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Dominos and Starbucks Turn Customer Behavior into Customer Service

posted on October 31, 2012

Domino’s and Starbucks are turning customer behavior into customer service with new initiatives that add value to their current service.

In the UK, Domino’s is offering a new twist on dinner and a movie. When you order a pizza, you’ll also get a code to stream a movie from Lionsgate while you eat. That means you can ease your hunger while watching Hunger Games or spend Halloween night with the classic horror movie Scream.

It’s a brilliant combination that plays into something their customers were already doing, eating in front of the TV. Now, they get to link their name to one of the biggest movies of the past year and dozens of classics.

Domino’s marketing director Simon Wallis said:

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Smartphone Click Traffic Up 105 Percent Year Over Year

posted on October 31, 2012

In the brick and mortar world, the ka-ching of an old cash register or the beep of an electronic one is the sound of money flowing into the business. In the online world, we listen for the sounds of the “click” and increasingly, the “tap”.

According to The Search Agency’s recently released State of Paid Search Report, click traffic is up 27% year over year worldwide, and up 21% in the US alone.

Google is still responsible for the overwhelming majority of those search clicks but Yahoo-Bing is showing some spunk. It looks like their aggressive marketing campaigns are working because they click traffic increased 9.6% in the last quarter. Google only rose 0.7%.

Bing also had a larger decrease in their Cost Per Click going from  0.57 to
$0.51; Google went from $0.58 to $0.56. (Q2 2012 to Q3 2012.)

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Google Analytics Enhancement Can Help Analyze ROI Across Channels

posted on October 31, 2012

While I write about many facets of the digital marketing space I readily admit when I am out of my league and truly understanding Google Analytics is one of them. For all of my good intentions I have not gotten the training necessary to truly get the most from the tool.

As a business person though I can appreciate when anyone talks about tracking ROI more effectively. That is what a new feature of Google Analytics, the beta Cost Data Import tool, is helping analytics users to do.

The Google Analytics blog reported yesterday

Google Analytics has been a great place to analyze the performance of your Google advertising programs, but a piece of the puzzle has been missing: analyzing return on investment across all your digital channels. That’s why we’re happy to announce our new Cost Data Import tool, now available in public beta. This tool allows Google Analytics users to import their cost data from any digital source — such as paid search providers, display providers, affiliates, email, social and even organic traffic.

Your imported cost data can be viewed in two places: in a new report called Cost Analysis in Traffic Sources, and in the newly publicly available Attribution Modeling Tool. These reports show you how all your digital marketing channels are performing compared to each other, so you can make better decisions about your marketing programs.

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Google’s New iOS Search App Approved with Most Advanced Voice Search

posted on October 31, 2012

Google has finally gotten through the approval process for their latest iOS search app for iPhone and iPads of all sizes. The main feature is as Google puts it “Google’s most advanced voice search”. Gee, I wonder why it took so long to get through Apple’s process (the app was announced back in August)? Maybe someone should ask Siri?

Here is a Google video showing the voice search (which has no name for now so let’s just call it Siri-ous Competition) on its best behavior.

The Google blog tells it like this

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Overwhelming Portion of Holiday Shoppers Will Start on One Device and Finish on Another

posted on October 30, 2012

For several years now, we’ve been hearing about the impact of mobile on holiday shopping. But here’s a fact I’ve never heard before.

85% of shoppers will shop for a gift by starting on one device and finishing on another.

The information comes from the Adweek Google 2012 Digital Holidays survey and it’s all about the birth of the multi-screen holiday shopping season. Take a look at this slice from their delightful infographic:

Crazy stuff. And what’s funny is, I actually do these things but didn’t really think about it. I email myself from my iPad all the time. I did this just yesterday after I found a cool gift idea for my husband. Emailing is an inelegant solution to the problem but it works. A better solution is a direct connection between the tablet (or smartphone) and the computer. For example, I also used the Amazon app on my iPad to add items to my Wish List which my husband will later access from his computer.

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With Yahoo Making Up Their Own Rules, Is There Any Point to ‘Do Not Track?’

posted on October 30, 2012

With the launch of Windows 8, Microsoft has begun the push to transition websurfers over to their hot, spanking new Internet Explorer 10. According to the Test Drive page, IE 10 utilizes Blob Builder, Particle Acceleration, Beta Fish IE, and RoboHornet Pro. Or not, because seriously, these all sound like Batman villains to me, so it’s possible I’m misreading the website.

IE 10 also comes with the ‘Do Not Track’ switch in the “on” position because Microsoft knows that you would rather not have those pesky ad networks stalking you all over the web. Given that I’ve spent a week trying to outrun that creepy Mojo Themes monster, I get it, but as a marketer, I must cry foul!

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Smartphones Are From Mars, Tablets Are From Venus

posted on October 30, 2012

Before I bought my iPad, I thought tablets were just over-grown iPhones; bigger screen and keyboard (nice) but too bulky to fit in my purse (not so nice.) Then I bought one and everything changed. Certainly, there’s a quantity of crossover between the two mobile devices but a year down the road, each one has its own purpose in my mind.

Phone calls, texting, coupon apps and music are all a part of my iPhone. Social TV apps, online shopping, writing, and video are all handled by my iPad. And then there are games. I have games on both devices but 90% of the time, I’m playing them on my tablet.

What’s the rest of the world doing? Have a look at this chart from Flurry.