So Graph Search, what exactly is it and how does it work? At the risk of oversimplifying, what is undoubtedly a huge and complex project, Graph Search essentially searches for people on Facebook that have similar interests and/or hobbies, in Facebook terms these could be described as “Likes”. Think of it as a kind of Venn Diagram of search, so if you want to know all your friends that like “Korean Food” and “International Travel”, graph search will take all of your friends that have those two interests and spit out the results.

As graph search continues to develop and become smarter (and comes out of beta), it could be a hugely useful tool for those businesses on Facebook. We all know the power of social media as a way to engage you customer base, but thus far social efforts have been like taking a wild guess and Graph Search seems to be the solution. Engaging with these targeted customers may take SMBs and local businesses to the next level on social and start to attach meaningful numbers to social media marketing. Chris Treadaway writes an in depth review of Graph Search on the Social Media Examiner blog, check out his article here to read how Graph Search will connect Facebook users to other people and places. The section of the review called “Search to Find a Local Business” may hold a particular interest to many of you. In all, Facebook has taken major steps to connect people to real world places, it is the convergence of the digital persona and the real world. If used properly and effectively, graph search could prove to be the next giant step in customer engagement for local and small business.

Have more questions? Check out Facebook’s Graph Search website, and watch their official video below!

Sure, consumers are driven by deals and offers. They love them, but offering products at a 75% discount isn’t going to help a merchant’s bottom line.

The problem with daily deals is the majority of the time the deal is one and done. They’re like a cheap fling. The merchant entices the consumer to come in with a steep discount but once that transaction happens the magic wears off and the consumer is out the door looking for the next tall, dark and handsome. Where’s the relationship building?

Card-linked offers (CLOs) help merchants build customer loyalty and differentiate their businesses by offering customers rewards in the shape of miles, points or cash back.  The consumer is still incentivized to shop… but in a more sustainable manner that doesn’t hit the merchant so hard or cheapen their brand. So really, CLOs are really a win-win for both customers and merchants. In fact

• 55% of small and midsize companies now offer customer rewards programs, and 68% say it has increased business (BIA/Kelsey Local Commerce Monitor Wave 16, 2012)
• 88% of retailers with rewards programs are more profitable than their competitors without one (2011 Deloitte Study)
• 54% of consumers would consider increasing the business they do with a company for a loyalty reward (ClickFox, April 2012)
• 84% of loyalty program members are likely to choose a retailer with a rewards program over a competitor (ACI Worldwide, January 2012)

What do you think are the benefits of card-linked offers versus daily deals?

These days, more and more technology is available to retailers and small businesses, but in recent years “Big Data” has become moved from the exclusive realm of massive companies, to corner drug stores and franchised retailers (read about how Big Data is used to create targeted offers here: Retailer Alert: Transaction Data Key to Personalization).

So, what is this “Big Data” trend in marketing? Simply put, Big Data is a term used to describe aggregated data from consumers in order to identify spending patterns based on a wide variety of variables. For example, Big Data may be able to tell you;

• What time of day your consumers are spending the most?
• Are men or women spending more?
•  What items are flying off the shelves?

Answering questions like these that are making small businesses smarter.

Seshu Edala, a data scientist with Manta.com, writes in a recent forbes.com article Big Data Analytics: Not Just for Big Business Anymore, that “another 2.5 quintillion bytes to the data universe each day”. To put that in perspective, 2.5 quintillion bytes, is 2,328,306,436.5 gigabytes. That is enough information to fill 14,551,915 Apple Ipod Classics. Thankfully, we don’t have to worry about storing all that data (or carrying around that many Ipods at once). While obviously the entirety of the 2.5 quintillion won’t be relative to you, much of the data can be leveraged for small business.

Big Data can help identify different types of patterns, from sales to web traffic, big data makes any business smarter.

It may seem overwhelming at first, but fear not! Big Data management and analytics firms are popping up everywhere, providing mid-market and small businesses with data driven insights that make your business smarter about everything ranging from your sales to your social media and web presence.

So, much like Steve Austin becoming the Six Million Dollar Man, SMB and Mid-Market companies can take that next evolutionary step by using technology resources, especially Big Data, to become bigger, faster, and stronger.

