On The Heels Of New Funding, Swirl Rolls Out In-Store Mobile Marketing Platform
Boston-based Swirl Networks has announced has released a new in-door marketing tool, which provides tools for retailers to create and deliver personalized content to their customers based on the customer’s in-store location. The company launched a pilot program of the platform in May for retailers including Kenneth Cole and Timberland, and has now released the service to the general public…
MapBox Raises $10 Million in Series A Round
MapBox, a cloud-based map platform that allows users to design customized and interactive maps, closed a $10 million Series A round led by Foundry Group today. The Washington, DC. and San Francisco based company, which develops its service entirely on top of the open-source mapping platform OpenStreetMap, has plans to use the funding to grow its 35 member team….
RetailNext CEO: Brick-and-Mortar Retailers Are Not Under Threat
Online retailers have traditionally had a big advantage in terms of data, but in-store retail analytics company RetailNext has built a model that allows owners of brick-and-mortar stores to collect, analyze, and visualize in-store customer engagement data. The San Jose-based company, which has raised over $24 million, aggregates the data that is collected from customers and makes it actionable for retailers such as American Apparel, Bloomingdales, Verizon Wireless, and Family Dollar…
Street Fight Daily: Patch Staffs Top Sites Only, BrandNetworks Acquires Optimal
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology… Patch Will Staff Outlets In Top-Performing Areas Only, Memo Says (Poynter)… Social Ad Companies Team Up As Brand Networks Acquires Optimal For $35M (TechCrunch)… In-Store Analytics Firm Nomi Raises $10 Million, Looks Beyond Retail (Mashable)…
Case Study: Natural Food Chain Sees Steady Growth In Mobile Coupon Redemptions
One-in-five consumers has downloaded a supermarket app, and the majority of those consumers use their mobile apps at least twice a month. In an effort to get in on the trend, PCC Natural Markets, a health food co-op with nine locations in Washington, partnered with Chinook Book earlier this year on a mobile coupon app. “Print coupons are still very popular — we get a ton of them that come through our registers — but it’s inevitable that digital coupons will become more prominent,” says Tom Monahan, marketing manager at PCC.
Street Fight Daily: GoDaddy Continues Buying Spree, Walmart Expands Same-Day Delivery
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology… GoDaddy on an Acquisition Tear: Five Companies Since February (Screenwerk)… Walmart Expands Same-Day Grocery Delivery To Denver (TechCrunch)… Savings.com Launches Favado Mobile App, Aims To Solve Grocery Savings Once And For All (PandoDaily)…
The Government Shutdown and the Local Data Economy
For the most part, local search appears to demonstrate with flying colors the benefits of getting things done in the private sector. Not only is it a self-sustaining and profitable industry; it exhibits a drive to innovate that brings ever-improving services to our desktops and handheld devices at a dizzying pace. Imagine if local directories and apps were run by the same bureaucracy that manages the Postal Service, the IRS, and the Census Bureau. We’d probably still be using phone books. Yet at a fundamental level, governmental authorities still act as objective reference points when it comes to information of interest to the public…
5 Mobile Payment Platforms With Integrated Marketing Solutions
When a cashier swipes a customer’s credit card at a mobile point of sale terminal, he’s doing more than just processing a financial transaction. He’s transmitting data about who that customer is, what he’s buying, and when he’s buying it. Although this data has traditionally been closely guarded by legacy POS vendors, an increasing number of providers are opening up their doors and giving merchants a peek inside—using the data they gather through customer transactions to fuel integrated marketing programs for merchants…
The Local Conference You Don’t Want to Miss
It’s that time of year again when the most exciting companies in local gather in New York City to hash through and celebrate the best ideas and strategies. Street Fight Summit is coming next Thursday and Friday to TriBeCa, and one of the themes we’re focusing on this year is partnerships. Partnerships are a key reason we have been bringing people together for the last few years, but never have they been such a high-profile, essential element of success as they have become over the past year…
Street Fight Daily: PayPal Teams With Revel, Drones Deliver Same-Day
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology… PayPal Expands “Real World” Presence Via Integration With iPad Point-of-Sale Maker Revel Systems (TechCrunch)… Zookal Starts “World First” Delivery-By-Drone Service In Sydney (PandoDaily)… Report: Google Smartwatch “Heavy Into” Google Now Functionality (GigaOm)…
Foursquare Introduces Ads For Small Businesses
This morning the company rolled out its flagship small business advertising product, capping a two-year effort to solve the company’s toughest challenge yet: making money. With the new product, which the company has been piloting in New York since May, local businesses will be able to buy ads that surface in the search results pages or home screen of its popular mobile app…
Should Hyperlocal Publishers Accept Barter Deals?
Most of the better known hyperlocal sites we contacted told us they didn’t do trade or barter, and they didn’t want to talk about it on the record. In Dallas, hyperlocal pioneer Mike Orren said people don’t talk about it because they don’t want to attract the attention of auditors, or they don’t want competitors to know that they’ll do barter. He agreed, however, that trade is “absolutely viable” for independents…
Gauging Hummingbird’s Impact on Local SEO
Standardization of data structure on simple things like name-address-phone number (NAP) information, mapping, local business category, organization (micro-formats) are now starting to pick up steam and become increasingly important for local search and discovery. Now with Hummingbird, things are about to get even more interesting…
Street Fight Daily: Yahoo Revisits Ad Consortium, Yelp Goes To Washington
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology… Newspapers’ Ad Consortium With Yahoo Reboots (Poynter)… Yelp Just Got Its First D.C. Lobbyist (Fast Company)… WhitePages.com Fulfills Its Enterprise Destiny, Launches WhitePages PRO Identity Verification Platform (PandoDaily)…
Survey of ‘Indie’ Hyperlocals Finds Mixed Bag When It Comes to Revenue
There are hundreds of independent community news sites in the U.S. — thousands if you count blogs — but only 131 of them meet the standards of “Michele’s List.” The list was assembled and is periodically updated by journalist/researcher/consultant Michele McLellan, who was the principal founder of Block by Block, a network that inspired (and goaded) “indie” community editors and publishers to focus, and stay focused, on achieving sustainability in the brave new world of digital journalism. McLellan, who still compiles her “list,” talked with Street Fight recently about what her new survey revealed….
How a Hyperlocal Editor-Publisher Team Scored Big in Suburban Nashville
One of the highest revenue producers on Michele’s List of independent hyperlocal sites is BrentWood Communications, which publishes four-year-old Brentwood Home Page in suburban Nashville, Tenn. Founders Kelly Gilfillan and Susan Leathers launched a second suburban site, Franklin Home Page, a year ago and a third, Nolensville Home Page, this summer. Total revenue for the sites is $251,000-$500,000 annually, a range attained by few hyperlocals, whether independents or part of corporate networks. Here’s how Gilfillan and Leathers did it…