Curious or confused about all the SoLoMo activities in the retail world? Looking for a guiding light for starting or evolving your SoLoMo marketing strategy? Stay tuned for an in-depth article on understanding the optimal role of SoLoMo marketing in order to maximize the impact on your bottom line.

Some context: I am not a coffee power drinker. 

I enjoy one cup, not quite every day.  Also, I live & work in Boston’s South End where there are many excellent independent coffee/bakery options.  (Flour, two blocks away is one easy favorite.) Plus Boston is a Dunkin’ town – I need to make a little effort to go to Starbucks.

Around one month ago I downloaded the Starbucks mobile payment app on a whim. I think I was on a “try new apps” binge.  During a recent caffeine-induced moment of curiosity I decided to check out my loyalty summary and noticed that I had a lot more visits during the last month. When I actually analyzed the numbers they showed that my coffee consumption at Starbucks had increased 300% in my single month of using the mobile payment app. Specifically, 10 transactions in the last month compared to an average 3.3 per month since I joined the loyalty program.

 Holy Mocha Frappuccino!

Because it’s Fun

Now I had a sense I might be finding my way to Starbucks a bit more often – but certainly not that much.  Reflecting over this behavior change, I realized that I enjoy the mobile payment process on a few levels:

• It’s amusing: It is kind of fun to hold out my iPhone and scan it. It feels kind of like I’m not really paying and the cashier usually shares a pleasant comment.
• Cool factor: I did notice a bit of self-consciousness in the beginning. And, if I’m being honest, still feel a slight “ain’t I clever” moment upon tapping “touch to pay.”  And people do notice. One customer engaged me in a several minute interrogatory around the Starbucks app, smart phones and the desire for other retailers to offer mobile payment.  
•  So easy: I don’t have to dig my money out of my wallet and actually learned that I could ‘trust my phone’ (interesting insight!) and leave my purse at home & go out with only phone and keys.

But another potent factor in giving Starbucks a bigger share-of-caffeine-wallet is because the loyalty program mechanics make me see stars.

Because I Win

Strong loyalty programs have always had elements of gaming. During a recent lunch with Carl Howe, Director, Anywhere Consumer Research at Yankee Group, he shared four major rules of gamification:

1. Exploring is about being open-ended.
2. Achieving is having stepped levels of accomplishments.
3. Socializing  is being able to share achievements and game progress with friends.
4. Competing is being able to compare game accomplishments with others and have friends challenge you to do better.

(And then he explained that I would fall into the “killer” gamer category due to some past behavior of spinning long-distance providers and gaming AT&T out of several hundred dollars of acquisition incentives. Hmm… )

The Starbucks loyalty program & mobile payments app certainly isn’t one of the new breed of uber-social gaming experiences, but it checks off some key basics if you include informal competition/manipulation between friends. (“wow – you only need 2 stars for a free drink? It’s time for a coffee break – you can treat.”)

More importantly, the mobile app has brilliantly incorporated the element of Fun Once, Fun Always.  Definition: The concept that an action is enjoyable to repeat all the time. Generally this has to do with simple actions.  (source: SCVNGR’s game mechanics playdeck)

Simple Actions, Easy Loyalty

You see, the Starbucks app has this clever little graphic of stars falling into a coffee cup with every purchase and informs you of how many stars (I mean drinks) needed to win the next reward.

How lovely! All those stars for me!

What a pleasant experience when refreshing my balance and several stars fall in at once. (Yes, I refresh often for the feel good factor, especially while on the bus.) Why wouldn’t I give more business to a place with great product and emotional gratification to boot. I drink = I win! At least now I can do it consciously, and not simply react to an unconscious urge for novelty and reward in my quest for caffeine.

So with the Age of Mobile Payments almost upon us, my experience shows that yes – mobile can provide an efficient, pleasant payment method on its own that customers will gladly adopt.

But don’t miss out on the opportunity to incorporate deeper levels of customer engagement and reward.  Gaming shows that engagement mechanics can appear deceptively simple yet still be addictive – kind of like a good cup of coffee.

This article was originally published for Boston World Partnerships on March 30, 2011. Go here to see it live.

When it Rains, It Pours. Boston’s Mobile Scene has a Deluge of Job Openings!