Want to get deeper into Big Data? Check out some of these resources for some great tools to get you started:

1.)    20 Must Have Tools For Small Business – Forbes.com

2.)    “Your Small Business Toolkit” – Webs

3.)    “Best Web Management Tools for Small Business” – Dream Scape

Card Linked Offers give members the opportunity to earn airline miles with their everyday purchases.

We all know these days that marketing your business through social media, through search engine optimization, and the web are more critical than ever. However, is this thinking already antiquated? Now that customers are more engaged on social media and the web, marketing your local business is about standing out from the rest of the pack and offering your best customers something your competition cannot.

A few years ago, everyone thought that the daily sites were the wave of the future when it came to customer engagement. What we have come to find is that these “daily deals” were great for the customer but challenging for the business because they were selling goods and services at a drastically reduced price and not making up for that reduction by increasing the volume of transactions (i.e. not enough people came it to recover the lowered price). So that begs the question, what does the next generation of customer engagement programs look like?

The answer? Loyalty Programs.

Loyalty programs have been around for quite some time now. We have all had one of those small paper cards that promised us one “Free meatball sub after your 10^th purchase”. With the advent of the smart phone, e-commerce and online shopping, loyalty programs have become more popular and robust. Take for example, Airline loyalty programs. What if you collect miles and instead of being 1/10^th of the way towards another sub, you were that much closer to your airline reward? The customer still purchases the meatball sub but it is also a way to earn something that is ultimately much more valuable to them.

Want to know some of the more impressive numbers behind customer loyalty programs? Then download our Top 10 Reasons Why You Should Offer Rewards info graphic to learn more about how being part of one of the largest loyalty networks can help engage your customers.

This phenomenon isn’t exclusive to major retailers like Target or Wal-Mart, but affects the corner stores, local chains and even regional franchises.
So the question remains how do retailers circumvent this consumer “showrooming” behavior and buy at the retail location?

In an article written by Kirk Kardashian, he asks Ron Adner, a Professor at Dartmouth College’s Tuck School of Business, how retailers can solve this behavioral problem. Adner makes it a point to say that small businesses can still thrive in this situation. Small and local businesses can offer consumer unique items that may not be available from places like Amazon or Overstock and perhaps more importantly, “provide a rich shopping experience that just can’t be replicated online.” Your differentiation will motivate consumers to visit your retail locations.

While offering unique items may get some customers through the door, Adner states that it is crucial that all types retail locations adopt new technologies in order to stay competitive with the e-commerce markets. Whether you use mobile devices to drive business, offer daily deals or engage consumers with loyalty programs (like OfferLink), your best bet to avoid showrooming in your store is to provide a unique value and a local experience which will earn the loyalty of the best consumers, one sale at a time.

Nickname: Allicat

Hometown: Tallahassee, Florida

Alma Mater: Florida State University

Role at Cartera: OfferLink Local Account Manager (Atlanta office)

Why did you join Cartera? I always held a strong interest in marketing and advertising, and after my previous experience in retail advertising at Aaron’s Inc., I decided to branch out to gain more knowledge about other types of marketing. In my pursuit, I was immediately drawn to Cartera Commerce because of the incredible national brands affiliated with OfferLink and the dynamic opportunity for local merchants to join the program. The account manager position was also appealing because of the role’s capacity to help drive success for local merchants, while building meaningful and encouraging relationships with my accounts.

Explain a “Day in the Life”: A day in my life begins with a key component— coffee.  Soon, I’m out the door to my second home-away-from-home, Cartera Commerce. The next 8 hours zip by with merchant conversations, laughs with my co-workers, an occasional snack at my desk, and executions of any other tasks that will ensure a positive experience for my merchants while participating in our Programs. The evening concludes with a to-do list for the morning, and an accomplished sigh in knowing I gave 110% in everything I did that day.

What do you love about your job? I appreciate the opportunity to deliver maximum branding and marketing exposure for local businesses in an uplifting and well-managed workplace environment. I love the compelling nature of our company to make an encouraging, and positive impact in the lives of others.

Favorite travel destination: A place I’ve never been before!

