6 POS Systems Designed With Restaurants in Mind

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Forty-three percent of restaurant industry professionals say they plan to upgrade their restaurant technology within the next year, and 22% say they will in the next six months, meaning this could be a major period of growth for POS solutions focused on the restaurant industry.

Case Study: Aerial Entertainment Company Turns Late-Night Web Browsing Into Booking Opportunities

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kayla Dyches has been able to capitalize on her unique line of work to get free press in local publications, but still says the best way to promote her upcoming classes is still with paid online advertising. She runs paid ads on Facebook and Instagram every two to three months to promote her circus arts classes.

5 Tools for Buying Local Ads in National Publications

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By placing localized ads in national publications, smaller businesses and national chains with physical locations can cut down on wasted spending and ensure their ads are only being seen by consumers in the markets they serve. At the same time, these businesses are getting access to high-quality publications for a tiny fraction of the typical cost.

5 Ways Merchants Are Using Instagram Stories to Connect With Consumers

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Instagram’s new Stories feature is providing merchants with a new way to generate buzz. Here area few ways that businesses are using it to capture consumer attention and reinvigorate sales.

Belly Launches Loyalty Platform for Enterprise Retailers

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According to the company, the new product will be considerably more flexible than Belly’s original loyalty rewards program for small businesses, giving retailers with large physical store footprints the opportunity to design more unified experiences across in-store, mobile, and online channels.

Yelp Courts Developers With New Tools for Integration

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The program includes tools for developers to build with the Yelp Fusion API and Yelp’s local data, along with additional integrations. An updated developer portal will give developers better access to search more than 50 million local businesses across 32 countries.

Case Study: Portland Retailer Reaches New Customers with At-Home Try-On

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EcoVibe Apparel is working with a hyperlocal startup called Dorrbell and giving local shoppers a way to try on items from the comfort of their homes. Customers go online and choose products they would like to try on, they then schedule a time for them to be dropped off.

6 Click-to-Text Tools for Local Businesses

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Seventy-five percent of millennials prefer to text versus call on their mobile phones, according to a survey by the mobile engagement platform OpenMarket, and 76% prefer to receive texts from businesses because they say texting is more convenient and less disruptive.

Spa Facial

Case Study: Rhode Island Spa Looks to Automate Repetitive Marketing Tasks

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When Alayne White first started using an online booking portal at her eponymous Rhode Island spa, her goal was to get just 10% of clients to book online. Eight years later, she’s inching closer to the 50% threshold, as nearly half of her clients are booking their appointments through desktop and mobile devices.

5 Predictive Ordering Platforms for Restaurants

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One area where restaurant owners struggle is inventory management — that is, predicting how many diners will show up at a given time and how much food they’ll consume. But many restaurant owners don’t realize that a number of hyperlocal platforms are already offering solutions to help with this issue.

For Local Companies Focused on Specific Verticals, a Sharp Focus Can Be Key for Growth

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Bloated technology platforms designed to serve the entire SMB market have slowly been replaced with more targeted vertical plays, but industry veterans still caution that every vertical requires a unique approach.

How Dashboards Are Shaping the Way Marketers Manage Local Campaigns

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Vendors are pulling out all the stops to help small and mid-size businesses acquire and retain a higher percentage of their customers. And as merchants increase the number of platforms they use for local promotions, they’re relying more heavily on dashboards to correlate their digital efforts with financial successes.

7 Ways National Brands Can Localize Email Marketing Campaigns

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Going local with an email campaign can be as simple as segmenting lists by city and including the addresses of local stores or as involved as editing the copy to reflect regional purchasing trends and language dialects. The end goal remains the same: to ground the business in the local community and give customers a sense of trust.

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Case Study: Harley-Davidson Dealers Push to Grow Mobile Database

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When marketers discuss the effectiveness of email and SMS campaigns, the size of a company’s customer database can play just as significant a role in the success or failure of a given campaign. That was one of the challenges faced by Calculated Risk Motorcycle Group, a management company for six Harley-Davidson dealerships.

Foursquare’s Location Analysis Digs Into Brand Preferences of Festival Attendees

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Location data is increasingly being used to market to consumers beyond traditional store walls. Whether the data comes from Foursquare or other competing location intelligence firms, it’s being used to demonstrate which mobile ads drive people to physical stores with real-time feedback.

Back to School

How Marketers Are Localizing Their Back-to-School Campaigns

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With back-to-school and back-to-college spending forecasted to reach $75.8 billion this year, brands and retailers are getting more strategic — and creative — with their localized marketing campaigns. Here are six examples of recent campaigns aimed directly at back-to-school shoppers.

6 Ways Brands Can Automate Updates on Local Facebook Pages

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For a brand with 10, 100, or even 1,000 locations, having to create and manually update local Facebook pages can be daunting, but a number of hyperlocal vendors have stepped in with solutions to streamline the process. Here are six examples of platforms that multi-location businesses can use to automate their updates across local Facebook pages.

What Local Consumers Really Want From a Loyalty Program

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To dig into what consumers expect in the loyalty programs they use most frequency today, we checked in with executives at a few of the most well-known loyalty platforms. Here’s what they said consumers are looking for in loyalty programs right now.

5 Buy Online, Pick Up In-Store Platforms for Retailers

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Roughly 61% of retailers with online and physical outposts offer a way for shoppers to pick up their online purchases in-store, and the trickle down effect means more small and mid-size businesses are adopting the technology to make buy online, pick up in-store a reality.

6 Ways Mobile Shopping Apps Are Targeting In-Store Customers

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More retailers are attempting to utilize the data breadcrumbs that shoppers leave behind when they use mobile devices in and around physical stores. Mobile shopping companion apps that add contextual intelligence layers — and target consumers in the moments when they’re most persuadable — are catching on among national retailers.