Below is live coverage of the Doing Check-ins & Offers Right panel from the SMX West 2012 conference. This coverage is provided by Avi Wilensky of Promedia Corp.
Disclaimer: The coverage is brought to you in real time, using a custom live blogging tool. Feel free to ask questions or leave comments for inclusion into the live coverage. During the live event, live notes will auto-scroll with newest entries at top. After the session is complete the archive version will have the oldest entries at the top. We ask you to please excuse any typos, as these are live notes.
Finished
Auto-Refresh: Off
Avi Wilensky:
3:27:07 pm
Moderator: Greg Sterling, Founding Principal, Sterling Market Intelligence (@gsterling)
Q&A Moderator: Chris Silver Smith, President, Argent Media (@si1very)
Speakers:
Rodney Hess, Account Manager, Search Influence
Daniel Lemin, Brand Consultant, Social Studio
Conrad Saam, Director of Marketing, Urbanspoon (@conradsaam)
Kate Salyers, Social Media & Digital Strategist, Towne Properties (@katesalyers)
Q&A Moderator: Chris Silver Smith, President, Argent Media (@si1very)
Speakers:
Rodney Hess, Account Manager, Search Influence
Daniel Lemin, Brand Consultant, Social Studio
Conrad Saam, Director of Marketing, Urbanspoon (@conradsaam)
Kate Salyers, Social Media & Digital Strategist, Towne Properties (@katesalyers)
Avi Wilensky:
3:33:29 pm
Kate Salyers starts off, will review case study for Towne Properties.
Avi Wilensky:
3:33:52 pm
Agenda: What & Why?, The Process, Case Study, Review
Avi Wilensky:
3:34:29 pm
What's in it for me? If you personally don't use it, your customers are.
Avi Wilensky:
3:35:02 pm
Can reward best customers, create specials, offer tips. Companies generally think of specials, not really tips.
Avi Wilensky:
3:35:40 pm
Give tips using your brand in nearby venues, good idea.
Avi Wilensky:
3:36:16 pm
23 checkins per second on 4sq, integrates with FB and TW.
Avi Wilensky:
3:37:20 pm
These are real time instant reviews of your business, need to be proactive to respond. Can't remove, but can rectify and acknowledge publicly.
Avi Wilensky:
3:37:47 pm
Using LBS - location based services. Identify goal, setup, establish, review.
Avi Wilensky:
3:41:21 pm
The process: Integration. Social media - share on FB and TW. Share with Yelp and FS friends. Search - SEO - venues rank, reviews rank.
Avi Wilensky:
3:44:11 pm
Bottom line - get involved, monitor, review and respond, innovative offers and tips, and have fun.
Avi Wilensky:
3:44:32 pm
Conrad from UrbanSpoon is up.
Avi Wilensky:
3:45:14 pm
4 case studies in restaurant industry of what worked and what didn't with deals and checkins.
Avi Wilensky:
3:47:36 pm
Sees a big shift from restaurants to travel. Reason for that is that deep discounts can help businesses in different ways. In food, dealing with incremental costs of 50-60% of overall cost structure. In travel, the incremental cost of having another person in the room of a hotel is minimal. Can offer big discounts on that. In restaurants, empty seats midweek is where the opportunities are.
Avi Wilensky:
3:50:43 pm
OpenTable spotlight - $25 for $50. Reservation required. Limited amount of deals. End up with coupon to redeem at restaurant. Launched in NY and Boston in Aug 2010. Added new cities the following quarter. As added new city, drove new interest. But interest wained. Both in numbers sold and sold per offer. People getting tired of emails with the deals. In 2011, canceled program. And stocked dipped during that time.
Avi Wilensky:
3:53:13 pm
Why? Tacky to bring a coupon into a fine restaurant. Limited control for restaurant to push people to empty time slots. Lots of diner deal fatigue. In Nov when they cancelled, Urban Spoon decided to try it. Realized that coupon was an issue, forced the user to go in an off peak hours. Results = not stellar. Problem - noone wants to eat at 5:30 on Tuesdays. No coupon = hard for restaurant to know who had the deal.
