Q&A: QVC explains how retailers can make the most of wearables

mobilecommercedaily.com

QVC believes that the Apple Watch is the perfect mobile extension for its brand

Television shopping network Quality, Value, Convenience, better known as QVC, expects big things from the Apple Watch for retailers, both as an engagement tool and as a point of sale.

The retailer is a leader in innovation through mobile as its demographic is quick to pickup on emerging technology. Recently the network released an application for the Apple Watch to create an integrated experience for consumers and a more seamless way to discover new brands and products through multi-platform channels.

The TV network feels that wearables and the Apple Watch are an important facet of the mobile industry and plans on developing its app further in the future for a greater user experience.

Here, Alex Miller, senior vice president of digital commerce at QVC, talks with Mobile Commerce Daily about QVC’s Apple Watch app, the company’s future wearables strategy and the benefits and pitfalls of the move into wearables.

What are QVC’s plans on utilizing the Apple Watch? 
At QVC, we look closely at how, when and where the customer is choosing to engage with us on digital platforms, both separate and in conjunction to our live broadcast viewing, to continue to make the experience more cohesive and engaging. As an expansion of our multi-platform offering, we see the Apple Watch extending the functionality of our iPhone app at the start, yet being contextual to the small screen format of a wearable.

QVC’s Apple Watch app

Through this platform, we are able to offer customers the ability to access and view QVC content with a glance at their wrist. Through real-time updates and notifications, or by simply tapping the QVC icon on their home screen, our customers will be able to view QVC’s most important content, including the current featured item on air and Today’s Special Value, QVC’s best find of the day.

Another tap brings up a close-up product shot with pricing and product details. Customers can then complete the transaction on their iPhone.

What is beneficial about the Apple Watch specifically with the QVC shopper/demographic?
Our customers tend to be early adopters of technology and are highly engaged with us across our community of social media channels and on multiple platforms.

A testament to this is the popularity of our QVC app for iPad and iPhone, which has been downloaded nearly 3 million times. Because we are continuously offering new content, our customers check in with us on these platforms often, many of them multiple times a day.

When they check in to access content like Today’s Special Value, we want to ensure they get their information in a quick, bite-sized way, and the Apple Watch is poised to support this demand.

How do you feel that the Apple Watch will change the course of retail and mobile commerce?
Wearables are the hot technology item of the moment. With Apple venturing into this arena and having partnered with several retail brands for the Apple Watch launch, including QVC, we see a tremendous potential for uplift and adoption of the wearables platform in the retail industry, both as an engagement tool and as a point of sale.

For the immediate future, we see the experience on the Apple Watch as an extension of the mobile/tablet shopping experience. Thinking more long-term, it seems inevitable that wearables will be the next true engagement device offering a standalone experience, where customers will be able to interact with brands, customize their content and make purchases.

We’re already starting to see cases of this in the retail and hospitality industries.

How should retailers go about moving forward with an Apple Watch app? 
Customer engagement and convenience is at the heart of the Apple Watch. Retailers should consider how their app will further enhance the shopping experience, deliver timely, key information about its products, make customers’ lives easier and ultimately drive sales.

What are the benefits for retailers getting involved with the Apple Watch? 
Digital platforms are increasingly becoming a first point of entry for new customers. For retailers, if you have the right business model, you can definitely leverage the technology and provide a differentiated experience for your consumers.

A mobile-first approach has become part of the core of our overall digital strategy, and the move to the wearables is a natural extension of the shopper’s need to visit and check-in with their favorite retailers over the course of the day.

What are some pitfalls that retailers should watch out for?
Retailers need to understand that not all platforms are the same. How they engage with consumers on a mobile or tablet device is different than on wearables.

Retailers will need to develop an engaging and efficient experience for customers that are in line with the functionality of the Apple Watch and works with the smaller screen size.

What can you do to combat these pitfalls or avoid them? 
Given the continued fragmentation of ecommerce experiences, retailers should be spending equal time on their content and technology strategies to ensure they are poised to adopt new platforms and experiences when appropriate.

What plans does QVC have in the future for the Apple Watch? 
We expect that our Apple Watch app will continue to evolve, offering new features and capabilities over time. We plan to keep close watch on customer adoption, feedback and behavior to ensure relevant capabilities to match their expectations and enhance their shopping experience.

