Lithium partners with Zuora for new online customer community

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Following three months in soft launch Lithium Technologies has announced that it has created an online community for Zuora, a provider of subscription billing, commerce and finance solutions.

The online community, which launched in January, allows more than 700 subscription businesses that use Zuora peer-to-peer support as well as access to Zuora employees and partners in order to receive answers to questions. They are also able to provide direct...

15 April 2016 | Customer Experience

Zizzi embraces gamification for latest branding initiative

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Italian restaurant chain Zizzi has embraced the concept of gamification for the second year running to deliver a new loyalty and promotional campaign that allowed customers to compete for food and holiday prizes and the chain to radically increase its marketing database. The campaign attracted 22,000 new customer names to the brand.

Zizzi ran an eight-week online board game promotion in association with 3radical Voco, which users could access through a...

14 April 2016 | Branding

How beacons combines experiential and engaging marketing to be a win-win for brands

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Beacons present a unique, cheap and simple way to identify a consumer is in a location at a point in time.  This allows promotions and incentives to be targeted not only on customer segment but on location, time and inventory. 

With connected devices becoming increasingly sophisticated, and consumers becoming more empowered, brands must consider how they are going to evolve their promotions and incentives schemes; and include the use of beacon...

25 September 2015 | Advertising Technology

Manchester United and HCL Technologies partner for digital transformation

Picture credit: MarketingTech

Manchester United has announced a 'digital transformation' partnership with HCL Technologies to analyse and enhance the relationship with the club's 650 million strong global fanbase.

The two organisations will create a United Xperience innovation lab, housed within United's Old Trafford stadium, which will essentially become an incubation pod for creating a unified fan experience and increasing engagement through building digital...

3 September 2015 | Data-driven marketing

The evolution of social commerce

(Image Credit: iStockPhoto/Rawpixel)

 ‘Commerce’ before it was ‘social’?

If you can remember the first retail websites in the mid ‘90s they were pretty boring, nothing more than online versions of printed brochures that took ages to download on your dial-up modem. It wasn’t until companies like Pegasus, eBay and Amazon identified the potential of ecommerce to disintermediate traditional retail, that shopping was forever changed. But that was...

20 March 2015 | Commerce

Multi-device marketing’s reach moves to embrace wearable users

Advertisers can now tap into the growing market for wearable technology using FitAd, a recently launched wearable advertising platform for fitness and health-oriented brands and publishers.

Engagement on mobile health software is higher than almost all other categories of apps, making it a market ripe for advertisers. Nielsen’s own evidence points to 46 million users of apps averaging 16 uses each month for a period totalling one hour per engagement.

New York-based...

17 December 2014 | Advertising

Microsoft tries to gain back Windows 8 ad trust with Ad Pano

Nearly two months ago I’d written an article on our sister site DeveloperTech how Windows 8 developers were not being paid for their in-app advertisements, and how it was affecting their finances. Now Microsoft could be trying to restore trust and rival Apple’s “iAds” with Ad Pano.

The platform which enables this new interactive advertising is even reminiscent of the iAd platform, but available on any screen where Windows 8 is installed.

Availability...

24 June 2013 | Advertising

Microsoft rewarding users for watching TV? Count me in!

From Microsoft’s initial introduction of the Xbox 360, the team wished to be the “360 [degree] entertainment hub for your home.”

This vision far succeeded where others fell short; taking a vast library of content services and mixing them with incredible games.

Alongside this version of the best-selling console came an “achievements” feature, the undisputed way of bragging to friends of your accomplishments and spurring them to do...

13 June 2013 | Advertising

That’s one confusing name: Xbox One product name review

After much speculation, Xbox revealed the name of its new console today: the Xbox One. Wait, huh? You know, “one,” as in “the one,” or the first “one” of its kind. Except that this Xbox isn’t the first one, and this discrepancy could confuse anyone who isn’t an avid gamer.  The last Xbox was the Xbox 360, and the one before that was simply the Xbox, which would technically make this the third generation Xbox. If Xbox wants to widen their appeal to the casual gamer,...

23 May 2013 | Advertising Technology

What businesses can get from gamification

Customers are more likely to respond to a gamified response, according to research by global marketing company Upstream.

Around three quarters of marketers believe that customers are likely to respond to game-based marketing mechanics, but only 27% have put this into practice.

The research, which focused on the understanding and use of game mechanics in marketing strategies, was collected at ad:tech London 2011. It found that 66% of marketers didn’t understand the term...

13 October 2011 | Gamification