Notes From A Mobilized Marketer - Does It Pay For A Retailer To Offer Apple Pay?

It may not pay to carry Apple Pay. Twenty-eight retailers told Reuters that lack of access to data about customers and their buying habits is a key reason why they don’t accept Apple Pay. But an Apple rep told the news organization that it expects half of the top U.S. merchants to feature the service by the end of the year.

Meanwhile, Kantar says that only 13% of U.S. iPhone 6 owners have used Apple Pay. What has held the other 87% back? Not enough locations, not enough consumer education, not enough benefit? Something else? I say that it’s all of the above.

Tweet of the week – from Rebecca Lieb ‏@lieblink: Smart jeans that tell you if you gained weight? My stupid jeans have done this for years.

Facebook Messenger now lets you send friends a map with your location.

True or false, fellow Apple Watch owners - if I left it at home, I'd make a special trip to retrieve it. I'm in the false camp.

Consumers are willing to trade personal info for value, per Forrester. 41% for cash rewards, 28% for loyal points, 15% for a better consumer experience.

Walmart announced new mobile programs that include a geofence feature that alerts associates to gather pre-ordered merchandise, saving time for the customer.

Periscope now offers a map view of active broadcasts.

Yahoo reportedly paid at least $20 million to stream October's Buffalo Bills – Jacksonville Jaguars game.

BlackBerry settled a legal dispute with Ryan Seacrest's Typo Products.

Expedia's Spanish-language mobile web site is part of an initiative to test and learn.

What irony: Gogo launched a "generous" customer loyalty program for airlines, not paying users who suffer with the service.

Seventy-four percent of people 55 and over in America used the mobile Internet in 2014, a 14% jump from 2013: comScore.

Fifty percent of people uninstall a poor app, IBM says.

Notes From A Mobilized Marketer - Reaching The Toddler Through Devices

One in seven uses a mobile device for at least an hour a day by age 1, according to the Einstein Health Network. Additionally, a third touch or scroll the screen before walking or talking, per the Pediatric Academic Societies. Somewhere there is a marketing plan being developed to influence this group. It is probably happening in multiple somewhere’s.

I found wording worse than phablet and appsolutely - calling Apple Watch marketing wrist-y business.

Apple Watch diaries? Aren't we taking this a little too far, even for an Apple product?

A new version of Google Glass is coming soon, according to Luxottica’s CEO.

Last quarter, Microsoft had Surface revenue of $713 million. The iPad sold $9 billion over the same period. And that's with iPad and tablets in decline due to the popularity of larger smartphones.

Millennials are nearly twice as likely as Gen Xers to use a smartphone when car shopping, per eMarketer.

Mobile is now 73% of Facebook’s ad revenue. Also, the number of daily active users is now 936 million, up from 890 million at the end of 2014.

Tweet from Fortune Magazine: What businesses want from workplace wearables: happy customers. My reaction? Imagine that.

Judging by the Web, Google's new limited wireless service is either "game-changing" or a relative non-event. I’m glad that we figured that one out.

For first time, New York Times editors are choosing stories specifically for smartphone readers to be delivered via app.

Apple Pay has added more than 30 additional banks and credit unions. There are now more than 200 institutions included.

I keep seeing Promoted Tweets from a company selling two watches for $60. Hello, it's not a timepiece that we're after. Duh.

Over 3 billion hours are spent playing mobile games each week around the globe, according to the Global Games Initiative.

Notes From A Mobilized Marketer - Ikea Brings New Meaning To "Charge It"

While the idea is noble, I have two problems with Ikea’s furniture that wirelessly charges devices. First, there is more than one charging standard and many phones will stay dead. Second, would there not be an electrical socket (or two or three) near the furniture? Isn’t the need more outside the home and office?

Selfie sticks are no longer welcome at the Smithsonian. From a new policy edict: “We encourage museum visitors to take selfies and share their experiences — and leave the selfie sticks in their bags.”

Do you want more battery life for your Apple Watch? The Reserve Strap is like a Mophie but it runs $249.