Final take
Brielle Jaekel is editorial assistant on Mobile Marketer and Mobile Commerce Daily

What the Verizon-AOL deal means for the Internet of Things

mashable.com

When Verizon announced on Tuesday it will buy AOL for $4.4 billion, the company's statement emphasized its plans to insert itself into every single part of your home beyond the TV: the refrigerator, the washing machine, even the wearable on your wrist.

Verizon touted its Internet of Things ambitions prominently in the press release, right there in the second paragraph.

For those unfamiliar with the buzzy concept, the Internet of Things refers to devices — the things — connected to the Internet that don't have a typical user interface (i.e. screen, keyboard, mouse, etc.). This includes everything from smart thermostats and garage doors to toothbrushes, tennis racquets and even your bed. They collect data about your usage patterns and habits, and often connect to an app that offers feedback to improve your lifestyle.

Verizon joins a long list of tech giants such as Samsung, Facebook and Apple that have expressed a growing interest in the Internet of Things. Verizon joins a long list of tech giants such as Samsung, Facebook and Apple that have expressed a growing interest in the Internet of Things. Although Verizon doesn't have much hardware experience, one could assume a Verizon FiOS set-top box could be that entry point.

With a strong emphasis on growing its mobile TV and advertising networks, could Verizon users one day be reading headlines from AOL-owned content publications such as The Huffington Post and Engadget directly from a refrigerator's display? Will Verizon monitor how we live our lives at home (what temperature we like, what time we go to bed) and pump that data into its newly acquired AOL advertising technology engine?

How this partnership would manifest in consumer homes is up for debate. For example, Aapo Markkanen, principle analyst at ABI Research, believes users could see personalized grocery advertisements (based on what your fridge senses you are running low on) while reading Huffington Post stories on a smartphone or tablet device, rather than seeing content streamed across a fridge's display.

In theory, the products in the home could learn your habits from walking room to room, determine when you make coffee and note your favorite blend. We could see this trickle beyond smart home and into the connected car, too — all data that would be enormously valuable to advertisers.

While it isn't immediately clear how strongly AOL's assets could help Verizon's Internet-of-Things efforts, the move shows just how much Verizon wants to expand its business into "things," beyond just connecting people. the move shows just how much Verizon wants to expand its business into "things," beyond just connecting people.

According to experts, the deal is a match made in heaven for AOL’s ad technology platform and Verizon’s massive mobile and over-the-top (OTT) audience through its Internet provider, FiOS. Not surprisingly, the big opportunity here is to build out Verizon's ad network.

"AOL has done a great job of pulling together the pieces of the digital advertising world, such as display, video, mobile and TV, and providing those options to advertisers in one platform," Dan Marcec of eMarketer told Mashable. "For Verizon, that means being able to provide a one-stop shop for advertisers and potentially gain revenue, while AOL gets access to a huge mobile audience. This makes its advertising platform even more valuable by including more data to advertisers to better target their audiences."

The key: tracking how consumers behave at home.

"You can compare it to Google or Facebook, in that sense — it’s not necessarily a short-term opportunity, but from the advertising perspective, there is nevertheless a lot of upside in understanding how consumers behave in off-screen environments," Markkanen of ABI Research said.

While it's unclear how Verizon will pursue Internet of Things, there's a chance it will meddle with consumer data to influence its advertising network. The caution: avoiding creepiness.

"Verizon could start crunching more the data it has access to, but I wouldn’t expect them to get very aggressive about it," Markkanen said. "There’s no point risking such a big longterm opportunity by alienating customers with intrusive uses of data."

While Apple is taking a hands-off approach with its HomeKit platform — allowing it to act as a framework to connect products in the home but doesn't collect or store user data — companies like Jawbone are taking a different approach. For example, in a blog post last year, the fitness wearable company analyzed user data to determine which cities were getting the least amount of sleep (the answer: New York City, followed by Miami, Atlantic City, Las Vegas and New Orleans).

Although Jawbone users granted the company access to this data, Verizon will have to tread carefully to keep consumer trust before sharing collected data with advertisers.

Becoming a bigger player

Lessons From App Experts: How Drync’s Brian Carr Retains Users

business2community.com

In this new series, we chat with leading app owners, creators and marketers to get their insights into what app success looks like and how they’re engaging users. Plus: what do they see working when it comes to app messaging tactics, and how do they use analytics to inform marketing? 

