6 Email Marketing Tools for Hyperlocal Publishers
By sending out email newsletters with links to the most important stories of the day, hyperlocal publishers can help their content go viral and build a loyal readership with low acquisition costs. Here are six email marketing platforms with built-in tools to help online publishers automate the process of creating and publishing daily email newsletters, as well as other important marketing materials…
Case Study: Coffee Shop Prizes Engagement Over Customer Acquisition
Customer engagement will always trump customer acquisition at Groundwork Coffee, an organic coffee roaster with seven outposts in the Southern California area. The company has been able to increase both the frequency of customer visits and the average ticket per visit by partnering with a digital loyalty program called FiveStars…
7 CMS Platforms for Hyperlocal Publishers
Although many publishers have adapted general-purpose systems like WordPress and Drupal to meet their needs — and others, like Patch and Sacramento Press, have built their own technology platforms from scratch — new CMS platforms are being developed specifically with the needs of local and regional publishers in mind. Here are seven CMS platforms that publishers can use to run local news websites…
Case Study: Salon Attracts Clients With Mobile Site, Loyalty Program
Anne Kelley wasn’t sure that daily deals were the direction she wanted Wet Salon and Studio to go when she began handling the Austin salon’s marketing efforts last year. Rather than work with the traditional deal companies, Kelley opted to focus her digital efforts on creating a mobile website and partnering with Belly to implement a rewards program that encourages loyalty rather than deal-seeking…
6 POS Systems With Loyalty Program Integration
With an increasing number of cloud-based point-of-sale systems now offering their own loyalty tools — and some offering integration with existing rewards programs — merchants have fewer and fewer reasons to pay for separate software systems when managing their small to mid-size businesses. Here are six point-of-sale systems that merchants can use to market their businesses and encourage repeat visits…
Case Study: Bay Area News Group Uses Wave2 for Self-Serve Ads
At the Bay Area News Group, a publisher of small and mid-sized papers around San Francisco, community information manager Elizabeth Naughton says using Wave2 Media’s self-serve platform has given her sales team more “breathing room,” which allows them to spend more time meeting advertisers and making social calls to customers. As a result, Naughton says advertisers have begun running larger ads and BANG has been able to generate more revenue…
#SFSW12: Foursquare’s Luedorf Says Users Still in Focus, Over Revenue
Although the company isn’t planning on charging merchants to use its basic dashboard tools—which provide insight into consumer demographics and trends— Luedorf said Foursquare “isn’t closing the door” on the possibility of charging businesses for its yield management system, more commonly known as specials. The self-serve tool gives businesses a way to drive traffic on slow days by introducing specials targeted at customers who check-in within a certain distance of their establishments.
Geoloqi CEO: ‘Your Phone Is a Remote Control for Reality’
t Street Fight Summit West on Tuesday afternoon Geoloqi co-founder Amber Case described a world in which smartphone users could get their prescriptions filled automatically upon entering their local pharmacies, or be checked-in automatically upon arriving at hotels: “This is about predicting your future experience based on location, using your own data,” Case said…
Topix CEO: To Make Hyperlocal Publishing Profitable ‘Be a Monopoly’
Hyperlocal publishing can actually be a profitable endeavor. That was the main takeaway from a fireside chat with Business Insider contributing editor Owen Thomas and Topix CEO Chris Tolles at Street Fight Summit West on Tuesday. “We are profitable. It took a long, long time,” Tolles said. “Keeping costs down was a big part in that.”
SMB Marketing Platform bzzHive Announces Launch at #SFSW12
CEO Dave Walker announced the launch of his company’s beta site at the Street Fight Summit West in San Francisco on Monday. bzzHive, a web start-up that aims to streamline the marketing process for small businesses and their suppliers, helps marketing services suppliers reach and sell to small businesses.
#SFSW12: Google’s Mangtani Says Quality Drives Redemptions
One way that product chief Nitin Mangtani and his team at Google have begun to streamline the merchant acquisition process is by introducing Google Offers Marketplace, which allows companies in the deal space to partner with Google for offer distribution. “We can work together to compliment each other’s skills,” explained Mangtani…
7 Strategies for Creating Effective Mobile Websites
Savvy marketers are ramping up their mobile offerings in an effort to generate attention from the 51% of consumers who say they’re more likely to purchase from retailers with mobile-specific sites. There are some basic principles that marketers large and small can follow to ensure their mobile sites generate the greatest ROI possible. Here are seven tips from experts in the mobile marketing industry about what small business owners should keep in mind.
Case Study: Sotheby’s Uses Mobile iPad App to Attract High-End Buyers
Consumers purchasing multi-million dollar properties want to see more than just static photos and written descriptions when researching homes online. According to John Passerini, vice president of interactive marketing at Sotheby’s International Realty, high-end buyers want to understand the “context” of the properties they’re viewing. To satisfy this need, Sotheby’s used LBS-technology to create a “lifestyle overlay” for its mobile iPad app…
5 Tools for Outsourcing Hyperlocal Ad Management & Sales
Companies that provide publishers with ad sales support and management tools have become a happy medium for publications that can’t afford to employ full-time reps and aren’t quite satisfied with the low rates they earn from advertising networks alone. Here are five tools that publishers can use to outsource some or all of the advertising operations…
Case Study: The Benefits of Running a POS System in the Cloud
When David Steingard began researching point-of-sale systems to use at Laughing Man, the New York City coffee shop he founded with the actor Hugh Jackman in 2011, he was surprised at how expensive checkout terminals had become. Rather than paying $15,000 to $30,000 for a traditional POS system, Steingard opted to go with ShopKeep, a mobile system that runs on the iPad…
6 Platforms Hyperlocal Publishers Can Use to Fill Unsold Ad Inventory
Ad inventory sold by networks typically doesn’t command the high CPM (cost per thousand impressions) that individual publishers can charge when they work with local businesses directly. However, these ads do give publishers a chance broaden their advertiser base and earn revenue for space that would have otherwise gone unused…
Case Study: Charlottesville Cafe Increases Customer Frequency With Cardagin
At Calvino Cafe in Charlottesville, Virginia, owner Katie Kroloff was already looking for a marketing program that provided trackable results when a salesperson from Cardagin Networks walked through her door. The loyalty platform provided many of the same benefits as the punch card system she had been using, but with fewer headaches and better rewards…