Friday, April 28, 2017

McDonald's expands Uber delivery after successful test


Dive Brief:

·         Uber and fast-food chain McDonald’s are building their mobile ordering and delivery service with the addition of several cities by the end of June, according to a report in Crain's Chicago Business. The ride-hailing service’s UberEats application has been in tests with about 220 McDonald’s stores in Miami, Orlando and Tampa since January. McDonald’s didn’t say which cities will be part of the expansion during its quarterly call with investors this week.
  • The UberEats app, which is replacing the UberRush service that will be shuttered on May 8, has allowed mobile users to order anything from the regular McDonald’s menu. The restaurants package the meal for delivery and hand it off to an Uber driver. A flat fee of $4.99 is added to the customer’s Uber bill.
·         McDonald’s Chief Executive Officer Steve Easterbrook said the company will gradually "put more marketing muscle" behind the delivery service as it gets more experience with mobile ordering and customers change their behaviors.

Dive Insight:

Uber needs some public victories after this year’s repeated scandals, including sexual harassment allegations, a viral video of CEO Travis Kalanick’s argument with a chauffeur and a lawsuit from drivers for Lyft, a major competitor. Demonstrating that UberEats delivery can help build business for a major established brand like McDonald’s would improve Uber’s image.
UberEats delivery is also important for McDonald’s, which has struggled to regain relevance as consumer's eating habits have changed by improving customer service and revamping its menu to appeal to millennials — who like to eat out or order in but often not with fast food chains. A top McDonald’s franchisee last year found that 80% of that key demographic had never tried a Big Mac, according to a report by The Wall Street Journal.
UberEats looks like a good fit for McDonald’s, which gets about 70% of its U.S. business from drive-through windows, while urban customers are more likely to take food to go instead of dining in the restaurant, Crain’s Chicago Business reported. Apps like Caviar, DoorDash, GrubHub, Postmates, Seamless and Yelp Eat24 also provide McDonald’s ordering in some regions.

#MobileMarketing #Application


Friday, April 21, 2017

Amazon opens door to conversational apps from brands


Dive Brief:

  • Amazon Web Services has opened up Amazon Lex, the voice technology that fuels the Alexa platform, to all cloud computing customers, according to a press release. The unlocking of Amazon Lex means developers can insert talking virtual assistants into chat services such as Facebook Messenger, Twilio or Slack. 
  • Until now, Amazon noted few developers were able to build apps with the automatic speech recognition and natural language understanding that characterizes Amazon Lex. With the company's move, developers can construct apps containing speaking aides to check the weather, book travel, order food and perform a plethora of other tasks.  
  • Amazon specified Capital One, Freshdesk, Hubspot, Liberty Mutual, Ohio Health, Vonage and the American Heart Association have already tapped Amazon Lex for conversational apps. The American Heart Association used Amazon Lex’s AI technology to ease its registration process for Heart Walk events, and Freshdesk harnessed it to provide personalized customer service. 
AI is venturing across the consumer and marketing landscape, and Amazon is aiming to be a key driver in its spread. Amazon Alexa and its related products such as Echo are doing so by entering people’s homes — millions of Alexa devices have sold — but Amazon has a much bigger vision for its voice technology careening across industries and into corners of the digital universe that the company might otherwise not touch or touch infrequently. In creeping into those corners, it hopes to outmaneuver its voice competitors Siri at Apple, Bixby at Samsung and Assistant at Google.  
Winning the voicebot battle can have enormous implications for business as more consumers use their voice and not their fingers to engage online. Propelling e-commerce is a big play, a strategy befitting Amazon’s core competency. It’s already possible to shop products sold on Amazon, discover nearby restaurants and request Uber or Lyft rides from Alexa. The opening up of Amazon Lex will likely thrust Amazon's voice capabilities into untold areas of commerce. The revenue potential is impactful. RBC Capital Markets has estimated Alexa could generate $10 billion for Amazon by 2020 from device sales and voice orders. 
The news follows Amazon's recent release of a development kit for the hardware and software that powers its Echo devices' voice recognition. Together, these two developments have the potential to help Alexa boost its position as the dominant voice assistant if enough manufacturers and developers jump on board. 
#MobileMarketing #Application


Thursday, April 20, 2017

Quote of the day


Life’s most persistent and urgent question is . ‘What are you doing for others?’!”

