Getting More Awesome

Is this the Future of Customer Service?

2013-05-21T22:34:31Z

Renting my Car in Phoenix from Someone in Omaha

I just experienced the future of virtual customer support in retail stores. I landed in Phoenix and saw a massive line at Hertz. I thought I would be there for at least 2 hours. Then BAM! The line started moving a lot faster, after 4 machines fired up with real (but virtual) customer support reps from Omaha, I was in my Hertz rental car just 25 minutes later. The company behind the technology is ClairVista.

Ghost Town turns into Rihanna Concert

Back in Highschool when I worked in the TV department at Sears, I would remember hours where not a single person would walk in. (I killed time by playing snake on my Nokia phone) Then around the 6pm rush-hour 10 people would show up. I would be out numbered and lose customers. I wish I had some virtual assistance that could answer questions and then help me close more deals!

Is this the future?

What do you think of a future with virtual reps in physical stores? There were a few people in front of me in the Hertz line that said no to using the virtual machines and let me cut in front of them.

What do you think of a future with virtual reps in physical stores? Would you talk to one at a Best Buy or Macy’s? Let me know in the comments below!

PS Pro Travel Tip: Go with the no-named local car rental company over Hertz. They are cheaper and have flexible with drop off times.

I like TurboTax’s Speech Bubbles

2013-04-16T22:18:34Z

Nobody likes Tax day…. except probably the people over at TurboTax. Their service is now the default way of filing taxes.

I really like how on their pricing page they have speech bubbles so you can easily self-identify with a the best TurboTax plan for your needs. It is really hard to cater to the masses.. but TurboTax does it extremely well, they are able to cater to low AND high income earners as well as students, military personnel, and business owners.

When I was on this page, my eyes went right to the speech bubbles. I remember even saying, “Yes” a few times in my head as I was scanning which package I should get.

What is interesting is that it isn’t just the simple short text, it is also the design. The speech bubbles make it look like you just said it.

What do you think of the speech bubbles – did they work on you?

Shopping Carts Go Mobile

2013-04-03T00:35:35Z

This is a guest blog post by Erin Schwartz, the lead marketing specialist behind 123Print. 123Print offers customizable print products for business and individuals, including the ability to make your own business cards and design other promotional items.

How easy is it to shop online with your mobile device? A couple days ago I was reading an online article on my phone about the favorite authors of several New Yorker writers. One author struck me as particularly interesting and I hopped on Amazon to see if I could buy one of his books, used. Less than a minute later I had received an email with a confirmation number and a “thank you” for my purchase.

When it’s that easy to purchase items on your mobile device, why wait to get home and log on to your computer to make a purchase? In fact, why wait at all? By making online purchases from mobile devices on your website quick, easy and worry free, you can greatly increase your sales potential. And if the growth in use of retailer apps is any indication — growing almost 600 percent over the past year — mobile sales should be the main focus for retailers in the future.

Mobile and Mortar Shopping

Facebook jumped onto the mobile gifting wagon in limited areas this past September 2012 with the reincarnation of Karma, a gift app that the social media giant purchased in May. The feature became available to all Facebook users in December 2012 and functions on the basis of gift recommendations based on your friends’ preferences.

As of 2013, Facebook is taking this gifting feature a step further with the Facebook reusable gift card. Essentially, Facebook users can purchase a gift card for a certain amount from places such as Target or Olive Garden and the recipient is notified immediately of the gift. The gift card is sent through the mail and as the recipient uses it, he or she can keep track of the amount left through the account settings tab on Facebook. The card can be recharged and reused and it can even hold multiple gift amounts such as $10 at Starbucks, $25 at Barnes & Noble and $50 at Olive Garden.

It’s a growing field of commerce that has tentatively been dubbed “Mobile and Mortar”: consumers using mobile devices to send real gifts from online retailers, as well as using their mobile devices to price compare, check reviews and look up item information while in-store. In fact, according to Flurry Analytics, between December 2011 and December 2012, the use of mobile devices for price comparisons went up 247 percent and the use of all shopping apps went up 274 percent. But what many retailers are discovering is that the key to increasing mobile sales is to make it easier to purchase from mobile websites instead of through individuals apps.

Mobile websites more important than ever

More often than not, if you’re looking up an item online, you’re using a search engine to browse the web as opposed to using a particular retailers’ app. Why? Not only is a search engine an automatic go-to for most mobile device owners but using a search engine, as opposed to a retailer app, typically allows you to price compare and find reviews instead of committing to just one store. In fact, 36 percent of smart phone users use them to read product reviews on retail sites while 47 percent use them to learn more about a product (http://www.emarketer.com/Article/Majority-of-US-Smartphone-Owners-Use-Devices-Aid-Shopping/1008971). If your website isn’t mobile-friendly, you could potentially be missing out on a good percentage of your customers.

