A review of using Foursquare and Gowalla for marketing

Earlier this year I wrote about my experience of using Foursquare. We also posted a summary of 5 Foursquare campaigns to inspire you and Dan has a useful infographic on the popularity of the mobile checkin - which is at the core of these tools. I'm now sharing the business opportunities of two similar location based marketing tools; Foursquare and Gowalla. For me, location-based marketing tools are ideal if you’re a venue or destination for eating out. Perfect for tourist locations. They’re not really suited for general businesses and they are also a bit of a game. Designed as geo-social networking tools and a form of online loyalty card, users access Foursquare and Gowalla from their smartphone and when they arrive at a specific destination, they 'check in'. Foursquare has made it harder to check in unless you’re…
While we're hearing a lot about mobile apps this year, it's rare to hear about the potential of the more primitive text message, but now integrating with location and mobile apps. So, I thought I'd share this case study from the O2 UK network service More since it shows there seems to be good demand from consumers if the offer and relevance is right. I say this since O2 recently reported that it has reached 2 million subscribers of which half have been added in the last 6 months.  This is how signup is achieved: And these are the type of offers - it will look familiar if you've seen Groupon!

Mobile messaging campaign examples

O2 give these two examples which show what personalisation can deliver: StarbuckA campaign for Starbucks, using a mixture…

The now ubiquitous and copied Like button just got a sibling - the Send button. One word for this simple addition by Facebook - nice, in fact very nice (OK, that's two words).

Facebook announced this new feature over the Easter weekend in its developer blog with a neat travel marketing example. Typically the button lives next to a Like button at the beginning or end of a page or post. It's purpose is, of course, to let you share content that you are reading or watching directly with specific contacts or to a Group. It's like the "Send to a Friend" or "Forward to a Friend" which has been used for years to make emails more viral. So you could say Facebook has an even stronger viral effect now since these are direct recommendations to an individual or group. If you look at the screen grab below (from Mashable in this case)…

A reminder of the latest changes to Google Analytics for non-specialists

This update page is intended to help anyone who uses Google Analytics, but not day-in day-out! It's also a reminder for me when giving training courses to highlight what's new. I subscribe to the Google Analytics Blog feed to keep up-to-date and other related ones like Webmaster Tools. There are quite a few detailed posts that don't make so much difference to most users and are more for interest of GA specialists working on it all the time.

New Google Analytics version 5 - Now available to All Users - 20th April 2011

Importance: [rating=5] Our commentary: You may have missed this announcement over the Easter break that all users of Google Analytics can now try the new version without signing up for the best programme. To see the new interface just log-on and select "New Version":