Facebook, brands make second go at creating rich Messenger ecosystem


Dive Brief:
  • Facebook Messenger is evolving with several updates, in what's being called Messenger Platform 2.0, including the ability to assimilate services from various apps such as Spotify and OpenTable directly into the messaging platform via a feature called chat extentions, according to a report in Fortune on Facebook’s annual developer conference F8, which opened yesterday. The news was also announced on the Messenger blog. 
  • Explaining chat extensions, The Verge likened them to the iMessage App Store, albeit “with a nicer design.” They allow users to pursue activities beyond chatting — listening to music or booking a restaurant reservation, for instance — without exiting Messenger. 
  • Facebook has also rolled out a Discovery tab in Messenger that spotlights featured and trending chatbots, and contains a search bar to help identify new ones; automated suggestions from the AI-powered digital assistant M; and Messenger QR codes that can be scanned with the Messenger camera to connect users to branded chatbots. 

Dive Insight:
Facebook Messenger chief David Marcus has acknowledged early chatbots weren’t that great. The AI-powered customer service agents have been criticized as being ineffective and disappointing to the consumers brands are trying to please with them. Even when they do provide a good service, chatbots have been hard to find. Bloomberg suggests “part of that was on purpose.” Marcus was giving chatbot creators time to better the programmed conversationalists, which currently total 100,000 on Messenger.
Now, Messenger is unmasking its chatbots to encourage bot-human interactions. The Discover tab within the chat platform will be a destination users understand they can go to in order to check out chatbots. It’s likely to expose them to bots — and, correspondingly, businesses — that they weren’t aware were available on Messenger. Additionally, Messenger’s digital assistant M will recommend chatbots to users amid conversations to let them know there might be a bot that can handle a service — like pizza delivery or ride sharing, for example — they might be interested in.
Along with the chat extensions that allow users to stay within Messenger if they want to hear music, among other pastimes, Messenger’s intent is to be “the centralized place for daily activities,” per Fortune. But Bloomberg points out that Facebook’s money-making goals for all the hanging out on Messenger aren’t clear. Marcus has stated advertising is a focus for Messenger’s business. Certainly, for marketers, Messenger is a compelling platform if its 1.2 billion users stick around on it for a range of tasks. And, if Facebook decides to chase additional revenue-producing ventures, it can’t hurt that Messenger is giving users more reasons to stay within its ecosystem. 

#MobileMarketing #Application


Wednesday, April 19, 2017

Quote of the day

#quoteoftheday #mobilemarketing 



“Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself!”

Mobile Apps To Promote Your Business


#mobilemarketing #application

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oj2Z8pwSK74

Tuesday, April 18, 2017

Quote of the day


“The World Is Jungle, You Either Fight Or Run Forever!”

Smart eyewear: Is it the future or destined for failure ... again?


With a number of smart eyewear offerings expected to launch in the coming months — from souped up glasses for checking email to sophisticated augmented reality (AR) devices — the question is: Can manufacturers avoid the missteps that sank Google Glass? 
The failure of Google Glass has marketers appropriately skeptical of a new crop of high-tech eyewear. But where Google Glass was nerdy, supercharged with search skills and expensive at $1,500, something like Snapchat Spectacles are simple, stylish and affordable, with a $130 price tag. Spectacles' strong early reception among consumers and brands is encouraging a number of other companies like Vuzix, ODG, Vue and Solos to plan smart eyewear releases for this year, with the goal of helping wearers accomplish tasks like checking emails, watching and shooting video, navigating the real world and integrating with fitness apps.

