Thanks to ad:tech for publishing this post first.
Anyone who gets even the smallest thrill out of shopping is probably familiar with buyer’s remorse: the notion that you can regret purchases after the fact. For me, it happens when I read about a book, rush to Amazon, and then later receive it and wonder, “What made me think that I would sustain enough interest in Central Asian politics to read a 900 page tome about the political development of the ‘stans?”
Even better example, especially because I love to make fun of myself. I once had a jacket that looked like a fireman’s coat. When it deteriorated to shards and dust, I tried to find a replacement. Sadly the brand had moved on to hipster schlock, so I went on eBay with the idea that I could buy an ACTUAL fireman’s coat and be even more authentically thrilled with its lines and warmth. You know where this is headed. I am now the owner of a 43 pound hyper insulated authentic fireman’s coat that would be too warm for Antarctica. Note to self – a fireman’s coat is designed to protect bodies from 1000 degree heat, not winter breezes.
As Groupon, Living Social, HomeRun et al continue to grow, there are naturally lots of people who buy deals and then find themselves less interested in redemption than they were in the heat of the click to buy moment.
For them there is the rapidly growing Lifesta site. Lifesta is a marketplace for reselling deals, connecting buyers and sellers and taking a cut of the transaction. While I heard at the outset of the group couponing age that redemption rates ran at 60-80%, that still leaves a lot of unredeemed deals. Clearly that’s what Lifesta is betting on. I also expect that redemption rates will fall over time as the novelty wears off and deals like this become part of daily shopping life.
Sellers can list their unwanted deals for a price they set. The deal stays up on the site for as long as it is available – until someone buys it or the seller withdraws it. When it sells, Lifesta takes 99cents plus 8% of the selling price. I’ll give a couple of f’rinstances for the math challenged. Lifesta gets:
$4.99 for a $50 sale
$8.99 for a $100 sale
Assuming you list for the price you paid these commissions are significantly lower than the restocking fee BS that major retailers have been adding to their return policies. While naturally many deals sell for LESS than their purchase prices, it would be hard to call Lifesta’s fees usurious. The user also gets instant access to the deal because the quota of respondents is already fulfilled and the item "delivered." No waitin'.
Buyers can browse listings by category and region, and pay only the selling price – all commissions are borne by the seller. Lifesta uses Amazon Payments for the transaction backend.
Let’s talk about the relevance of this for marketers. The development of a reseller market for these coupons will only serve to grow the group couponing phenomenon, as the cost of mistakes comes down considerably when you can get at least part of your purchase price back. As this buying model spreads, it’s reaching into populations that are likely a little more reluctant to plunk down money for services that they might not use. The availability of a venue on which to sell such deals reduces both the actual and the psychological risk of buying deals.
This may have implications as well on the structure and timing for your deals. Obviously the value of a deal on the reseller market is higher with a long expiry date. But the flip side is that surely we are going to end up with an environment in which some savvy businesspeople buy deals expressly for resale. So you will need to consider that as well.
But the trend may also mean that we will see less of the overwhelming swell of redemption that some businesses report occurs when they use Groupon and others. 300 people standing outside your store with printed deals flapping in their hands.
But assuming you take these issues in consideration, I expect that Lifesta and others will result in significantly more coupons sold – for good deals. More growth for the deal sites, and a nice business opp for Lifesta.
Friday, February 18, 2011
Thursday, February 17, 2011
COD: Pushpins and the next generation of retail couponing
Thanks to the ad:tech blog for publishing this first.
Boy has the world of coupons changed. A few years ago, the coupon business was an all newspaper and direct mail business. And it was, quite frankly, a fairly quiet business. The recession of 2009 changed all that. NCH reported that in 2009 consumers redeemed more than $3.5B in coupons, up 30% versus the year before. Actual redemptions were up 23%, with the remainder of the increase made up in increased discounts.
