Right now, it’s a little bit more than a month away, but I’m nevertheless already excited for EverythingCU’s next webinar, How to Determine Your Credit Card Portfolio’s Marketing Needs which will be presented by Ondine Irving, creator of the nationally recognized Credit Card Connection program.
Ondine is an expert in credit union credit cards and her consulting branch is Card Analysis Solutions. Because of her deep knowledge of this arena of CU business, she routinely saves her clients tens of thousands of dollars by eliminating unnecessary and redundant charges coming from the card processor.
In this webinar, Ondine will show you how to analyze YOUR current card portfolio to determine what course of marketing action will maximize your ROI. Sometimes your card processor wants to sell you something that will benefit your credit union, but sometimes they are trying to sell you something which is in their best interests, which is not necessarily yours. Attend this webinar to gain the knowledge to put yourself in the driver’s seat of your card portfolio. You might even end up being able to save your CU some money on the expense side as well.
In the meantime, make sure your credit union is listed in the national database of the Credit Card Connection by registering here (which is FREE). Suze Orman continually promotes this site through her latest book and tv appearances, and credit unions that are featured get a steady flow of new card applications.
To learn more about the webinar including pricing, or to sign up for it, register yourself on EverythingCU.com (which is quick, free and easy) if you haven’t already, and check out this webinar’s detail page here.
Introducing another new feature of EverythingCU.com: our first-ever EverythingCU Roundtable webinar!
We know that one of the most popular features of EverythingCU’s regular webinars is the ability to interact with one another, sharing tips, techniques, venting, etc., so we’re devoting an entire session to just that.
The agenda? Is whatever you want it to be. Agenda topics are being posted here. We know the collective brainpower of EverythingCU’ers is off the charts, so this webinar will be as good as YOU make it! (Which we know is pretty dang awesome.) Unlike our regular webinars where everyone’s line is muted unless you unmute, in this webinar, everyone’s line will be LIVE, so if you are attending, you are participating! We’ll use our regular interface for raising hands so that we can have a meaningful conversation without the chaos of everyone talking over each other.
Oh yeah, and we’ve slashed the prices compared to our regular speaker-led webinars, so you almost can’t afford NOT to come. And as always, our Executive Members get a discount over the already-low prices.
You can even check out the folks who are going to be there.
So what are you waiting for? Sign up today! (And in breaking with our usual Thursday webinar tradition, this one will be next Tuesday, October 26, at the usual time: 2 pm Eastern/11 am Pacific.)
This blog post covers the third of three panel/sessions at GeoM, held at MIT’s NERD Center on Monday. It was hosted by Mike Schneider, SVP Director, Digital Incubator for agency Allen & Gerritsen. For highlights of the 1st panel, click here. For highlights of the 2nd panel, click here. Also, these highlight blog posts may be a bit jumpy, because they are comprised of the tweets I made during the sessions.
This final panel of the day was moderated by Mike Schnieder, and featured Dennis Crowley, founder of Foursquare, Seth Priebatsch, founder of SCVNGR, and Jeff Holden, CEO of Whrrl.
Dennis Crowley began by explaining that Foursquare was the successor to Dodgeball, which was a project he started while a student at NYU. He later sold Dodgeball to Google. He realized Dodgeball had a limited audience/purpose, so later designed Foursquare to appeal to a broader audience. Dennis also explained that check-ins are the beginning of the story, not the end. The data generated can be used for tons of interesting stuff.
The whole panel noted that marriage proposals as well as breakups are now happening via geolocation sites.
Jeff Holden: “Places are more semantically rich than simply location, so the check-in is what’s important because the person has decided to designate the place that they currently are.”
Seth Priebatsch: “Instead of check-ins, @scvngr is based on challenges.”
Dennis Crowley: “Local merchants are now encouraging people to check-in via foursquare. That aspect was never anticipated by us. Reality TV (Bravo etc) shows overlap nicely with foursquare because both are reality-based. Reality TV viewers can now visit and check-in to the places where their favorite shows occur.”
Seth Priebatsch: “SCVNGR’s big goal is to build a game-layer on top of the whole world.”
Seth Priebatsch also asks “What’s the social coefficient of your store’s location?” (How many people go there with friends?) “This type of metric has never been thought about before, because the data wasn’t available. Now it is. When you visit a store or a place with friends, loyalty goes up, and people return more often. It’s a more valuable social experience.”
Dennis Crowley: “Mayors are our best salesforce.”
Dennis Crowley: “It’s not about the check-in, it’s about what you do with the data/knowledge.”
