Mobile banking growth drives reduction in banks’ physical presence - Mobile Commerce Daily

By Staff reports

November 19, 2013

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Mobile banking growth drives reduction in banks? physical presence
As mobile banking is gaining traction, traditional banks are struggling to adapt to the new reality where physical in-store interactions are no longer the status quo.
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Are retail apps losing relevancy as the mobile Web gains?
While many retailers have a mobile application at this point, few provide enough value to keep shoppers coming back. Some retailers are integrating apps with their loyalty programs to enhance relevancy, others are shifting focus to the mobile Web.?
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Office Depot triggers automatic in-store check-ins via app update
Office Depot is making a hard push into the mobile in-store experience that is centered around the company?s application serving up store-specific coupons tied to a check-in.
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Tanger Outlets launches SMS sweepstakes to kick off holiday savings
Tanger Factory Outlets has launched a mobile sweepstakes to kick off its early holiday shopping campaign and provide an easy way for consumers to win a shopping spree.
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The free ride is over in mobile POS - Mobile Commerce Daily

By Staff reports

November 21, 2013

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The free ride is over in mobile POS
Square's decision to eliminate its flat monthly fee for merchants could see the company lose business to competitors in the mobile POS space that still have competitive fee structures such as?Intuit, LevelUp?and Groupon.
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Macy?s, shopkick up the ante for personalized shopping
Macy?s is rolling out an iBeacon pilot at its East and West coast flagships to provide an enhanced in-store experience for Shopkick users.?
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Caribou Coffee supercharges loyalty strategy with mobile gift cards
Coffeehouse chain Caribou Coffee is one of a still small but growing number of merchants to recognize the power of mobile to reinvigorate their gift card strategy by making them easier to purchase, send and redeem.?
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B&H Photo Video doubles down on mobile for cross-channel holiday push
New York photo and video equipment store B&H Photo Video is making a big bet on mobile this holiday season with a new responsive Web site and two mobile applications.
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Home Depot approaches 100,000 mobile POS transactions per week: Javelin exec - Mobile Commerce Daily

By Staff reports

October 31, 2013

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Home Depot approaches 100,000 mobile POS transactions per week: Javelin exec
LITCHFIELD PARK, AZ ? A Javelin Strategy and Research executive at the Mobile Shopping Fall Summit said that Home Depot is on track to process 100,000 mobile payment transactions per week by the first-quarter of 2014. as mobile point-of-sale plays a stronger role for big retailers, the technology must offer merchants more advanced services.
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REI exec: Mobile email drives browsing, not conversions
LITCHFIELD PARK, AZ ?An REI executive at the Mobile Shopping Fall Summit said that the marketer is leveraging push notifications and email to engage with consumers based on their specific intentions on mobile.
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How Lenovo leverages mobile search to drive in-store sales
LITCHFIELD PARK, AZ ? A Lenovo executive at the Mobile Shopping Fall Summit said that the brand is working around the fact that that it does not have physical stores with 5,053 location-based mobile search pages to increase traffic to consumer electronics retailers.
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TapSense exec: Focus on iOS for conversions
LITCHFIELD PARK, AZ ?A TapSense executive at the Mobile Shopping Fall Summit said that 80 percent of mobile commerce transactions occur on iOS as opposed to Android.
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NFC will not power US mobile payments: Forrester - Mobile Commerce Daily

By Staff reports

October 30, 2013

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NFC will not power US mobile payments: Forrester?
LITCHFIELD PARK, AZ ?A Forrester Research analyst at the Mobile Shopping Fall Summit said that she does not expect NFC to ever takeover the mobile wallet space.
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Pizza Hut overhauls mobile ordering to support skyrocketing volume
Faster is better, at least when it comes to mobile ordering, hence Pizza Hut?s focus on enabling mobile users to place an order in less than seconds with its newly overhauled mobile applications and site.
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Travelocity exec: Travel takes on mobile-exclusive role post-purchase
LITCHFIELD PARK, AZ ? A Travelocity executive at the Mobile Shopping Fall Summit said that all of a traveler?s post-purchase behaviors have shifted over to mobile devices as consumers rely on their smartphones and tablets as a part of the travel experience.
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Payfone exec highlights SIM advantages over fingerprint authentication
LITCHFIELD PARK, AZ ? A Payfone executive at the Mobile Shopping Fall Summit said that despite all of the marketing interest around mobile fingerprint authentication, the technology is not revocable, posing serious security risks.?
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Urban Airship exec offers tips on leveraging push notifications for holiday marketing
LITCHFIELD PARK, AZ ? An Urban Airship executive at the Mobile Shopping Fall Summit said that brands should leverage the homescreen of mobile devices to engage consumers via relevant push notifications.
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State Farm marries mobile video, location to spark leads

By Lauren Johnson

October 21, 2013

State Farm's mobile site

State Farm has launched a new interactive iAd campaign that puts consumers in control of their experience to ultimately generate a sales lead.

