Business and Marketing

Epsilon takes a partner to peg the dynamic content delivered by Agility Harmony to live information.

Movable Ink's Sharma

Epsilon, whose Agility Harmony solution provides email marketers with advanced segmentation and dynamic content options, announced it will partner with Movable Ink. The company reported that this was among the first of several alliances it plants to undertake with third-party vendors in an effort to “transport email marketing closer to marketing in real-time.”

Movable Ink's agileEMAIL platform increases customer engagement and ROI by serving personalized content to recipients in real time. The system allows marketers to alter the content of emails even after they've been delivered.

Agility Harmony enables marketers to link the sending of dynamic content to a customer action or behavior by applying the same business rules used in creating customer segments. Adding the capabilities of agileEMAIL, Epsilon claimed, will allow that dynamic content to be based on live information.

“Epsilon shares our vision of making email marketing faster, smarter, and more measurable,” said Movable Ink CEO Vivek Sharma. Epsilon SVP of Products Bob Zurek added that the two companies are “pioneering the concept of agility in the inbox.”

Business Breaking News: Top 6 Chrome Browser Extensions for Business

Google's Chrome Web browser isn't just for surfing the Web. With the right extensions, Chrome can become a productivity hub that lets you manage many different aspects of your business. There are extensions that can help you take and view notes, meet remotely and even balance your books. But with such a big library in the Google Chrome Web Store, it's hard to know which are worth your time. Read on for six of the best Chrome browser extensions for work.

Smartsheet

Smartsheet is a powerful project-management app that you can use directly in your Chrome browser. The app has the look of a familiar spreadsheet, so it's fairly intuitive and easy to use. Context-sensitive columns let you access drop-down menus to change the assignment date, priority and completion status of any item with just a few clicks. You can add sub-assignments to any item, and then expand or collapse items to zero in on details or focus on the bigger picture. Smartsheet also lets you attach videos, contracts, documents and other files to assignments so you and your teammates have immediate access to them. Meanwhile, the ability to switch among a spreadsheet view, calendar and interactive timeline helps you see all your scheduled items at a glance.

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Consumers aren't playing games here. They know what they want out of loyalty programs, and what they want is cash.

Badges don't wash with "Sierra Madre's" Alfonso Bedoya--or consumers.

Asked about their primary motivations for joining loyalty programs, 57% of consumers said “saving money,” and an additional 38% said “receiving rewards.” Gamification payouts such as the badges distributed by FourSquare have apparently had their day. Forty-four percent of consumers said they'd be less likely to join a loyalty program that used such social rewards, and an additional 40% said they'd be much less likely.

These are the key findings of a survey of 3,162 U.S. loyalty program users conducted by TechnologyAdvice, an online service that hooks up business operators with tech service providers. The company had noticed a strong uptick in digital loyalty program adoption by SMBs and local businesses and wanted to tap consumer insights to share with its customers.

Insight number one turns out to be that the grocery chains that built loyalty card programs decades ago on numerous, small discounts had it right. Such a straightforward model still rules, the study says, whether the program be card-based or digital. Consumers want rewards that put cash in their pockets, not emblems on their smartphones.

Consumers are so single-minded about the value proposition of their loyalty programs that they're format agnostic. Thirty-seven percent said they preferred card-based programs, 33% favored digital, and 30% were undecided.

The digital loyalty case is made, however, by apps. Fifty-nine percent of survey respondents said they'd be more likely to enlist in a program that had a mobile app.

Business Breaking News: First Small Business Loan? 7 Things to Consider

Is this your first time venturing into the small business loan frontier? Obtaining a small business loan is just one of the first steps to launching your business. Proper financial planning, however, is critical to your success.

There are two key things to keep in mind as a small business loan first-timer. If you're seeking a small business loan, the way you present your business idea, business plan and financial forecasts can be the difference between gaining or not gaining investors' or a bank's approval. But once you do get a business loan, how you manage your operations and where those funds go can make or break your entire business.