Another battle is shaping up in AR glasses that are bigger than traditional eyeglasses but smaller than VR headsets. On this front, Microsoft's HoloLens is likely to soon go up against offerings from Magic Leap, Apple and Facebook, with the goal of making immersive computing technology commonplace for a variety of activities throughout the day. 
The recent interest in smart eyewear comes as smartphone sales growth is stagnating, with the tech industry eyeing glasses as having the potential to propel a shift in consumers’ relationships to their phones.
“I hope we are [going] to a place where we are not carrying our phones around as much and, as technology gets stronger and stronger, it becomes less intrusive,” said Ned Lampert, creative director at digital advertising agency space150. “Specs is a step in that direction. Not having to pull your phone out at the moment of capture is a big step.”
Better consumer experiences
Even in the short time Snapchat Spectacles have been available, they’ve gone a long way toward reversing the bad reputation Google Glass gave smart eyewear. Reactions have been overwhelmingly positive, with kudos especially raining down on the Snapchat Spectacles rollout as an example of how to drive excitement and demand through pop-up locations and limited availability.
Sales prognoses bear out Lampert’s bullishness about the space. Mediakix predicts Snapchat Spectacles will gross over $5 billion in sales by 2020, when it’s figured Snapchat will have 280 million global users.
“They’ve made the experience fun in a way that other technologies like Google Glass failed to do,” said Liz Gottbrecht, director of marketing at influencer marketing platform Mavrck. “They really did have the consumer in mind with the design and functionality of them.”
Turning to the broader augmented reality and virtual reality market, the International Data Corporation (IDC) projects it will surge at a compound annual growth rate of 198% between 2015 and 2020 to reach $143.3 billion in global revenues, up 97% from an estimated $13.9 billion this year. Worldwide spending on hardware, software and services is expected to total $6.2 billion in 2017, an increase of 130.5% from 2016.
A different perspective
For marketers, the experience with Spectacles offers some insight into how they can start thinking about leveraging smart eyewear if the hardware category takes off as expected. Some early adopters from a brand perspective include ToyotaL'Oreal Paris and Hyatt.
Snap now calls itself a camera company and, indeed, Spectacles are camera-equipped sunglasses, but the video camera they’re built with doesn’t share the perspective of most video cameras.
“The glasses are literally seeing what you're seeing," wrote Avery Hartmans in her Business Insider review of the eyewear. 
This first-person vantage point is a differentiator for marketers looking to convey action or the energy of being behind-the-scenes, putting viewers almost literally in the heads of people they esteem.
In the influencer marketing field, Gottbrecht considers Spectacles as heightening the benefits Snapchat already offers as a platform to share unboxing or demo videos by allowing followers to virtually peer through the eyes of the digital personalities they admire at the products revealed. Beyond the unboxing and demo videos, marketers can connect with the micro-influencer population wielding Snapchat Spectacles to amplify messaging in communities they might not have previously entertained.
“When brands think about leveraging Spectacles, the question is: How do you leverage consumer-generated content in a way that’s valuable for your brand?” said Gottbrecht. “These people are sharing the most intimate details of their lives. The intimacy level on Snapchat and the way brands can tap into that is really powerful.”
Point-of-view storytelling
The Minnesota Wild, the first professional sports team to get a hold of Snapchat Spectacles, employed them to give firsthand glimpses into the locker room, a pre-game skate, a Zamboni ride and even a game from high up at the Xcel Energy Center.
“Point of view video is the next frontier when it comes to digital storytelling,” said Phil Ervin, digital managing editor and content strategist for the Minnesota Wild. “We are selling our fans on the Minnesota Wild experience and the more immersive you can make it, the better.
"Snapchat Spectacles are a really good lead-in to where everything is going, and there will be more tools to do that in the AR/VR world," he added.
Space150, which collaborated with the Minnesota Wild on its Snapchat Spectacles footage, furnished fencer Miles Chamley-Watson with a pair to document his swiftness.
“It was all about making use of a hands-free social capture tool and showing the types of things you would never be able to do with a phone,” said Lampert. “[With Snapchat Spectacles] you can stay in the moment, but also capture a memory at the same time. You are able to be at a concert or hit a golf shot and get that perspective without missing out on the moment of being part of that.”
Challenges persist
To produce Snapchat Spectacles content that resonates with Snapchat’s millennial and Gen Z users, Max Goldberg, president of consultancy Max Goldberg & Associates, advised marketers to steer clear of getting too slick.
“[Users] don’t want to see canned selling presentations,” he said. “What they want is authenticity. They want what’s current, what’s happening now. It isn’t Instagram. It’s Snapchat.”
In the short term, whether or not the buzz around Spectacles is a strong enough foundation to support a broader smart eyewear market remains to be seen. Thomas Husson, vice president and principal analyst at Forrester, doesn’t anticipate advanced eyewear moving the needle much in most marketing budgets.
“The main challenge [of] smart eyewear for marketers is the niche adoption and the privacy concerns such devices can raise among consumers," he said. "As of today and for the next couple of years, only a very small subset of consumers will own and use smart glasses.
"Snap's spectacles were better positioned than Google's glasses, but I think we're still years away from any meaningful advertising investments from B2C brands," he said. 