A security firm said that it found pre-installed malware on the Xiaomi Mi 4 smartphone.

A thousand new smartphones are shipped every 21.8 seconds, according to The Economist.

Google's wireless service will only work with the Nexus 6, per the Wall Street Journal.

Samsung has lost its “Next Big Thing” marketing chief. He had a humongous budget, but certainly got his company's products noticed.

77% of millennials have mobile-banked within the past month. 52% have done so at least four times: Lightspeed FSG.

More than 40% of all time spent on TV properties is on mobile, per comScore.

Target says that mobile accounts for 40% of its digital orders.

The most valuable users are acquired via mobile ads between 9 a.m. and 1 p.m.: Fetch.

Mobile video ads will account for 26% of the U.S. video ad spend by end of the year, per eMarketer.

That Samsung Pay will be widely available is only part of the story of adoption. Consumers need education and assurance of security.

Almost 2 billion mobile phones were sold in 2014: Gartner. Google’s operating system was included on about 80% of all devices sold.

Notes From A Mobilized Marketer - How RadioShack's Mobile Strategy Led To Its Downfall

In doing research for my upcoming book, I learned that while many were too slow when it comes to mobile, RadioShack actually moved too fast. In 2009, it abandoned its core do-it-yourself customer in favor of mobility products.

"We completely pissed them off," Chief Marketing Officer Lee Applbaum said of the retailer's core DIY customers, who are (or now were) 55 year old Caucausian males with jobs or interest in engineering. "We had turned our back and were ignoring them. We had alienated the very consumer that had given us that core credibility in electronics."

As the mobility business grew, RadioShack’s core business fell from 38% of sales in 2009 to 32% in 2010. And despite going back to its roots, the drop continued all the way to bankruptcy.

More notes:

Thanksgiving was highest sales day during the holiday season for REI mobile properties. But Christmas Day saw the most traffic.

Just one-third of mobile users will buy apps in 2015, per eMarketer.

Tweet of the week from @BillGates – “Today, 2 billion people don’t have a bank account.  In 15 years they’ll be making payments with their phones”.

Only 47% of retail brands engage on Twitter when tagged in an @ mention, according to Brandwatch.

62% of consumers expect a brand to have a mobile-friendly website, 42% mobile app, 23% location-specific experience, says Forrester.

Tablet shipments fell 12% last quarter, its first-ever decline: Canalys.

Twitter says 36,048,635 tweets about the Super Bowl were viewed 2,500,732,548 times.

Apple Stores reportedly will be outfitted with safes to protect gold Apple Watches. No price has been given. Speculation centers on these being priced at several thousand dollars each.

Mobile will account for half of all U.S. digital commerce revenue within two years, per Gartner.

61% of mobile consumers want to call a business when making their purchasing decision, according to Marchex.

Facebook served 65% fewer ads last quarter but cost per ad was up 335%.

More than half a billion users only access Facebook from mobile.

Panera: 80% of mobile payments are from Apple Pay.

Meanwhile, Apple Pay is said to be coming to 200,000 vending machines, kiosks, paid parking, other self-serve locations.

Headline on TechCrunch - Microsoft Faces Stiff Mobile Challenge. Me - the things you learn on the net.

Starbucks' mobile app payments now represent 16% of all Starbucks transactions: Fast Company.

Last year, mobile apps generated the most revenue in Japan, South Korea and the U.S., says App Annie.

93% of all U.S. app downloads in 2014 were organic, down slightly from 95% in 2011 according to Flurry.

Notes From A Mobilized Marketer - From Coins To Bitcoin For NYC Meters

New York City is weighing bitcoin and Apple Pay for parking meters. I grew up there needing quarters to fill ‘em so I could put my dimes in the Zerox machine in the library. Despite what you see from my pretty website picture, I'm as old as dirt.

Facebook is now operating at a $10 billion revenue run rate from mobile, per industry analyst Chetan Sharma. Twitter and Yahoo also exceeded $1 billion in mobile revenue for 2014.

