7 Apps for Managing and Growing Business from Your Office on Wheels

by Cynthia Fedor | May 10th, 2012

in car mobile officeBy 2013, 34.9 percent of the global population—roughly 1.19 billion people—will conduct business while on the go, according to a Worldwide Mobile Worker Population Forecast published by the marketing intelligence firm IDC. A large segment of this group is in their vehicles daily, managing business and marketing efforts from a makeshift office on wheels.

For those in the home services industry—remodelers, home cleaners, landscapers, roofers, real estate agents, etc.—this is especially true. Smart phones and access to productivity apps offer an opportunity to effectively market, manage, and grow business in between appointments, from virtually anywhere.

Below are just seven of the apps you may find in a road warrior’s mobile office.

Dragon Dictation: I personally love this application. Dragon Dictation makes sending texts, emails, and posting updates to Facebook and Twitter a snap. Just say what you want to type and the speech-recognition software converts it into text. For those constantly behind the wheel or frustrated every time they attempt to compose a message via a smart phone’s tiny touch-screen keyboards, this app is a great solution to consider.

Dropbox: Dropbox is a cloud-based file storage tool that allows users to save documents, presentations, photos, videos—anything, really—and then access the files from their smart phone, tablet, and desktop computer as long as the Dropbox application is installed. An app like Dropbox makes it easy for a person to access pricing sheets, instructional diagrams, product demos, etc. while away from the office.

Genius Scan: This app turns a smart phone or tablet into a pocket scanner. Users can take a photo with their device’s camera or choose files from their library, crop and straighten, group them into a single PDF, and then share documents via email or export to cloud-based storage like Dropbox, Google Docs, and Evernote. Instead of hunting for antiquated fax machines or waiting until returning back to the office, this app makes it easy to scan and share time-sensitive documents while on the go.

Square: There’s almost nothing worse than missing out on a sale just because there’s no easy way to capture funds. The Square app along with Square card reader turns smart phones and tablets in to a credit card terminal. It’s super simple to use and transaction fees are minimal.

QuantumCards: Through this mobile application, users can create, print and mail vibrant, full-color postcards to market their business in local neighborhoods–right from their iPhone or iPad. What’s unique about it is that QuantumCards offers users the ability to generate neighborhood mailing lists on the fly by using their smart phone’s geo-location feature or by typing in a target location. Service-based business professionals–like house painters, landscapers, real estate agents, or residential cleaners–no longer have to walk door to door distributing business cards or door hangers to prospects surrounding job sites. They can simply take a picture with their iPhone, write a personal message, and even link to their website or a video via QR code, then mail postcards to the neighborhood audience. SMBs can market their business in a matter of minutes; postcards mail next business day so they can start seeing results quickly.

Shoeboxed: Frequent business travelers and mobile workers often find themselves spending a good amount of time after a trip or work day trying to organize receipts, invoices, and other items for expense reports. The Shoeboxed app streamlines that process. As users scan documentation, the app uses OCR to extract data and organize items for easy management.

MiniBooks for Freshbooks: This app allows users to invoice and manage accounting on the run. From the MiniBooks app description: “Manage clients, send invoices, enter payments, check on rates from past jobs, run timers, and much more, all from the palm of your hand.” The sooner one is able to invoice, the faster they’ll get paid.

Direct Mail Strategy: JCPenney’s New Postcard Campaign

by Cynthia Fedor | April 17th, 2012

Last month when I read about JCPenney’s new integrated marketing strategy I was excited to see how the retailer would execute on the direct mail component of their plan. Through the approach described in the article, JCP seemed to understand the value of highly targeted and personalized direct mail as part of an integrated mix and the role it could play in getting people into physical store locations.
JCPenney Marketing

“We’re focused on targeting our customers through an integrated marketing campaign, and direct mail is a key component to this outreach strategy,” says Kate Coultas, spokesperson for jcpenney. Source: Deliver Magazine

This month, I received my first direct mail postcard from JCPenney. The oversized square format along with their bold new logo caught my eye; however, they failed to keep my attention and motivate action. In this post, I’ll outline a few things they can do to make future direct mail touches more effective.

Deconstructing JCPenney’s April Marketing Postcard

Upon review of JCP’s direct mail postcard, I noticed several missed opportunities to:

  • provide relevant content
  • track the performance of offers and channels
  • collect key data that could aid in refining future messages

Weakness: Poor Targeting and/or Lack of Personalized Content

The front of JCPenney’s postcard features a large, colorful photo that fills the entire frame. Images that are colorful, simple, and direct—like the one on their postcard—often work well for conveying a message quickly. However, this image did not resonate with me. It was a photo of a yawning baby. The back of the piece included the message: “Don’t let another precious moment go by without making it memorable. Capture their smiles, the surprises and event the sleepy times that fill your heart.”

I do not yet have children or grandchildren. There are no small children living in my house.

Recommendation #1: Segment your mailing list. Use demographic selections to narrow down your list to target recipients that more closely match your service offering or message. By doing so, JCPenney could have saved money, reduced waste, and realized better return on investment.

Recommendation #2: Personalize mail pieces and include relevant content that matches the interests and/or needs of the target audience. JCPenney could have easily increased the efficacy of their direct mail campaign by using variable data printing to swap out images and copy. Rather than include a photo of a baby, they could have advertised their “business portraits” service to me or let me know if I could get a portrait taken with my pet (my husband and I have two dogs and a cat).

Pets

Weakness: No tracking mechanisms to measure campaign response

If you were JCPenney, wouldn’t you like to know if you were generating more business due to a direct mail piece vs. newspaper ad vs. online ad vs. social media campaign, etc? Digital technologies available today—like PURLs (personalized URLs and landing pages), QR codes, and SMS text elements—make it possible to track responses to traditional media. The call to action on JCPenney’s postcard directs recipients to a general website and generic telephone number. Read More »