Jeff Holden explained that his background is in recommendation engine from Amazon. That’s where his love for serendipitous discovery came from.
Seth Priebatsch: “The world has not yet reached its fun quota. We can make the world a lot more fun.”
Dennis Crowley: “Just checking-in isn’t all that great on its own, it’s fast becoming a commodity. We’re building things on top of the check-in; it’s what you do with the check-in that counts.”
Jeff Holden: “We’re getting to the point in geolocation where there’s enough awareness to get to mass adoption.”
Dennis Crowley: “This whole world of geolocation startups, where we’re changing the way people interact with their physical environment, is very new. It’s a really good, fun time to be exploring in this (geolocation) space.”
Jeff Holden: “We’re NOW entering the era of the location-based web, which is entirely new, and a very different thing than mobile web. The mobile web was about making the existing internet available on your mobile device. The location-based web is ushering in a new world – a context-aware version of the physical world. These are exciting times!”
Highlights of the 1st panel. Highlights of the 2nd panel. Also, Eric Leist of host A & G has a recap that includes highlights and the blog posts that came out of GeoM.
This blog post covers the second of three panel/sessions at GeoM, held at MIT’s NERD Center on Monday. It was hosted by Mike Schneider, SVP Director, Digital Incubator for agency Allen & Gerritsen. For highlights of the 1st panel, click here. Also, these highlight blog posts may be a bit jumpy, because they are comprised of the tweets I made during the sessions.
Session 2: Data and Loyalty
Moderator: Sean Corcoran, analyst at Forrester (@SeanCor)
Panelists: Aaron Strout, CMO, Powered.com (@AaronStrout)
Anne Mai Bertelsen, loyalty and integrated marketing strategy consultant, Mai Strategies (@AnneMai)
Matt Galligan, SimpleGeo Co-founder and CEO (@mg)
Sean Corcoan, Moderator: “Forrester Research shows that Geolocation hasn’t hit huge mass adoption yet, but the growth rate is extremely fast.”
Anne Mai Bertelsen: “Loyalty programs have been around for quite a number of years, so there is precedent for the type of data the geolocation provides. Location data, sentiment data, and spend data can be married to provide new relevant insights for businesses and offers for consumers.”
Matt Galligan: “Police monitor mentions of the word ‘party’ at night on twitter to determine where to station officers; that’s an instance of location data being helpful.”
Aaron Strout: “My experience with some of the companies that are entering into geolocation marketing strategies is that they are not going far enough, fast enough with some of their offers and programs.”
Matt Galligan: “The technology in your pocket is far more advanced than the technology that is checking you out at the store.”
Anne Mai Bertelsen: “For big companies that understand loyalty, social media/geolocation resides in a different department, apart from the rest of the marketing management, which is an impediment to fully realizing the possibilities that geolocation offers.”
Aaron Strout then discusses Augmented Reality, i.e. Yelp’s Monacle feature.
Sean Corcoran, Moderator: “What if Facebook makes a mistake with privacy (and it’s been know to make a few mistakes in privacy) with Facebook Places, will that set geolocation back?”
Anne Mai Bertelsen: “The best traditional loyalty programs require registration and opt-in. Legislators have been watching these loyalty programs for years. People use grocery loyalty because they get value. The expectation in geolocation loyalty programs would be the same to the consumer (i.e. what value am I getting in exchange for checking-in?), although offering up one’s location seems scarier to most consumers.”
Aaron Strout: “Smart companies will set things up so they would get a ping to know when loyal shoppers are in the store. Also, people forget that you can check-in without making it public.”
Anne Mai Bertelsen: “Marketing people don’t mine data well, they just don’t. They aren’t working with good, smart models of loyalty, behavior, and how that translates into sales.”
Matt Galligan: “The geolocation space is already so fragmented, it’s hard for companies to know where to start. At the same time, the geolocation space is starting to get really exciting.”
Earlier in the session, Aaron Strout referenced a case-study of Whole Foods and Trader Joe consumers’ shopping behaviors, and later that link was tweeted. It lives here: Hyper-local traffic measurement and analysis
After this session wrapped, it was great to reconnect with Aaron Strout who I met only once in Boston before he relocated to Austin.
Highlights of the 1st panel. Highlights of the 3rd panel. Also, Eric Leist of host A & G has a recap that includes highlights and the blog posts that came out of GeoM.
