Klout's Clever Use of iOS's App & Badge Icons

I talk about Klout all the time and encourage marketers to integrate / leverage the service as a way to engage quality users & customers. This has implications for advertising, customer service, product experience, etc. This is an entirely unrelated point - but I think it's extremely clever and unique. Klout has released a new iPhone application and they are using iOS's "Badge" system to display your Klout Score atop the app's icon. Terrifically simple, smart idea and a way to bring users back into the application (which is the single most important and challenging aspect for most applications).

I love it and expect / encourage others to think about how this relates to their service and their users.

Dream Lites & Promo Codes

Watching the Sprout channel with our son, a mini commercial aired for Pillow Pet's new product: Dream Lites. They announced a special Promo Code ("PROMO") that would save 25% off an order. This is a common way of driving purchases and tracking efficacy / sources.

The great consumer I am, I pulled up DreamLites.com on my iPhone to find the following screenshot... which entirely negates the point of a promo code. It's a huge text promotion that says "Enter promo code DREAM to save 25%". What's the point?? If you are going to do this - might as well just say: regularly priced at $X. But now 25% off!

Strange.

Worse yet, when tax and shipping are added up - the purchase price is actually more than the 25% off. Might as well promote free shipping with full price. Even at the same total price - and with a generous refund policy - that's more compelling because I get frustrated paying S&H (thanks to Amazon and others).

Flipboard: In the River Promotion, From iPad to iPhone?

I write a lot about targeted marketing - which means effecting messaging your users at the right moment and in the right place. I use the term "in the river marketing" to describe it. Here is a great example by Flipboard - a master at mobile design. Flipboard - which has huge distribution as an iPad app - is trying to promote their new iPhone app (which generally is a different experience and design). To do that, Flipboard gets as "in the river" as possible. The welcome screen generally displays a story from your network. In this case, it is a note directly from Flipboard's CEO Mike McCue and describes their new iPhone app. This ensures that all Flipboard users see the message and, at the very least, recognize that Flipboard now exists for iPhone. That's aggressive. But it's targeted: these are Flipboard users and iPad owners (so they likely have iPhones as well).

The major question that mobile publishers / developers struggle with: how do you then drive conversion? What next after this message? Driving downloads across device is difficult. Driving downloads from the web is even harder. Then layer on tracking to understand the efficacy of the campaign and it's unfortunately very difficult...

Sparrow, Mobile: In the River Promotion

I frequently write about two ongoing themes: 1. the importance of "in the river marketing" (reaching targeted users at relevant points in the product / experience) 2. the difficult of driving mobile downloads from web, advertisement, other devices, etc

Here is a good example from Sparrow. They want to promote their popular Mac mail application to iPhone users. Within the initial product walk-through (now very popular within applications), Sparrow highlights their Mac app (Got a Mac?) and, to drive conversions, offers to send a download link. That's simple but effective (it's actionable), intelligent (captures some data / funnel measuring) and relevant (iPhone users are more likely to be Mac users than Android users).

Of course - if Sparrow were promoting their mobile product, SMS is more effective than mail. Groupon and Redbox do great work here.

Sparrow Mail + Facebook Connect

I love these two screenshots from Sparrow's new iPhone app because they confirm a few threads that I routinely discuss / think about. The screenshots appear after app download and after your mail account is connected - you are prompted of course to connect the mail account with Facebook ("mail is much nicer with your friends' profile pictures!"): 1. First and foremost, Facebook should be considered an identity platform as much as it is a considered a social network. I firmly believe this.

2. Outsource to Facebook (and other major platforms) in areas where they do things better (ie identity, sharing) or where you gain advantage elsewhere (ie Facebook Connect + mail account = superior data / future functionalities).

3. Mail still needs to be rethought and Sparrow gives it an interesting twist.

4. Facebook should play a bigger role in email 2.0.

Yet Another Reminder of Amazon & Kindle's Importance: Proliferation

Reminder yet again that Amazon and Kindle are important parts of the mobile, cloud, content and application universe... these are the registered Kindle devices to my family: it's a combination of devices, platforms, formats, etc. More and more I am using Kindle like Evernote (one of my daily, most-used applications): I forward important documents to my personal Kindle emails. It's great. And for some use cases, its the equivalent of Evernote or iCloud.

And like Evernote - the content is accessible anywhere, nearly instantly. I love the email component of it and think that personalized emails as a content direction / entry mechanism are underutilized - Evernote and Tripit are examples of products that (for me) are most useful through email.

Social, Mobile Web as highlighted by Salesforce

Below are three charts from a longer SalesForce presentation that recently appeared on Business Insider. I wanted to quickly highlight these three charts because they highlight three (very high level) themes I regularly think about and talk about: 1. The future of the web is social (social eats the web)

2. The future web is mobile - not browser-based (next generation devices)

3. Communication is changing: from email to social and mobile - sms, notifications, etc (social networking surpasses email)

"The article, first published on the SI.com iPad application late Tuesday night..."

This cracks me up: ESPN (who has been criticized for not generously citing sources in the past) ran a front page article on UCLA's troubled basketball team. In citing the source as Sports Illustrated, ESPN strangely noted: "The article, first published on the SI.com iPad application late Tuesday night..."

I find it fascinating:

1. this was called out by ESPN ... why?

2. Sports Illustrated published the article to the iPad before the website... and both before the magazine. It clearly was an attempt to push the iPad app / subscription... which seems to be working (#1 in Sports over last week) but doesn't seem nearly as strategic as launching the article on SI.com.

Siri and Twitter (Facebook and more)

As I have tweeted a few times over the last couple weeks, Siri is a better product in theory than in practice: 'she' simply is too inconsistent and too time intensive to really be worthwhile. The only pieces I find myself regularly using Siri for are sending text messages and location-based searches.

Because Siri does a good job sending SMS's, I figured I'd try sending a Tweet... after all, Twitter is fully integrated into Apple's iOS5. It should work, right? Strangely, it doesn't... and it's a big opportunity for Twitter and Apple. And why not also work with Facebook and other core applications? Or allow those core applications to develop atop / into Siri?

By the way: if you really want to update Twitter (or Facebook) via Siri, you can make it work via some clever workarounds.