From creating a budget to managing costs, there are several steps you can take to make the most out of obtaining and managing small business loans. Holly Nicholas Signorelli, a certified financial planner and CPA, advises aspiring entrepreneurs and small business owners to maintain realistic expectations. Based on more than 20 years' experience, Signorelli shared the following do's and don'ts of first-time small business loans. [Applying for a Small Business Loan? Here's What You'll Need]

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Business Breaking News: Difficult Co-Worker? Don't Get Defensive

Every office has at least one employee or boss who can't seem to get along with anyone. Whether this person actively antagonizes co-workers or simply has a difficult personality, he or she can strain workplace relationships and, in some cases, impede productivity for other employees.

If a colleague is getting in the way of your daily tasks, the first thing you should do is determine whether that person's behavior is actual bullying or if there's just a communication barrier. With the latter, the problem can usually be remedied by changing your perspective, said Kerry Preston, co-author of "Enhancing Your Executive Edge" (McGraw-Hill, 2014) and a partner at professional development organization Image Dynamics.

"Do not let [co-workers] live rent-free in your brain and hurt your edge because they are difficult to work with," Preston told Business News Daily. "Think about your goal when communicating with them and separate your goal from the personality. Learn their style and how to adapt to reach your goal in each situation."

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New solutions include next logical product and customer lookalike modeling. The long-time direct marketing player announces it will open a San Jose office in September.

Merit puts its eye on the buy.

Merit Direct has introduced a suite of new lead scoring and revenue producing solutions for B2B marketers that combine its OmniChannelBASE customer files with the analytical expertise of its Strategic Services Group.

The company is billing the three new offerings as next-generation predictive marketing tools for its increasingly technology-driven client base. “This is not just ad hoc modeling, where a client's existing customer file is matched to a database,” says Dee Blohm, Merit's VP of customer acquisition and retention. “We've found the only reliable predictive element is a transaction.”

Merit's new predictive analytics suite includes the following modeling programs:

Next Logical Product: Compares transaction histories against customer attributes in OmniChannelBASE to determine the next product a business buyer is likely to purchase.

Customer Lookalike: Determines the fundamental attributes of a client's highest-value customers and applies those variables to identify prospects with similar characteristics among the 55 million business contacts in the database. It also identifies contact preferences among direct mail, email, and phone.

Alpha Models: A top-of-the-funnel solution that seeks to cull the small percentage of new business prospects that will spend 10 to 20 times more than the average buyer throughout their customer lifecycles. Blohm uses the example of an enterprise on the scale of Docusign, which captures 40,000 leads a day, looking to place its resources against leads with the best possible returns. “You can get a weekly feed of those leads and handle them differently,” she says.

“We've been doing modeling and analytics for 15 years, and it's based on real, live buying behavior at a site and customer contact level,” Blohm adds. “Our growing roster of tech clients has been hungry for this, and so we've introduced these products to help optimize results.”

As further evidence of its devotion to the tech community, MeritDirect announced it will open a San Jose office in September.

Business Breaking News: Is Your Corporate Language Hurting Your Brand?

Corporate content is everywhere nowadays. Whether it's website copy, blog posts, tweets or emails, digital communications represent your company to the online world, and are an important component of its branding strategy. But if your corporate language is too unclear, it may be doing your brand more harm than good.

"The base level that brands need to get to [in their communications] is simplifying their language and making it more human," said Anelia Varela, U.S. director of The Writer, a firm that provides writing services and training for organizations. "This means speaking to people on their level. Once you've simplified, [figure out] how to make that language your own and stand out against competitors."

No matter what industry you're in, you should aim to have your corporate voice be clear, concise and distinct, Varela said. She offered the following tips to help brands improve their corporate communication strategy. [Creating a Social Media 'Fingerprint' for Your Business]

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They'll visit stores to touch product and avoid shipping fees, but eight of 10 plan to consult mobile devices in the aisles, a study says.

'Webrooming' fills parking lots.

Mobile's growing influence on shoppers may be forging a new retail regime, but brick-and-mortar is still king during the back-to-school shopping season. A new study from Accenture says that 89% of parents of school-age children will be scouring stores to touch merchandise and save on shipping fees. What stores they walk into, however, will often be determined by “webrooming”—browsing online to determine pricing and in-stock status.

“The idea that we're seeing the death of the physical store is not borne out by the results of this survey,” says Dave Richards, managing director of Accenture's global retail practice, which polled 500 parents of kindergarten-to-college-age kids on their back-to-school plans.