While there was growth across all sectors, online distribution of printable coupons really exploded. Coupons Inc., the big Mama of the space, hit $1B in printed savings (there is significant drop off course, between printing and redemption) and that the growth rate for digital coupon distribution was 10 times higher than for print distributed coupons. One of the challenges for the Print distribution side of the business has been the decline in daily and Sunday newspaper circulation, which is likely a long term trend.
At the same time, we all know that many chains have adopted loyalty card programs. Many chains have now initiated a service whereby the consumer can visit a website and load their card with the discounts they like. Those discounts are then read off their cards when they go to the store.
A startup called Pushpins is trying a different approach – one that requires less premeditation on the consumer’s part. Using the Pushpins iPhone application, the consumer checks in when they arrive at the store, and then scans their purchases with their phones as they shop. The phone then shows the discount(s) that are available on that item, and the consumer taps them to have them transferred to their loyalty card. The app also enables you to send word of a deal to friends, and keeps track of your weekly purchases and total savings.
Here’s the sizzle vid:
Mind you, the platform is asking the consumer to add a step to their shopping process – scanning items as they go into the cart. The extent to which the coupon platform is successful will rely on consumer willingness to consistently take that step. Pushpins has an answer to this challenge: to drive consistent use of the platform, there is a points program that enables “top savers” to win prizes.
Pushpins ensures that a broader set of consumer types gain access to a discount. One needn’t be a “clipper” or a “printer” to get the discounts – rather they are made available as the user shops normally. In addition, as the consumer scans items, the app tells them about other discounts available on related items, like a jelly coupon if you are buying peanut butter.
As of this writing, the app works in more than 2000 stores including:
Carr’s
Dominicks
Genuardis
Pavillions
Randall’s
Safeway
Shoprite
Tom Thumb
Vons
On a high level, this methodology appears to favor rewarding current buyers rather than attracting brand switchers and “deal prones.” Many have feared that traditional couponing approaches actually reduce brand loyalty by driving loyalty to deals rather than brands. Meaning that the deal prone thinks...I buy the cereals that offer me a buck off, and so forth. The flip side, of course, is that broad scale adoption of Pushpins might constitute “subsidizing your user” – the idea that you might be giving people a discount you didn’t need to in order to make the sale. But that negative characterization of this loyalty approach may be a vestige of a bygone era. In a transparent world, treating our loyal users right makes sense.
Boy has the world of coupons changed. A few years ago, the coupon business was an all newspaper and direct mail business. And it was, quite frankly, a fairly quiet business. The recession of 2009 changed all that. NCH reported that in 2009 consumers redeemed more than $3.5B in coupons, up 30% versus the year before. Actual redemptions were up 23%, with the remainder of the increase made up in increased discounts.
While there was growth across all sectors, online distribution of printable coupons really exploded. Coupons Inc., the big Mama of the space, hit $1B in printed savings (there is significant drop off course, between printing and redemption) and that the growth rate for digital coupon distribution was 10 times higher than for print distributed coupons. One of the challenges for the Print distribution side of the business has been the decline in daily and Sunday newspaper circulation, which is likely a long term trend.
At the same time, we all know that many chains have adopted loyalty card programs. Many chains have now initiated a service whereby the consumer can visit a website and load their card with the discounts they like. Those discounts are then read off their cards when they go to the store.
A startup called Pushpins is trying a different approach – one that requires less premeditation on the consumer’s part. Using the Pushpins iPhone application, the consumer checks in when they arrive at the store, and then scans their purchases with their phones as they shop. The phone then shows the discount(s) that are available on that item, and the consumer taps them to have them transferred to their loyalty card. The app also enables you to send word of a deal to friends, and keeps track of your weekly purchases and total savings.
Here’s the sizzle vid:
Mind you, the platform is asking the consumer to add a step to their shopping process – scanning items as they go into the cart. The extent to which the coupon platform is successful will rely on consumer willingness to consistently take that step. Pushpins has an answer to this challenge: to drive consistent use of the platform, there is a points program that enables “top savers” to win prizes.
