Check out the Portland Mercury's story on Supportland, a "rewards card" program that promotes buying locally in Portland. The really interesting thing to me is how Supportland makes CRM-based marketing* accessible to small stores. That is SO COOL!
Supportland will offer its participating businesses access to software that allows them to create incentive programs. For example, if someone is a repeat customer, they get a free cookie. I am intrigued by the possibilities. For starters, will marketing data from multiple businesses be co-mingled? This could create a powerful treasure trove of behavioral and demographic data.
It sounds like Supportland is sensitive to privacy concerns, and will not be sharing customer names and addresses with businesses. This means incentives need to be offered in point-of-sale situations, a constraint that could give rise to considerable creativity. I will definitely be getting my hands on a card. I can't wait to see how it works in the real world. I hope to see businesses really putting this software into action for themselves.
*(CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management. In the non-profit world it is often referred to as Constituent Relationship Management. The idea is to track a particular individual's preferences, activities and demographic data, and to use that data to actively manage your relationship with them. Unfortunately many organizations collect a lot of data, but then don't do a great job of actually using it to analyze and create differentiated relationships with discrete constituent groups.)
2 comments:
Agreed that this is awesome. The privacy concerns are real, and so what I kick around in my head a lot is this: Giving fake zip codes at Old Navy's checkout counter in 1996 really felt like I was sticking it to the man (I just want some board shorts, bro!).
Am I pissed that West Elm emails me every week about "affordable" end tables that I can't afford because I COULD afford them four years ago? Well, it's annoying. Are the inevitable ads directed towards me via Hulu.com better because I responded to their question: "Is this ad relevant to you?". Yes.
That's just one example, but the experience of providing companies with just a smidgeon of personal info so that they can better market to you is actually kind of useful, and especially if it's benefiting smaller, local businesses with a heart, that's a win, I think.
Great article and I'm glad you're back.
I actually found a pretty good site called "chip-in" it allows people to donate to your cause via a few different methods.
Here is mine, as you can see I have zero donations, partially because I just started, and partially because everywhere I post this is considered "spam" and deleted. I figure here its legit since I'm sharing the link with other people looking for donation ideas :D. I think it would work very well if you had a popular blog (I don't).
http://vesatriptofijibenmckinley.chipin.com/trip-to-fiji
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