Also from Sharma, Amazon led in mobile commerce with over $15 billion in revenues from mobile.

Holiday SMS promotions by major retailers dramatically plummeted year over year, BDO said. One third of marketers asked went the text message route in 2013. Only 7 percent said they would do so in the just concluded shopping season.

Kodak is reportedly back at CES with a cell phone. Given how late it is entering the game, Kodak isn’t likely to even be in the picture by the end of 2015.

After a long break, I resumed using Twitterific recently. Since, I’ve been getting daily short-lived “connection errors” on my Mac. At that point, it loses its “ificness”.

Tweet of the week - @helpareporter was “looking for burlesque stars to give ‘regular’ women tips on performing their own private dances”. Two comments: that story again? And how does one define a regular woman?

According to the U.S. Department of Transportation, cellphones are involved in 1.6 million auto crashes each year.

In 2014, U.S adults spent 23% more time on #mobile during an average day than in 2013, says eMarketer.

Ericsson: "90% of the global population over 6 years old will own a mobile phone by 2020.

Companies that allow users to submit expenses via mobile have 28% shorter cycle times: Concur.

Jerry Jones, the owner of the Dallas Cowboys, is worth $3 billion and he still uses a flip phone, reports Business Insider. So does Indianapolis quarterback Andrew Luck.

Notes From A Mobilized Marketer - Facing 2015 Head On

Touch ID is so 2014. Among the advancements expected at next week’s CES 2015 are additional mobile applications that combine biometrics and selfies to enable authentication and access. Hoyos Labs unveiled one 12 months ago or about the last time we attempted to log into a site and remembered both our user name and password. A faceoff is ahead with more competition and innovation.

Smartphones and tablets accounted for more than a third of online sales on Christmas Day as well as 57% of all online traffic: IBM. Those are big jumps vs. previous years.

Also, iOS sales were 4X Android sales on Christmas. That is consistent with Thanksgiving and recent holiday seasons.

Amazon: sales made from its smartphone app doubled this year: nearly 60% of customers shopped on a mobile device. Cyber Monday remained its busiest mobile shopping day of the year, with customers ordering 18 toys per second.

35% had troubles holiday shopping on mobile devices (SOASTA) in what was called "early stages" for retailers.

Tweet of the week: from @ChrisPirillo: BREAKING NEWS: Santa can't be tracked for the rest of Christmas because he had to turn off his GPS to save battery.

From The Verge’s review of the BlackBerry Classic: "The only problem with the screen is that you can't fit a big enough line of coke on it."

Only 12% of ages 18-29 say television would be hard to give up, according to Pew.

While I was out shopping, zero attention was given to Apple Pay at Macy’s’ point of sale. No signage or discussion from clerk. That's no way to speed up adoption.

Meanwhile, Apple Pay launched at Walt Disney World on Christmas Eve. Disneyland comes on in in 2015.

It was great to hear from Apple that a package I sent was on a truck for delivery. Not so great was getting a 5 a.m. text about it. Common sense, no?

Headline: Consumer Interest In Apple Watch Has Been Steadily Declining Since September. Is that a surprise given that it’s not on sale?

I received several impersonal holiday email, including one from FreeConferenceCall.com. Touching.

70% of executives surveyed, more than in the previous four polls, agree that mobile technology use invades time between work and leisure, per CNBC’s Mobile Elite report. Six in 10 access business content via their mobile device over the weekend. 

Notes From A Mobilized Marketer - On The Joy of Giving A Selfie Stick

Sure, using a selfie stick makes you a dork, but one with a smile on your face. I bet tens of millions more could’ve been sold this season on street corners, outside the holiday recital, and anywhere that there is mistletoe or Santa Claus. Admit it, you bought one. Or should have.

Is this the last holiday season before our refrigerators send a message to our mobile or smartwatch that we are low on eggnog?

My belief is that after all these years and all the dollars spent, we have no idea how much data we need in our mobile plans.

