Tuesday, May 12, 2009

White Paper: Mobile Marketing for Casinos

CM Comment: White paper outlines some ideas for how SMS, or text messaging, can be used to boost business It explains the benefits of text messaging, how casinos can use the medium in their marketing campaigns, and how SMS can help casinos both retain current customers and acquire new ones.
Mobile Marketing for Casinos Mobile Marketing for Casinos Casino Marketeer White paper outlines how SMS, or text messaging, can be used to boost business in light of the challenges facing the casino industry today. It explains the benefits of text messaging, how casinos can use the medium in their marketing campaigns, and how SMS can help casinos both retain current customers and acquire new ones.

Research: Babyboomers In The Digital Age

CM Comment: This presentation from the Pew Research Project contains data about how Baby Boomers use the internet. It charts the rise of broadband, wireless connections, and a variety of internet activities, including e-commerce.
Babyboomers In The Digital Age Babyboomers In The Digital Age Casino Marketeer This presentation contains data about how Baby Boomers use the internet. It charts the rise of broadband, wireless connections, and a variety of internet activities, including e-commerce.

Online advertising: Time And Engagement Beats CPM

May 7, 2009: summarized from ADOTAS -- One interesting theme was the idea that online advertisers should rely more on time spent on a page as opposed to just page views as a deciding metric. VideoEgg CMO Troy Young started the discussion and promoted moving away from page views and toward time a user spends on a page or at a website. It was an idea later brought up by Matt Freeman, Betawave CEO, who said that its not only how much time a user is online, but what he is doing that should be a factor in sending advertising to him. His parting shot, via a slide was, "Is an impression still an impression if it doesn't make one?"

Of course, VideoEgg, which also launched a new product,and Betawave are in the attention and engagement end of the business. But despite the soaring number of online users and page views, the traditional online advertising model is in a steep decline and advertisers want more. Could it be time over impressions?

Full story at: http://tinyurl.com/d4tpny

Marketers Search For Social Media Metric

CM Comment: As casino marketers dive deeper into the world of online and email marketing these types of metrics will become more relevant.

May 6, 2009: summarized from Media Post News -- Marketers place a lifetime value on customers with addresses on its email list based on their purchasing activity. For Netflix, it could be $9. At US Airways, maybe $2. But how do you place a similar value on a person who is active on a company's Facebook or MySpace page? With social-networking booming, marketers are now in hot pursuit of the metric.

Identifying those pacesetters and understanding what drives them can help marketers send them more targeted messages, aiming to drive even more referrals and launch successful viral marketing.

They agree that a person who simply visits a "fan" page and is a static follower is of minimal value. But people who can be tagged as influencers, who forward information to friends or other contacts that result in transactions, have tremendous value.

Email marketers are working hard on algorithms to quantify the worth of those influencers operating via social media outlets. Tim Schigel of ShareThis.com, who spoke on a panel at the MediaPost Email Insider Summit on Wednesday, said: "We'll see a better understanding of that (soon) ... the industry is trying to figure it out."

Also on the panel was Craig Swerdloff, CEO of LeadSpend, who said the value of a social-media influencer should be "another variable that you put into your algorithm to determine the lifetime value of a customer."

What is that amount? A back-of-the-envelope calculation could be as follows: If a Netflix customer is worth $9 alone, but that person has 500 Facebook friends, and is able to drive even 1% of them (5) to make a purchase, that individual's value could be as high as $54.

Full story at: http://tinyurl.com/d5up3j

Online In Troubled Times

April 1, 2009: summarized from Promo Magazine -- Under pressure to make every marketing dollar count in this recession, marketers are gravitating to channels that offer measurability, accountability and a sound return on investment. And very often, that means heading online, even if they have to shift dollars from offline channels.

There's only one problem. Their consumers are flocking to parts of the Web where the metrics are still pretty shaky and the ROI can be hard to demonstrate - social networks, blogs, word-of-mouth campaigns, video and text-messaging.
What's a marketer to do? For at least some, the answer is to fish where the fish are, budget constraints or not.

According to the 2009 Promo Interactive Marketing Survey of brands and agencies, growing numbers of marketers say they will make use this year of interactive channels that are more likely to have an effect on brand identity than to drive provable incremental sales to the bottom line.

Full story at: http://tinyurl.com/oknh84