rest of daily deal industry hasn’t fared any better; 798 deal sites didn’t survive the second half of 2011, according to Fast Company.
So why is American Express doubling down on its deals business? “Our goal is not to bombard customers but to give them relevant offers so that you’ll use the offer,” said Ed Gilligan, vice chairman of American Express. “It’ll be meaningful to you, and the merchants will see more business as a result.” All daily deal providers claim, or at least should claim, to surface relevant offers for consumers, but AmEx’s cardmember data gives the company a leg up. To capitalize on its position, AmEx is launching a mobile offer engine at 6:00 p.m.
IPhone owners aren’t the only mobile cardmembers getting new features this week. Burberry Builds Success With China's Luxury Consumers | Global News. Pepsi Digital Exec: Google 'Messed Up' With Google+, Instagram Is 'Phenomenal' Brian Dunn Resigns as Best Buy’s Chief Executive. Barriers to Change: The Real Reason Behind the Kodak Downfall. P&G Innovates on Razor-Thin Margins - Vijay Govindarajan. By Vijay Govindarajan | 10:17 AM April 16, 2012 If you shaved today, either in the U.S. or in India, you probably used a Gillette razor. Gillette (now a brand of P&G), reportedly has had a U.S. market share of more than 80%, with Schick a distant second. Even more remarkably, they achieved this without resorting to price competition. The blade cartridges for its latest-and-greatest razor, the top-selling Fusion ProGlide, retail for around $4 each, leaving Gillette with what must be incredibly lucrative gross margins.
But that is not the story in developing markets, where these top-of-the-line products don’t fare nearly as well. It starts as most such stories do — with a Western-based company trying to sell their cheapest products in emerging markets. Recently, P&G has completely reversed the innovation approach at Gillette. Third, P&G didn’t stop at an India-tailored product, but built an India-tailored business model. However, it has not yet completed the reverse innovation cycle. How HubSpot Rocked 2011: A Year in Review. We recently released HubSpot's 2011 Year in Review slide deck , filled with interesting insights into HubSpot's growth and milestones as a business over the past year.
We've had a lot to celebrate internally as a company, as well as the awesome growth HubSpot's customers have experienced from their implementation of the HubSpot software and inbound marketing methodology. We wanted to share some of the milestones we and our customers have achieved in 2011 and give you a peek at the slide presentation, too. HubSpot Customer Achievements in 2011 HubSpot customers generated an average of 34,000 new leads per day in 2011. HubSpot customers generated a grand total of 12.4 million leads in 2011. HubSpot customers saw an average of 32% increase in leads per month in 2011. HubSpot in 2011: A Timeline March 8: HubSpot raises $32 million in funding from Sequoia Capital, Google Ventures, and Salesforce.com.
HubSpot Company Milestones in 2011 85% of customers said they'd recommend HubSpot. KFC Shares its Social Media Strategy. IBM's Social Selling: The Computer Giant Finds B2B Leads in Social Media. For almost a century, IBM has made the computing tools that solved some of the world's big problems. IBM punch cards powered Eniac, the first big programmable computer in 1946. Deep Blue beat world chess champion Garry Kasparov in 1997—after losing the first round.
And of course Watson won Final Jeopardy —and $77,000 for charity—over two human opponents last year. But some problems require a human touch. In IBM's case, the specific problem was that the effective traditional ways of finding B2B customers for hardware and software products—telemarketing and email—were not producing the same results when applied to selling web-based services such as cloud computing and data security.
A buyer preference study commissioned by IBM revealed that one-third of its B2B buyers were already using social media of various kinds (Twitter, blogs, online forums) to engage with vendors and learn about products. Building a Framework The Personal Touch But that time spent eavesdropping is far from wasted. Starbuck's Latest Mobile App Delivers Augmented Reality Valentine’s Messages. 6 Customer Experience Lessons to Learn From Netflix. In recent months, Netflix made big changes to its service offerings. First, a 60-percent price hike, then an announcement that it was spinning its DVD mail service into a new company called Qwikster, and finally a decision not to split off its DVD service after all.
Whatever you think of the changes, I think most of us agree that Netflix could have handled things a bit differently in terms of communications and customer experience. Change is necessary for almost any business. In fact, two of the most important jobs of any marketer are to anticipate customer needs as they evolve over time, and then translate those emerging needs into the next thing you do for customers. Change can be positive and very profitable if these two jobs are done well. With that, let’s take a closer look at a few of Netflix’s missteps—and lessons you can take away, as marketers, and use in your day-to-day work: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. What did you take away from the Netflix debacle? How Toshiba Uses Social Media to Make Products Its Customers Really Want.
Marketing Automation Helps Nxtbook Identify Prospects.