Keeping up with the Joneses, Garcias, and Wongs - Three Ways to Keep your Multilingual Site up to Date

J. Freedom du Lac had an excellent article today in the Washington Post on Maryland Live!'s efforts to market to Asian players. In the article, Mr. du Lac mentions that the Maryland Live! Web site is translated into Spanish, Korean, Vietnamese, and Chinese.

Being the inquisitive person that I am I had to take a look. I noticed some things that show just how difficult
multicultural marketing can be.

Movable Ink: 65% of US email opened 1st on Mobile Device

If you needed any other reminder to make sure your email is at least mobile aware, the latest from Movable Ink should serve.

According to the Movable Ink 2013 Q4 Consumer Preference report, in the US market 65% of email is first opened on a mobile device.

How to make sure your email is at least mobile aware?

Review of "Big Data" by Viktor Meyer-Schönberger and Kenneth Cukier

"Big Data - A Revolution That Will Transform How We Live, Work, and Think" is a thought provoking take on the increasing use of large pools of accumulated data for predictive analytics.

The authors are Viktor Meyer-Schönberger, professor of Internet governance and regulation at Oxford University,  and Kenneth Cukier, data editor for The Economist.

As such, regular readers of The Economist will recognize some of the early examples cited in the book, such as the Farecast business modeled on predictive ability for airfare price changes and Google search predicting the spread of flu. Do not let that put you off picking up the book and continuing to read it.

The authors do a good job of first defining Big Data as the "ability ...to harness information in novel ways to produce useful insights or goods and services of significant value." It is not just about having large databases. Those have existed already.

Disney to Suck Up Data Exhaust

John Foreman, chief data scientist at email service provider (ESP) Mail Chimp, has written a nice Gigaom on Disney's Big Data efforts.
piece at

For years, Disney has done things to make trips convenient in exchange for money. They abolished individiual ride tickets (I still remember E-tickets from our first family trip to Orlando - that seriously dates me) in exchange for daily passes.

In one large family trip that we took to the park many years ago, we used the "Golden Key" credit cards that gave us access to any food option in the park in exchange for paying the food cost for the trip up front.

Disney is now on board with the concept that the convenience is worth more than the money directly.
 
By creating a new, chic, high-tech accessory of a rubberized visitor band enabled with RFID, Disney can also track everything you do in the park.

John Foreman does a nice job comparing and contrasting with other efforts to track consumer behavior, and the comment thread explores more of the underlying technology.

I have just finished reading "Big Data" by Mayer-Schönberger and Cukier, and this is a way for Disney to produce and use what they call "data exhaust". You aren't just using entering the park, paying for a cup of coffee, and using Fast Pass to get on a ride. You are telling Disney how long you spent on Main Street before leaving, what other shops you entered, and what route you took to get to your first ride. You let them know how long you spent together and when you separated from the family.

Do you have access to this level of detail in data as a marketer? You may already even if you don't realize it. My favorite example of this is my supermarket hand held bar scanner.

Giant offers scanners at the entrance that allow me to build up my order as I go, rather than wait until self checkout at the end to scan goods.

The immediate appeal to Giant and marketers seems to be the ability to do real-time marketing and make me offers as I shop.

However, in addition to the same list of goods tied to my loyalty card that they would get at any checkout is a big bonus: a chronology of how long I spend in the store, and how I move around. That is data exhaust.

Will they make use of it? At some point they will if they are not already but they need to plan ahead for it. Most basically, knowing where items are stocked in the store or having passive scanners to track the device is necessary to tie my scanning to location would be important.

What data exhaust are your customers producing? Do you know how to use it? Disney is already on it.

Intuit Turbo Tax "The Year of the You" Commercial FTW

I love the new Intuit TurboTax commercials (60 and 90 second versions) that have been running during the NFL playoffs here in the U.S.

Clearly an appeal to ego, it manages to dismiss fears of doing your own taxes by placing it in the context of financial experiences like buying a house or getting a new job as well as strong emotional ones like marriage and child birth.

The John C. Reilly narration is professional and folksy at the same time.

Though the spot is meant for traditional broadcast media, the Intuit team has made it available on their YouTube page.

The Biggest Mistake Marketers Make with Pinterest

Pinterest experienced expansive growth in 2013 reaching 70 million registered users in July, and grew in importance to marketers (for example, see this article on growth in referrals to publishers).

With limited resources, your marketing team can be forgiven for not creating and maintaining an active presence on Pinterest. There simply might not be enough time to curate pinboards and to find and follow influencers there when resources might be used on other more predominant channels such as Facebook and Twitter. Regular participation on Pinterest may not be part of the daily plan.

However, do not take that as a pass for completely ignoring Pinterest, especially when it comes to incoming Web traffic.

Marketers cannot be given a pass when they lose an inbound lead that originates from Pinterest.

Whenever a Pinterest user pins an image from the Web, the URL of the page that hosted that image is stored along with the pin. Repins preserve that information. And whenever someone else finds that pin, whether from their home feed or in a search, the image continues to link back to the original URL.

For a retailer with a catalog item that debuted this week, that URL is almost certainly going to be active. But for older content, it becomes more and more likely that the URL will not be active.

As an example, looking for kids clothes I found this on Pinterest. It might make a nice gift for my nephew, so I clicked through the image to Hot Topic, the online retailer that offered the shirt, only to find:

A Toast for Jon Taffer's "Raise the Bar"

Jon Taffer is star of the popular reality TV series Bar Rescue. Although the initial draw for many might be the way Jon Taffer dresses down bar owners and employees alike, prolonged interest in the show is sustained by his clear understanding of the bar industry and broader management concepts, and his ability to turn businesses around.

As a result his newly published book "Raise the Bar", though clearly focused on the bar business, has plenty to offer as a general business book.