Keeping customers on your site

Once consumers find your site, the last major hurdle is getting them to follow through with purchases. One of the biggest complaints of online retailers over the past year has been shopping cart abandonment rates. About 67 percent of all shopping carts are abandoned at some point in the shopping process.

To cut down on this, online stores have employed several different strategies with varying degrees of success. Some of the main solutions have been consistently assuring customers not only that the purchasing process is secure, but that returns and exchanges are easy and welcome. Many online marketing firms also stress the importance of including privacy and trust information next to personal information fields. Even if it’s just a click-through to legal information, reminding potential clients that their personal information will not be shared or sold is very encouraging and can easily make the difference in a sale.

Lastly, employing little reminders when clients leave your site before making a purchase could help bring them back at a later date. Brief emails such as “Just a reminder that you still have [blank] items in your cart” or even “How might we have made your shopping experience better?” might help to encourage the completed sale of an abandoned shopping cart.

Online retail is a constantly changing landscape and a major challenge for business owners and marketers alike. The best thing you can do to improve sales is to look for overall trends and try to keep up with the curve.

What ways have you found to encourage potential customers to stay on your website? Have any marketing plans worked well for you or failed unexpectedly? What seems to be the number one issue for you regarding shopping cart abandonment? Let me know in the comments below.

PS If you need business cards checkout my website: http://www.123print.com/business-cards

Is the Future of Showrooms a Taco Truck?

2013-03-25T02:15:24Z

Everyone is going online these days and not even thinking about having a physical presence. It is cheaper, faster, and something you can start in a day!

Your Product in Human Hands

The hard part is still getting people to discover your product. Distribution is king! You can do online marketing … but what if you just need to get your product in the hands of people to really appreciate the awesomeness of it? This strategy worked for Apple (which is why they opened physical stores 12 years ago in 2001!).

The first Apple Store at Tysons Corner Center – Opening Day in 2001

I was walking past my favorite coffee shop in San Francisco and happen to come across the Gorilly Marketing truck. Think Taco Truck meets Online Stores. This is perfect for everyone that doesn’t have Apple like Cash to start opening stores in malls (i.e. everyone).

The Gorilly guys converted their truck into a showroom for Dodo Case – this way potential customers can check out their awesome iPad cases. Customers can now try out a product before ordering it online. The business also benefits by building brand awareness in high traffic areas.

I took a quick interview with one of the founders on my iPhone, I was super awkward and you may cringe.

Dodo Case Showroom Inside Truck

Showroom on Wheels (Rain or Shine)

Future of Showrooms?

So, do you think this the future of commerce, a bunch of trucks driving around pimping online products? I’d really like to get your opinion on this. Feel free to leave a comment or send me an email.

PS Their name is super clever because it is a play on Guerilla Marketing

I’m addicted the the Subway Surfers iPhone game – have you played it yet?

2013-03-25T20:12:44Z

Quick shout out to Vasu Vadlamudi who provided a lot of the great insights below. Vasu was previously at Zynga and now at Delectable. If you are into wine, download his new app - you will love it!

Everyone I know is addicted to Subway Surfers. Me, my 5 year old cousin, my mom, and the parking lot attendant at the mall. It’s nuts!

I found myself playing Subway Surfers more and more and then I realized why. They are amazing at Game Mechanics!

Game Mechanic #1: Easy to Learn

Lets start off with the core game, it is extremely easy to learn but really hard to master. Similar to golf. This makes it easy for anyone to start playing and enjoying in a matter of seconds. The game gets faster and faster so for more experienced players the game remains exciting and challenging.

Game Mechanic #2: Missions

The game has fun missions that keep on changing as you advance. These missions actually teach you how to get better at the game, the first few are super easy and make you feel good about yourself because you can pass them at the first go. You start saying things like this “I’m awesome at the game, maybe this is what I’m destined to do with my life!”

Game Mechanic #3: Coins

Just “having coins” is kind of a mechanical thing. It is the way Subway Surfers designed and implemented their coins system that makes it feel really meaningful to collect. Games that implement a currency well succeed because they either

a) make it so that every time I play actually helps me out with the other times I play (ex. coins I earn today, I can use tomorrow – so I am investing and also excited about the promise of learning or doing new things in the future) or

b) they give me an element of strategy and choice (when should I use my precious coins? on what? how much should I even FOCUS on the coins vs. just surviving).

