Newspapers have local brand credibility and content; agencies have media expertise; and neither of them do especially well selling SMBs on today's social-infused media options. That's the challenge being addressed by Speakeasy, a new local social service being owned in…
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.…
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…
Well, another shoe has dropped in the U.S. directories market. This morning Dex One and SuperMedia announced plans to merge, creating an an entity called Dex Media with roughly $3.1 billion in revenue, based on 2011 results. Dex shareholders will…
This week we caught up with Yodle CEO Court Cunningham to talk about how his company uses data and technology to gain insights that help improve results and drive down customer acquisition costs. Cunningham will be a featured speaker at…
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…
On last week's Q2 earnings call, local online marketing firm ReachLocal emphasized how its international expansion will fuel its growth. Plus the company offered a glimpse into its efforts to expand into smaller U.S. markets via telesales. ReachLocal has long been among the…
A study commissioned by YP Holdings (formerly AT&T interactive and AT&T Ad Solutions) has concluded that phone calls generated from listings distributed on YP.com and its Local Ad Network outperformed those sourced from Google Ad Words, as measured by cost…
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…
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…
Facebook investor and press events have become spectacles unto themselves, where distilling signal from noise is a tricky task. But that's what we'll flesh out here in the aftermath of the company's first earnings call post-IPO...a call that featured an…
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…
Though BIA/Kelsey's LCM 15 survey suggests that SMBs are still sluggish to adopt mobile websites (fewer than 10 percent) or other forms of mobile marketing, we believe mobile momentum will finally accelerate as business owners' personal comfort with the device…
