The Week in Review
Check out a few interesting articles and blog posts from the online marketing industry over the last week.
Colorado Online Sales Tax Law on Hold
A U.S. District Judge issues a preliminary injunction that keeps Colorado from enforcing the 2010 law that would impose online sales tax on retailers like Amazon.com and have a serious impact on the affiliate marketing industry in the state (Amazon.com decided to stop working with 4200 Colorado based affiliates in response to the law). At least one CO State Representative hopes to repeal the law in its entirety.
Timing an Email Marketing Campaign in Bad Weather
Interesting article from MarketingVOX on timing email campaigns with bad weather to increase performance. It highlights another way to engage with consumers, based on issues the consumer is facing right at that moment – dealing with a snowstorm, etc. Keep this in mind the next time the East Coast is getting slammed by Mother Nature.
Apple’s ‘iWallet’ Ready To Shake Up Registers?
This story was covered by a few different newsletters and online publications this week. It involves Apple’s possible plans to include Near Field Communication (NFC) technology in the next versions of the iPhone and iPad. NFC is the technology that could enable consumers to use their mobile devices to make brick-and-mortar retail purchases. There are still plenty of issues to work out, but by including the technology in more mobile devices, this form of payment is getting closer to realization in the U.S. MarketingVOX covered the story here and Adotas gave it some mention in this story about smartphones.
Who Said Twitter Would Never Make Any Money?
Twitter announced that it expects to triple its revenue in 2011 to $150 million and is forecasted to jump to $250 million in 2012. Is Twitter finally ready for prime time as an advertising platform?
Facebook to Compete with Groupon?
It seems like everyone is jumping onto the coupon bandwagon this week, with Facebook testing a new “Buy with Friends” feature that lets users share special deals on virtual goods. While this isn’t a quite the same as Groupon’s business, it isn’t too far-fetched to think that Facebook would extend the social buying concept to other parts of its business. It already debuted a “Deals” product in late 2010 that allowed businesses to provide special offers as a reward for check-ins on Facebook Places. Sharing deals with friends could be a pretty logical next step. This comes on the heels of Google’s recent announcement about its upcoming “Google Offers” service that looks like it will go head-to-head with Groupon.
