Why Payment Now Belongs with Product, Price, Place and Promotion as a Key Decision Lever

Since the 1960s, - the smartest of marketers have developed an offer taxonomy based on the 4 Ps—product, price, place and promotion. For years these 4 Ps have helped us marketers measure, classify and optimize different offers against one another based largely on these trigger points, allowing for an organized and optimized marketing mix that drives revenue with the most efficiency. And that taxonomy-- or process of determining how all the offers from brands should be broken down into distinguishable pieces, has held its grip on the marketing industry.

In this great post from Perianne Grignon of [x + 1], she argues that the concept of media is dead, sayi ng “obviously at one level – as a means for reaching the right audiences with relevant messages – the answer is “yes”. But if you’re still thinking of media as an array of discreet channels that need to be individually planned for, bought, optimized and managed, the answer needs to be a loud and emphatic “no.”

At Pluris, we wholeheartedly agree with this message. Our Offer Optimization solution runs across all channels, and its goal is to deliver a consistent message to each consumer regardless of channel. About a year ago, we posted our thinking on personas as a means to provide “color” to statistics.

Facebook creates so much news that it’s easy to miss a new set of features aimed at marketers- even when those very changes can have big implications on how brands speak to you on the social platform. Last week, nestled between the social buzz of the Olympics and ups and downs of its stock price, the social network rolled out a bevy of new ways for marketers to take advantage of things such as your age, interests, gender, relationship status and more to inform how they ‘speak’ to you.

Everyone hailed the Nook as smart business. Now, thanks to the very same company that powers the Nook, it’s going the way of disco -- fun while it lasted, but an impractical long term way to groove.

The hype around Google’s new Nexus 7 tablet is mostly surrounding its threat to Amazon, and while there may be merit there, the striking first casualty is Barnes & Noble. With brick and mortar bookstores and physical reading of books declining in favor of e-readers, Barnes & Noble announced plans earlier this year to this one from Peter Svenson of the Huffington Post, I am convinced that the Nexus 7 will provide me a far better experience than my Nook or a continued relationship with Barnes & Noble would. Here are my top 3 reasons as follows:

A company with expertise in cross-channel offer optimization, loyalty, database marketing and advanced analytics

It’s not easy being a consumer-facing brand these days. After years building a company based on one consumer pathway, the mobile, app, email, social, geo-located, connected TV, real-time bargain hungry consumer is now touching brands in more ways and with more diverse behavior patterns than any company can keep up with. That’s 100 years of organizational design shot to hell.

We all know over the last several years, a growing need for cutting corners – and coupons – has paved the way for sites like Groupon, LivingSocial and others to offer attractive discounts to consumers and – as their salespeople pitch it – equally attractive perks to participating businesses. It’s changed consumer behaviors, disrupted business models on the local level and it’s made a few people very wealthy.

With all the new entrants and a different playing field, loyalty marketers are not ruing as they did in the good old days when they had the consumer gaming dynamic all to themselves. Quite the contrary -- there is palpable excitement surrounding what the growing shift in consumer behavior means for their programs. Armed with a seemingly endless choice of game mechanics, technology platforms and social networks to enable new programs and a new set of consumer experiences, the loyalty sector is now more relevant than ever.