Led by Whole Foods shoppers, Apple Pay accounted for 1% of digital payment dollars in November: ITG.

Tweet of the week is from eMarketer’s @noahelkin Anytime headlines mention #beacons in relation to boosting fast-food sales, I always assume they meant #bacon. Did Noah mean #iBacon?

32 million in the U.S. reportedly download more than 17 mobile apps a month. They are dubbed Mobile App Install addicts.

Half of shoppers research on mobile devices while in-store, say Forrester Research and SPS Commerce.

In the time that BlackBerry took to bring the new Classic, I've gotten around using one by changing to shorter emails on my iPhone. It as proven to be good enough. Are you in the same camp?

The problem with companies like Comcast is that they build no brand loyalty. After tons of trouble with them, they overbilled me. And then they got no slack.

From Yahoo: BlackBerry works with Boeing on phone that self-destructs. Me: No mobile entity is more qualified on self-destruction than BlackBerry.

41% of North American smartphone users are highly aware that their phones can be used as payment devices at retail counters, yet only 16% have done this: Accenture.

Notes From A Mobilized Marketer - Will "Text Neck" Be As Common As A Selfie?

A text neck “epidemic" due to excessive lowering of the head to look at our mobile phones? A medical researcher told the Washington Post that “it is an epidemic or, at least, it’s very common.” The web and Twitter went wild with the hype. Most of us read it with our heads down.

22% of men made a purchase on their smartphones last year, compared to 18% of women, per SeeWhy. Will that change this holiday season?

Square says the company will begin accepting Apple Pay next year.

Stop the madness – I heard a new mobile term “beacosystem” for players in campaigns involving beacons.

Another “say it ain’t so” mobile finding– Motorola says that spice isn’t just for your pumpkin latte anymore. MotoX has spice colored backs.

1 in 10 mobile ad impressions in retail leads to a store visit: iAd.

People are now spending more time with mobile devices than with television, according to Flurry.

Not just for newbies: 76-year-old retailer Nebraska Furniture Mart has deployed beacons.

Holiday web spending will rise 16%, comScore projects, with mobile growing 25%.

100% adoption of mobile payments? Ha. The day that there are no bank tellers.

ESPN has 94 million unique users via mobile — 76% of its digital users come through phones, tablets; 40% through apps, and 17% through ESPN Fantasy Football.

19% of shoppers plan to increase Cyber Monday shopping despite shipping costs and online security concerns: Kelly Scott Madison Holiday Shopping Study.

Over 50% of YouTube viewing happens on mobile.

Google is now highlighting mobile friendly websites in search results.

90% of the global population will have a mobile phone by 2020, says Ericsson.

Target has included product inventory search functionality into its mobile app.

In 2015-2016, the percentage of digital travel researchers using mobile will rise from 54.6% to 62.2%: eMarketer.

97% of fantasy football players make weekly changes to their teams using a mobile phone or tablet, according to Thinknear.

53% of Thanksgiving Day online shopping will take place via mobile: IBM. Because we’ll be too bloated to move to our computers?

Is Convenience Without Loyalty Enough For Businesses To Want Apple Pay?

I realize that you might find this hard to believe, but it is my wife who is the actual jokester in the family.

Impossible, you say. Nah.

Here’s an example:

Her take on Apple Pay to explain how an expensive handbag may soon make its way into our house:

“What if I’m in the Louis Vuitton section of Nordstrom and my phone just happens to swipe?”

Of course, the technology doesn’t work that way. Thankfully.

Education is a big hurdle for Apple Pay and other mobile payments services with questions around everything from how the process works to how secure the transaction will be. Small and medium-sized businesses wonder, too, how available it will be for them in the near future.

Among the most interesting aspects of the Apple Pay rollout is the pushback by some retailers who have loyalty worries on their minds.

In a Bloomberg Businessweek story titled Apple Pay Is Too Anonymous for Some Retailers, http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-10-20/apple-pay-is-too-anonymous-for-panera-starbucks-and-other-retailers#r=read, a Panera Bread executive said that Apple’s new service is too impersonal.