For our first installment we asked Brian Carr, the COO of Drync, about how the optimize their app to drive business. 

Where did you get the idea for the Drync app?

Our founder, Brad Rosen, came up with the idea for the app while he was traveling with in Tuscany. He was enjoying a bottle of wine, but realized how challenging it would be to remember that particular bottle. Moreover, since most retailers stock about 1,000 on their shelves, about 3% ​of the wines available in a given market, finding a specific bottle can be nearly impossible. So, he wanted to create a solution that would allow consumers to not only learn more about the wines they are drinking but allow them to purchase in seconds.

How do you acquire new users?

We acquire new users through searches and features in the App Store or Google Play; partnerships with events like the Food & Wine Classic in Aspen and the Boston Wine Expo, social media, and good old word-of-mouth from our existing users. We also have advertising campaigns that are fully trackable using Localytics; so for example, we can tell which campaigns have the best ROI and bring in the most engaged users, with one simple dashboard in the tool.

How important is push and in-app messaging to your marketing efforts?

Not only do we use both on a daily basis, but what’s most important is we test and optimize both.

For push notifications, we use personalized (only seen by you) and segmented (seen by all cabernet lovers) pushes daily to remind users of wines they have in their cart, or to let them know we’ve located that hard-to-find wine they took a snapshot of a few minutes ago. In general, we’d expect a 7%+ click-through rate (CTR) on personalized push notifications and a 3%+ on segmented ones. 

We recently launched in-store pickup in Massachusetts. We couldn’t do an in-app messaging campaign to the whole nation, it wouldn’t make sense and would only frustrate users. Instead, we targeted just our Massachusetts customers and automated an in-app messaged for when they opened the app.

They key is to use both in tandem where it makes sense. We do push campaigns to Massachusetts users such as: “Update: We have new pickup locations nearby.” That loads the app and then the in-app message appears, reinforces the in-store pickup and prompts a click to see more.

I should note that we build and A/B/N test all of our in-app and push campaigns to assess the best click and action rates. You’d be amazed what a difference language and color changes can make. For example, we posed these questions for our campaigns:

1)   ​Push notification: Should you use “Tap” or “Swipe” in your call to action?

2)   In-App: Should your call to action button be red, green, or black?

And found that:

1)  Our campaigns ​saw 26​% higher CTR on “swipe” than “tap”

2)  For us, click-through-rate on buttons is higher in this order: red, green, black

What’s the most popular feature in your app?

The most popular feature in the app is scanning: users can snap a picture of the label of the wine in front of them and Drync populates the bottle information including producer, region, grape variety, and other users’ ratings and tasting notes. They can then add their own ratings and tasting notes and even share on their social networks.

How do you garner and respond to user feedback?

We constantly acquire user feedback through a variety of channels: replies to marketing emails, the in-app feedback tab, social media, surveys, phone calls and even in-person events. We pride ourselves on prompt turn-around time and great customer service regardless of the channel. We also regularly track our Net Promoter Score for purchasers by talking to them about 10 days after purchase to see how it went.

How do you use app analytics in your marketing?

Mobile marketing does not differ from conventional digital marketing in this way: data is key. We set goals for every marketing, push, in-app campaign, and even social posts. Whether or not these campaigns meet, exceed, or fall short of expectations, will determine next steps for upcoming campaigns.

Where do you see as the future of apps?

It’s all going personal. We’re constantly competing for attention and usability at the right time and the right place. So timing, content and messaging all are going to be as personalized as ever.

Think about it, the phone is by far the most personal thing we have. It “knows” more about us than our closest friends. Ever see a teenager lose their phone? It’s Armageddon. We put our own screen savers and wallpapers on our phones. Then we change them depending on our mood. We spend hours finding just the right case for it. Then we arrange our home screen with the apps we use most, in a certain order.  Dunkin Donuts here, mail at the top, etc.

So as app marketers, we have to constantly be aware of the context of how the app is being used – as one of more than 50 other apps on a mobile phone. Blasting a “Deal” notification for something a person will never buy is a big negative – they’ll delete your app in a heartbeat and you’ll lose that customer forever. For us, we’ll think twice about sending an obvious Chardonnay lover a notification that’s about Cabernets.

We ultimately see the app functioning as the premier mobile commerce platform for wine and spirits. We have a number of really cool features in the pipeline to make it even easier for consumers to buy the wine they love – stay tuned!

