New Profile Designs for LinkedIn

Not too shabby.  I thought the site could use a refresh.  I'm happy that the focus of a user profile is going the direction of 'the person' as opposed to 'the resume'.  There's a much cleaner aesthetic to the design that I think many people will like.

The photo has been given more prominence, as has the number of connections someone has.  It's annoying that the giant blue button for "improve your profile" still appears, even if the system says that you're at 100% completeness.  Oh well...

Canadian Innovations in Payment

This is a web-friendly version of a presentation for the Canadian Innovations in Payment Conference. My talk is about leveraging technology to attract and retain customers using various tactics, platforms and approaches.

I also dive a little bit into what customers are like these days, the tech they're using and how psychology plays an important role.

Many of the speakers will be tackling the highly changing and complex world of mobile payments and what's involved in accepting them from a merchant or bank perspective.  I took a different approach and decided to look at some of the things that happen before, during and after the payment that can affect customer loyalty, retention, engagement and long-term customer value.

If you attended the presentation and want to connect on LinkedIn, feel free to find me here, or follow me on twitter.

McDonald's Canada and old school loyalty

McDonald's Restaurants of Canada Ltd is doing an interesting thing in Kitchener-Waterloo, Ontario and some other locations with its McCafé Coffee Loyalty Program.  I'm not sure if it's a test, a pilot, a powerful franchisee with a penchant for old-school tactics, but they have an 'on cup' loyalty program that must have taken some significant effort to implement. It's in Edmonton,AB, KW/Cambridge/Guelph, and Atlantic Canada.

One side of the cup has a fancy sticker (pretty sure all sizes have the stickers) and the other side of the double walled cup has a 'pull-out' perforated oblong loyalty card.  As per the picture above, you simply take the sticker, stick it, and collect 7 for a  free medium hot drink.

And now the real question---  Why ?

This kind of program is elaborate from a production standpoint, having to make special McCafe Loyalty cups with extra steps for stickers, perforations, etc.  They could have done a separate card and done the stickers like their monopoly execution, but they've gone this route.  Ok. Fine.

Applying Bartle's Player Types to Customer Loyalty Design

Richard Bartle is a British writer, professor and game researcher.  He is a pioneer in game design and was instrumental to the  popularity of Massively Multiplayer Online games.  He's the author of Designing Virtual Worlds and is credited with inspiring the Bartle Test, an online questionnaire that determines a gamer type based on a number of criteria.

The Bartle Test of Gamer Psychology, or simply 'Bartle Test', lumps people into four categories: Explorers, Socializers, Achievers and Killers. Lucky for us, those nicely line up with the four suits in a deck of cards, so we can easily follow a design description that works for Achievers (♦ Diamonds), Explorers (♠ Spades), Socializers (♥ Hearts),  and Killers (♣ Clubs).

As intuitive as the four categories are, we still need a basic understanding of the player types before we compare them to a customer in the midst of a brand loyalty engagement. As well, understanding how a Bartle Player-type applies in a single vs. multi-player situation is also relevant to how a customer would interact with others within a program.

SoLoMoDaCo - Say it with me.

Social
Local
Mobile
Data
Commerce.

Your Social Graph + your Location with relevance + accessed via Smart phones or Tablets using apps or mobile websites yields Data and insights that drives commerce: SoLoMoDaCo.

This is a new way of easily looking at an idea or strategy and evaluating whether it hits the highlights of the new digital world.

Is it Social?

Does it have a location element or use mapping, GPS or on-site technology (like Shopkick) to pinpoint a users physical location and thus drive relevance for that user?

Is it accessible via portable platforms like smartphones, tablets, e-readers or other devices?

What real-time data is being produced?

How can it be monetized?

Will "Solomodaco" become the next sexy buzz word?  Probably not, but I'm going to use it in a few presentations I think.

How Apple will reach $1 Trillion.

Valued at around $500 Billion today, Apple certainly is doing well for itself.  Lot's of iPads, iPods and iPhones continue to roll out of Foxconn in China and into the hands of the masses worldwide.  Including China.

That's where it started. Where it'll end up is somewhere amazing. I predict as soon as NFC is added to iDevices rolling off the line, the Apple ecosystem for payments, loyalty and other channels will be firmly in the clutches of Tim Cook and co.

Think about this:

Banks want to own mobile payments, but can't because they hate risk, are laggards in technology and can't innovate.

Digital Loyalty Data for CPG

Lumping CPG companies together, across different categories, can blur a lot of what makes each category unique. The difference between Baby Care and Ready-to-Eat cereal is staggering-- when you're deep into it, but from the surface, these are all categories that are getting tossed in the same baskets at the same retailers by roughly the same customers.

So how do you leverage Data and Customer Experience to drive loyalty?

The Illogical nature of a gift card

You can't think of what to buy.  You know you want to spend $50.  You buy a gift card to a store you know they like.  Perfect right?  Nope.

If you have to spend that money, either buy an actual gift with a gift receipt (like a gift card, except bigger) or give cash.  Why?  Well, I've explained it a few times here, and here, but the gist of it is this:  You're admitting failure.  You're saying "I can't think of something meaningful, but I will have the balls to tell you where to spend my money".   That's not a thoughtful gift, that's formula.  They do, so I must do.

What about this:  Donate the $50 to a charity in their name?  Send/Give them a nice card with all the things that $50 is going to do or the number of people it's going to feed over Christmas. That's sweet and thoughtful.

Also-- if you are going to give someone cash, why do the bills have to be new and crisp and right from the bank?  The person you give them to is going to A) Spend them, at which point, it won't matter if they're creased or dirty or B) Deposit them back into the bank, which of course will take the dirtiest of money anyway...  

One last thing--- Never get those Visa Vanilla Gift Cards.  They have all the drawbacks of a regular gift card with the added benefit of an activation fee...  GIVE CASH!