Deal Sites Gone Wild

So by now I'm sure everyone has jumped on the Groupon bandwagon and tried a few more of the local or specialty (golf, vacation) deal websites.  Depending on how active you are online or how good you are at cleaning out your inbox, these sites are either really fun, addicting or they are starting to get super annoying.  For me, the annoyance is beginning to build because...

1. 75% of the deals lately don't pertain to my interests or are too far away, and 

2. I can't keep up with the barrage of deals visiting my personal and work email inboxes.  

(Yes, it's my own fault for signing up...but I also don't want to miss out!) If I'm having a busy day, I don't spend a lot of time checking my personal email nor do I have time to sift through the deal sites.  So then on a day that I do have time, I have 95 unread emails of expired deals  It's crazy.  

And that, my friends, is why I'm loving GROUPON NOW, which recently launched in the Detroit market.  It's perfect for a executive/mom/person on-the-go like me because I can search for a deal when I'm actually out running errands or headed out to lunch with the Hunchees.  Planning in advance just doesn't work for me anymore so GROUPON NOW helps me get nearby deals to use that day. Plus, it's a killer app on my iphone, which is my (and most people's) main source of connection throughout the day.  On a side note, isn't it funny that computers are now slightly archaic? I rarely visit the groupon website, but I sure do interact with the iphone app!

Check it out fellow Detroiters.  I'm pretty certain you'll love it. :)

Mobile Phones: Digital Marketing’s X-Factor

Billboards. TV ads. Radio spots. Online banners. Pop ups. The list of ways to advertise a product or service goes on, and on, and on…

But in my eyes, it’s all about whether or not it can fit in the palm of your hand.

More than 200 trillion text messages are sent in a single day in the United States.

Mobile devices are taking over the world, quite literally. We text. We surf the web. We tweet. We update Facebook statuses. We play interactive games. We navigate with real-time mapping. We make calls (wait, those still exist, right?).  We schedule meetings. We do it all.

Currently, more than 90 percent of the world’s population is covered by mobile networks, according to the International Telecommunications Union.

At the end of 2010, ITU reported there were more than 5.3 billion mobile phone subscriptions. Roughly 70 percent of people (3.8 billion) in developing countries have a mobile device — more than any other technology.

About 300 million phone apps were downloaded in 2009. Impressive? Not when you see 2010’s statistic of 5 billion.

In 2010, the U.S. spent $42.8 million on mobile devices. In 2015, the projected figure is $1.8 billion.

Roughly 42 percent of teens say they can text message blindfolded.

Are you on board, advertisers? Do you understand where your market is? Are you spending boatloads of money searching for them?

Because I found them. They’re buried in their phone screens.

Say something to them. They’re waiting for you.