Game Mechanic #4: Leader-boards

They give you 5,000 coins if you connect to Facebook. That is a lot of coin, on average I collect 200 coins each play so connecting to Facebook is pretty heavily incentivized.

This makes a lot of sense though. A Leaderboard allows you to compete against your friends. One of my cousins was up until 6am playing the game because his friend overtook his high score. (Just in case you are curious he wasn’t able to beat his friend’s high score and is now accusing him of buying coins)

This also adds a viral component to the game, you can easily share your score on your Facebook timeline which serves as a personal endorsement for your friends to download the game.

Game Mechanic #5: Multiple Upgrades

All gadgets can get even better. For example the JetPack allows you to fly for 30 seconds, but if you upgrade the jet pack last for a few more seconds. There are 5 levels of upgrades and each level costs more coins. For example level one is just 300 coins, level 4 upgrade is 10,000 coins. The beauty of this is right after you upgrade is you see a dramatic difference which makes you addicted. All of a sudden you start becoming focused on collecting coins and start thinking of ways to collect more coins. You realize that 10,000 coins is going to take you 10+ hours to, so you decide to take a quick short cut and just buy 10,000 coins for $4.99.

Game Mechanic #6: Collectibles

The game never gets boring. Their is a lot to discover and use. Every few plays you get a mystery box and when you get lucky you can get a spaceship or guitar. I’m not a big gamer but for some reason I really want that spaceship!

Now, getting that spaceship seems next to impossible when you run the numbers. Every 5 game plays I get about 1 mystery box and every 5 mystery boxes I get 1 spaceship card. In order to actually get a spaceship I need to collect 500 spaceship cards. This means I need to play the game at least 12,500 times! As sadly as this sounds this makes me want the spaceship even more!!!! So rare and unique, I must have it.

Game Mechanic #7: Daily Play Bonus

The Subway Surfers team wants you to play everyday… they don’t want to be a “One-Play Wonder”. They have their own type of loyalty program if you play 5 days straight. This alone makes you want to launch and play the app on a daily basis.

Game Mechanic #8: Daily Missions

Along with daily play bonuses they have new daily missions. These missions make me want to play first thing in the morning, similar to my addiction to coffee. The daily missions also vary from the regular ones? It gives the user a different experience to look forward to (but not too different, after all they fell in love with the game as it exists for a reason).

Game Mechanic #9: Limited Time Only Items

You can change your character to different people. This is a lot of fun, I’m not really sure why but it just is. Anyway, they have limited time only characters. This means you have to buy coins if you can’t earn 100,000 coins in 2 day period.

Game Mechanics or Just Good Game Design?

A lot of the mechanics I observed are actually broader than just a game mechanic – they are hallmarks of good game design.

Yes, it’s true. I love Subway Surfers

Subway Surfers is one of the coolest games I have seen and their use of Game Mechanics is executed brilliantly.

These mechanics don’t interfere with the core fun of the game, a lot of them serve to actually ENHANCE it (leaderboards!) or at least make sure that more people get a chance to try out this great game. To me at least it’s always a little sad to see a great product that doesn’t bring as much joy to the world as it could have because not enough people ever saw it.

Do you think Game Mechanics are good or bad? I’d love to know your opinion in the comments below.

PS If you are wine connoisseur or a wanna-be wine connoisseur YOU MUST download and try Vasu’s new iPhone app.

Simple Plan to Find a Business Partner

2013-02-27T05:25:27Z

Here is a simple plan that can help you find a technical business partner.

3 Fundamental Principles You Must Know First

Come to terms with the fact that no one wants to work for your idea
Understand that everyone you talk to is in love with their own ideas
Embrace the concept of helping others and don’t expect anything in return

Now, Follow this Plan

Meet some technical people that are working on their own side projects. These types of people are everywhere. Your current job, online, at hackathons, conferences, etc.
Tell them you want to help them get their first 20 customers
Get their side project some customers! Feel free to use some of the marketing tactics you have learned on this blog
Once you get their side project some customers they will have tremendous respect for you. You have just done something they have been struggling with… turning their side project into a real business with customers!

This is a simple plan to help you find ambitious people to work with.

Don’t kill the Viber app

2013-02-22T00:58:00Z

I thought this was a great sales copy! The viber app shows me a screen and reminds me to not kill their app (this was the first screen I saw after I relaunched their app).

