Category: Thoughtgadgets

The 7 Levels of Loyalty Programs

One of the great ironies of marketing is that while organizations worry continually about customer loyalty, economists provide scant help in thinking through the levers of a loyalty program. The presumption of economic theory is that people conduct transactions rationally to maximum perceived value (profit) and minimize perceived pain (loss). So most marketers try to build loyalty by giving what they think is economic value (say, coupons or points programs) or using subscription agreements that maximize the pain of leaving.

But people aren’t purely rational. “Loyalty” goes far, far beyond the silly points programs or contractual switching costs that most marketers deploy. To understand the real levers, first consider that loyalty has two fundamental psychological levers: rationality and perceived fairness…

How to Mine the Upcoming Gold Rush of Wearable Data

Like early-1800s railroad engineers trying to figure out the optimal width for track gauges, gadget makers in the 2010s are frantically experimenting with wearable technology. Nike put a “+” sports sensor into sneakers. Google launched Glass heads-up eyeglass displays. Disney research labs has announced Touché, a technology that can turn any surface — clothing, water, your leather couch — into a touchscreen sensor. Reebok has headgear that tells football players when they’ve taken too big a hit. Wearable is the new gadget gold rush.

Some say it won’t happen. Humans will have to get comfortable walking around with tech, and there have been some stumbles in design (Bluetooth earpieces are still uncool, and Google Glass has yet to overcome the image of Robert Scoble wearing it in the shower). The convergence of humans with technology faces the barriers of evolutionary aversion, as we recoil from the Uncanny Valley of humanoid-looking creatures that aren’t really human, to the social barriers of us accepting our friends are with us but completely checked out.

But, like the locomotive, we believe you can’t stop this wearable train. ABI Research, which monitors such things, predicts seven types of wearable technology are coming: heads-up display glasses, cameras, clothing, healthcare monitoring, sports monitoring, 3-D motion detectors, and watches…

A Marketer’s Gameboard for Predictive Analytics

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What works best: Shorter or longer ad units?

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Why Did Tim Cook Launch the Apple Watch?

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Learn How Google Patented Crowd Personalization.

What can you do with a room filled with mobile? Read our report on Google’s effort to pull data on preferences up from a crowd.

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Most Online Video Ads are Unseen. Let’s Fix That.

A recent study found that 57% of all online video ads are not ‘viewable.’ Download our whitepaper showing 10 ways marketers can solve this puzzle.

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Learn The 7 Steps of Advertising Measurement

If you are a marketing executive facing the challenge of making advertising work, download our free whitepaper using the form at right to learn seven steps for improving ad campaign performance. We discuss how to prioritize marketing metrics; collect only the data most important in optimizing campaigns; and how to build a “forward-facing dashboard” that allows you to control future results.

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Redesigning Government to Meet Change.

Federal agencies are under more pressure than ever before. Ripples from the 2016 election, past recession, and changing audience needs make it harder than ever to plan for results. Here, we explain a new organizational theory that will help government agency managers structure teams and outside partners — to improve performance in today’s volatile world.

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