Pushpins ensures that a broader set of consumer types gain access to a discount. One needn’t be a “clipper” or a “printer” to get the discounts – rather they are made available as the user shops normally. In addition, as the consumer scans items, the app tells them about other discounts available on related items, like a jelly coupon if you are buying peanut butter.
As of this writing, the app works in more than 2000 stores including:
Carr’s
Dominicks
Genuardis
Pavillions
Randall’s
Safeway
Shoprite
Tom Thumb
Vons
On a high level, this methodology appears to favor rewarding current buyers rather than attracting brand switchers and “deal prones.” Many have feared that traditional couponing approaches actually reduce brand loyalty by driving loyalty to deals rather than brands. Meaning that the deal prone thinks...I buy the cereals that offer me a buck off, and so forth. The flip side, of course, is that broad scale adoption of Pushpins might constitute “subsidizing your user” – the idea that you might be giving people a discount you didn’t need to in order to make the sale. But that negative characterization of this loyalty approach may be a vestige of a bygone era. In a transparent world, treating our loyal users right makes sense.
SocialSmack gives "props" and "drops" to brands
Thanks to the ad:tech blog for publishing this first.
Good news! Social media give you windows through which to see how your consumers are feeling about your product. Bad news: that’s potentially 200 million windows!
OK, that is a bit of an exaggeration. Because not every person online uses your product or talks about their product experiences. But we all know that it is very easy to get caught up in the enormous amounts of social data that may be available for your brand. Monitoring tools can find the commentary for you, but that still leaves you with the challenge of sifting through it and addressing problems and opportunities.
An Austin-based start-up called SocialSmack is trying to change the paradigm for brands and consumers by creating a community expressly to share brand experiences. The idea of SocialSmack is that consumers can describe their experiences using a product, have those distributed to their social circle, and potentially get feedback and a response from the responsible company, all in a dedicated brand feedback community.
Imagine you want to tell the world about a great experience you had with your new Chevy Volt.
You make the comment on SocialSmack (on site or through a mobile app.)
It is distributed to your social network of friends (Facebook, Twitter, etc.)
Other members of the SocialSmack community can give Chevy a thumbs up or a thumbs down based upon your comment. They can also thumbs up/down the value of your comment. (Thumbs ups are called Props on the platform, thumbs downs, Drops in SocialSmack.)
It might stop there. Or it might not. Because if Chevy was part of the SocialSmack community, they would see your comment immediately, and be able to contact you with thanks ore a deal or a reward of some kind, or with a remedy if your experience wasn’t positive.
Here’s their pitch presentation from last year’s Demo competition:
We all know that companies can turn fans into superfans and naysayers into supporters through proactive listening and responding. This sort of thing is happening with increasing frequency via Twitter and on Facebook pages. What SocialSmack does is create a more engaged consumer community that gives and is rewarded for providing more feedback to brands, which creates a more focused environment for brands to understand and respond to consumer experiences.
In order to create an active SocialSmack community, the site uses simple game mechanics to drive more site participation and reward more and more valuable commentary and criticism. Users garner points and badges by:
Making comments
Providing ratings
Commenting on others’ comments
Voting brands up or down
Voting other users up and down
And more.
Part of the premise is that participants in a dedicated community are likely to:
Participate more
Make more comments
Be more responsible in their critiques of brands, products and services
Viral the community to friends and family to earn points and enliven discussions
Will people be more likely to offer comments if they are part of a community that expressly encourages and rewards such behavior? Time will tell, but it would certainly seem to offer benefits to brands if a community like this “makes it.”
Good news! Social media give you windows through which to see how your consumers are feeling about your product. Bad news: that’s potentially 200 million windows!
OK, that is a bit of an exaggeration. Because not every person online uses your product or talks about their product experiences. But we all know that it is very easy to get caught up in the enormous amounts of social data that may be available for your brand. Monitoring tools can find the commentary for you, but that still leaves you with the challenge of sifting through it and addressing problems and opportunities.
An Austin-based start-up called SocialSmack is trying to change the paradigm for brands and consumers by creating a community expressly to share brand experiences. The idea of SocialSmack is that consumers can describe their experiences using a product, have those distributed to their social circle, and potentially get feedback and a response from the responsible company, all in a dedicated brand feedback community.