#MobileMarketing #Application #G8appz

Monday, April 17, 2017

Quote of the day


“You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough!”

Why app marketing is a game of inches



App marketers have come off the biggest download season of the year, but not all are set up for strong, sustainable growth. While some might pin their hopes on a killer feature or other “silver bullet,” the best will approach growth as an iterative, repeatable, data-driven process. They think of growth as a four-quarter game, not a 60-second drive.
Read on to learn how you can give your growth strategy legs based on principles we use to drive lifetime value for our own apps like Google Photos and Google Search.
Small wins are the building blocks of long-term growth. Looking at a growth curve, many focus on the inflection point where things climb dramatically. But it’s the many small features and optimizations along the way that typically make up the majority of a product’s growth — usually exceeding the growth impact of so-called “killer” features.
We applied this idea to the Google Photos app. User research showed that people were quickly running out of storage on their phones and unaware that Google Photos could help them free up space. However the feature was buried deep in settings under a header that said "manage device storage." By changing the name to “Free up space” and moving this button to a more prominent spot in the app — and then running marketing campaigns around it — we significantly increased usage of this feature which has been sustained, even after the campaign ended.
By focusing on identifying and delivering many small improvements to the app, our teams could continually drive engagement — without having to find any silver bullets.

Growth begins and ends with data

Data doesn’t merely reflect what’s knowable. It’s the fuel of smart, informed decisions. Certain user actions within your app could hold the keys to unlocking greater lifetime value.
Our Google Search app teams in Australia and Japan noticed that some users downloaded the app but never searched. We analyzed data to identify the types of users who were most likely to do a search in the Search app, and used those insights to revamp our paid advertising strategy.
Consequently, we were able to begin targeting users who might mirror the desired behavior (i.e., engagement within the app) rather than just one-and-done downloaders. Once we optimized our app campaigns in tools like AdWords for “first search” — that is, identifying the users most likely to perform a search — we saw a 40%+ relative uplift in retention. Using data to understand user flows, drop off, usage and retention rates helped inform our marketing decisions, leading to overall higher lifetime value.
This example serves to introduce our next rule of thumb for consistent growth:

Think retention before acquisition

It may seem like a chicken-or-egg scenario, but it’s not. If you don’t have good retention, your future acquisitions hold very little long-term value. Think of it as a leaky bucket: Without good retention, pouring more users in only guarantees more will fall through.
First, draw a retention curve from a cohort of users who started using your app on a certain day. Then, for each subsequent day, plot what percentage of that cohort came back on that day. If you have poor retention, your curve will keep dropping.
So what does good retention look like? The numbers differ from business to business, but it’s essentially a curve that flattens rather than continuously dropping. Eventually, the curve will become pretty flat. That’s the goal — and the point at which you can start focusing more on acquisition.
And sure enough, data can help there too. Most studies point to the fact that a small percentage of an app’s users typically drive the majority of the app’s revenue. Given the majority of apps are free, analyzing your data to identify the types of users that are most likely to monetize is important. When only a small subset of your users contribute to your total revenue, product and marketing efforts must focus on finding people who are more likely to stick around.

Give data some legroom

Mobile marketers know that data can help drive decisions that improve lifetime value. Even so, product data and marketing data have historically been incredibly siloed. Growth is not a product challenge, and it’s not a marketing challenge — it must be a business priority. So when you’re looking at data, it’s vitally important to look end to end.
Again it’s about moving one inch at a time — not necessarily focusing on finding the killer new feature. By thinking of growth as an iterative, repeatable, data-driven process that’s continually ongoing, you’ve put your team within striking distance of scoring. Add data to the mix, and you’re dancing in the end zone.