Learning whether an item was in stock was the chief reason people gave for engaging in webrooming, according to the survey, with 47% naming that purpose. Avoiding shipping costs (43%), touching and feeling products before buying (43%), and asking stores to match lower prices (33%), were the other key motivations.

"The fact that the majority of parents we surveyed plan to participate in webrooming underscores the significance of having a consistent and convenient experience across all retail touchpoints," Richards says, noting that it's imperative for retailers to arm store associates with mobile devices to solve problems and move transactions.

“Customers have to have the current information at their fingertips,” Richards adds. “Retailers need to look at how to integrate interactive experiences that connect in-store shopping experiences with omnichannel capabilities.”

Just over half of parents (52%) told Accenture they expected to spend more on back-to-school items this year, while only 11% said they would spend less. Two fifths put their budgets at $500 or more. Right now is the peak period for marketers to be reaching out to shoppers via their mobile connections. Some 58% said they'd do most of their shopping between July 16 and August 15.

Those who plan to do their shopping online will stick primarily to home computers (89%), though nearly a third said they'd likely make purchases via mobile devices. Price, not convenience, was the key reason named for going the digital route. Nearly two thirds said they expected to find better discounts online, 59% were after the lowest prices, and 44% named the convenience of home shipping.

Business Breaking News: Why Narcissists Make Good CEOs

Though they might not do much for employee morale, narcissistic CEOs can do wonders for companies' bottom lines, new research finds.

Narcissism, considered by many to be a negative personality trait in executives, mayactually be a good thing when it comes to certain financial measures, according to a study published recently in The Journal of Management Accounting Research. Specifically, companies led by narcissistic CEOs reported higher earnings per share and share price than those with non-narcissistic CEOs.

However, being led by a narcissist isn't totally beneficial for a company's financial well-being. The research discovered that the methods such CEOs may employ to boost these indicators of financial soundness can jeopardize the long-term health of their organizations.

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Chief marketers who usurp the CDO role earn the board's respect, as well as base salaries of $500,000 and up, says a new study.

Only 4% of CMOs have base pay exceeding $500,000.

University of Virginia marketing professor Kimberly Whitler recently spoke with the CMO of a multi-billion dollar company who told her he reported to someone who reported to the CIO. The episode points up two of the key findings of a new compensation report that Whitler authored for the CMO Council: 1) CMOs can still be disrespected even at sophisticated enterprises; and 2) executives in charge of digital strategy can and do receive greater respect.

The median base salary of the 345 global CMOs surveyed for the report was $200,000. Only 4% of those polled reported bases of $500,000 and the top earners were more likely to focus on accomplishments that play well in corporate boardrooms: restructuring marketing to drive results, improving marketing yield, and building digital capabilities.

“Digital marketing makeover is the number one endeavor for CMOs in the coming 12 months,” says Donovan Neale-May, executive director of the CMO Council. “As digital marketing becomes more and more pervasive, it provides a wider platform for CMOs to play bigger roles in their organizations. In reality, the CMO should also be the chief digital officer and the chief customer experience officer.”

Crucial to ascending that platform is building alliances with other c-level officers with stakes in digitalization. Of CMOs earning between $200,000 and $349,000, 40% or more reported strong working relationships with CIOs, CFOs, and chief innovation officers.

Some 39% of survey respondents put themselves in that salary range, while an identical number reported earning bases of between $100,000 and $199,999. Six percent earned between $350,000 and $499,000, and 12% made under $100,000. Survey participants were asked to place themselves in a range, and did not divulge exact compensation numbers. Most, around 85%, received bonuses.

One scenario being played out in boardrooms that could be holding marketers back is the appointment of chief digital officers, says Whitler, who served as CMO of David's Bridal. “Boards are interested in companies leveraging digital, but appointing a CDO bifurcates the role. CMOs are in charge of commercialization and they are more likely to produce results and be recognized if they are in charge of digital, too.”

Apparently, they are taking charge no matter what their title is. This compensation report is a breakout from the CMO Council's State of Marketing report, which has yet to be released. But early results reveal them to be running with the digital ball. “What marketers are talking about as their major effort is re-realizing marketing to better source sales,” says Neale-May. “There's a lot of effort being invested in doing makeovers in people, process, and platforms.”

Titles apparently mean little when it comes to the numbers on the paychecks. More than a quarter of top earners in the $500,000-and-above class held titles of VP marketing and sales. Only 8% had “CMO” on their business cards.

