“Twitter Cards let you bring rich experiences and useful tools to users within an expanded Tweet. The Lead Generation Card makes it easy for users to express interest in what your brand offers. Users can easily and securely share their email address with a business without leaving Twitter or having to fill out a cumbersome form,” Twitter explained in a recent blog post.

It also contains an expandable display unit that features a photo of the product that’s on special.

“When someone expands your Tweet, they see a description of the offer and a call to action. Their name, @username, and email address are already pre-filled within the Card. The user simply clicks a button to send this information directly (and securely) to you,” Twitter also noted.

With a click of a button users can claim bargains that advertisers are offering through the unit. The unit automatically forwards the user’s Twitter ID and email to the advertiser, who then fulfils the deal.

Here is what the new Twitter card will look like:

Mitali Pattnaik, Product Manager, Revenue with Twitter, continued to write in the blog post:

As with all our products, we’ve been testing this feature with a handful of brands, including New Relic (@newrelic), Full Sail (@fullsail) and Priceline (@priceline), and have received positive feedback about how it helps to drive deeper connections with customers. Additionally, many beta participants found the streamlined nature of the Lead Generation Card was instrumental in driving a low cost-per-lead compared to other technologies in their marketing suite.

Today, the Lead Generation Card will only be available to our managed clients; we have plans to launch this Card globally and to small- and medium-sized businesses soon.

Visit our help center to learn more about Lead Generation Card creation and best practices.

Tumblr defines itself as a platform that “lets you effortlessly share anything” including “text, photos, quotes, links, music and videos.” Some businesses have a tough time incorporating Tumblr into their social media strategy or they leave it out all together. And even if you don’t understand Tumblr’s definition of itself – the sites user base and potential to engage with fans is limitless.

The site tends to hit a tough demographic including pre-teens and 18-24 year olds. It not only lets you post almost anything – photos, videos, quotes, chats, links and text – but it allows and encourages engagement effortlessly through messaging, comments and tagging. In addition, users have to ability to run multiple blogs seamlessly.

So, should your brand be on Tumblr? We think so.

Tumblr in a nutshell

Tumblr may be forgotten about manyby brands when it comes to developing a social media strategy, but it is a MASSIVE community. Some think that it is the absence of brands that have played such a big part in Tumblr’s rapid growth. More than 107.5 million blogs and 50.5 billion posts have been created on Tumblr, including the more than 70 million new posts that appear every day.

That’s a lot of people to just leave out of your social marketing strategy, right?

The key about Tumblr is the type of content and the community it has. Users have the ability to post short text updates, similar to Facebook or Twitter, but the platform also give users the opportunity to express their creative side or “fandom” for a brand. Tumblr is a visual medium and one of the few out there that can accommodate the GIF, which has produced a new source of content creators for Tumblr.

The GIF

The GIF, which stands for graphics interchange format, was introduced to the world almost two decades ago by CompuServe, but has made a comeback because it can act as a lo-fi method of short-form-video sharing. There are several hilarious blogs that have popped up dedicated to creating funny GIFs which apply to every day life-situations. In addition, fans use GIFs to share their favorite few seconds from TV shows or movies, then add narration in the form of overlying text – since GIFS do not have audio.

Tumblr+TV=<3

Television networks regularly create Facebook pages and Twitter accounts for their popular programs, they do this to encourage engagement and conversations about their shows, as well as, put together a community for fans. While this is a great strategy – are they really paying attention to where their “superfans” gather? Because Tumblr is where passionate TV fans rejoice.

If you head over to the blogging site and search for your favorite television show (you’ll have to set up a free account if you don’t already have one), you’ll find animated GIFS, images, quotations, songs, text-based reactions and more.

It is, literally, a sky high pile of content organized in a way that little to no other platforms could pull off. Of course, Twitter has #hashtags, but that’s still text based. Facebook supports images but fails to organize them well when compared to Tumblr. Tumblr has excellent flexibility when it comes to what content can be published and its tagging ability.

