#SFSW16: Loyalty is Back, and It’s Big, But It’s Not Cutting-Edge
“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.”…
FiveStars Digs Deeper Into Customer Data to Get Beyond ‘Loyalty’
FiveStars co-founder and CEO Victor Ho, who will be a speaker at Street Fight Summit West next week, caught up with us recently to talk about the efficiency of retention marketing, the shift from daily deals to digital loyalty programs, and what analyzing the trove of SMB consumer data can potentially yield.
Case Study: Burger Chain Grows Facebook Reach By Prioritizing Local Pages
In the past 18 months, the ratio of spending between print and digital marketing campaigns has flipped at Hwy 55. Today, the company’s digital spend is more than 20% higher than print. The company has chosen to focus its efforts on platforms that can be used to reach consumers at the hyperlocal level.
5 Keys to Small Business Success From 2014
Given all the hyperlocal solutions aimed at small businesses, it’s no wonder merchants took a varied approach in 2014. Over the past year, merchants have become savvier about online marketing solutions, and as a result, many are now willing to try platforms they would not have been comfortable using in previous years…
Street Fight Daily: Uber’s Billion Dollar Round, Local’s ‘Moral Imperative’
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Uber Said in Early Talks to Raise Another $1 Billion (Recode)… The ‘Moral Imperative’ Behind Small Business Marketing (Screenwerk)… YC Alum Fivestars Sees Explosive Growth In La, Fights For The Loyalty Of Consumers And Local Merchants (Pando)…
The Sharing Economy Goes Behind the Counter
We tend to think of the sharing economy as a consumer movement that helps us hail a ride or find a place to stay. But the basic logic driving the shift will soon start to impact the more mundane aspects of small business, allowing merchants to enjoy some of the advantages of scale that their larger competitors do…
Street Fight Daily: Google Maps Eyes Yelp, Nextdoor Adds Business Lead
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Google Maps Added One Of Yelp’s Best Features (BusinessInsider)… Nextdoor Hires Disney’s Christa Quarles as Chief Business Officer (Recode)… Model Number for Apple’s Mystery iBeacon Device May Hint at Upgrade to Existing Hardware (AppleInsider)…
7 Tools for Re-activating Dormant Customers
The cost of acquiring a new customer is five times higher than the cost to keep an existing one, which is one of the reasons why businesses of all sizes are beefing up their loyalty programs and using social media to keep fans engaged. But what about customers who’ve fallen off the bandwagon — those whose accounts have gone dormant after not coming in for a period of weeks or months?
Case Study: Boosting Customer Retention With a Card-Based Program
Local merchants need to keep their customer base in mind when deciding which hyperlocal loyalty platform to use. After experimenting with a mobile-only loyalty platform, Alex Su, the owner of Tpumps Tea Shop in San Mateo, Calif.,was surprised to learn that his customers weren’t as interested in earning rewards through their smartphones as he had previously thought. A different kind of loyalty program from FiveStars provided an alternative…
Behind Big Retail Brands’ Complicated Relationship With Loyalty
More and more, loyalty startups are looking beyond the SMB market, and to larger brands as a potentially lucrative market with substantially lower sales costs. But, the outcome could be more complicated than it first appears. In a recent conversation with Street Fight, Dawn Maire, creative director at Rockfish Interactive, suggested that retailers might be better acquirers than partners for many loyalty companies…
6 Tools Restaurants Can Use for Better Guest Intelligence
By the time a guest walks through the front doors at Ping Pong Dim Sum in Washington D.C., marketing manager Myca Ferrer can already be fairly certain what he or she will order. Ferrer isn’t psychic, but he is using a guest intelligence platform to gain a deeper understanding of his most frequent customers. By tracking preferences and payment histories, Ping Pong Dim Sum is better able to offer VIP service to its most loyal diners…
LBMA Podcast: Chuck Martin on ‘Mobile Influence’
In this week’s episode, eBay turns windows into stores; Shopify turns e-tailers into retailers; The LBMA creates the world’s first human heatmap logo; Wikipedia goes local with content; Rogers partners with FiveStars on Vicinity; Free wifi with Scrabble; Pak ‘n Save makes the shopper the DJ; and local mobile is exploding…
With New Products and Integrations, Belly Looks Beyond Loyalty
A year and a half after launch, and Logan LaHive, chief executive of Belly, has a clear message for the competition: we’re winning. The Chicago-based company has rolled out new integrations with Yelp and Facebook this morning, marking the beginning of the company’s push to move beyond loyalty toward an open, social CRM…
5 Reasons to Add Gift Cards to a Digital Loyalty Program
Promoting customer loyalty is a broad goal that local merchants are tackling in many different ways. While plenty of platforms utilize mobile redemptions and out-of-the-box rewards or coupons to curry favor with consumers, an increasing number of loyalty providers are moving outside the virtual environment with pre-loaded physical gift cards…
Channeling Starbucks, FiveStars Seeks Loyalty in the Form of a Gift Card
The Mountain View, Calif., company is launching a new gift card product aimed at helping businesses transform new customers into returning customers through its POS-integrated loyalty platform. The company has piloted a co-branded gift card with a handful of small retail chains since December, and plans to open the feature to its smaller merchants with the release…
Street Fight Daily: Gannett Paywall Pays Off, AOL Sunsets Hipster.com
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.… The Case for Paywalls: Gannett Gains While Digital First Experiments (Poynter)… More Change At AOL: Photosharing App Hipster.com Is Shutting Down (TechCrunch)… PayPal Destroys Google Wallet, MasterCard, Square, and Visa in Digital Wallet Study (VentureBeat)…
Street Fight Daily: Pushpins Snapped Up, In-Store Payments Boom
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.… The Full Story of Pushpins Acquisition by Ebates Parent Performance Marketing Brands (PandoDaily)… Forrester: Proximity Payment is Fastest-Growing Segment of Mobile Payments (Mobile Commerce Daily)… How To Make Foursquare Fun Again (Business Insider)…
Street Fight Daily: Google Partners with Kia, Cloud Computing and Coupons
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.… Car Rental Company Avis To Buy ZipCar For $500 Million (TechCrunch)… Google Partners with Kia Motors to Integrate Google Maps and Places into New Car Models (The Next Web)… How Cloud Computing Is Accelerating Context-Aware Coupons, Offers and Promotions (Business2Community)…