For those unfamiliar with mobile marketing or mobile coupons here is a quick 1,2,3:

The first phase of the mobile marketing mix is to generate a qualified list of opt-in mobile device users. Preferably smartphones so that the web can easily be accessed to redeem the coupon or to email the coupon if needed.

The second step is to build a mobile friendly website that fits your brand and consumer behavior.

Finally, to start marketing and sending messages to subscribers.

But you can easily tune people out if you take advantage of having their mobile number by sending them messages that are either too

A mobile coupon scanner.

frequent or simply non-relevant. This is why segmenting the list of mobile subscribers is a helpful exercise. One way this can be done is by running a cross reference against your email list and finding the mobile user on the email list that you should have segmented by now.

Once you have the segments, you can start running targeted marketing campaigns.  One of the best ways to target consumers is to target their thrifty side. Most consumers respond well to coupon offers and when top-of-mind, they will even use them. However, like most of us, remembering the coupons is the hard part. This is why mobile is so key to the coupon lifecycle. By texting someone a mobile coupon you are providing them access to the savings they want on a device that they always have. And thanks to the ubiquitous nature of mobile phones, the likelihood of the coupon getting used greatly increases.

The trick is getting the consumer to opt-in to your retail list. This is why I have begun nudging my clients to gather a mobile number when they gather email address. 2 birds-one stone.

I’ve been hearing for years about technology that will leverage Bluetooth and other mobile detection services to “ping” consumers when they are near a retailer they frequent. Imagine walking by a store in the mall, they have your mobile number and when they detect that you are within 40 feet or so, they text you a coupon.

When done with best practices in place this style of mobile marketing is  personal, timely and relevant.

Thoughts?

The move will also allow for Google to start running advertising on television. Similar to the AdWords program that Google has running for it’s web search; users will now see advertisements for products and services that relate to the kind of television they watch.  This could be really interesting and incredibly targeted, or, it could just get flat-out annoying.

I’m curious to see how this evolves. Below I’ve posted a video that will explain in Google terms what exactly this platform does and how to participate.

In the past, Saint Patrick’s Day was celebrated as a religious holiday. It became a public holiday in 1903, by the Money Bank. (Ireland) Act 1903, an Act of the United Kingdom Parliament introduced by the Irish MP James O’Mara.[8] O’Mara later introduced the law which required that pubs be closed on 17 March, a provision which was repealed only in the 1970s. The first St. Patrick’s Day parade held in the Irish Free State was held in Dublin in 1931 and was reviewed by the then Minister of Defense Desmond Fitzgerald. Although secular celebrations now exist, the holiday remains a religious observance in Ireland, for both the Church of Ireland and Roman Catholic Church.

It was only in the mid-1990s that the Irish government began a campaign to use Saint Patrick’s Day to showcase Ireland and its culture.[9] The government set up a group called St. Patrick’s Festival, with the aim to:

— Offer a national festival that ranks amongst all of the greatest celebrations in the world and promote excitement throughout Ireland via innovation, creativity, grassroots involvement, and marketing activity.
— Provide the opportunity and motivation for people of Irish descent, (and those who sometimes wish they were Irish) to attend and join in the imaginative and expressive celebrations.
— Project, internationally, an accurate image of Ireland as a creative, professional and sophisticated country with wide appeal, as we approach the new millennium.[10]

The first Saint Patrick’s Festival was held on 17 March 1996. In 1997, it became a three-day event, and by 2000 it was a four-day event. By 2006, the festival was five days long; over 675,000 people attended the 2009 parade.

The topic of the 2004 St. Patrick’s Symposium was “Talking Irish,” during which the nature of Irish identity, economic success, and the future were discussed. Since 1996, there has been a greater emphasis on celebrating and projecting a fluid and inclusive notion of “Irishness” rather than an identity based around traditional religious or ethnic allegiance. The week around Saint Patrick’s Day usually involves Irish language speakers using more Irish during seachtain na Gaeilge (“Irish Week”).

As well as Dublin, many other Irish cities, towns and villages hold their own parades and festivals, including Cork, Belfast, Derry, Galway, Kilkenny, Limerick, and Waterford.

The biggest celebrations outside Dublin are in Downpatrick, County Down, where Saint Patrick is rumoured to be buried following his death on 17 March, 461. In 2004, according to Down District Council, the week-long St. Patrick’s Festival had over 2,000 participants and 82 floats, bands, and performers, and was watched by over 30,000 people.

Belfast City Council recently agreed to give public funds to its parade for the very first time. In previous years funding was refused by pro-British Unionist councillors in the city for not being inclusive of Unionist citizens, the refusal to fund it was labelled as “anti-Irish racism” by Nationalist Belfast councillors. Also the Ulster Schools Cup final is annually held on this day which is the 2nd oldest rugby cup in the world.
Everyone’s Irish on March 17th.
Sign on a beam in the Guinness Storehouse.

Christian leaders in Ireland have expressed concern about the secularisation of St Patrick’s Day. Writing in The Word magazine’s March 2007 issue, Fr. Vincent Twomey stated that, “it is time to reclaim St Patrick’s Day as a church festival”. He questioned the need for “mindless alcohol-fuelled revelry” and concluded that, “it is time to bring the piety and the fun together”.

The company and service is called www.whypark.com

WhyPark.com provides the following benefits:

• You choose the keywords that are relevant  & WhyPark.com does the rest

• Real Content, articles and press releases are displayed on your completely developed website.

• Fresh content is added to your website daily. The only content that appears on your web site is directly related to the keywords that you’ve chosen.

Here is the site once again, good luck! www.whypark.com

Students seem to really respond and engage her content more thoroughly. One student even said:

“In a class of 90 plus trying to pipe up and get your opinion heard is a little intimidating. However with this we can post something from our phone and get heard.”

