News and Analysis

6 Scheduling Platforms for Fitness Studios

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One of the most exciting verticals right now is the fitness space, where the number of boutique gyms and studios is on the rise. Scheduling software has become an absolute necessity for fitness studios, giving clients a way to quickly book classes, pay for memberships, and even check in from their smartphones.

Here are six scheduling platforms serving the fitness vertical.

Direct-to-Consumer Brands Are Winning at Personalized Messaging. Here’s Why

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According to new research conducted by Braze, a company that specializes in growth marketing automation, direct-to-consumer brands beat non-direct-to-consumer brands with 58.6% higher messaging open rates across channels.

One reason for the higher open rates is because direct-to-consumer brands show greater willingness to use automation and iteration to personalize messages and speak to customers at a point in the journey when it makes sense for them.

Nextdoor Releases Local Deals to Connect Businesses with Nearby Customers

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Nextdoor, the social networking app that requires users to enter a verified address in order to connect neighbors, is announcing local deals, a feature that will allow businesses on the platform to promote sales, discounts, and other offers to nearby customers.

Nextdoor is active in more than 248,000 neighborhoods across 11 countries.

Commentary

How Sports Marketers Can Extend Their Brands and Win Big This Summer

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With so much opportunity — and competition — how can marketers stand out from the crowd and forge meaningful relationships with sports fans? Here are some best practices that will enable marketers to identify their perfect audiences and build lifelong relationships with fans.

Are Website Builders the Next Big Growth Market in Local?

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Website builders have been around almost as long as the internet itself. As you would expect, this is a busy market. Sitebuilderreport.com tracks 35 vendors. There are many more. Interestingly, only 4 of the 35 vendors get a good rating. Clearly, this is a large market that is ready for new and better solutions.

Google’s Next Local Conquest: Visual Search

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Indoor mapping continues to be one of those “holy grail” topics in local. It picks up where GPS drops off, tracking consumers all the way to the cash register. The latest move comes from Google, with an approach that could leapfrog beacons by using the positioning capability already in your phone (or soon will be).

Latest Posts

Scaling the Neighborhood: A Community Focus for Local Services

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So far, digital services, even those focused on local, have done more to atomize local communities than unite them, training us to rely on anonymous resources for the information and recommendations we used to get from our friends and neighbors.

Street Fight Daily: Google May Make Billions on Maps’ Local Ads, Uber IPO Coming No Time Soon

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Thanks to Local Ads, Google Maps Could Produce $1.5 Billion in New Revenue… Uber CEO Says Company Will Go Public ‘As Late As Humanly Possible’… The Bezos Effect: How Amazon’s Founder is Reinventing The Washington Post…

#SFSW16: What VCs Are Looking for in Local Startups

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The pace for venture capital funding has slowed and deals that once took days to close now take months, but Hunter Walk (Partner, Homebrew VC) and Eric Feng (General Partner, Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers) say it’s still an exciting time to be involved in local tech.

#SFSW16: Identifying the Location ‘Currency of Local’

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“The way we categorize data is it’s probabilistic,” said Juice Mobile CEO Neil Sweeney at Street Fight Summit West. “If you are acquiring or buying location from bid stream data, your location is inferred and inherently flawed.”

Street Fight Daily: Foursquare’s Swarm Offers Check-in Rewards, Yahoo Debuts Chatbots

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Foursquare’s Swarm Now Rewards You for Check-Ins… Yahoo Enters the World of Chatbots… Google is Bringing New Ad Types to AMP…

#SFSW16: Location Solves Data Glut Says HERE Exec

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Goubert says one of the biggest questions that comes up when people start talking about data is, is more always better? “We all love data because we think data is the oil of the next industry,” he said. “We all want more.” But collecting data for the sake of collecting data is a common mistake, and Goubert said the first step in solving most big data dilemmas is to add a location angle…

#SFSW16: Loyalty is Back, and It’s Big, But It’s Not Cutting-Edge

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“The premise of our business is that in the past you walk into your local business and everybody knows who you are. It is a very familial relational space,” Ho said. “Our goal is to help these business owners treat every single [customer] as a unique individual. Not long from now it’s either going to be like Minority Report or like Cheers. We want it to be like Cheers.”…

#SFSW16: YP’s Biggest Competitor? SMBs’ ‘Guy’

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Fragmentation is changing the local marketing industry, with smaller sellers encroaching on a space that was once reserved for large national agencies. At Street Fight Summit West, YP CEO David Krantz said the influx of competition is making it tougher to sell bigger advertising services.

#SFSW16: Yelp Announces New CPC Program

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Ten new partners in one week, a “Twitter firehose for local analytics,” and an appearance at Street Fight Summit West 2016. The new programs are helping to further Yelp’s mission to make the local marketing ecosystem less daunting for merchants…

Survey: Some National-to-Local Marketers Still Need Convincing on Digital Effectiveness

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Street Fight surveyed over 200 managers and decision makers at big companies in retail, financial services, and other industries. We asked them about spending patterns, perceived effectiveness, pain points, etc., around their local marketing and advertising efforts.