The Borders Rewards program where you earn “Borders Bucks” for your spend at Borders and Waldenbooks stores just launched a new program called Borders Rewards Perks. From what I can tell, Borders is getting into the online mall business leveraging the many different affiliate programs to get special offers and discounts for people registered in the program. There’s a lot of talk about personalized offers and reminders. (more…)
I was introduced to a new program recently that is using a Loyalty component to help drive behavior. The company/site is uBoost (http://www.uboost.com) which is based in beautiful Hawaii. The site is still in Beta mode with a plan to launch right around Labor Day. The site is an online education and tutorial service for students, parents and educators. They’ve established partnerships with groups such as Weekly Reader, the company you might remember from their magazines and educational supplements. These partnerships will provide the consumers and uBoost will manage the platform and provide rewards for the users. In fact, they’ll reward the students, parents and teachers for their use of the system. They are looking for additional partnerships, both on the content and member side as well as on the prize/rewards side. They’ve built an interesting platform and have immediate traffic through some key partnerships. This is one I personally plan to watch.
I think it’s fair to say that no two people are exactly alike. They may be similar in many ways but given our personal histories and the many influencing factors in our lives, when put into specific situations, each person will react slightly differently. That’s the premise behind many of the one-to-one marketing concepts that are bandied about in conference rooms and at industry events. But the reality is that one-to-one marketing is extremely difficult and very few companies are doing it well.
I recently reconnected with a friend/business colleague whom I hadn’t spoken to in more than 7 years. This came about through the wonders of LinkedIn. It’s great to see that after 7 years, he’s still pontificating on technology and business and how they intersect. Only now, in the world of Blogs, he can share his opinions with a lot more people. If you appreciate a good debate on the merits of technology and business, I encourage you to check it out. He’s in the process of launching a new website which when available will also be a great resource if you’re in the market for technology services.
So while I’m at it, I thought I’d share some other Blogs that might be interesting as well. If you have any you think are worth sharing, please do so.
Thanks.
Blogs of Interest
Found another interesting article online from practical ecommerce about Online Loyalty Programs. If you’re reading this Blog then you must be interested in the world of Loyalty to one degree or another. This article is worth a read though I do have a few concerns. My biggest is the assumption that an online merchant can or should launch a Loyalty program on their own. (more…)
And now for a post that falls under the “and More…” category.
I read an interesting article recently about online advertising, behavioral targeting and Google. Here’s a link to the article. In essence, the article was talking about Google’s reluctance to read too much into what a user searches and target advertising accordingly. Many people in the online advertising industry have been talking about this level of targeting for years but have not had a holistic view of the individual to best serve them. Until now.
More and more publishers and advertising networks are relying on their own data and third-party clickstream data (see Compete Inc.) to better understand the users and provide them with targeted, relevant information. It’s true that you have to be careful not to read too much into what someone does online and try to predict that want to do it in the future. Amazon.com is famous for trying to recommend other products you might be interested in based on what you’ve searched and/or bought. I know from personal experience that buying a gift for someone doesn’t mean I’m interested in buying more of that item in the future.
But no matter what Google says about being cautious, behavioral targeting appears here to stay. The trick will be what companies can do to perfect the approach in a seamless way for the consumer so it doesn’t look like Big Brother is watching.