Tumblr’s niche blogging site floats in the crowded social media space – it is just taking brands a longer time to notice. This however, may be beneficial for brands. With so little brands on Tumblr, getting onto the site early and establishing their presence may give them an edge over competitors.

Source: Social Media Today

CREDO and Progressives United will email 120,000 of their members who are Yahoo users beginning this week informing them of FWD.us’ pro-Keystone XL ad and encourage them to call on Yahoo’s Mayer to resign as co-founder of Mark Zuckerberg’s dark money group.

In addition, the two groups have launched a blog on Tumblr, the service recently purchased by Yahoo, to spread the word about the tactics of FWD.us. It can be found here: dropfwd.tumblr.com.

“Even as other tech stars are resigning from FWD.us over climate, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer is out there publicly defending the organization and its pro-Keystone XL propaganda,” said Becky Bond, Political Director of CREDO. “This is a sensitive time for Yahoo. The company’s CEO Marissa Mayer should follow Elon Musk’s lead and resign from FWD.us. If she doesn’t, she risks alienating millions of Yahoo users who want to see real action on climate, starting with stopping the Keystone XL pipeline.”

“Supporters of FWD.us have every right to join the discussion about comprehensive immigration reform,” said Russ Feingold, founder of Progressives United, “but progressives won’t stand for cynical tactics that use unlimited, undisclosed money to throw progressive issues like clean energy and health care reform under the bus.”

FWD.us received widespread backlash for its decision to air ads in South Carolina and Alaska supporting the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline and drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Following the public outcry over the ads, Tesla CEO Elon Musk resigned from  the group stating, “I agreed to support Fwd.us because there is a genuine need to reform immigration. However, this should not be done at the expense of other important causes.”

FWD.us continues to claim that its anti-environmental campaign strategy is just part of a broader strategy to pass immigration reform even though the ads in question never mention immigration reform.

The proposed Keystone XL pipeline will accelerate climate change by speeding up tar sands development and exporting dirty tar sands oil from Canada to foreign countries.

Source: Press Release

Editor’s note: The following is a guest post by Marc Horne.  Marc is a co-founder of DailyDealBuilder.com, provider of daily deal software, solutions, and sales training.

At this point, I’m fairly confident that a sales rep for one of the many daily deal sites has knocked on your business’s door and attempted to sell you on the idea to run a flash sale promotion for your business.  If the sales rep wasn’t too pushy and they actually conveyed the information properly, you might be seriously considering running a daily deal promotion or even running another one if you have already done so.

It can be a superb way for you to get new clients, grow additional revenue, get an influx of new customers, and it can provide a myriad of other benefits for your business.  But before simply diving right in and agreeing to terms set forth by the sales rep, I highly encourage you to do proper due diligence and be sure that you are setting your business up for success.  I have personally seen too many deal promotions go sour due to improper planning primarily from the business side of things.

Before dropping a couple million on a Super Bowl advertisement, you would probably do some proper planning and preparation, right?  Well, one of the great things about running a deal promotion is that typically you will not have to put up any money upfront to run the campaign (which in and of itself makes doing this more appealing).  Nonetheless, properly planning for the deal promotion and structuring the deal correctly is vital to the success of your deal campaign.  If the promotion is successful, you can potential gain hoards of new customers.

Proper Planning & Preparation

Proper prior planning prevents piss poor performance.  It is wise to do your due diligence about the daily deal industry as it relates to the industry or market in which your business operates.  The goal is to find one or more similar companies to yours who have run a deal promotion and analyze their results.

Fully understanding competitor’s deals that they have already run will help you improve upon your daily deal offering, as you can get an idea of your competitor’s successes and failures in running a daily deal.

When you find a related daily deal that has been featured, it is a great idea to reverse-engineer the workings of the deal.  

• What were the pricing and promotional details of the offer?

• How many coupons / vouchers were sold?  Was there a maximum # of coupons available?

• What were the margins of the promotion?

• Any negative or positive side effects that you can see?