As the magazine reported, “Apple Pay, with its built-in anonymity, won’t eliminate the need to swipe a loyalty card or give the cashier a phone number. ‘Obviously, that’s not where we want to be,’ says Blaine Hurst, Panera’s executive vice president for technology and transformation. ‘Why can’t I just walk up to a cashier with my phone and all that information magically appears?’”

Not to be left out at the launch, Panera decided to be an Apple Pay merchant despite its concerns about what the new service is supposedly missing – personalization that rewards loyalty.

Study after study tells us that the modern-day technology user wants personal experiences.

Personalized emails improve click-through rates by an average of 14% and conversation rates by 10% (Aberdeen Group).

Nearly 75% of online consumers get frustrated with websites when content (e.g. offers, ads and promotions) appears that has nothing to do with their interests (Harris Interactive).

What we don’t know is whether consumers will trade a personal, loyalty-driven experience for a speedier one. And that’s provided that they get over any concerns that they may have about privacy and where individual purchase data may or may not go.

As stated in the Bloomberg Businessweek story, the world’s largest retailer, Wal-Mart Stores, is rejecting Apple Pay altogether. It has said it has no plans to accept Apple’s payments, and is working on its own system developed by Merchant Customer Exchange, or MCX, in conjunction with a handful of other big merchants.

MCX and Wal-Mart declined to discuss their reasons for not working with Apple Pay. Analysts told the publication that the primary reason for the parallel effort is to make sure that merchants retain control of the relationship with their customers.

As of now, ApplePay is unavailable to many merchants, including those small and medium-sized businesses on Main Street. If, and when that changes, entities of all sizes will get to decide if Apple Pay pays for them – and their customers.

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This post was brought to you by IBM for Midsize Business and opinions are my own. To read more on this topic, visit  IBM's Midsize Insider. Dedicated to providing businesses with expertise, solutions and tools that are specific to small and midsized companies, the Midsize Business program provides businesses with the materials and knowledge they need to become engines of a smarter planet.

Notes From A Mobilized Marketer - Do Your Customers Practice "Click and Mortar"?

There are supposed mega dollars in same-day delivery, enough for Amazon, Google and others to make it a large emphasis. Among the hurdles is so-called "click and mortar”.  Who does that? As an example, 15% of target.com orders are picked up onsite with 80% being fulfilled within an hour.

Another behavior to keep an eye on with the same retailer - mobile app usage has increased 50% since Target rolled out in-store Wi-Fi.

A tweet I saw says that “cool kids buy shoes covered in poop”. It’s more evidence that Twitter is the land of never-ending learning. Aren’t you glad that I didn’t feature this one in the lead paragraph and accompany it with a picture?

About the argument about too many messages – a second one via beacons incents American Eagle Outfittter customers to try on clothes. The percentage who visited the fitting room area to try on clothes was more than double for those who received a beacon-enabled incentive offer versus for those users that did not.

Worldwide mobile device sales will hit 2.4 billion unit this year, Gartner says.

Starbucks “order-ahead” app will begin a test in Portland.

Retailers accepting Apple Pay at launch this week is a who's who. That was one of the battles. Customer usage is next.

Mobile will account for 44% of the programmatic ad spending this year, up to 56% next year, per eMarketer. The same source forecasts mobile ad spending to overtake desktop ad spending by 2016.

Fifty percent of marketers don't have a full understanding of their customer journey, according to an ANA/McKinsey study.

The "sweet" story of Bill Murray's recent first smartphone purchase of a BlackBerry couldn't be a paid endorsement, could it? Nah.

A tweet from Apple executive Craig Federighi – “News that Google will announce their new Nexus Tablet on Wed.  Hope they've got the 248 units they'll need  for opening weekend sales.” Ouch.

The mobile-only newspaper audience has doubled in the past year, eMarketer tells us.

We'll have zero bank tellers the same day we have a world with no cash. Never. There are no absolutes.