5 Things Video Game Execs Need To Know About Marketing Games

blogs.imediaconnection.com

I know, video game and app marketers are some of the hardest working people on the planet, and I no doubt have the HIGHEST respect for what they do at all hours of the night - and no I'm not talking about their private lives.

Still, working on the creative, strategy, video, marketing, social media and PR side of game and app promotion, I see important actionables and accountabilities slipping through the cracks.

So, take this as intended - or hate me. Just don't do both at the same time. I confuse easily.

1. BE AUTHENTIC TO YOUR BRAND, GAME AND FANBASE

I don’t care of your game involves stacking cherries on top of ice cream before it melts, or shooting hookers in the street. Own it. I remember running a campaign for Street Fighter X Tekken where we weren’t allowed to use the word “badass” in our social media updates. The game was about kicking people in the face.

There’s a huge disconnect between the desires of the fans and the politically correct spew coming out of the marketing spokesholes. It’s not their fault. It;s the system.

2. ALLOCATE BUDGET FOR PROMOTING CONTESTS, GIVEAWAYS AND COMMISSIONING INFLUENCERS

Players and fans don’t just magically appear - especially of you’re a new game. Some of the older franchises can skate by tapping their existing fan bases and leveraging influencers but imagine how many MORE users you’d reach if you threw in some promo dollars along the way.

Influencers in the gaming industry are the brass ring. They have huge groups of followers across multiple platforms that hang on their every comment. They know these games inside and out and they’re rockstars. Tap into that street red - organically or paid - and reach whole new audiences.

3. SPEND A COMPARABLE AMOUNT OF AD BUDGET, PR OR SOCIAL MEDIA EFFORT ON PROMOTING GAME TRAILERS AND PROMO VIDEOS AS PRODUCING THEM

You’d think that after several years, all game publishers would have learned that you can’t throw money into amazing videos and expect them to magically go viral. Some do but most don’t. We worked with Atari awhile back and were assured that the videos would be pitched via their internal PR department, rather than hiring Supercool to promote the videos via paid ads, influencers and organic PR outreach to blogs and publications consumed by their target user base.  They pitched several game review sites and called it a day. Probably had to get home to watch honey boo boo and pop a brewski. I don’t know.

4. DON’T JUST CHECK THE BOXES - LOOK FOR RESULTS

I get the feeling, regardless of the industry, that many marketing execs are simply checking the boxes. We have a video due in April. Did we make the video? OK, check the box. But what did that video do for the bottom line? Was it integrated into a larger online, PR and social media strategy? Did it sell more units, drive more downloads? If not, you may as well shoot some crap with your iPhone and convince the CMO it’s the latest trend.

5. LOOK FOR SOMETHING NEW AND TAKE CHANCES

The online marketing world is getting very cluttered and you need to stand out. Forget the endless focus groups, bouncing everything off everyone and covering your ass. Get out there and go with your gut. You’re the marketing executive! Act like it. Nobody ever rose above the crowd by playing it safe.

One more bonus - listen to podcasts and read voraciously. Don;t get stuck in a rut. See what's going on not only in the gaming and mobile industries but everything else - except farming. Farming's boring.

Surprise, In-App Purchase Behavior Peaks Before The Workday Even Starts [Study]

New study shows mobile e-commerce behavior doesn't mirror online purchasing habits.

Turns out users aren’t using their lunch breaks to make in-app purchases. Whether it be in games, retail, travel or other commerce apps, users are much more likely to make purchases before and after work, according to a study from AppLovin and TUNE.

AppLovin, a marketing automation and analytics platform, and attribution firm TUNE studied millions of transactions and billions of data points on US mobile users from the first quarter of 2015 to understand how in-app purchase behavior differs from online e-commerce patterns.

The study shows that most weekday mobile revenues and usage occur at 7:00 AM and PM. In fact, pre-workday morning revenues topped evening revenue patterns.

In-app revenue per hour peaks at 7 AM and 7 PM, normalized to Pacific Time.

Interestingly, usage rates are relatively low in the hours before the workday starts, and climb throughout the day, peaking at 8:00 PM.