To properly reverse-engineer a daily deal, you will probably need to speak with the business, whom undoubtedly will not be interested in telling you specifics.  But you can get a somewhat accurate picture just by viewing the recent deal and inquiring to the actual deal site.

Proper preparation also entails educating your staff about the upcoming daily deal and scheduling the promotion properly.  It doesn’t make much sense to run a daily deal promotion during your busiest season or hours.

A few other questions that you can ask the actual daily deal site representative to help you prepare to run a successful daily deal promotion:

• Have you done business with a similar company as mine?  Results?

• What is the estimated redemption rate that your buyers typically redeem coupons?

• How much traffic and exposure does your site have?

• What is the average amount of sales that we might be able to plan for and accomplish?

Focus on Bringing Your New Customers Back to Your Business

If your business has trouble converting your new customers into loyal, repeat customers, you might find that running a daily deal is simply not for you depending on the type of offer you craft.

When you do run a deal, go above and beyond for the daily deal customers.

Subconsciously, you or your employees might want to give them “half-assed” service because they only paid half or less, but the exact opposite is true.  Work your tail off to make these customers happy and loyal.  In fact, it really should go without saying but the goal should be to turn customers into loyal customers regardless of where they came from or how much they paid.

When running a price reduction promotion, the importance of impressing your visitors, going above and beyond, and turning your new clients into raving new fans of your business is of utmost importance.  Follow up with the new customers you acquire by making sure you grab their contact information when they redeem their coupon, or get the information from the deal site itself.

Focus on delivering quality, gaining loyalty, and encourage visitors to connect with you on the social networks and write their raving reviews of your service.  Get these new clients on your email list, follow up with the new customers, and do everything you can to bring them back to your business.

Develop a customer loyalty program so that you can continually incentivize your customers to re-visit your business.

Margins are low when you run a daily deal.  Many deal sites will want to take 50% of the revenue generated on top of having you discount your product or service.  With that in mind, you shouldn’t expect to make bundles of money from the promotion itself.  In fact, many businesses take a loss on the front-end in order to acquire new customers.  Don’t forget too, that a core way to increase your revenue from a deal promotion is by using upsells.  Often times the daily deal site can offer upsells immediately after a customer purchases, but you can also upsell the customers once they are in your business.  Get them in the door, impress them, and offer related products, items, or services that make sense. For example a skydiving company would do everything in their power to upsell pictures or videos.

Analyzing Results

After running a deal promotion, it is important to continually analyze the results.  Pinpoint bottlenecks that happened, and ways to improve upon them.  Keep track of your coupon redemption rate.  How many people saw your offer? What was the conversion rate?  Take special note of this information as the goal is to improve upon the various conversion rates the next time you run an offer.

I invite your comments, suggestions, or stories about when your company offered a daily deal promotion.

]]> http://www.dailydealmedia.com/259how-to-run-a-successful-and-profitable-daily-deal-promotion-for-your-business/feed/ 0 http://www.dailydealmedia.com/329groupon-to-open-international-headquarters-in-dublin-recruiting-30-new-hires/ http://www.dailydealmedia.com/329groupon-to-open-international-headquarters-in-dublin-recruiting-30-new-hires/#comments Tue, 21 May 2013 17:50:14 +0000 Megan Bildner - Jr. Editor http://www.dailydealmedia.com/?p=43214 Groupon  is currently recruiting at least 30 people to work at its new international headquarters, which will be located in Ireland on St Stephens Green in Dublin’s city center. Jobs advertised on Groupon’s UK website indicate the company will be establishing a major presence in Ireland.

Currently, the daily deal site is looking to fill as many as 30 roles advertised on Groupon’s UK website. Job openings range from HR and marketing to IT, design, software engineering, data analysis, web applications engineering, and product management.

The findings emerged from the 2013 Yellow Social Media Report released earlier this week, after a survey of 932 Australians and 1959 businesses between February and April this year. Some interesting results included:

• More than three in five Australians now use social media.
• Smartphones and tablets have overtaken the laptop.
• Australian social network statistics – see the bottom of this story.

