Street Fight Daily: Amazon Might Crowdsource Delivery, Square Introduces Apple Watch App
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology…
Amazon Flex Could Be a New Way to Get Your Packages, Report Says (Mashable)
Amazon Flex, which hasn’t been publicly announced by Amazon, was discovered at a facility in Kirkland, Washington and appears to involve either crowdsourcing deliveries by recruiting local individuals willing to take on the task, or allowing you to pick up your own packages.
Square Cash for Apple Watch Lets You Send Money From Your Wrist (The Next Web)
Square is now the first payments company on the Apple Watch. The move is a logical step, considering that Square is competing with companies like PayPal and Venmo to corner the market on personal cash exchanges.
A New Political Campaign Methodology Connects Supporters With Localized Social Media (Street Fight)
Pat Kitano: It’s self-evident that campaigns should be promoted at local levels, where word-of-mouth buzz can truly happen within neighborhoods. As the 2016 national election approaches, campaigns have the opportunity to harness local social more directly than ever before.
Here’s How the Post Office Is Taking on UPS, FedEx, and Amazon (Fortune)
The USPS is starting to evolve in line with changing American mailing needs, ramping up same-day delivery in order to compete with rivals for the growing share of packages with tight schedules. The insatiable need for e-commerce delivery presents the Postal Service with an opportunity to replace lost revenue, if it can be light on its feet in a competitive market.
Sponsored Content: Localizing Your Pay-Per-Click Campaigns (Street Fight)
After getting listed in online directories, setting up SEO-optimized websites, and creating profiles on popular social channels, running a PPC campaign is the next logical step for local business marketers. This post is part of a series on strategies in local digital marketing, sponsored by Mediative.
U.S. E-Commerce Sales Jump 14 Percent, Account For 7.2 Percent Of All Retail (Marketing Land)
In all, 7.2 percent of the estimated $1,1771.5 billion in US retail sales transactions occurred online in the second quarter, up from 7 percent in the first quarter of 2015 and 6.3 percent a year ago.
Retailers Cut Back on Newspaper Circulars (Wall Street Journal)
“We have shifted investments from preprint to other channels, like digital, social, and radio,” said Will Setliff, Kohl’s executive vice president of marketing. He said the approach allowed Kohl’s to tailor its marketing to customer preferences and local tastes. (Subscription required.)
AOL Plans to Train More Than 600 Microsoft Salespeople on Programmatic (Digiday)
The task comes as AOL absorbs Microsoft’s digital advertising business as part of an exclusive, 10-year search and advertising partnership between the two companies. Programmatic is becoming a big business for AOL, which reports that programmatic revenue grew 80 percent year-over-year in the second quarter.
These Days ‘Convergence’ Means Uniting the Selves of the Customer (VentureBeat)
Even the always-online mode of today’s customers doesn’t give a consistent profile. There’s one view obtained via mobile marketing and SMS, another through credit card transactions, another via social interaction, and so on. And that’s just the online part. The vast majority of retail sales still takes place in brick-and-mortar stores, so there’s the self that actually walks into a store.
iPad Point-Of-Sale Company Revel Systems Raises $13.5M To Expand In Asia And Europe (TechCrunch)
Revel, which makes point-of-sale platforms for SMBs and large franchises alike, has raised funding to fuel its rapid growth and will expand internationally. It will differentiate itself from other tablet POS systems by including a wide array of features in its software suite so it can handle deliveries and shipping in addition to payment processing.
This Infographic Reveals How Social and Mobile Impact Back-to-School Shoppers (AdWeek)
More than 1,000 adults from a wide set of demographics were surveyed to see how they behave during the back-to-school shopping season. Ninety percent of respondents said they would shop in a store, while 45 percent said they plan to buy online; 82 percent said they would share their purchases on Facebook, the most popular social platform for such sharing.
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