Business Breaking News: Time to Refresh? 3 Tips for Updating Your Logo

To make a strong first impression on consumers, businesses need an impactful logo.

Despite the importance of a logo, businesses with just a handful of employees often struggle to design a memorable one with their limited budgets.

A new study from Endurance International Group, a cloud-based platform solutions provider, discovered that 15 percent of small businesses with five employees or less have no logo at all, with 56 percent of businesses having designed their own logos without any professional help.

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The Big Unveil of Experian Marketing Services' Marketing Suite

During a keynote session at Experian Marketing Services' 2014 Client Summit in Las Vegas, the consumer insights and marketing services company launched its Experian Marketing Suite. The end-to-end solution is designed to provide Experian customers with “the most actionable, complete, and current customer information” available to them, said Emad Georgy, SVP, global product development, cross-channel marketing. This comprehensive data, he added, would provide the single view of the customer that is core to marketing success.

“Our goal the past year is to help our customers break down silos,” said Mark Picone, SVP, global product development, consumer insights and targeting. The Experian Marketing Suite, he said, is the result of that objective.

The Marketing Suite is designed to help marketers better identify customers across channels, profile them, and provide additional data that not only helps to create a richer picture of individual customers, but also to help Experian clients find prospects based on profiles of their best customers. The suite “adds thousands of data elements,” that marketers could potentially add to customer profiles, but just shows users the data most relevant so they're not overwhelmed, Picone explained. Georgy added that marketers will get the information they need at the right time and in real time, enabling them to better create personalized communications and interactions.

The Experian Marketing Suite comprises three integrated elements:

Identity manager, which is designed to help marketers build a holistic view of customers through integrated first-party, Experian, and market data, as well as connecting cross-channel customer data that's linked via a persistent ID.

Intelligence manager, which aims to help marketers to create customer profiles that provide a better understanding customer behaviors and preferences, as well as improve targeting and hone messaging.

Interactions manager, which is designed to help marketers interact smartly across channels through improved campaign management, analysis focused on optimizing performance, and campaign attribution.

“Our Experian Marketing Suite empowers brands to deliver higher customer lifetime value and benefit from long-term profitability,” Matt Seeley, president of Experian Marketing Services, said in a statement about the product.

Business Breaking News: 8 Hidden Android Features for Business

Android smartphones and tablets can be great business tools. With the right apps, you can manage your email inbox, create documents, meet remotely and even balance your company's books, all on the go. But there's more to Android than apps. There are also tons of tricks and tools within the operating system itself that can help you be more productive — and not all of them are obvious. Here are eight hidden features for Android that can give you a boost at work.

Printing

The traditional way to print a document saved on your mobile phone is to email it to yourself, and then access the email on your desktop PC and print it from there. But starting with version 4.4, Android gained integrated wireless printing capabilities. To use the feature, go to Settings, select Printing and make sure Cloud Print is turned on. Next, load Google Drive, OneDrive, DropBox or another cloud storage platform where your document is stored. Finally, long-press on the document's file name, and select Print to send it to a nearby wireless-enabled printer.

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Business Breaking News: 8 Hidden Android Features for Business

Android smartphones and tablets can be great business tools. With the right apps, you can manage your email inbox, create documents, meet remotely and even balance your company's books, all on the go. But there's more to Android than apps. There are also tons of tricks and tools within the operating system itself that can help you be more productive — and not all of them are obvious. Here are eight hidden features for Android that can give you a boost at work.

Printing

The traditional way to print a document saved on your mobile phone is to email it to yourself, and then access the email on your desktop PC and print it from there. But starting with version 4.4, Android gained integrated wireless printing capabilities. To use the feature, go to Settings, select Printing and make sure Cloud Print is turned on. Next, load Google Drive, OneDrive, DropBox or another cloud storage platform where your document is stored. Finally, long-press on the document's file name, and select Print to send it to a nearby wireless-enabled printer.

Commodity Online News: RM Seed market rises on short covering open interest drops 6.74%

The general sentiment is that David Rubin's success with the Axe brand is unlikely to help him grow the social network's male audience.

