MasterCard has dived feet first into the card linked loyalty battles with the acquisition of Truaxis. The company should prove to be an anchor for MasterCard Offers Services, where it has partnered with Local Offer Network and others. Formerly known…
In the loyalty space, we're closely watching how major tech players are vertically integrating loyalty offerings into their SMB product suite. Google, Facebook and Amazon each have acquired loyalty startups and will likely make them part of their SMB suite.…
We're putting the final flourishes on our SMB Digital Marketing conference Sept. 17-19 in Chicago, and they are big ones: top SMB decision makers for Google and Facebook, plus Entertainment.com CEO Dean DeBiase. These headliners are being added to 37+…
A big milestone was reached last week when Bank of America launched its BankAmericaDeals loyalty and rewards product to many of its 59 million customers. The launch of the product, a partnership with Cardlytics, suggests a coming of age for…
In a reflection of the industry's ongoing interest in developing SMB promotional and loyalty services, Yodle founder Nate Stevens' venture fund announced last week that it is putting $1.7 Million into Punchey, a new mobile-oriented payments and promotions platform. The…
Trulia, which provides real estate Web and mobile leads, display advertising and real estate-oriented social media services, has followed in the footsteps of its rival, Zillow, and issued an S1 in preparation for going public and raising $75 Million. Zillow's…
A major feature of the current crop of loyalty and rewards programs is that they link to credit card or debit card accounts. This gives them the ability to process transactions and provide deeper analytics. But a number of players…
The SMB Digital Marketing conference in Chicago Sept. 17-19 is truly shaping up to be a cutting-edge event. This week, we've added a number of top speakers to program that already includes such featured speakers as Alfred Mockett, CEO, Dex…
When eBay purchased Jack Abraham's Milo.com in December 2010, it caused some head scratching. While retail Inventory is helpful to track goods availability and has some value in developing location-based promotions, it seemed an unlikely anchor for eBay's SMB and…
The card-linked loyalty and rewards space is seen by a lot of the smart money as the next Groupon. Today, we saw new money being poured into FiveStars ($13.9 Million), LevelUp ($9 Million) and LocalBonus ($900,000). The companies have now…
Expensive ad agency solutions regularly push video and rich media ad campaigns into six figures. AdReady, Mixpo and others have used templates, stock footage, networks and other solutions to bring the cost down. How about crowd sourcing the creative? Genius…
Google is adding Wildfire to its social-oriented suite of business services, paying "about $250 Million," according to a source cited by The Wall Street Journal. The San Francisco-based company provides social media analytics for 16,000 customers, ranging from large SMBs…
Our inaugural SMB Digital Marketing event keeps building and building. We’re being welcomed to Chicago for the Sept. 17-19 event by Mayor Rahm Emanuel, and have already announced key speakers, including Dex One CEO Alfred Mockett, Constant Contact CEO Gail…
We’ve calculated that more than $287 Million has been invested in more than 20 transaction marketing players. The investment reflects the inherent opportunities in transaction marketing, which is a synergistic mash of loyalty programs, offers, reputation management and the "big…
What happened to the theory that Facebook Credits would become a universal virtual currency, competing against the likes of PayPal and others? Facebook very quietly closed the program down a few weeks ago, reverting to a more standard model that…
We never get tired of saying it: SMBs represent the biggest marketing segment and the greatest opportunity in the local arena. We’ve watched the Yellow Pages evolve quickly to reflect this reality; and everyone else joining in: Groupon, Google, Facebook…
As major players such as Google, Groupon, LevelUp and Square position themselves as next generation payment processors, the role of banks and other financial institutions in the emerging payment is a little unsettled. The financial institutions are potential giants here --…
Two schools of thought have broken out about loyalty programs. The first is to build a collective currency for points or other loyalty incentives that can be used anywhere in the network. This is the approach taken by players such…
Amazon has reportedly purchased UpNext, the five-year-old, 3-D mapping and directory service that now provides "clickable building"-oriented maps for more than 50 cities, including 23 that are enhanced in depth. The service has experimented with a number of features, including…
Mobile ads are taking off but mobile specific technology, such as LAT/Long and GPS, sometimes gets messed up when the data are transferred from publishers, said panelists participating at MLM San Francisco today. Lots of networks provide Wichita, Kansas, as…