#MobileMarketing #Application


Sunday, April 16, 2017

Quote of the day


“You never know how strong you are until being strong is the only choice you have.”

Friday, April 14, 2017

Happy Tamil New Year

Do all the best you can, by all the ways u can, in all the manners u can, in all the occasions you can and at all the opportunity you can. A very happy Tamil New Year 2017.

Thursday, April 13, 2017

Happy Tamil New Year


Happiness, prosperity, peace & love. That is my wishes to you. Happy tamil new year!”

Google adds 'Similar Items' feature to Image Search capabilities


Dive Brief:
  • Google is augmenting its Image Search capabilities through Android apps and the mobile web with a new “Similar Items” feature that helps users find products similar to those they see in searched photos.
  • Google Image Search accomplishes this by using machine vision technology, a form of machine learning that identifies products in lifestyle images and displays matching items to the user. The Similar Items feature currently allows search results related to handbags, sunglasses and shoes, and will cover other apparel and home and garden categories in the next few months.
  • Retailers and merchants wanting to leverage the new feature need to add and maintain schema.org product metadata on their web pages, according to the Google Webmaster Central blog. Schema.org/Product markup helps Google find product offerings on the web and give users an at-a-glance summary of product info.

Dive Insight:
As search technology innovations go, image search (or visual search) has drawn a lot of attention and innovation over the last year or so. And though it recent has seemed like voice search could steal the spotlight away, this announcement by Google is evidence that search technology players are still exploring what they can accomplish within the borders of a photo.
It's not surprising that Google has been pushing the envelope as much as anyone. Over the last year or so, the company has made several announcements related to new Image Search capabilities. Last May, Google enabled related shopping ads to appear as users browsed image search results, and last summer, it launched an offering for product companies to have ads for their specific products appear in results for broadly-termed search queries.
Late last year, Google also acquired hot image search startup Undecidable Labs. It's not clear if that company's technology is helping fuel the Similar Items feature, or if this new feature was already in development using other in-house technology, but that acquisition suggested Google was more than willing to go outside of its own organization to find new image search technology it believed in.
Similar Items and similar image search features should go quite a ways to endearing merchants to Google. While Google is, without argument, an internet search pioneer, search technology evolutions have left the door open for companies like Amazon and Pinterest to play a huge role in shopping searches. For Google to stay in the shopping search conversation among among merchants and consumers, it must continue innovating along the lines of Similar Items.

#Mobilemarketing #Application

Tuesday, April 11, 2017

Quote of the day


“Don’t complain about the things you’re not willing to change!.”

Lyft, Dollar Shave Club double down on merging branding and direct response via video

Some brands are accelerating efforts to merge brand-building and direct response on mobile, with video as the glue.

As mobile gadgets become handheld TVs with a wireless link to a cash register, marketers are transforming brand-building content into transactional platforms, with video content providing an emotional draw that can boost results.
Mobile video is growing and marketers are diving in across a wide range of tactics designed to elevate awareness of a brand through entertaining content, from super-short 10-second ad to mini-films like Marriott’s popular "Two Bellmen" series.
As marketers get more adept at video and at engaging mobile users, some are taking their branding efforts one step further by including a direct response angle in their strategies, thereby giving new life to an app and acquiring valuable data that can be used to determine the return on investment for mobile. However, research suggests this is still the exception rather than the rule, despite marketers recognizing that branding and direct response are complementary.

"We are seeing a convergence of direct response and brand strategies in the digital video space,” said Joe Beccaroli, chief executive of Interact Marketing in New Windsor, New York. “Marketers are using social media and video to build relational brand equity by rotating about three brand videos to every one direct response or promotional video.”