Kelly Brough, Sensis digital partnerships and innovation executive general manager, explained that the number of Australians and time spend on social sites shot up this year, showing Australians of all ages were embracing online communication.

“The big thing we’re learning from the report each year is the continued, really large growth of social media across Australia,” Brough said. “Every site is growing and it’s a testament to how important social media is becoming.”

In addition, Brough explained that this was the first year smartphones had overtaken laptop computers as the chief way to view social networks (76 per cent vs 64 per cent), but this allowed users to share information in unexpected locations.

AUSTRALIAN SOCIAL NETWORK USERS AT A GLANCE

• 65 per cent of online Australians use social networks
• 45 per cent log on daily
• 17 per cent log on more than five times daily
• 76 per cent log on from a smartphone
• 37 per cent view social networks first thing in the morning 42 per cent use social networks last thing at night
• 34 per cent log on at work
• 6 per cent log on in the toilet
• The typical Facebook user spends 7 hours on the site weekly
• Average number of friends, followers and fans is 258

Source: The Australian 

Smartphone addicted Americans have something to feel good about. Findings from a new 

The online survey of 2,120 U.S. adults (among whom 971 are smartphone owners) was conducted by Harris Interactive in April 2013 on behalf of ClickSoftware, theleading provider of automatedmobile workforce management and enterprise mobility solutions. 

“This survey calculates a concrete value of the benefits that mobility brings to everyday life and it is apparent that the smartphone-toting masses are, in reality, carrying quite a high ticket item, far more valuable than the price they paid to purchase the device,” said Gil Bouhnick, vice president of mobility, ClickSoftware. “Beyond being a five-figure personal accessory, the smartphone can afford its owner, on average, more than 500 hours per year in savings accrued by using popular apps like email, text and GPS as tallied from our survey data.” 

   
97 percent of smartphone owners who use apps reported saving time each day by using at least one of the 16 types of apps listed in the survey. Key findings include:

1.        Surprise! People do more with a smartphone than snap pics of their food.
·        Email, text and social networking apps lead the pack for frequency of use, followed by games and web browsing, with weather, GPS and calendar apps also making it onto the leaderboard. 

2.        Now we know why men don’t ask for directions.
·        Men (17 percent) are more likely than women (10 percent) to identify GPS apps as one of the three types of apps they use most often. More than half (59 percent) of people who use GPS (either most, second-most or third-most) consider themselves to be extremely or very productive when using GPS and 72 percent said GPS saves them up to 30 minutes per day, versus completing the same task without the app, for instance, using a paper map.

3.        You can swipe and type your way to a more productive self, saving more than an hour of your day. 
·        After selecting the top three types of apps they use most frequently, the smartphone owners who used apps collectively attributed a total savings of as much as 88 minutes per day to app use—up to 10 hours per week or 535 hours (22 days) per year—as opposed to functioning without the use of those smartphone apps. 

4.        Like a fine wine, your smartphone actually appreciates in value. 
·        According to Social Security Administration datahttp://money.cnn.com/2013/04/01/news/economy/jobs-wages/index.html., the average U.S. annual wage is $45,790, which makes the average cost of an hour of an American worker’s time $22 based on a typical 40 hour work week. Multiply that by the up to 535 hours per year in time savings simply realized from smartphone owners’ use of their  top three apps and the true value of the smartphone emerges at approximately $12,000 ($11,777) for just one year of use.

5.        Personal and professional crossover use may contribute to the $12,000 value. 
·        Email and GPS seem to be the apps with the most balanced split between work and personal use by employed smartphone users, with about one in five saying they use these for mostly work use, and one third saying they use them equally for both work and personal use. One in five email app users designated their productivity level as “extremely productive” when using mobile email on their smartphone. 

6.        Whether you care more about Facebook status updates or weather updates depends on your age.
·        People ages 35+ are far more likely to list weather apps among their top three most-often used, while the younger 18-34 crowd plays on social networking sites with more frequency. Interestingly, 79 percent of smartphone owners said they save up to an hour per day by using weather apps, perhaps to avoid running late after ransacking the house for that lost umbrella or sitting in weather-related traffic delays.