I had the privilege of attending GeoM yesterday in Boston, hosted by Mike Schneider, SVP Director, Digital Incubator for agency Allen & Gerritsen. The event was held at the MIT New England Research and Development (NERD) Center in Cambridge. About 200 people attended, of which I’d guess only about 5 or 6 had also attended PodCamp Boston 5 in the same event space the week before.
There were a total of three panels of three guests each, plus a different moderator for each panel. I will highlight the guests and moderators, with some of the best quotes from each session. This blog post covers the first session. For highlights of the 2nd panel, click here. For highlights of the 3rd panel, click here.
Session 1: Making Money from Location Based Services
Moderator: Jason Keath, founder of SocialFresh (@jakrose)
Panelists: Wayne Sutton, VP of Marketing, TriOut (@WayneSutton), geoblogger
Joshua Karpf, Digital Media Communications Manager, PepsiCo (@jkarpf)
David Chang, VP of Product, WHERE (@changds)
David Chang: “Like any business arena, there is a wide range of results in the geolocation space. Awareness, repeat, leads, ad-based models”
Wayne Sutton: “Geo results could be much higher outside major urban areas where there is less competition”
Moderator Jason Keath: “Challenge: right now geo users are super geeky, super-early-adopters. What’s the path to mass market adoption?”
Wayne Sutton: “Geolocation space is very fragmented, seems like a new one is launching every week.”
[my observation]: Loyalty programs, rewards, advertising are mostly being talked about in terms of monetizing geolocation
David Chang: “MassMarket using some form of geolocation is already here. Now the question is, what will business do with it?”
Joshua Karpf: “Small businesses are creating the most interesting geolocation-based business offers.”
Wayne Sutton: “Increasing check-ins, doesn’t always mean more sales.”
Question for panel: “Where are we going beyond the check-in?”
Jason Keath: “StickyBits – Checking into a product via barcode – then media can be associated with it.”
David Chang: “Groupon, BuySocial, etc., helping businesses to generate sales during downtimes, is the next purpose for geolocation.”
Active vs passive check-ins:
Joshua Karpf: “Does active have more business value? Consumers need to give permission before passive check-ins should be done. You don’t necessarily want to be checked in to every Pepsi you drink walk past.”
Wayne Sutton: “Future of passive check-ins is to tie-in with future plans, i.e. I’m going to MIT NERD Center, check me in automatically when I get there. Also, businesses can’t make a joke out of geolocation offers. Initially Krispy Kreme was giving away but ONE free donut for 6th check-in, which is a joke. Businesses need to give good values for check-ins.”
David Chang: “There’s a big disconnect between how users are using geo-based apps, and the companies (and their dollars) that want to connect with them. Changing behavior is a tough thing. Many large companies as well as start-ups may burn through a lot of money trying to introduce the masses to geolocation.”
Wayne Sutton: “When doing a coupon via geolocation service, make sure it’s long term. A one-time only coupon or discount is the worst.”
After this session, I was privileged to speak in depth with Lawrence Ingraham, TriOut’s lead developer, and he graciously took a picture of me with geo-star Wayne.
Highlights of the 2nd panel. Highlights of the 3rd panel. Also, Eric Leist of host A & G has a recap that includes highlights and the blog posts that came out of GeoM.
PodCamp Boston 5 starts tomorrow, and I’m excited to be going there with my sweetheart, Lesley Lambert. Both she and I will be facilitating sessions on Sunday. Lesley’s topic is Advanced Twitter, and I’ll be facilitating a discussion on Geolocation. I’ve facilitated sessions on Geolocation at RE BarCamp Orlando and RE BarCamp Rye, and my slidedeck for it has been viewed 1,178 times on Slideshare.net. I’ll be modifying the presentation for the PodCamp environment versus the real estate camp.
This will be my third PodCamp Boston, and lucky 13th camp of any variety.
I love the things that happen at camps, the people, the sessions, the networking, the brainstorming, the learning, the teaching, the sharing, the connections that people make. Being somewhat of a Camp veteran, I especially enjoy helping newcomers have a good experience as much as I enjoy reconnecting with old friends. I also love “seeing” the camp through others’ eyes, especially Camp virgins, but I love veteran’s thoughts, photos, videos, blogs, tweets, and whatever other media is produced.
Here are some links looking back at my previous Camp experiences, including PodCamp Boston 2, where I knew no one going into it, but made some great friends:
Looking forward to what this weekend brings at PodCamp Boston 5!
