Street Fight Daily: McDonald’s Beacon Strategy, Yelp Stock Plummets
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology…
McDonald’s Beacon Strategy Pushes In-Store Conversion Rate To 20% (Mobile Marketer)
McDonald’s recently leveraged a new proximity marketing strategy, sending beacon-enabled promotions to customers within its venues via a mobile application, resulting in a conversion rate of 20 percent. The brand sought to enhance its personal relationships with customers as well as increase awareness of a new line of coffee-flavored beverages.
New Verve Mobile CEO: It’s All About the Data (Street Fight)
Last month, Verve Mobile, one of the earliest local-mobile marketing firms, parted ways with its long-time CEO Tom MacIssac. We caught up with the company’s new chief executive, Nada Stirratt, to talk about where she sees the industry headed.
Analysts Lower Price Targets as Yelp Stock Tumbles (MarketWatch)
Yelp shares were down 21% Thursday, a day after the company missed on first-quarter earnings and revenue, garnering a series of price target cuts from analysts and at least one downgrade. One worrying factor is its monthly unique visitor reading, which has seen below the 13% growth in the previous quarter.
Leaked Lyft Document Reveals a Costly Battle With Uber (Bloomberg)
The expensive battle plan helped Lyft claim a fourfold increase in active passengers on 2.2 million rides in December 2014, but growth is beginning to slow, according to a company presentation to investors. Lyft estimates $130 million in revenue for 2014, according to the document.
Web Pros: GoDaddy’s Potential 3-Million-Person Salesforce (Screenwerk)
GoDaddy is currently focused most on site development but ultimately will include marketing tools and services that can be offered by “web pros” to their small business customers. The three million paid web pros represent a massive market opportunity and potential reseller channel for GoDaddy.
Seven Million People Used Facebook’s Check-In Feature After Nepal Earthquake (Recode)
More than seven million people used Facebook’s emergency check-in feature, Safety Check, to let their friends on the service know they were safe following the deadly earthquake that hit last Saturday, according to a post from Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. That’s roughly one quarter of Nepal’s entire population.
Warby Parker Now Worth $1.2 Billion, Focusing On Building More Brick-And-Mortar Stores (TechCrunch)
The e-commerce eyeglasses retailer Warby Parker has raised $100 million to expand physical store locations from 12 to 20 by year’s end and to work on technology that will allow customers to conduct eye exams on their mobile phones.
How Popular Are Mobile In-Store Payments? (eMarketer)
eMarketer estimates that the number of US proximity mobile payment users—where a proximity mobile payment is a point-of-sale (POS) transaction made by using a mobile device as a payment method—will reach 22.6 million in 2015, up 41.7% year over year but representing just 12.7% of smartphone users.
LBMA Podcast: Twitter Invests in Swirl, Gannett Taps Gravy (Street Fight)
On the show: Viewswagen wants to sell ads in Uber and Lyft; Density brings local establishment crowd numbers to mobile; Voatz hopes to bring the vote to the voters; Leap Transit makes taking the bus the destination; Air Orchard and Ant Man innovate on billboard advertising.
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