Before I wrote this post I spoke to some of my friends about this and we all agreed that this would have helped us engage with our classroom content more easily. Furthermore we all felt it would improve collaboration with students. Classrooms can create Twitter lists that students can follow for notes, group projects or follow-up discussions.

Finally, this approach allows a professor to travel and to still maintain a relationship with his/her students by simply logging in.

The professor in this video was at a teaching conference in Santa Fe but still managed to answer questions on that day’s lecture via Twitter.

Take it for a test drive here:  Delegate by WooThemes

Optimize is one of my favorite WordPress themes. It is user friendly and easy on the eyes. It gives off a confident yet organized and savvy vibe that a lot of modern websites have. It displays content in a nice, clean and organized fashion. This makes it easy to get a lot of content on the homepage while making sure the appearance and usability of the website are not sacrificed. Optimize would be a great theme for an SEO company, web design firm or any marketing organization. Integrates easily with Twitter as well.

Take a look at the theme and demo it here: Optimize by WooThemes

Suit & Tie is a stylish business theme by top designer, Bryan Veloso. It is easy to customize with a homepage slider image and logo. This theme is also very search engine friendly.  The clean & trendy style inherit in the design will definitely keep your business up-to-date with current online trends, while the attractive homepage slider will be woo-ing most of your customers. Top that off with 13 diverse color schemes and you’ve got your next business website design right here.

To test drive this theme visit: Suit & Tie by WooThemes

With WordPress becoming a popular Content Management System (CMS) for website producers and developers, having a good list of themes to work from is helpful. These themes can be used right out of the box, as they are, or, they can be customized and tweaked to your personal style preference.

For more WordPress themes check out the following link: Themes (All)

2010’s keynote speaker will be Imran Jooma, General Manager, E-Commerce Sears Holding Corp.

Other featured speakers include; Goeff Robertson, General Manager, E-Commerce, Whitney Automotive Group; Tont Ellison, CEO, Shoplet.com and Dennis McEniry President, Online Estee Lauder.

This is the sixth year the event has been put-on and this upcoming show in June will be my 3rd. I was involved in the very first show back in 2004 and again in 2006. In fact, this year my old boss will presenting a few slides that explain mobile marketing and commerce, here is the link to the Internet Retailer website for that article:  Tiny text messages can boost traffic, brand, loyalty and sales

I’m really interested to learn about the social media monitoring platforms that are being used for etailers. I predict(like many other people) that social media will spill into ecommerce very quickly, especially as the holiday season approaches. Therefore, I’d like to see what social commerce platforms are springing up. I’m also interested in learning more about usability and what standards ecommerce merchants will be holding themselves to this year. This conversation usually leaks into shopping cart conversion and abandonment and to some extent the payment processing process.

If you are going, feel free to ping me so we can set-up some time to grab a drink or coffee or something. Contact me

And of course there will no doubt be a few fun happy hours in the wonderful city of Chicago which will indeed be at the pinnacle of the season during early June. I’m really looking forward to this years event.

Others are clearly “getting-it” when it comes to social media. The email below is a response I received from a dealership here in town just this morning:

I’m sorry it sold (Sold 2 Jeeps on Saturday.) you might consider “following” us on twitter as explained below where I can send to a text message when new vehicles arrive.  Barry

PATRIOT AUTO

PS.  GET A JUMP on our NEWEST offerings  FOLLOW US ON TWITTER! http://twitter.com/PatriotTweets We often sell our BEST cars & SUV’s before they get on our website or Print Ads. Twitter gives you a “heads up” because once daily as needed I will  “TWEET” a list of our cars, trucks & SUV’s as they or before they arrive at the lot!

Guess what? I’m following them on Twitter now. And I’ll probably generate a few other followers for them just by posting this blog post – and that is great. When a company does a good job embracing new technology, especially something as old and stodgy as used-car sales, I’ve got to give props.

The guide can also be used for consumers as well. Within it, consumers can find helpful information that will aid in their evaluation as to whether to bookmark them for future shopping needs.  I used to sell software to merchants on this list and because I knew it well, I was always able to recommend a trusted merchant with whom to purchase through.

Consumers can find information like the amount of fraud merchants experience, customer service contact information and the types of payment options that the merchants accept.  Armed with this information my family and friends create lists of favorite merchants and go back to that list when they need to buy something online.

There is also a trade-show that takes place annually that is catered to focus on the techniques and best practices of the Top 500 retailers. The trade-show is usually held in June and consists of 3-4 days of workshops, break-out sessions and guest speakers; as well as a popular vendor display showroom where people display their products or services in a booth.

61% of companies say their organizations are either poor or very poor at measuring ROI from social media, according to “The Value of Social Media Report.”

The report, which based its findings on a survey of 400 U.S. companies and agencies (19% of them retailers) in December and January, found that among the reasons companies are pursuing social media are to:

* Drive traffic to the company’s web site, 74%
* Raise brand recognition, 64%
* Improve the brand’s reputation, 62%
* Increase sales, 56%
* Improve customer retention, 51%
* Bolster customer satisfaction scores, such as NetPromoter, 52%

Despite the difficulty of finding a direct relationship between the social media efforts and those goals, companies are growing their social media efforts, in part, because those efforts are relatively inexpensive, says the report. 32% of companies do not spend anything on their efforts (aside from their employees’ time), 36% spend less than $5,000 and 12% spend $10,000 or less.

Facebook is the most commonly used social media site, with 85% of companies using it, followed by Twitter (77%), LinkedIn (58%) and YouTube (49%).

The original article appeared on Internet Retailer