Movie: Forest Gump

Book: “The Hours” by Michael Cunningham

Pets: A special cat and well behaved Labrador Retriever

Sports Teams: FSU Seminoles

Music: Up and coming artists

Blogs: Does Pinterest count….

Guilty Pleasure: Potato CHIPS (not partial to just one kind!)

Best Kept Secret: If I told you then it wouldn’t be a secret

Favorite Quote: “Grace is courage under pressure” – Ernest Hemingway

Where do you see yourself in 5 years?  Financially stable, successful, happy, with accomplished goals and new dreams.

Why do you earn rewards, and what are you saving for?  I LOVE saving miles to visit the 5 women most closest to me in my core group of friends. We all grew up together, but have since relocated in completely different parts of the country too far to travel by car. So I’m always trying to earn the miles needed to keep us closer than ever!

So how do retailers bridge the gap between coupons and shoppers?. Today’s retailers are turning to consumer transaction data to create targeted, relevant offers for their shoppers.

Retailers recognize the importance of data to create relevant offers. With today’s technology, the largest national retailers are turning to complex data from their own internal loyalty programs to create more sophisticated campaigns. To quote from a recent Retail TouchPoints article, “With the ability to create a single, holistic view of customers, retailers can leverage their current data to understand who their high-value, loyal customers are, where they are in the purchase lifecycle, and listen to their needs based on data points gathered from various channels.”

Consumers will more readily exchange data for personalized offers. A recent study by StreetFight.com, shows that consumers are willing to forfeit personal data (i.e. location, spend and transaction data) in order to receive a discount or offer. 80% of people surveyed were willing to provide data if it yielded a better experience for them. Even more astoundingly, 70% of people surveyed were willing to provide their geographic location, if in exchange for an exclusive offer. The study implies consumer support for the growth and expansion of intelligent and data-centric rewards programs that go beyond the simple coupon.

Several large retailers are now using transaction data to vary in-store pricing. New York Times journalist Stephanie Clifford’s article Shopper Alert: Prices May Drop Just for You cites two supermarket chains ’ strategies of using customer spend data within their own loyalty programs to create smarter, more targeted deals that are unique to the individual shopper. This means that an item’s price may be different for you versus your neighbor – you may get a discount for a frequently purchased item, or an incentive to switch brands. For these retailers, loyalty rewards and personalized discount programs are replacing traditional coupons.

These trends suggest that the era of “mass discounting” and coupons as we know them are coming to an end. Today’s consumers are looking for a frictionless way to get the best deal on their purchases. The next generation of discounts will tailor offers based on individual consumer behavior, preference, and interests- and the most innovative retailers are using transaction data to power this personalization.

In last week’s RetailWire article, “What is the New Normal?”,

• In a survey of 8,500 U.S. consumers by BIGinsight, when asked if they thought the economy would ever rebound to where it was before the economic crisis, 32.3% said “No” and 32.6% responded “unsure.”
• The Food Marketing Institutes’s The U.S. Grocery Shopper Trends 2012 found that 16 to 20 million households have shifted into the mindset that they have to accept living with less.
• TIME/Money American’s Financial Values Survey indicates more than four out of five people (83%) say that the economy has caused them to be more frugal and cost-conscious in the long run.

If you’re a merchant, you’re likely feeling the pressure of these trends every day.  Your customers, more than ever, think “deal first” before they buy.  Tom Beecher, Cartera’s CEO, presented on this rise of the deal-first shopper earlier this year at the MITX What’s Next – E-Commerce Summit in January.  Coupon clipping has not only become socially acceptable, it’s even the subject of a prime-time cable television show!

In our next post, we’ll look at some of the ways merchants are responding to the deal-first shopper with new personalized promotional strategies that help satiate consumers’ desire for deals without giving away the bottom line with deep discounts.

Watch our new merchant testimonial video to learn how Eileen’s Special Cheesecake, Karen Millen, Merlin Entertainments Group (LEGOLAND and Madame Tussaud’s), Kate’s Paperie, and Annabella Salon all use OfferLink to give rewards and get sales.

Whether it’s miles for fun, points for paper, cash back for salon services, or loyalty points for fashion, hear firsthand how these businesses use OfferLink for that “little something extra” to incentivize shoppers by rewarding new and repeat customers in the currencies they crave and collect.