Phone coupons rock

Why not non-printed coupons you can use on your phone? Can you use your iPhone, Blackberry or Andrioid and just get discounts without printing anything out?

In the future when you add products to your shopping list like milk, soup, bread, cheese, or pasta,  you can scan a bar code with your phone and have it show up on your phone list. It could also sync with someone else’s list and even compare prices at other stores. You’ll be able to do all sorts of other entry mechanisms and, digitally check items off your list as you shop.

If there’s a coupon for the product just print it right to your printer, wirelessly off your phone. Some stores are working on systems so can drop the coupon right onto the stores frequent shopper card. Many Restaurants, big box retailers, and consumer retailers already allow you to show a bar code on your cell phone or show a code number to have the coupon keyed in at the register. If retailers want to keep the line moving they need to find ways to integrate with their technology. Some systems are working toward identifying your phone with bluetooth or wifi to automate the application of the coupons.

Get ready – change is coming fast as more stores embrace the use of smart phones for shoppers. 

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Foul Language

Do you have a family and want to control what your children are exposed to in the media.  Satellite and cable has some controls but common foul language has become a part on the media.  Try to watch a military or cop show without cussing.    Not that I am a prude but many times when I try to watch a movie, and I love movies, bad language takes away from my experience.

 

Well a device has been updated that promises to remove foul language from broadcast TV, movies and DVD’s.  It’s called TVG.  I had one of their early models years ago. But I was not able to use it HD TV.  Well it’s back, and now it works with new TV standards. It mutes the bad words in the audio, and pops up a closed caption of the missing dialogue without the offensive words.  You can configure the unit from strict to light filtering, and even filter religious and sexual references. Filtering out the bad words is not for everyone but with 12 million TVG’s sold, perhaps there is a market. The foul language filter concept is not new but now this unit works with HD video and even 1080p.  I just ordered mine. See it in action below:

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85% emotion

Did you know 85% of all brain activity is emotional.  That is why we must engage people on an emotional level with marketing.  I have a saying, “I want to spend time with people that have the hang factor”.  That is to say people who are fun and engaging. I will pass on hanging out with negative aggravating people.

In addition our brains use a lot of their power focusing on images, especially peoples faces.  We have learned how to subconsciously read faces since we were an infant.  That is why it’s important to choose the right model or spokesperson and if they can not communicate the message correctly the viewer will know.  For example, if the video actor forgets their line for a split second, the viewer will feel the fear and it may make the message ineffective.

Are your marketing efforts engaging?  If not you are wasting your money!

Here is a great book on the subject: Emotionomics: Leveraging Emotions for Business Success by Dan Hill D.V and Sam Simon

Last season on Fox there was a show called “Lie to Me”.  If you saw the show – you know a bit about what I am saying.

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Go Green Foot Power!

Do you have lots of gadgets?  I do. When on two wheels I carry my phone, tunes and GPS.  So, what about batteries?

Here’s a device that charges your electronics as you ride.  It uses Flintstone power to power what ever devices like your bullhorn, electric flyswatter or your iphone. It’s German and called the e-werk.  I have not tried i,t but what a great idea. It looks more durable than a solar panel for your wheels.

e-werk website

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Make that sale!

When you want to target the sale of specific items … offer an incentive. Subway has the five dollar footlong and boosted their lunch business.

Let’s say you want to sell a case of product instead of a smaller quanity of the item. Why not offer free shipping or some other perk on the purchase of a case? If they buy less, don’t offer it!.

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Is your e-mail delayed?

Let me speak to this, we host several hundred  websites and it seems like every week somebody writes me and says “my e-mail is bouncing.” The message sender got a message back that says “your e-mail has been delayed because of grey listing.” What is grey listing? It stops about 80% of our spam! It’s a good thing.

Here is a simple definition of Grey listing: it’s a method of defending against spam. A recipients mail server “temporarily rejects” any email from a sender it does not recognize. If the mail is legitimate the originating server will, after a delay, accept this email.Valid email gets delivered. If the mail is from a spammer that sends to many thousands of email addresses, delivery will probably not be retried resulting in spam being blocked and good mail delivered.

 

So, when you send an e-mail to someone and you get a message back that mentions “delayed” and “grey listing” don’t get upset. Your e-mail will most likely be received. Remember it’s blocking spam to your recipient and it doesn’t mean your e-mail bounced.

See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greylisting

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Iron Wins

I saw Iron Man last night with a couple of friends. This movie is just full of one-liners. It is a good balance of funny human moments and dramatic sci-fi comic book adventure.

Are you one that sits and watches all the credits at the end of the film. I do. The sound design was amazing. So many scenes in this movie would have failed without good audio design. I was surprised at how many digital special effects people were listed in this film, quite a crew. A truly amazing film.

Social Media Sells!

Social media works! After several weeks of trying to build a fan base on Facebook we had 500 followers. Then this site went viral! In one day we had 30,000 visitors and generated 20,000 orders for our customer.

Why? Mommy bloggers were added to the mix. Consider adding blogs to your mix when trying to build traffic and a fan base.

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Don’t have time for it or is Social Media a fad?

I still run into people who don’t have time for social media or think it’s a fad.  How about you – still not a believer … watch this!

 

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Why update to Office 2010?

I use Microsoft Office apps everyday.  I am currently running Office 2007 and it’s been three years since it was released.  So why will I upgrade? If you use Microsoft web apps it will integrate your work flow.

But the biggest improvement to me will be with Outlook and it’s new “conversation view” that ties all email conversations together.  The idea of showing all related messages in a thread appeals to me because I struggle with making sense of my email workspace. In addition there are lots of other little things that will rock my email world.

 

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