Official Blog of GTM360 Marketing Solutions
President Barack Obama’s credit card got declined in a New York restaurant. Because, to quote Obama himself, “…I guess I don’t use it enough, so they thought there was some fraud going on.” While this is the most high profile example of predictive analytics going awry, it’s not the first, and it certainly won’t be … Read more
As soon as I opened The Inner Circle, Brad Meltzer’s novel about the presidential spy ring Culper Ring, on my B&N Nook Color, I noticed that it had 977 pages. Which is quite a lot for the average paperback. I’m no stranger to big books – Texas by James A. Michener, Exodus by Leon Uris … Read more
Like many, I’ve long held that nothing is broken with plastic cards for instore payments and made the case for mobile wallets to stick to gift, loyalty, ID and other forms of non-payment cards (see Mobile Wallets Should Fix What’s Broken – And It Ain’t Payments). Until I read this line about Apple Pay: “Every … Read more
Looks like mobile has started impoverishing publishers, too, since I wrote Will Mobile Impoverish Bloggers? two years ago. Smartphones and tablets are causing trouble for publishers for more reasons than one: Their smaller displays support fewer ads People have a lower propensity to click ads on mobile (unless they’re like the nicely obfuscated Google Ads but … Read more
Security increases friction. That’s not news. I’ve myself written many blog posts – click here, here and here – on this perennial tradeoff involved in payments. However, I recently found a new security measure that actually creates new sources of vulnerability. Ironic but true. Since December 2013, India’s central bank RBI has made it mandatory … Read more
Since I wrote Loyalty Or Disloyalty Programs? and Beware Of Losing Sales With Bad Loyalty Programs, a couple of companies have used mobile technologies in very innovative ways to design loyalty programs that truly foster loyalty. But Shopper’s Stop is not one among them. The pioneer of India’s organized retail industry recently introduced a mobile app variant of its … Read more
I recently went through two omnichannel experiences, one that started well but went downhill thereafter, and another that was a disaster right from the beginning. Before I deep dive into my experiences, here’s a quick working definition of omnichannel: Omnichannel is where a single business process is deliberately split across multiple channels so that each … Read more
Advances in Big Data, Internet of Things and other technologies are contributing to an ever-increasing deluge of information in today’s digital world. Not surprisingly, analytics has once again become a hot topic. But I sometimes wonder if there’s such a thing as “too much analytics”. I’m not referring to “analysis paralysis” where no action results … Read more
In Mobile Wallets Should Fix What’s Broken – And It Ain’t Payments, I’d highlighted why paying with plastic cards comes naturally to most people and why mobile wallets are not offering any compelling reason for people to switch to them instead of continuing to use plastic cards for their everyday payments. I’d also pointed out in … Read more
In a world that’s awash with exuberant projections in 2022 for products that are not yet launched in 2013 – no, I’m not just looking at you, ISIS – GigaOm injected a touch of reality by providing some actual figures for mobile wallet payment volumes: US$ 500M in USA last year (Source: GigaOm / Berg … Read more