7.        You’re probably leaving untapped productivity potential in your pocket.
·        While smartphone owners reported feeling productive when they use apps on their phones, the survey also revealed a majority (82 percent) feel they are probably not using all the features and apps on their smartphones to the fullest. And 77 percent of them feel it is important to be able to access their information from multiple devices (e.g. smartphone, laptop and tablet).  
  
“Given the world’s massive immersion in mobile computing, it has been an eye-opening exercise to measure a facet of its influence on modern America, and certainly, specific professions that rely on mobility to support job performance have the potential to derive an even higher dollar figure than $12K,” added Bouhnick. “As powerful as our survey results prove the smartphone to be, the exciting reality is today’s mobile technology innovation has only scratched the surface of its potential to propel success, both in personal life and in business. The trend of “consumerization of IT” is sure to make workers demand this productivity in their workplace. As the lines continue to blur between work and non-work mobile device use, organizations will seek out cost-effective solutions that empower their mobile workforce and enhance their bottom line while supporting complete workflows required in the enterprise market”  

Survey Methodology
This survey was conducted online within the United States by Harris Interactive on behalf of ClickSoftware from April 1-3, 2013 among 2,120 adults ages 18 and older, among which 971 are smartphone owners. This online survey is not based on a probability sample and therefore no estimate of theoretical sampling error can be calculated. For complete survey methodology, including weighting variables, please contact clicksoftware@schwartzmsl.com. 

About ClickSoftware 
ClickSoftware (NasdaqGS: CKSW) is the leading provider of automated mobile workforce management and service optimization solutions for the enterprise, both for mobile and in-house resources. As pioneers of the “Service chain optimization” concept, our solutions provide organizations with end-to-end visibility and control of the entire service management chain by optimizing forecasting, planning, shift and task scheduling, mobility and real-time management of resource and customer communication. 

Available via the cloud or on-premise, our products incorporate best business practices and advanced decision-making algorithms to manage service operations more efficiently, in a scalable, integrated manner. Our solutions have become the backbone for many leading organizations worldwide by addressing the fundamental question of job fulfillment: Who does What, for Whom, With what, Where and When. 

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Gary Gulman is one of my favorite comedians and he tells a story about the magic of finding a $20 bill.  It makes any of us feel rich!  He goes to Chipotle and is asked if he wants to add guacamole to his order for an extra $1.75 and he throws it on without hesitation.  $20 can make us feel so wealthy we sling some guacamole as if it were unlimited and free, a powerful statement.  Are we really just working hard in hopes of a little more guacamole?  Perhaps.

The parable has an interesting parallel to the current state of the daily deals industry.  The market came along at the perfect time, providing great discounts during a few year period in which we all felt financially nervous.  Now that the economic recovery is well underway, we get a lot more confident in our future earning potential and give ourselves permission to spend a little more on the things we enjoy.  Most of us are not buying Porsches or vacation homes with this permission, but we make small decisions daily that give satisfaction even if the price isn’t quite as great as before.  We may not wait for the 50% discount to try out the new restaurant.  We may spend the extra $10 at the new kitchen store in town without needing the coupon to come into the store.  These are small, incremental buying decisions spread across millions of consumers that mean a lot to local merchants as the recovery builds.  

So what does this mean for the daily deals industry?  Will consumers stop waiting for a great deal across the board?  We don’t think so.  At SaveLocal we are seeing a couple of interesting trends that actually make us more bullish on the future of this industry.

1. Daily Luxury – As mentioned above, most of us are not buying up fancy sports cars just because we feel a little more confident in our prospects.  However, consumers are starting to trade up.  We are seeing the higher-priced offers from spas and med-spas, including microdermabrasion, Botox, and high-end massages, do really well these days.  A 33% discount on a $300 treatment is a luxury that was probably overlooked a couple years ago but is making a comeback with a stronger economy.  All are expensive enough that most folks probably aren’t going to buy them every week, but more and more are making the decision to invest in themselves once a month.  