We all know that Boston is a leading innovation city. And mobile has become one of the hot industries in the Boston/Cambridge metro-area with over 100 companies and several exciting liquidity events making headlines.

Combined with the increasing presence of digital power players that integrate mobile into their offerings, these companies are contributing substantially to regional job growth.

Over the last few months, there has been a marked increase in companies looking for strong players to join their team across capabilities. Jobs are trending at mid-level Manager and Director level.  Account Management, Business Development, Developer, Engineering and Marketing jobs are all available.

Is this spring fever? I believe there is a correlation to:  1) angel and venture capital deals closing and providing cash for strategic hires; 2) brand budgets loosening up and larger allocations going towards innovative digital/mobile technologies; and, 3) companies who were well-positioned in the earlier days of mobile are riding the wave of increased customer adoption.

Sound interesting? Check out Celtra, Fluent Mobile, HeyWire, JumpTap, Localytics, PhoneValley and WHERE. Other digital powerhouses with huge numbers of job openings include Google and Digitas.  And ClovrMedia plans to redefine the digital ad space with its card-linked offers.

This group of companies has over 150 job openings and are either already market leaders or just about to be.  For example:

• WHERE reaches over 50 million consumers nationally through their own mobile app and their mobile ad network.
• Publicis-owned PhoneValley was named “Mobile Marketing Agency of the Year” for two years (2009, 2010) by OMMA.
• And David George, COO of Celtra, says his company has been called “one of the best kept secrets” by top-tier clients. (somehow I bet the secret will be getting out…)

So are you or anyone in your network looking to jump in where the action is? If so, now is the time to act. Christine Hickey of Hartley Hickey Executive Search perhaps says it best: “Companies are in expansion mode and can’t seem to fill positions fast enough.  Job seekers are starting to get multiple offers.  It’s the perfect storm.”

And that’s one storm New England will be happy to have.

SoLoMo (Social-Local-Mobile) is the new catch-phrase coined by John Doerr at KPCB and made popular during his talk with Mary Meeker at Google’s thinkmobile event.

With real-time social features accelerating mobile usage, sharing + location + friending means a new paradigm for businesses and consumers.

What do retailers care about within this revolution? A recent MITX event  brought together retail industry leaders in the Boston area to share their insights. A few noted priorities are below.

1. Providing digital solutions “how and where” customers want to interact

• CVS’s  top priority is serving the pharmacy customer. CVS is cognizant of the needs of this market segment and proactively working on digital solutions. For example, people with chronic illness are often on the go, may have caregivers involved and deal with the “nightmare” of pill management.  CVS wants to help customers manage these issues.
• CVS also actively inquires “how to get people to engage.”  Even though they have 65 million loyalty card members (!) they acknowledge that “customer behavior is very hard to change.”
• For example, CVS’s in-store kiosks do not have high usage even with extreme measures such as gluing “footprints” on the floor to help walk customers over. One vision is to make mobile phone into a “personal kiosk” – thus interacting more on the customers’ terms

2. Making money “come out the other end”

• Some retailers have the opinion that group buying programs cause margin compression and can be “incredibly treacherous.”  For businesses that closely track the cost of acquiring customers, there is fear that if a customer can be “bought” with a discounted offer, then someone can buy them away. That makes social commerce a non-starter for certain brands and businesses – although others claim to have success and Buy With Me reports many repeat clients.
• Newbury Comics (with over $2 billion in revenue) has used social media to decrease marketing spend from $3 million to $300,000 with better results. They are looking for solutions that are easy to understand (with no consultants needed to explain it!) and that provide a “500% return, not a 7% return.”
• Aisle Buyer, as a solution example, can prove that money is being transacted by delivering real-time custom offers aisle-by-aisle and “mobilizing self-checkout.”

3. Talk to them when it’s out of the laboratory

• Retailers do not have the internal bandwidth to “manage all these marketing experiments.” They talk to their peers to gather a trusted opinion, such as “Foursquare doesn’t work” and may act (or not act) on that opinion. Others may lean towards “waiting to see which technology will win.”
• With all the noise in the market (over 100 mobile coupon companies launched in the last 2 years) they wonder “which entities understand the entire ecosystem” as well as understand their priorities as retailers.