What I liked about it was they got inside my head. The addressed my biggest misunderstanding which was that I thought the viber app would drain my battery. Nice work Viber team!

How to Get Thousands of People to Show up at a Mall in Japan

2013-02-05T01:43:33Z

Need a million people to show up to your mall? That’s easy! Build a 60 Foot Robot that moves and talks. This got me and my wife to go check out the Diver City Mall in Tokyo, Japan.

To show you how big it is, above is a picture of me next to the Robot’s foot. Along with being massive, every few hours their is a show where he moves and talks. It was amazing and I was really glad I fell into this marketing tourist trap.

This reminds me of a small town called Soap Lake in Washington, USA. The town of Soap Lake was dying and they had to come up with something quick to attract people.

So, They decided to build the worlds largest Lava Lamp as a tourist attraction. It is 52,000 pounds in size!

What was your favorite tourist trap and how did you get suckered in? Let me know in the comments.

Email growth hack: 4 Tips to Increase Engagement in Your Email Newsletter

2013-01-22T17:00:47Z

This guest post is by Elizabeth Yin, CEO and co-founder of LaunchBit and NewsletterDirectory.co, an ad network for high quality email newsletters.

Email marketing is one of those activities you’re told to do, but you never really know how to do it effectively to increase engagement and/or sales for your company. Here are 4 tips to increase engagement in your email newsletter:

1) Assess exactly what you need to improve

There are so many different email stats you could be improving — your open rate, your click-through-rate, etc… Trying to improve all of them is too difficult and time consuming. Get a free assessment of your 2012 email communications with the Email Newsletter Report Card to see specifically where and how to improve. Check out what a full sample report card looks like here.

2) Optimize your layout for engagement

Email layout is one of the most ignored aspects of email marketing. Marketers spend far too much time thinking about creative and split testing content. Yet, just like on the web, you need a layout that makes it easy for your subscribers to click on your call to action.

In general, you should use:

CSS buttons so that people who do not display images can see them
1 column to reduce clutter and confusion
Use tables and inline styles (email styling is old-school)

Consider more best practices for mobile email if you have 30%+ mobile subscribers.

3) Reduce the number of links

My friend sends an email newsletter to 250k+ subscribers. I looked at her latest newsletter, and she had 40 links in her latest send!

“Why so many?” I asked.
“Because I want people to click and come back to my site!” she said.

It turns out that having more links doesn’t actually help with your click-through-rate. Having more links merely distributes the clicks. This brings me to my 4th tip.

4) Move your call-to-action up

When we looked at publishers who have < 5 links, it turns out the most clicked links are links #1 and #2. You can get a greater concentration of clicks on your key call to action by moving it to the second or first link.

For example, in this newsletter, you should expect the bulk of the clicks to be on these two links.

Restaurant Distribution via Highways… The Story of Cracker Barrel

2013-01-20T16:47:49Z

If you have ever been on any highway in the United States you will recognize the Cracker Barrel logo (see above).

I recently came across their Wikipedia page and discovered that their entire strategy was to open restaurants near highway exits. This makes a ton of sense! Open restaurants along the highway. Imagine driving for miles and not seeing anywhere to eat until you come across a Cracker Barrel. This is similar to a water stand in the middle of the desert.

I did a little more digging and found out the founder Dan Evins use to work at a Shell Oil gas station! He borrowed $40,000 and opened his first Cracker Barrel in 1969 right by the Tennessee State Route 109. They now have 600 stores nation-wide and $2 Billion in revenue.

The first Cracker Barrel store

I remember thinking on long road trips “What is the Cracker Barrel, I see it everywhere!” My parents would never take me there even though I would beg for it, I know now because we are vegetarian and most dishes on their menu are meat based. Till this day I still have yet to make it into a Cracker Barrel – will someone please tell me what’s inside?

…

From the Comments by Tom Parnau

Trusted and Recognized Symbol Representing Security… it works!

Cracker Barrel Logo is a trusted and recognized symbol representing security for those in unfamiliar surroundings. This same strategy is recognized more obviously at McDonalds. Another example, to a lesser extent would be The Machine Shed. This icon targets Farmers and truckers from the Midwest,with reputed expertise in the home cooking arena,now refered to as comfort food. Make no mistake,this same strategy is quite effective today and employed with regularity by the Kwik Trip Corporations. Your own comfort level,sense of security and of knowing exactly what to expect when you enter, is why you will drive in to the Kwik trip in lieu of the other convenience stops. It works !