2. Lower Discounts – We are also seeing more deals do well with lower discounts.  They might be 25% off a fantastic restaurant or 35% off a reputable retailer, but it doesn’t have to be 50% off any more.  That’s great news for local merchants, as it results in more profit in their pocket.  Any time the local merchant wins, we are happy.

3. More Campaigns – The trend toward lower discounts provides an opportunity for local merchants in two ways.  First, the decreased profit pressure allows them to run offers on more types of goods and services, including those with a lower margin.  And second, it opens up the types of campaigns they run to include both deals and coupons.  Many merchants who only offered a heavily discounted product or service in exchange for an advance purchase are willing to give more flexibility to the consumer when there’s less of a discount on the table. We are expecting this trend to continue as the economy continues its recovery.

As you can see, guacamole is apparently the leading indicator of the future direction of the daily deals space.  It is the perfect little upgrade into daily luxury that we can all afford.  Very little discount needed!

The deal is set to close during the second half of this year.

Tumblr users are not happy about to acquisition. Karp has also weighed in with his own announcement about the deal, emphasizing the same independence line: “We’re not turning purple,” he wrote:

“We’re not turning purple. Our headquarters isn’t moving. Our team isn’t changing. Our roadmap isn’t changing. And our mission – to empower creators to make their best work and get it in front of the audience they deserve – certainly isn’t changing.”

In addition, Karp explains that joining up with the “original Internet company,” will aide users in getting more resources to create the “ultimate creative canvas.”

Marissa Mayer, CEO of Yahoo, has decided to join the Tumblr fad by firing up her very own Tumblr account. She then posted a photo on her account to respond to all negativity.

Karp and Mayer are trying to convince everyone that they will not screw this up” – but there are plenty of business reasoning behind the acquisition.

- The merger give Yahoo access to younger users – Tumblr is strongest between 18-24.

- Yahoo wants Tumblr’s current 300 million monthly unique visitors, which is growing by 120,000 signups every day, “one of the fastest-growing media networks in the world” with 900 posts per second and 24 billion minutes spent on site each month.

- Yahoo wants to focus on mobile, which Tumblr already is strong in. More than half of Tumblr’s mobile users using the mobile app on an average of 7 sessions per day.

- Yahoo says it expects Tumblr to expand Yahoo!’s audience by 50% to more than a billion monthly visitors, and to grow traffic by approximately 20%.

Source: TechCrunch

To celebrate the app launch, Gilt is also kicking off a series of Android-exclusive mobile sales on the new app from Tuesday, May 28^th to Saturday, June 1^st. Members can also enjoy free shipping on all orders placed on the new Android app from May 28^th at 12pm EST to June 1^st at 11:59pm EST. 

Gilt for Android’s new features include: 

• All New Look & Feel: Every screen has been redesigned to reflect Gilt’s latest aesthetic, with sale images increased 5X in size to showcase beautiful visuals plus smoother navigation, making shopping on Gilt even faster, easier and inspiring.
• Better Performance: Gilt for Android now loads faster than ever before – and runs more smoothly, too, thanks to a new Backbone JS / HTML 5 framework that supports multiple browsers with a sleek, native-like experience.
• New Checkout Function: Gilt for Android’s new checkout function makes it easier – and faster – for members to complete their orders.

Gilt has seen tremendous success on mobile among its members each day, with more than 30% of overall revenue and half of the site’s daily traffic coming from Gilt’s existing apps and mobile site.

Gilt is also the only flash sale site that currently offers pre-shoppable mobile first looks and mobile exclusive sales on its apps for members to discover each day.

“We are thrilled to be introducing our newly redesigned Gilt for Android app to our members,” says Yonatan Feldman, Vice President of Mobile, Gilt.com. “Mobile is a crucial part of our business and is growing each day, and we always keep that in mind as we develop new and exciting ways for our members to shop. With the latest version of the app, Android customers will be able to access our daily sales and mobile-exclusive features even faster than before – anytime, anywhere.”

The Gilt for Android app is available for free from www.gilt.com/mobile/download.