It's no secret that women comprise the lion's share of users on Pinterest, the social media go-to for saving images. Apparently, Pinterest wants to change that and it wants to do it through David Rubin, a 15-year marketing veteran most known for his work with Unilever's Axe brand as VP of marketing. He'll serve as head of brand, a newly created position at the social site.

Rubin has earned both respect and notoriety for his work with Axe, though not quite in equal measures. Whatever criticism he's garnered over the years, the growth of the Axe brand can't be denied, and Pinterest ostensibly wants to replicate that growth in its male user base.

The twittersphere, however, doesn't seem too keen on the social networks new hire.

Here's what folks are saying:

Ugh. The axe guy, really? Gotta be a less douchy way to attract men to @Pinterest http://bit.ly/1nFHPxs via @HuffPostWomen @AlexCKaufman

— Kumar McMillan (@kumar303) July 23, 2014

@Pinterest You hired the man that created the nauseatingly sexist Axe ads?? Who's next?? Sexual predators Dov Charney and Terry Richardson??

— Gemini Garner-Jones (@geminig420) July 23, 2014

Just me, or is it odd for women-dominated Pinterest to hire man behind Axe's sexist marketing? http://bit.ly/1nFHRFQ http://bit.ly/1nFHRW7

— Alexander C. Kaufman (@AlexCKaufman) July 22, 2014

.@AlexCKaufman If I see ONE axe pin anywhere near my DIY/Brunch recipe/things that fit in a mason jar pinterest board, there's gonna b hell!

— Terri Ciccone (@TerriCiccone) July 23, 2014

@MarketingUK maybe they should transform it into an online Panini album. That would drag men to it!

— Amélie Thomas (@TheOnlyCleoLuna) July 23, 2014

@clockwork_bells it would be hilarious to me if the female base left and the males still don't care about Pinterest.

— Xaelra the Priest (@xaelra) July 23, 2014

Not all the buzz is negative, though. Some folks are expecting Axe-like results.

Really excited to see what changes David Rubin will make to the @Pinterest brand- http://bit.ly/Ux2jM5

— Collin Wood Perdew (@cwoodperdew) July 23, 2014

Welcome David - the Bay adds marketing 'Boom!' Pinterest Hires Unilever's David Rubin to Drive Its Brand Efforts http://bit.ly/1nFHPxu

— Jonathan Mildenhall (@Mildenhall) July 22, 2014

Business Breaking News: Instagram Marketing Tips for Insta-Success

You may only think of Instagram as a place to edit and share snapshots of your fancy vegan lunch or your adorable new kitten, but the photo-sharing app can be highly useful when it comes to building your business's brand.

"Social media, not only Instagram, is an incredible platform for people to use to drive more interest to their business," said Kayla Itsine, an international certified personal trainer and founder of The Bikini Body Training Co.

And with over 790,000 fans, Itsine knows a thing or two about successful Instagram branding.

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A seat on one of Virgin Galactic's first-planned space flights is first prize in a contest sponsored by Virool.

Does going weightless beat going viral?

Creatives who proclaim their concepts to be other-worldly or universal or just plain spacey now have the chance to put their Tricorders where their mouths are. Virool, a video content promoter, today announced a video contest that will award the winner a seat on one of Virgin Galactic's first private flights into outer space.

Brand marketers, creative directors, C-level executives, company owners, video producers, and all other comers are invited to Virool's contest site to register for more information about submitting their entries. No creative ground rules have been established by Virool, which is looking simply for entrants' best campaigns. Promotional materials say that the contest is challenging “top creatives to push the outer limits of their imagination, launch their most original space-themed video campaigns, and boldly go where no agency or brand has gone before.”

Virgin CEO Richard Branson has promised that initial flights will commence this year, though Galactic still needs to pass several tests to win a Federal Aviation Administration license. Some 700 people, including Tom Hanks and Angelina Jolie, have paid up to $260,000 to reserve seats on one of the first flights, which will venture 62 miles above the Earth and feature about five minutes of weightlessness.

Business Breaking News: Once Upon a Time: Successful Online Ads Tell a Story

Ads that tell a story have the greatest impact on consumers, new research suggests.

Digital media ad campaigns that tell a brand story before asking people to buy something are significantly more effective than ads that immediately encourage people to take an action, the study shows. Results come from research by Facebook and the social media advertising technology firm Adaptly.