With many retailers being (extremely busy) merchants at heart, and not technologists, they may be cautious to adopt SoLoMo solutions that consumers are already using.

And especially when some SoLoMo products may resemble a lab experiment (hmmm…. Shopkick?) retailers need to trust that something is good for their customers & bottom line before investing their limited resources … or setting out any cheese.

So how has all the great technology and imagination in the mobile world enhanced our driving and road-tripping experience?

Three words: location, social networks, cloud.  

Apps are becoming available that provide access to real-time traffic data, social media communication about traffic jams, cops, and scenery, travel journaling, analysis of fuel-efficiency vs. others, etc. They use sophisticated location data and cloud storage has enabled great creativity. And since safety while driving is an issue, several have voice recognition.

Students at the University of Michigan (one of my alma maters, Go Blue!) developed an app called Caravan Track that allows clusters of vehicles traveling together to track each other during the drive – which is great for road trip with more than one car. The app uses vehicle telemetry to track each vehicle, maps routes and sends alerts about stops and road conditions.

Some new apps from General Motors are also helpful when standing still – they allow owners to perform standard key fob functions like remote starts or locking and unlocking the car from wherever they are. The apps also give users the ability to check their fuel tank level, remaining oil live, tire pressure and fuel economy. The car uploads this information to GM’s servers with every start.

Apps are also giving access to an electronic version of their user manual, and feature some location-based services, including the ability to tag your parking spot with GPS coordinates and a photo or note. The apps also include a timer for tracking how much time you have left on the parking meter.

The American driver will have more innovative mobile experiences to look forward to as technology advances.  The next task is to improve the food at the rest stops…

Some other good apps: 10 must-have apps for holiday travel, which are applicable for most road trips.

With the app market projected to be $35 billion by 2014 (source: IDC) one of the challenges brands face is to create a mobile experience that succeeds.

Part of app success is being discovered, another part is being used, enjoyed and used again. With budgets under pressure to deliver results, the last thing a brand needs is an app that flops. Especially since research shows that “almost 40% are unhappy with branded apps” (source: MediaPost)

All good marketing has a strong element of customer insight, and app development should be no different. Ask any agency worth its billing rate and they will shout out how the voice of the customer, and the agency’s perceptive interpretation thereof, informs stellar creative execution. How can this work in app development?

Appswell, a very clever young company in Boston, is using mobile crowd-sourcing to integrate the voice of a brand’s most engaged consumers into the app development process. Through Appswell’s expertise in social engineering they engage a brand’s community to suggest and vote for app ideas. This is a win for brands in several ways: 1) pre-approved app ideas with a high likelihood of success, 2) identified brand champions and influencers to tap into for future brand engagement, and 3) broader insights as to consumer’s desires for engaging with a brand in the mobile channel.

Appswell is already working with innovative mobile marketers GE, Kraft and Hearst with more to come. Here is a link to an article on Crowd-sourcing the App Strategy.

If your brand has a community (and all brands do…) its time to give them a voice and start listening.

Mass Tech Leadership Council recently hosted a rock star panel that discussed trends in mobile.

AT&T’s CTO John Donovan was the headliner with AT&T’s perspective. He has the task of overseeing the company’s global technology direction and innovation roadmap while maintaining AT&T’s network for its millions of customers across the world.  

My of two favorite quotes from Mr. Donovan are below.

 Quote: “Mobile shortens the distance from intent to action.”

 Implication: For all you marketers that pay attention to purchase behavior, wake up to the new mobile reality. Your audience is busy running around, living their lives and wants immediate gratification of whatever they need. Purchase decisions are made on the fly between getting off the commuter rail and getting home to an empty fridge.  Or while walking in mid-town Manhattan looking for a child-friendly restaurant for lunch in 5 minutes.

How is your brand intercepting consumer needs in real time? How is it being discovered during your audiences’ flight-path? How are you integrating location-based mobile & social networks to be the hero-brand that serves the consumer exactly what she needs with minimum effort on her part?

Quote: “Solve a 10X problem, not a 2X problem”

Implication:  Most entrepreneurs (and the early stage investors checking them out) have this floating somewhere in their brain’s frontal lobe, but it’s a good rule of thumb for strategic marketers as well. Particularly when applied to mobile, businesses have the opportunity to address some major pain points that impact our daily lives.