The insurance company?s new ?Chaos in Your Town? iAd campaign leverages GPS to pull in a video scene of chaos happening around a consumer?s location. State Farm worked with DDB on the ad.

?The heft of our efforts in mobile has been dedicated to standard acquisition ad units driving users to get a quote and to a lesser extent pre-roll video,? said Joseph Cianciotto, executive creative director at DDB, New York.

?This campaign represents a hybrid approach that both leverages the awareness capabilities of an experiential vehicle with the ability to drive both engagement and acquisition in a way that can be tracked and optimized in real-time,? he said.

Mobile chaos?
When users click on an ad, a video begins that pulls in Google Maps to make the ad more contextual.

Consumers then hold up their mobile devices in place while a scene of robots move across the screen.

As the robots move in closer, the ad?s creative prompts users to either use a force field to fight off the robots or find a State Farm agent.

If a consumer picks the force field option, the robots are automatically zapped.

On the other hand, the agent button triggers a scene where the robots are pulled off of the street with a giant branded magnet.

The mobile video ad in action

At the end of the video, a call-to-action prompts users to click through to get a quote from State Farm. There are also options to share or replay the video.

The ?Get a Quote? button brings up State Farm?s mobile site, which includes a click-to-call action that connects consumers with an insurer.

Similar to other insurance companies, the goal is to drive sales leads, and the ad is aimed at giving consumers a few different options to engage with leading up to the ultimate call-to-action prompting a call.

Incorporating both GPS and HTML5 highlights the opportunities that marketers have to create interactive mobile campaigns within Apple?s iAds.

State Farm?s ?Chaos in your town? ad builds on a similar campaign in 2011. A Web microsite asked consumers to type in their address that pulled up a Google Street View scene of the robots on a consumer?s block.

Past efforts?
State Farm was one of the first advertisers to get on board with Apple?s iAd in 2010 (see story).

State Farm has also used other forms of mobile advertising, including Pandora, in the past to promote different campaigns (see story).

In this case, State Farm and DDB chose to use HTML5 to create a rich experience that is geo-targeted versus the typical app experience of iAds.

Additionally, HTML5 enabled the brand to include a sharing option so that consumers can revisit the ad via a browser after closing the ad.

?Previously State Farm has utilized the iAd platform to serve up video,? Mr. Cianciotto said.

?And while these units have performed very well for us in both tracking and clicks, we had a stronger desire to create a vehicle that specifically spoke to the mobile platform and afforded us the opportunity to optimize more efficiently based upon post engagement behavior,? he said.

Final Take
Lauren Johnson is associate reporter on Mobile Marketer, New York

Lauren Johnson is associate reporter on Mobile Marketer. Reach her at lauren@mobilemarketer.com.

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Mobile Minutes: Isis, Twitter, publishers, Lenovo

By Staff reports

November 15, 2013

Isis, the mobile payments initiative from AT&T, Verizon?and T-Mobile, launches across the U.S.
Mobile wallet platform Isis, backed by AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon here in the U.S., is kicking off its nationwide launch today, as previously planned. Alongside the launch, an updated version of the Isis mobile wallet application also hit the Google Play Store yesterday, with separate versions designed for each carrier?s supported smartphones. Isis says that today there are over 40 supported smartphones that work with the technology, and the carriers will give out free Isis-ready SIM cards to those whose phones are NFC-enabled and on the list, according to TechCrunch.
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Twitter provides more-precise tools for targeting mobile ads
Twitter said Wednesday that it has introduced a set of tools that allow marketers to target ads at mobile users based on a wide range of criteria, including their operating system, their device, and even if they're on Wi-Fi, CNet reports.
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Smartphone challenger Lenovo chimes with Apple and Samsung strategies
Gartner has published its Q3 mobile phone and smartphone sales estimates and the figures make for very interesting reading. A total of 456 million mobile phones were sold, with smartphones now making up 55 percent?of the total, at 250 million devices. The total number of sales for 2013 looks like being in the region of 1.8 billion phones. But who is on the up?, Forbes asks.
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The impact of mobile on publishers - more consumption, less revenue
News organizations will continue to struggle as users transition from consuming media on computers to mobile devices, per Forbes.
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Will U.S. consumers and retailers ever be ready for NFC? - Mobile Commerce Daily

