Oscar night and here I am blogging, did you see that Sandra Bullock? Was that couture or was that couture? And that Steve Martin what a hoot, really fake arrow through the head that never gets old. When I was on the red carpet earlier I almost gagged when I saw Joan Rivers …. Oh yeah, data, databases, customers … I got all dressed up for nothing…
Just checking in is a cross channel interaction.
I finally did the iPhone check-in for a flight and it was pretty impressive – no boarding pass, just swiped my phone through security and at the gate and onto the plane. That was pretty cool as I am always wondering where my boarding pass is while I wait for my flight.
The context of this is also interesting. I left Denver on a 4 day, 3 city trip – Chicago, Raleigh, Atlanta and back to Denver. I forgot to online check-in when I left my house so I had to do it at the kiosk. Then I checked in at the office in Chicago for my next flight, but I had to print it because it wouldn’t let me do the iPhone thing for the United Express flight. Then – I did the kiosk thing again in Raleigh because I didn’t have a printer and didn’t know the phone was an option. Lastly leaving Atlanta I was able to do it all from my phone.
So in four days, I used multiple channels for checking into flights as I headed across the country. The iPhone check-in was also interesting because it combined real-time messaging (SMS) with a mobile device for an offline activity – flying on a plane (at least it seemed like a real plane). And all this is happening within minutes – checking in, getting the message and loading the pass on my browser. Plus think of the rich data the airline gets knowing my phone number, browser info, willingness to try / adopt new technologies and my activity towards boarding (hint, I am kind of a last minute type of traveler).
I think this just highlights another of the many use cases for integrating online and offline data.
Speaking of integrating data, Webtrends and Omniture both announced new ways to measure Facebook activities. I know that smarter people than I are looking at the pros and cons of both approaches, I am talking to you Jim Sterne, Eric Peterson, John Lovett, etc.
First some background. A couple weeks ago, I was researching web traffic for a presentation to a large maker of refreshing carbonated beverages. But they had very limited web traffic, almost no search spending – but a huge brand. What was going on? They and their agency were primarily marketing through facebook. Just one campaign facebook page had over 500,000 fans.
But from a data standpoint that used to be a dead-end. You could see all the user-ids of fans, but what does that mean? Not much. But from what I understand from Mashable, is that Webtrends allows you to look at custom fans tabs – so you can understand what your fans are doing on the site as they move between tabs and put things on your wall etc. without having a Facebook application – and looks at the referring data so that you can see upstream on visitors – perhaps from Twitter. (screen shots here)
Because I got to present with Webtrends at Teradata’s Southeast user group last week, I was really excited because the audience had lots of great questions about how to use this for cross-channel marketing. Come out to San Francisco on April 1 and Newark in May and get more information from Webtrends yourself when we speak again at the Teradata User Groups.
Paul Barrett
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