For the study, researchers generated two ad campaigns on Facebook for Refinery29, an independent fashion and lifestyle website, and then compared the rate of email subscriptions and visits to the ads' landing pages.

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The cofounder of Ludic Labs is tabbed to direct growth of the mobile geo-location company.

Ed Haslam

PlaceIQ, the company that cut the U.S. into 100-meter squares to help marketers geo-locate mobile users, announced the hiring of two new senior executives to lead its “next big phase of expansion,” said CEO Duncan McCall.

Taking over as SVP of marketing is Ed Haslam, who joins PlaceIQ from YuMe, a video ad startup. He cofounded Ludic Labs, which was acquired by Groupon and developed the social media community Didit.com. Prior to that, Haslam served as the founding marketing exeucitve at Orbital Data (acquired by Citrix) and Inktomi (bought by Yahoo).

Joining Haslam on the senior management team as SVP of product and technology is Phil London, who comes from SynapSense, where he was SVP of marketing and engineering. Prior to that, he served as VP of software technology and general manager of the data center infrastructure management group at APC by Schneider Electric.

“PlaceIQ is growing quickly because the industry continues to see value in the real-world insights that we're providing about location and human behavior,” McCall said. “Both Ed and Phil have consistently built and led teams that provide market-leading products.”

Business Breaking News: Top 7 Android Tablet Apps for Business

An Android tablet is a great tool for work, but not every Android app was made for tablets. In fact, most Android apps were made for smaller smartphone displays. While those apps will run just fine on your tablet, they don't do anything to take advantage of the extra screen space. And while smartphone appsare forced to hide options deep in menus, tablet apps have more room to put those controls front and center. Plus, phone apps just don't look very good on a tablet; the interface is usually stretched and skewed to fill the larger screen. With that in mind, here are seven apps that will help you get to work on your Android tablet.

Evernote (Free)

Evernotefor Android is a great app for taking notes, making to-do lists and saving photos, and it's even better on a tablet. The biggest difference between the smartphone and tablet version of Evernote is that the latter features a persistent sidebar that lets you quickly flip between notes, notebooks and tagged items. And it has large buttons that let you create a new note, snap a photo or quickly dictate a voice memo; those options are hidden in a slide-out menu in the smartphone app. You also get more space to view each individual note, which means you can see your entire memo or list at once with less scrolling and swiping.

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The mobile rewards company seeks to provide advertisers with improved audience targeting.

nGEN is Tapjoy's audience intelligence platform.

Tapjoy, which rewards mobile users with premium content for engaging with advertisers, has announced a strategic partnership with Experian Marketing Services to offer its clients enhanced audience targeting capabilities.

As part of the agreement, Tapjoy will have access to Experian's ConsumerView database, which Experian says covers 98% of the U.S. population and provides demographic breakdowns, behavioral and life stage information, and category and brand preference.

Experian, which rewards members for downloading specific apps, makes a claim to 450 million active monthly users and access to more than a billion devices on a global scale. “Our advertisers now have a unique and robust solution to target ads on mobile based on segmentation, desktop browsing behavior, and the power of Web-based targeting,” said Tapjoy CEO Steve Wadsworth in a release announcing the deal. “We have dramatically increased Tapjoy's targeting capabilities over the previous quarters.”

Business Breaking News: Once Upon a Time: Successful Online Ads Tell a Story

Ads that tell a story have the greatest impact on consumers, new research suggests.

Digital media ad campaigns that tell a brand story before asking people to buy something are significantly more effective than ads that immediately encourage people to take an action, the study shows. Results come from research by Facebook and the social media advertising technology firm Adaptly.

For the study, researchers generated two ad campaigns on Facebook for Refinery29, an independent fashion and lifestyle website, and then compared the rate of email subscriptions and visits to the ads' landing pages.

Commodity Online News: Karvy sees modest positive bias on Bullion Crude Oil

An August conference is scheduled to examine whether postal rates are inelastic and don't cause volume decreases when they're raised.

Mailers get a hearing on postal price elasticity.

The Postal Regulatory Commission has approved a request from a coalition of mailers to review the econometric elasticity demand model used by the U.S. Postal Service as background in researching rate changes, such as the 4.3% exigent increase put in effect earlier this year. The PRC has scheduled a technical conference to examine the issue on August 14 at PRC headquarters in Washington.