Souped-up apps

The power of mobile direct response is well recognized among marketers, but not easy to implement. While two-thirds of marketers see branding and direct response as complementary, only 35% of respondents have “completely aligned” the two initiatives, according to a survey this month by the Mobile Marketing Association and RadiumOne, a San Francisco-based advertising agency.
Marketers said social media is most important for branding campaigns, while direct response initiatives are more focused on people who are repeat buyers, according to the survey. Purchase data is the most popular way to measure the effectiveness of mobile direct response, with 38% of respondents ranking it as the No. 1 metric.
Video is one tactic that is helping brands merge their branding and direct response efforts on mobile.
Mobile viewers are 80% more likely to respond to a video than to text, said Beccaroli, while video consumption has increased as the smartphone market reaches 90% saturation.
Dollar Shave Club, a marketer of personal grooming products, is a former “direct-response purist” whose mobile app, released this year, has a strong element of brand-building, he noted.
The app features weekly video content and topical, punchy articles on topics from proper grooming techniques to general health and wellness. The content is an addition to typical transactional-based offerings like signing up to receive monthly razor shipments, adjusting delivery frequency, switching razor choices, buying additional items and sending a gift.
“This weekly dose of video branding is creating engagement with consumers, too, with some weekly videos topping 150,000 views,” Beccaroli said.
A key reason for the push into mobile video is the immediate measurability that smartphones provide.
“With digital advertising and mobile, in particular, all marketers are required to produce tangible, measurable results,” said Jasper Radeke, director of North America marketing for AppsFlyer, an Israel-based mobile attribution and marketing data analytics company. “Major brands are becoming very savvy when it comes to combining content-driven mobile marketing with more traditional direct response tactics.”
User behavior can be measured in many ways, such as the frequency and time spent with the content, social media shares with friends and followers, likes and purchases.
“Our projection is that we'll see more and more of such use cases — where apps provide custom/interactive experiences based on measurable user activity,” Radeke said.

Common ground

Lyft Inc., the ride-hailing service that’s available in more than 130 U.S. cities, tried an experiment to re-work its video brand awareness ads to drive a simple transaction: a free download of its mobile app. 
The company found that a brand awareness video ad featuring former NBA star Shaquille O’Neal had better results than its direct-response video that didn’t have a celebrity.
“The Shaq ad, for example received 8% higher clickthrough rates than Lyft's traditional direct response ad and a similar conversion rate to those ads that were designed specifically to drive conversions, or installs,” Aman Govil, head of the art, copy and code projects team at Google, wrote in a blog post in March about Lyft’s efforts. “The lesson here: Make sure to test and learn how all your creative performs on various metrics.”

A natural fit

The role of the brand message drives decisions on creative elements to include in a marketing campaign, said David Griffith, chief strategy officer of Seattle-based agency POP, via email.
“There is no reason brand-oriented videos cannot also handle the hard work of direct response,” Griffith continued. “All direct response strategy should consider an approach that includes brand imagery or messaging. Will that always mean video content? Perhaps not.”
He said online media gives marketers more freedom than the confines of a 15- or 30-second spot that characterizes broadcast video.
“If you want to add a call action to your spot designed to run on TV you can do so without cutting out the heart of the creative idea,” Griffith said. “As long as it is done in a way that feels natural rather than ‘Frankensteining’ it, the video should perform great as both a brand message and direct response piece.”
Viewers of mobile video are remarkably open to seeing ads, and they don’t mind a little irreverence, Interact Marketing’s Beccaroli said.
“Brands should stay within the general boundaries of their core image and messaging strategies,” he said. “Content that is humorous, fun or sometimes even a little weird seems to perform better for most consumer brands.”
Meanwhile, social media platforms like Facebook are rapidly evolving into major purveyors of mobile video. Last year, 85% of videos that appear on Facebook were originally posted on its platform, compared with only 10% of videos that first appeared on YouTube, according to Quintly, a social media analytics firm based in Cologne, Germany.
“Especially through Facebook Live videos, Facebook users — consisting of private accounts and businesses – have the ability to directly engage with their audience by discussing topics in real-time,” Nils Herrman, communications manager at Quintly, wrote in a blog post in March. “It is crucial to implement Facebook Live to your Facebook campaign to reach and engage the audience you are targeting.”
Mobile video advertising will continue to develop as the technology improves and high-speed bandwidth allows for better connectivity with customers.
“Video remains a highly effective format on mobile both for advertising and other content because it's well understood both by advertisers and the audience,” AppFlyer’s Radeke said. "It's going to be interesting to see how the removal of technical limitations, from compression to the length of ad units, and the continuing evolution of mobile usage overall impact its use by both groups." 

#MobileMarketing #Application #G8appz