Imagine you want to tell the world about a great experience you had with your new Chevy Volt.
You make the comment on SocialSmack (on site or through a mobile app.)
It is distributed to your social network of friends (Facebook, Twitter, etc.)
Other members of the SocialSmack community can give Chevy a thumbs up or a thumbs down based upon your comment. They can also thumbs up/down the value of your comment. (Thumbs ups are called Props on the platform, thumbs downs, Drops in SocialSmack.)
It might stop there. Or it might not. Because if Chevy was part of the SocialSmack community, they would see your comment immediately, and be able to contact you with thanks ore a deal or a reward of some kind, or with a remedy if your experience wasn’t positive.
Here’s their pitch presentation from last year’s Demo competition:
We all know that companies can turn fans into superfans and naysayers into supporters through proactive listening and responding. This sort of thing is happening with increasing frequency via Twitter and on Facebook pages. What SocialSmack does is create a more engaged consumer community that gives and is rewarded for providing more feedback to brands, which creates a more focused environment for brands to understand and respond to consumer experiences.
In order to create an active SocialSmack community, the site uses simple game mechanics to drive more site participation and reward more and more valuable commentary and criticism. Users garner points and badges by:
Making comments
Providing ratings
Commenting on others’ comments
Voting brands up or down
Voting other users up and down
And more.
Part of the premise is that participants in a dedicated community are likely to:
Participate more
Make more comments
Be more responsible in their critiques of brands, products and services
Viral the community to friends and family to earn points and enliven discussions
Will people be more likely to offer comments if they are part of a community that expressly encourages and rewards such behavior? Time will tell, but it would certainly seem to offer benefits to brands if a community like this “makes it.”
COD: Walk Light Media is saving rainforests one big square at a time
Thanks to the ad:tech blog for publishing this first.
Now here's an interesting concept: a new ad network that is helping companies make a positive environmental contribution through their normal operations. Not "reducing the footprint,' rolling it back.
Walk Light Media makes it clear that their focus is on delivering a highly valuable audience to advertisers -- an audience that many companies covet. Specifically, they promise 22MM LOHAS and "green" uniques. Because these audiences tend to be affluent, aspirational, and influential, they represent a strong lure for advertisers anxious to demonstrate their conscientious cred. According to Walk Light, they also over represent in areas like Influencer/Early Adopter behaviors.
The "hook" is that Walk Light Media has a Responsible Media Program (RMP) that protects an area of forest equivalent to the area of the banners run through its platforms. So, for example, an area of equal size to a 300x250 is preserved for every impression you run in that ad size. That means that an acre of ground is preserved for about 400,000 big square impressions.
Now, you can say an acre isn't very much. But the beauty of this model is that the acre is preserved without your lifting a finger -- it happens as a normal part of doing your everyday business. This is a media play to reach a desirable audience, not a CSR-primary thing. The CSR comes as a side benefit of working with them. The passions of their audience run a fairly broad gamut of conscientious interests and lifestyles, including...
In terms of advertising options, they offer IAB standards, Video, interstitials, skins, content creation, deeper promo programs and more. A broad range of targeting solutions is available. They operate in the US and Canada. Not surprisingly, their sites tend toward leaders within the environmental, socially conscious, and LOHAS niches. The name appears to be a play on the myriad of quotes that enjoin conscientious people to "walk lightly" to preserve the earth. Quotes like:
"We have forgotten how to be good guests, how to walk lightly on the earth as its other creatures do."
It appears that the company is built on the idea that the long road to a better future is made of many small steps.
Now here's an interesting concept: a new ad network that is helping companies make a positive environmental contribution through their normal operations. Not "reducing the footprint,' rolling it back.
Walk Light Media makes it clear that their focus is on delivering a highly valuable audience to advertisers -- an audience that many companies covet. Specifically, they promise 22MM LOHAS and "green" uniques. Because these audiences tend to be affluent, aspirational, and influential, they represent a strong lure for advertisers anxious to demonstrate their conscientious cred. According to Walk Light, they also over represent in areas like Influencer/Early Adopter behaviors.