Avi Wilensky:
3:55:06 pm
Pirq: Seattle based startup around the smartphone. Location based, open app and find deals nearest you. Restaurants control speed of offers. Can customize the deal - 20-50% off, free to users, no coupons, on location checkin. Added COMMIT button - does nothing. Made them check in with a tag at the restaurant. Seem to be doing fairly well.
Avi Wilensky:
3:56:08 pm
Savored is doing very well. $10 for 30% off. Requires reservation. 635 restaurants. $2mil a month. Works because it resolves alot of problems. Seemless and invisible process. Financially comitted. Most important, no printed coupon.
Avi Wilensky:
3:58:10 pm
Rodney Hess is up. Has a case study.
Avi Wilensky:
3:58:40 pm
15 million 4sq users, half international.
Avi Wilensky:
4:00:22 pm
Goal: Increase brand awareness for a bar Oak. Created FB ads and targeted demographics. Built custom landing page. Well branded with Like button to get exclusive offers. Click would outline checkin specials.
Avi Wilensky:
4:01:35 pm
Created witty facebook posts with quotes to spur likes and comments. Most popular post was a video clip of Homer Simpson talking about alcohol.
Avi Wilensky:
4:02:30 pm
Most important goal is increase revenue. Met with owners, slowest night is midweek. Created 10% off bar tab on check in. Wednesday = slowest night - 50% any bottle of wine on a checkin, as many times as possible. Wanted competition among mayors of fourqsquare.
Avi Wilensky:
4:03:54 pm
Yelp emailed them about advertising on Yelp. Yelp was least succesful. Did not get all the data, bc not paying advertiser.
Avi Wilensky:
4:04:52 pm
With 4sq - fot a total 876 checkins, avg 46 checkins per month. 72% increase compared to monthly average. 22 people used the 10% off bar tab, 13 on wine deal.
Avi Wilensky:
4:05:57 pm
With FB: 1670 total likes in the beginning. In 30 days, got 118% increase in monthly average. Prior got alot of checkins got a 593% in monthly average. FB most used check in for this promo.
Avi Wilensky:
4:06:30 pm
R increase. Wednesays went from 1-2 servers to 2 full time, 167-200% increase in sales.
Avi Wilensky:
4:08:48 pm
Finally, Daniel is up. 4 Keys to Success.
Avi Wilensky:
4:11:21 pm
Avi Wilensky:
4:12:45 pm
Deal costs are around 50% of deal value. Push their clients to give 50% or more of retail. If you are a donut shop, sell a dozen for $8, Groupon would want you to sell it for $4, and Groupon takes $2. 20 cent profit. Not so great for profits but get name out.
Avi Wilensky:
4:13:21 pm
Do you want new or existing customers? Can you afford the deal you are offering? Can you ensure high quality deal delivery? What will you do with this new exposure? What is the lifetime value of your average customer?
Avi Wilensky:
4:16:05 pm
Using Twitter for coupons - works well for smaller business if can train staff to redeem it. Send out a tweet with a deal is a simple way to drive foot traffic. Especially day-part on an off peak time. No cost, but need Twitter following.
Avi Wilensky:
4:16:34 pm
For 4SQ the deals are free. Can go through bunch of options such as swarm special or mayor special.
Avi Wilensky:
4:17:57 pm
Maximize the sale. Income = good outcome. Get people to review, share their experience. Will help with SEO. Sign up for email list to remarket. Maximize value of effort.
Avi Wilensky:
4:19:16 pm
Whole Foods did a living social deal around Thanksgiving. If search for "whole food deal" the #7 result is the expired deal. Whether that matters or not, may help with reputation.
Avi Wilensky:
4:20:49 pm
Example of deals that resulted in bad Yelp reviews - tipping on full value, etc.
Avi Wilensky:
4:21:25 pm
Alternatives: Email list, PPC coupon codes, put promo on receipt to get customer back.
Avi Wilensky:
4:21:34 pm
Follow Daniel @social_studio