This past weekend, I travelled with my family down to Baltimore for a reunion, including catching a ballgame at Camden Yards. While we were there, we stayed at the Crowne Plaza hotel in Timonium, MD. I’ve been using geolocation service Gowalla since Baer Tierkel turned me on to it in November of last year (2009). So upon arrival at the hotel, I opened the Gowalla app on my iPhone to check in. I immediately noticed that instead of a generic hotel icon, the Crowne Plaza had its own snazzy custom icon.
Since the icon was so cool, I decided to send my Crowne Plaza check-in to Facebook and twitter. Within a short time, I noticed that a company I had never heard of sent me this tweet in response to my check-in:
Since I was busy with a family reunion, I didn’t have time to investigate this meaning behind this tweet until I returned home. So this morning, I visited the Topguest site, and noticed they had a Facebook page, which is good since there is very little about them on their own site. Via their Facebook page, I discovered this is a very new (4 month old) start-up based out of NYC.
They have 4 hotel reward programs under their belt, and they accept check-ins from all the major geolocation services: Brightkite, Foursquare, Gowalla, Facebook Places, and Twitter location. Topguest ties your geolocation check-in method(s) of choice to your hotel reward program(s) of choice. Since I love Gowalla and am already a Priority Club member, it was a snap for me to link the two. Priority Club encompasses the InterContinental Hotels Group (ICHG) which includes: Holiday Inn, Holiday Inn Express, Crowne Plaza, Staybridge Suites, and another recent discovery I love: Hotel Indigo.
Geolocation: it’s not just for mayorships and games anymore…
It can be intimidating to try to hold a PodCamp, BarCamp, REBarCamp, BarCampBank, or any type of event for that matter. Just in case anyone who is thinking about holding a Camp is feeling intimidated by the prospect, or disheartened that the process might not be as smooth, let me offer a few words of encouragement, from someone who has attended REBarCamps, FacebookDevCamp, and has attended and organized both a BarCampBank and two PodCamps.
First of all, this is an important truism of Camps:
The right people always show up.
There are so many people out there who NEED to have their first PodCamp experience. They will have their eyes opened to the fact that all this stuff happening on their laptop/smart phone represents REAL LIVING PEOPLE. They are not alone in the world. There are others who are going through the exact same experiences, who are ready, willing, and able to learn from others who are similar to them that live RIGHT in YOUR area.
Don’t get hung up about attendance numbers. There is no right number. I’ve been to camps of all shapes and sizes, from 15 to 750. And let me tell you, I LOVE camps that are 35-60 people. There is an intimacy shared that you lose when it gets as large as 100 or 150 or more. I love the big ones too, but there is NOTHING wrong with small and intimate. This is a non-profit endeavor, right? No one has a profit motive to try to put on a huge PodCamp. Throw away the idea of a traditional conference with thousands of attendees, a huge stage, and breakouts only as time-filler. To me, the ideal model of PodCamp is to have ONLY breakouts; 4, 8, 12 or however many of them simultaneously, some as small as a conversation between two people, others with 12 people, others with 20, others 40, in an urban brick building converted into classroom spaces all around a central gathering space.
Another thing to keep in mind: the people who want to, and need to, learn from the PodCamp experience…. you don’t know who they are yet. They will come from being friends of attendees who hear about what an amazing thing PodCamp is. They will come from friends of current local social events who are beyond stoked about the prospect of your Camp. You can’t get that until you have Camp #1. Let the thing grow organically. That’s what happened for the original BarCamp and the first PodCamp Boston. What you want is a small, highly charged, well connected core of people, who blog, podcast, tweet, fb, and videocast their experience with your first Camp… what it meant to them, what they got out of it.
Have a maximum attendance cap. It can be 100 people. Keeping it limited like that accomplishes many positive things at once.
Don’t care if only 50-60 people show up to the first one. About 35 people pre-registered for PodCamp WesternMass 1, but we had about 50-55 people total show up. Attendees brought friends with them; there will always be people who show up at the door with admission in hand. The following year, when we did PCWM for the 2nd time, word had spread about what a great event it was, and we nearly doubled attendance.
You have to create the first one. Since so many don’t know what a PodCamp or other Camp is (but awesome people DO know what it is), they aren’t going to get excited about it ahead of time. But adventurous people WILL check it out and attend.
Trust it. Do it. The right thing will happen.
PodCamp WesternMass 2 photo by vievetrick
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Where I'll Be: CU Tech Technology Research Consortium Spring Forum Look Who Is Talking – Monitoring your Brand in the Web 2.0 World Boston Park Plaza Hotel Boston MA Wednesday 5.12.10 Places I've verbalized Info on my World 2.0 Workshop. |
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