Among economists, a good or service is said to be elastic when changes in price have a significant effect on demand. Conversely, products and services whose demand holds steady in the face of price increases are said to be inelastic. In asking for the exigent increase, the Postal Service leaned heavily on a May 13 analysis issued by the Postal Inspector General's office (OIG) affirming that postal products are firmly inelastic. Price increases increase postal revenues, and price decreases decrease revenues, said the report, because usage levels remain fairly constant. Excepting Standard Enhanced Carrier Route mail, the OIG report said postal products have grown more price inelastic over time.

In its motion for a hearing on the matter, the mailers' group held that the econometric volume demand model the Postal Service uses “materially understates” the true price elasticities for major postal products. USPS counter-petitioned the PRC to table the issue, holding that “a proceeding would serve no useful purpose and that the interests of the Commission and the Postal Service would be better served by focusing their scarce resources elsewhere.”

The PRC sided with mailers based on a study by PRC economists that presents a model for deriving different demand elasticities for separate classes of mail. In its decision, the Commission said that such analyses broken down by industry class or individual mailer could prove a boon to the Postal Service's campaign to sign Negotiated Service Agreements with users of market dominant products.

The coalition that petitioned the PRC was made up of the National Postal Policy Council, the Association for Mail Electronic Enhancement, the Association of Marketing Service Providers, GrayHair Software, the Greeting Card Association, the International Digital Enterprise Alliance, the Major Mailers Association, and the National Association of Presort Mailers.

Business Breaking News: Top 7 Android Tablet Apps for Business

An Android tablet is a great tool for work, but not every Android app was made for tablets. In fact, most Android apps were made for smaller smartphone displays. While those apps will run just fine on your tablet, they don't do anything to take advantage of the extra screen space. And while smartphone appsare forced to hide options deep in menus, tablet apps have more room to put those controls front and center. Plus, phone apps just don't look very good on a tablet; the interface is usually stretched and skewed to fill the larger screen. With that in mind, here are seven apps that will help you get to work on your Android tablet.

Evernote (Free)

Evernotefor Android is a great app for taking notes, making to-do lists and saving photos, and it's even better on a tablet. The biggest difference between the smartphone and tablet version of Evernote is that the latter features a persistent sidebar that lets you quickly flip between notes, notebooks and tagged items. And it has large buttons that let you create a new note, snap a photo or quickly dictate a voice memo; those options are hidden in a slide-out menu in the smartphone app. You also get more space to view each individual note, which means you can see your entire memo or list at once with less scrolling and swiping.

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The enterprise service bus, that is. New applications added to its platform promise access to custom solutions employed by large enterprises.

Lyris favors an open cloud environment.

Lyris today announced three in a promised series of “mini applications” that will allow its users to configure custom solutions by using enterprise service bus (ESB) approaches employed by large enterprises. The additions to its platform, Lyris says, will give all marketers the flexibility to choose, configure, and swap out application components with their own alternatives, or ones provided by Lyris or other technology vendors.

“The reality is that most marketing clouds are walled gardens not based on open standards, but on proprietary API scripting standards that are expensive and difficult to maintain. You need to rely on the vendor or app developers in order to tailor solutions to your business needs,” says Lyris CMO Alex Lustberg. “Marketers need to get set up quickly and so they go with a Salesforce or an Oracle that can be used out of the box. But they end up only using 10% to 20% of its capabilities. They are forced to make a choice of the least worst system.”

The three mini applications introduced by Lyris include:

• A data mapper to connect rich customer data and intelligence between Lyris and third-party cloud systems like Salesforce;


• a reputation monitor that does email scoring and enhances workflow capabilities;


• and a set of automatically generated engagement analytics that augment customer profiles with data from email interactions.

“Marketers need out-of-box solutions to get started, but when they want to do custom integration, how do they get it done?” posits Akin Arikan, Lyris's senior director of product marketing. “We didn't invent this architecture. For companies that don't have this underlying technology, our solution gives them a point-and-drag, visual way to configure new applications.”

Lustberg points out that marketers will require some minimal assistance from IT to master the system, but promises that on-staff marketing technologists are not necessary.