The "hook" is that Walk Light Media has a Responsible Media Program (RMP) that protects an area of forest equivalent to the area of the banners run through its platforms. So, for example, an area of equal size to a 300x250 is preserved for every impression you run in that ad size. That means that an acre of ground is preserved for about 400,000 big square impressions.
Now, you can say an acre isn't very much. But the beauty of this model is that the acre is preserved without your lifting a finger -- it happens as a normal part of doing your everyday business. This is a media play to reach a desirable audience, not a CSR-primary thing. The CSR comes as a side benefit of working with them. The passions of their audience run a fairly broad gamut of conscientious interests and lifestyles, including...
In terms of advertising options, they offer IAB standards, Video, interstitials, skins, content creation, deeper promo programs and more. A broad range of targeting solutions is available. They operate in the US and Canada. Not surprisingly, their sites tend toward leaders within the environmental, socially conscious, and LOHAS niches. The name appears to be a play on the myriad of quotes that enjoin conscientious people to "walk lightly" to preserve the earth. Quotes like:
"We have forgotten how to be good guests, how to walk lightly on the earth as its other creatures do."
It appears that the company is built on the idea that the long road to a better future is made of many small steps.
COD: Waze means getting there without the road hassles
Thanks to the ad:tech blog for publishing this first.
OK, $5 will get you $10 you have heard of this one already.
Waze is a social mobile application providing free turn-by-turn navigation empowered through the live conditions of the road. This Israel-based start-up combines great turn by turn directions with real-time crowd sourced reports about driving conditions and congestion.
Based upon the idea that the 101 is only the best way from Palo Alto to San Francisco as long as the traffic is moving, Waze automatically detects the car speed of members, identifying congestion zones before Sky Chopper 10 makes it to the scene. You download Waze onto your smartphone, then take that phone with you (you were planning to anyway, right?) as you drive. GPS tells Waze where you are and how fast you are moving. When traffic slows or stops, Waze colors the roadway behind that user red on its real time traffic maps.
That's the passive foundation of the platform, but Waze also allows people to describe road conditions at fixed points, and even photograph the causes of traffic issues and problems. Special local driving clubs help add more depth to the reporting, as well as a bit of fun and connection to others.
Before you even ask, please be assured that Waze actually won't allow a driver to send updates and photos when the car is in motion. So don't think that this is a safety hazard. Rather, the platform is out to save the enormous amounts of time and energy spent in traffic slowdowns and jams. Here's a guided tour.
They have all the maps -- the key with Waze is to get a critical mass of drivers signed up in a given market, so that they can offer genuine value in the driving conditions "essence" of the offering. To drive greater usage, the company is planning to incorporate some social gaming elements that reward people for desirable actions. That's a nice twist and may add a little fun to the drudgery of commuting.
Waze works with the following smartphone platforms:
-Android
-iPhone
-Symbian
-Windows Mobile
-J2ME (RIM)
They plan to monetize in part through geo-loco-based ads and offers. That's how brands and agencies can fit into all this. The added information that Waze can provide about a consumer may be valuable in a geo-loco context.
OK, $5 will get you $10 you have heard of this one already.
Waze is a social mobile application providing free turn-by-turn navigation empowered through the live conditions of the road. This Israel-based start-up combines great turn by turn directions with real-time crowd sourced reports about driving conditions and congestion.
Based upon the idea that the 101 is only the best way from Palo Alto to San Francisco as long as the traffic is moving, Waze automatically detects the car speed of members, identifying congestion zones before Sky Chopper 10 makes it to the scene. You download Waze onto your smartphone, then take that phone with you (you were planning to anyway, right?) as you drive. GPS tells Waze where you are and how fast you are moving. When traffic slows or stops, Waze colors the roadway behind that user red on its real time traffic maps.