By Staff reports

November 22, 2013

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Will U.S. consumers and retailers ever be ready for NFC?
Last year, experts thought that NFC was going to really take off this year, but recent moves from Google Wallet and Isis point to a significant question: Will NFC ever really take off?
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EBay envisions a world filled with mobile-enabled shoppable windows
EBay wants to scale up its Connected Glass program at the national and even international level, enabling consumers around the world to touch a glass window and shop products, with purchases completed from a mobile phone.?
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22pc of retail mobile sites miss the mark on SEO: report
While Amazon, Staples and Walmart are getting mobile redirects from search results right, others are not and risk being downgraded in Google search results, according to a new study from Pure Oxygen Labs.
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Gap expands omnichannel inventory program for added convenience
Gap and Banana Republic are expanding their ?Reserve in Store? pilot to help holiday shoppers save time by reserving items on-the-go and easily picking them up in-store.
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Lifetime's Project Runway integrates mobile banking for added financial challenge

By Rebecca Borison

October 18, 2013

Project Runway promotes mobile banking

Lifetime's Project Runway?has kicked off a?mobile social sweepstakes to end a season that for the first time integrated mobile banking into the show's challenges.

The ?Runway Rundown? sweepstakes will run until Oct. 24, when a winner will be selected randomly for a trip to New York to shop with the season?s winning designer. The sweepstakes concludes the show's season-long partnership with Green Dot Corp.?s mobile-banking application GoBank.

?GoBank has been part of a new spin for this year's contestants and viewers with a mandate to control their spending throughout the show, a first in all 12 seasons,? said Sharon Pope, chief marketing officer of Green Dot Corp., Monrovia, CA.

?With all the thought that went into shopping for fabric this season, we thought a great way to celebrate the finale is by letting a fan get in on the New York shopping fun,? she said. ?And what better shopping companion than this season's winner?

?Our ?Runway Rundown? sweepstakes will hopefully grab the attention of the very active social media-engaged Project Runway fans.?

Shopping spree
The Project Runway Facebook sweepstakes launched last night as the season finale aired. The sweepstakes is accessible via a mobile-optimized microsite.

To enter the sweepstakes, consumers must first share their thoughts on the finale and the winning designs, and then they must "Like" the GoBank Facebook page. Finally they need to enter their personal information.

The GoBank app

Consumers can also share the sweepstakes on social media.

The winner will receive an all-expense paid trip to New York and $500 to spend on a shopping spree with the season?s winning designer.

The sweepstakes follows a season-long partnership with mobile-banking app GoBank. GoBank is available on Android and iPhone devices ans offers a mobile-first way to bank.

Consumers can sign up for the bank directly from their phone with a ?pay what you want? model, where members can choose to pay anywhere from $0 to $9 for their monthly membership fee. It also lets consumers peek at their balance without logging in.

Additionally, consumers can use the Fortune Teller feature that gives advice on how to spend money based on a consumer?s budget. Consumers can also send money via email or SMS.

The Fortune Teller feature

Mobile designers
Throughout the 12th season of Project Runway, the contestants managed their finances with the GoBank app.

In previous seasons, designers would be handed cash to spend on fabric before every challenge. This season gave the designers $4,000 in a GoBank account, and the designers had to budget the money for the whole season.

This added a new twist to the show by making the designers budget for themselves.

Designers were able to use the Fortune Teller feature for help, as well as the Money Vault feature to set money aside.

Additionally, the winning designer will receive $150,000 from GoBank towards a fashion line.

?Earlier this year we released a State of the Bank study, which found that Americans see banking as one of the least innovative industries,? Ms. Pope said.

?Our team at GoBank is dedicated to changing that sentiment,? she said. ?We're obsessed with innovating banking beyond consumers' expectations.

?Pairing GoBank, a forward-thinking brand, with Project Runway, a show that rewards constant creative innovation, was the perfect combination to drive home the position of GoBank as a mobile banking pioneer.?

Final Take
Rebecca Borison is editorial assistant on Mobile Marketer, New York

Rebecca Borison is editorial assistant on Mobile Marketer. Reach her at rebecca@mobilemarketer.com.

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