Tag Archives: Innovation
OMMA Global NY: A Social Media Conference with No Social Media tools?
I am planning to be at the OMMA Global Event in NY next week. The theme for this year is
The New Socialism: welcome to a world where social networks, social media applications and microblogging services become our central means of engaging online. Many industry watchers believe the answer to online advertising’s oldest problem lies inside social media’s walled gardens: that is, how to bring the estimated $500 billion spent annually on offline brand advertising to the Web.
Given that OMMA is giving so much importance to social media, I was surprised that OMMA has not used any of the social media tools on the conference website. The website’s main purpose is to give participants information on the conference agenda, program schedule and speakers bio. And that’s where it stops.
The challenge with most conferences is that you don’t know the other participants, their background, their areas of interest. Won’t networking be easier and you get more value from your investment of time and money if OMMA had done some of the following?
- Create communities of interest: the conference has 11 different themes or track sessions including Mobile, Search, Metrics, Gaming, Video, Behavioral etc. It could have easily created participant communities based for each of these sessions to encourage interaction and networking.
- Ability to interact with speakers: Along with the speaker bios, it would have been helpful if I also knew the link to their blog and/or twitter handle.
- Ability to interact with the sponsors: Sponsors often complain that the breaks during sessions aren’t enough to interact with participants and share with them the value proposition of their tools/products. OMMA could have created more value for the sponsors by allowing participants to interact directly with them. That way, they could have used the breaks for follow-up sessions and shortened the sales cycle.
- Ability to post questions ahead of time: With knowledge of some of participant questions beforehand, the speakers can not only make the session more interactive but also fine tune it to the audience needs.
I do still believe that it will be a great conference to attend given the Who’s Who of Digital Marketing speaking at the event. But I would like the next Social Media Conference to leverage some more social media tools.
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/guptanitinonline
The Digital ATM: 2012
This morning I went to my bank to deposit a stack of checks. Not only the ATM didn’t require me to use an envelope, it took all the 6 checks in one go, recognized the check amounts and gave me a receipt at the end of the transaction with the check images. I was pretty impressed. That made me think what would the ATM in 2012 look like:
- Touch screen for easier navigation: Let’s do away with the navigation buttoms on the right hand side. The ATM of the future will have a touch screen interface that allows for easier navigation. Plus, for a consistent customer experience, the design and layout is very similar to the online banking interface.
- Carry out all banking transactions: Rather than just being the means of dispensing cash and depositing checks, ATMs should be able to carry out all banking transactions like consolidated account view, bill payments, funds transfers etc. This will allow the bank branch associates to focus exclusively on delivering a personalized differentiated experience to the customers and discuss their needs.
- Targeted offers: Marketing over the ATM occurs during four operational phases: the idle phase, the welcome phase, the “please wait” phase and the farewell phase. ATM users see direct response video commercials or display ads promoting the bank products. Customers are targeted with a personalized, sales-oriented advertising campaign. The target group is defined by criteria such as age, activity, interests and account balance.
For a high income level customer (determined based on spend analysis and employer direct deposit of salary) who visits the ATM once a week to withdraw cash, offer financial planning advice or brokerage products or insurance products. For another small business customer who writes employee salary checks, show offer for the payroll service with electronic deposit of salary to employee accounts.
The ad should end with a simple call to action: “would you like to discuss your financial planning needs with our Bank Associate? Click Yes or No”. If the customer clicks “yes”, she is directed to the branch banking associate (if customer is at branch location) or can receive call from associate (if banking outside of branch). The associate already has the customer’s financial profile available and can discuss insurance, mortgage and other financial needs with the customer. - Ads on receipt: Some of the offers can be printed (both sides) on the transaction receipt that is handed out to the customer. The customer can SMS the code to the bank’s calling number to receive a call from the banking associate.
- Location based services: The customer can print offers and discount coupons for stores in the vicinity of the ATM location. Say I visit a mall and withdraw money from the ATM. The bank can provide me a list of stores in the mall that are offering discounts and then allow me to print coupons based on my selection. A lot of this can be achieved during the “please wait” and “thank you” phases of the transaction thus not significantly increasing the overall transaction time.
Do you think ATMs are poised to change? Or do you think branch banking and cash are on their way out and we will be writing an obituary of the ATMs 20 years from now?