That's the passive foundation of the platform, but Waze also allows people to describe road conditions at fixed points, and even photograph the causes of traffic issues and problems. Special local driving clubs help add more depth to the reporting, as well as a bit of fun and connection to others.
Before you even ask, please be assured that Waze actually won't allow a driver to send updates and photos when the car is in motion. So don't think that this is a safety hazard. Rather, the platform is out to save the enormous amounts of time and energy spent in traffic slowdowns and jams. Here's a guided tour.
They have all the maps -- the key with Waze is to get a critical mass of drivers signed up in a given market, so that they can offer genuine value in the driving conditions "essence" of the offering. To drive greater usage, the company is planning to incorporate some social gaming elements that reward people for desirable actions. That's a nice twist and may add a little fun to the drudgery of commuting.
Waze works with the following smartphone platforms:
-Android
-iPhone
-Symbian
-Windows Mobile
-J2ME (RIM)
They plan to monetize in part through geo-loco-based ads and offers. That's how brands and agencies can fit into all this. The added information that Waze can provide about a consumer may be valuable in a geo-loco context.
Monday, February 14, 2011
COD: ShareThis and the business value of content sharing behavior
The world of advanced targeting has grown a lot more crowded over the past couple of years. And one of the more promising approaches (in my view) is targeting based upon the consumer’s searching and sharing history. ShareThis is built on using such information to help brands and online publishers better identify and connect with their audiences.
That simple looking “ShareThis” button you see all the time – there’s actually a lot more to it than you think. ShareThis provides the button for free to publishers large and small. It adds instant sociability to content on web pages and blogs. A nice benefit to publishers and content owners because it helps to spread the word about valuable and interesting content.
But the data side of the sharing buttons is even more powerful. Because as users search for content and share it through the ShareThis functionality, the company begins to develop a deep view of their “lean forward” interests.
Further, the data collection process serves to separate active influencers from engagers and viewers. Think about it this way: you’re probably really into something if you decide to share it with your social graph. The people who click on your shares and visit the content are also probably really into the content type, though perhaps a little less than the person who took a sharing action. Finally, there are millions and millions of people who search for and visit content, but choose not to share it. It’s safe to say that their intensity of interest may be lower. And that they are less likely to be influencers, at least in terms of the content type paired with that particular sharing button.
ShareThis acts as a network, using the data to identify and purchase the best inventory for brands on the exchanges. They can also focus media on the click-to-sharers in particular, which may speed the dissemination of a message or content more rapidly than a more broadly targeted buy.
According to ShareThis, using both the evidenced intensity of interest AND the propensity to be an influencer can make a big difference in the effectiveness of an ad program. Sound enough, perhaps, for a test buy to see what they can deliver.
Let’s go back to the pub side for a minute. It’s important to note that pubs can get a lot more from participation than just an easy way to socialize content. One of the ways that ShareThis says it can help pubs is by equipping them with the tools and data to demonstrate both the passion of their viewers and their audience influencer comp. For example, a site could demonstrate that they have a higher total composition of health influencers. That would, it stands to reason, make their impressions more valuable to a pharma company. Finally, they also offer pubs a trending content widget that provides a view of the most shared content on a site, which is sure to drive incremental clicks and views.
ShareThis offers 50+ interest channels and has profiles on more than 400 million people, based upon their behaviors across 1 million web pages. They compete most closely with Clearspring’s AddThis offering, which also buys media for clients based upon sharing button data. They also sell their data on many of the exchanges so that DSP users can benefit from their targeting information.
ShareThis states that they offer a more robust consumer view for both brands and pubs, coupled with more value add on the pub side. AddThis focuses their comparative story on the greater reach that their button network offers. Their buttons appear on more pages.
I cannot tell you if “*.This” targeting will work for you, or which provider would work better for you. What I can say is that to me this approach to advanced targeting is sufficiently different that it warrants taking a meeting to see what they have for your particular business situation. Further, I like that they offer unique things to pubs — because the success of content creators is 1000% vital to the success of advertisers.
All this from those ubiquitous little buttons!
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