I love the traffic management work some universities are doing using mobile phones as sensors to visualize, and ultimately impact, traffic flow. And mobile health has dramatic potential to integrate vital statistics monitoring to optimize and improve health for our aging population.

But sometimes a seemingly small problem can be a personal “10X situation” which needs to be answered on the go:

• Where can I go NOW to accomplish <this task that my spouse is going crazy over>?
• Where the heck is the closest < brand of juice my kid won’t go to sleep without>?
• Who can I trust to handle <this urgent procedure that has me scared>? 
• OMG… I have nothing to wear! What <do I do for my hot date tonight>?

There are new mobile & social technologies that can present your brand as customized, real-time solutions to your consumers’ big issues – be sure to explore the new technology landscape as you make your plan for solving those 10X problems.

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Mobile Monday Boston’s end-of-summer August event was hosted by Google.

In addition to Rich Miner sharing the fascinating entrepreneurial story of Android’s rise to global domination

(in the not too far future) some industry stats were a reminder of the huge shifts happening in consumer digital consumption.

• By 2013 “web” traffic will be 50% PC and 50% mobile
• Mobile couponing will grow to $6.5B in five years
• 1 in 7 minutes of media are consumed on mobile devices
• Android is on 60 devices today and 59 carriers globally
• Android users download 40 apps on average
• Youtube videos have 100M views per day, this has grown 300% in the last year
• 24 hours of video content is uploaded every minute

Check out the video: momoboston

My necessities when out and about are my keys, wallet and mobile phone (and lip gloss). I like travelling light – so how can I get rid of my bulky wallet? Give my mobile more purchasing power. The “mobile wallet” is a reality in Japan and other parts of the world and companies are working to make it possible in the States as well.

When thinking about mobile commerce there are four categories:

1)      In-store & NFC (Near Field Communications). Ex: Vivotech, Verifone, Square

2)      Mobile banking. Ex: mFoundry, various banking institutions

3)      P2P (Peer-to-Peer). Ex: Obopay, PayPal

4)      Remote payment. Ex: Billing Revolution, Zong, Boku, Cardinal Commerce

Let’s look at remote payments – mobile commerce platforms that allow merchants to accept payment via credit card or operator billing – as these hold the greatest near-term promise for wide-spread adoption.

A shopper could be purchasing a real or virtual item while on the web, in a retail environment or responding to an outbound email or SMS.  The easier the transaction, the higher the likelihood to capture the sale. “Blink” decision making for impulse purchases rules mobile commerce– and the battle is won or lost in checkout.

The best case is the single-click checkout (CC#, exp date, cell# – or just cell# for operator billing) with no username or password. Billing Revolution is finding that 85% of its users are single-click enabling their phones.  Their average transaction size is $10-$12, with average from physical goods being $48 and virtual goods $6.

SMS “text2buy” can be powerful tactics to increase mCommerce sales. Businesses use test2buy for “line-busters” to shorten the wait in the queue (e.g., ski passes), to facilitate customer pick up of pre-ordered items or communicate and convert sales for a “Deal of the day”.  Mobile loyalty programs that use SMS have found a 2X return over non-SMS. (think about Friday night pizza orders…)

How difficult is mCommerce to implement? Companies like Billing Revolution, Zong, Boku and Cardinal Commerce have leading platforms with simple integration that work for smaller brands as well as the biggies like Facebook.  And Square, from the founder of twitter, is a dongle that turns your iPhone or iPad into a portable credit card acceptance device.

And while mCommerce is picking up steam, the bankers are also adapting to consumer mobility desires. Bank of America is a leader in mobile services with 5 million customers using mobile banking and is one of the few global banking institutions implementing a ”Triple Play” of SMS, mobile web, applications. Innovation is also happening at smaller financial companies – USAA has over 1 million customers using mobile check imaging and deposit – take a picture of your check and it is automatically deposited in your account!

While mobile commerce is entering the mainstream, there will be opportunities for businesses to look at their competitive landscape and customer mobility needs to fill in gaps and possibly leapfrog competition. Will leaving home without our wallets and only our mobile phones be a reality some day? Perhaps… but I’ll still need my lipgloss.