While online e-commerce is typically expected to perform well on Mondays, in-app purchase revenues were highest on Sundays and Fridays. Wednesdays brought in by far the lowest spending activity. Wednesday also had the lowest usage rate, and Sunday saw the highest rates of usage for the week. However, the usage-to-spend correlation does not occur on Friday, which has the second-slowest usage day but the second-highest spend rates of the week.

The study concludes that, because mobile commerce and online spending and usage patterns are different, in-app advertisers should look to increase win rates during peak hours and weekends and consider time-based offers or discounts during the times of day and days of week where most spending occurs. Take a close look at your own app performance and don’t assume all platforms perform the same.

Facebook Brings The New York Times, BuzzFeed And Others On Board With “Instant Articles”

marketingland.com

Publishers will post content directly to the Facebook platform and keep 100% of revenue from ads they sell against the stories

Facebook’s publisher outreach program is finally launching.

The social network announced early this morning that it will start hosting content from publishers directly on its platform with a new product called “Instant Articles.”

The move has been long anticipated; Facebook was known to be negotiating with publishers about terms of the deal for the last several months. There are nine launch partners — The New York Times, National Geographic, BuzzFeed, NBC, The Atlantic, The Guardian, BBC News, Spiegel and Bild — with the Times, BuzzFeed, the Atlantic, NBC and National Geographic expected to post stories in the format Wednesday morning.

Facebook says Instant Articles are designed to load quickly on users’ mobile phones — at launch they will be available on the Facebook iPhone app.

Here’s how Facebook’s blog post announcing described the new product:

As more people get their news on mobile devices, we want to make the experience faster and richer on Facebook. People share a lot of articles on Facebook, particularly on our mobile app. To date, however, these stories take an average of eight seconds to load, by far the slowest single content type on Facebook. Instant Articles makes the reading experience as much as ten times faster than standard mobile web articles.

Along with a faster experience, Instant Articles introduces a suite of interactive features that allow publishers to bring their stories to life in new ways. Zoom in and explore high-resolution photos by tilting your phone. Watch auto-play videos come alive as you scroll through stories. Explore interactive maps, listen to audio captions, and even like and comment on individual parts of an article in-line.

We designed Instant Articles to give publishers control over their stories, brand experience and monetization opportunities. Publishers can sell ads in their articles and keep the revenue, or they can choose to use Facebook’s Audience Network to monetize unsold inventory. Publishers will also have the ability to track data and traffic through comScore and other analytics tools.

“Fundamentally, this is a tool that enables publishers to provide a better experience for their readers on Facebook” said Facebook Chief Product Officer Chris Cox. “Instant Articles lets them deliver fast, interactive articles while maintaining control of their content and business models.”

Publishers, who have grown ever more dependent on referral traffic from Facebook, have been wary of giving up the advertising revenue and user data they glean from people who visit their sites. But the terms of Instant Articles seem good enough to assuage those who might be hesitant. Also the partnership is experimental — there are no commitments to publish a certain number of articles a day and publishers can stop at any time.

“We’re going in with our eyes open,” New York Times CEO Mark Thompson told Re/code.

Here are some other notable features of Instant Articles (pulled from coverage by Re/code, TechCrunch and The Verge):

• Media partners will use their own publishing tools to create Instant Articles; Facebook’s system will then convert stories into the proper format for the Facebook app.
• Publishers will also be able to add multimedia elements to the stories, including embedded tweets, YouTube videos, photos, image galleries, videos and interactive graphics.
• Elements of the design were borrowed from Facebook’s news reading app Paper.
• Publications’ logos and a Facebook Page “follow” button will appear on top of every story. Optionally publishers can include authors’ and photographers’ Facebook photos in the presentation within the story.
• comScore will give Instant Article publishers full credit for traffic the stories generate on Facebook’s app.
• Facebook says it won’t favor Instant Articles in the News Feed algorithm. “But given their novelty, and the fact they’re designed to be eye-catching, it seems very likely that these things will get lots of attention at the start,” Re/code’s Peter Kafka notes.
• Facebook hopes to eventually roll out Instant Articles to any publisher that shares stories on Facebook.
• Facebook will allow publishers’ sponsored content — like the posts BuzzFeed creates for advertisers  — to be uploaded into the system.
• 

How Big Will the Internet of Things Be for Samsung?

Young Sohn, Samsung’s president and chief strategy officer, discusses the company's Internet of Things strategy and the future of the smartphone with Bloomberg's Emily Chang on "Bloomberg West."