Business Breaking News: Top 7 Samsung Galaxy Apps for Business

Samsung makes some best business phones and tablets around. And now the company has launched a revamped app store for those devices that's filled with productivity-boosting applications. Galaxy Apps is a unique app store that has plenty of overlap with Google Play, but also boasts many options you won't find in the Google's app directory. If you own a Samsung phone like the Galaxy S5 or a tablet like the Galaxy Note Pro 12.2, read on for seven of the best business and productivity apps in the Galaxy Apps store.

Business Calendar (Free)

The appropriately named Business Calendar might be the best calendar app available for business users on Samsung smartphones. The app lets you quickly zero in on specific chunks of your schedule by dragging your finger over multiple days, shrinking the view to include only those days. From there you can add or subtract days to get the optimal view of your upcoming week. It's also easy to toggle between day, week, month and year views. And Business Calendar features tons of options for setting reminders so you won't be late for an important appointment, and allows you to set up recurring alerts for those weekly business meetings.

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Young adults touch their cell phones an average of 43 times a day—and that's just when they're not on other devices, says a new study urging marketers to keep millennial messaging consistent.

43 touches a day for the average millennial

For the sakes of millennials everywhere, let's hope their mothers don't get hold of today's study from SDL reporting that members of the now-dominant generational group touch their cell phones 43 times a day. Or let's hope for their sakes that at least one out of 300 of their weekly touches is an interaction with dear old mom.

As for marketers wanting to interact with millennials, being on message is crucial, according to results of this survey of more than 1,800 global consumers aged 18 to 36. Because of their incessant relationships with their phones and other devices (67% in the U.S. touched two devices daily; 45% touched three) marketers needn't waste time altering messages by channel, says SDL, a customer experience company. Sixty percent of millennials said they expected a consistent experience from brands whether it was online, in-store, or over the phone.

“Marketers should focus on the experiences customers want throughout the customer journey, and adjust company strategies to coincide,” says SDL's CMO Paige O'Neill. “It is vital for organizations to ensure channels are so connected that they become irrelevant.”

Millennials generally understand the proposition that they must trade data to interact on the Web, though they are not accepting of the tradeoff. Some data exchanges are more acceptable than others, however. Young adults don't mind recording of click-throughs, email addresses, or device-specific usage information. On the other hand, they do not cotton to giving up phone numbers, browser information, or locations.

Business Breaking News: Top 6 Chrome Apps for Business

Chrome apps can make you more productive, whether you're using a full Chromebook laptop or just running Google's Chrome Web browser. Whether you want to create and edit documents, take notes, maintain a to-do list or manage a business meeting, there's a Chrome app that can help you do it. Some of these apps require an active Internet connection, while others have robust offline functionality. And since they run in the Chrome browser, you can use these apps on virtually any computer, no matter what operating system you're using. Read on for six of the best Chrome apps for work.

Business Hangouts (for meeting remotely):

Google's Hangouts is a good videoconferencing app for small businesses, since it's free and easy to use. Business Hangoutsfor Chrome takes the basicHangouts platform and adds extra features for business users, including a registration tool to help you manage attendees, and an email system that makes it easy to send invitations, reminders and follow-up messages once your business meeting is complete. When you create a meeting, you're prompted to invite attendees via email, SMS text message or social networking apps. Plus, Business Hangouts also lets you create meeting rooms that anyone can join, even if they don't have a Google+ account.

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Seventy percent of consumers hop from desktop to smartphone to tablet when researching products. More than half of them, though, consummate the sale in-store.

The digital path to purchase traverse several devices.

Tron, the early Digital Age movie in which Jeff Bridges actually enters a mainframe and traverses its circuitry in a neon hockey uniform may now be considered kitsch. But the truth is that, some 30 years after the film's release, we all have something in common with Bridges' Kevin Flynn: Our lives are palpably interwoven with digital technology.

A path to purchase study conducted by Forrester Research on behalf of cross-screen technology provider Tapad paints this ubiquitous picture of the influence of connected devices: 5% of Americans rock six of them, 14% use five; 22% do four; and 30% have three. In other words, shopping forays for 70% of consumers ply a route of desktop to tablet to smartphone. When it comes to transactions, however, brick-and-mortar stores are still involved in the majority of them.

Forrester's surveys of 1,500 connected consumers found that two thirds of them discovered products via digital channels. To learn more about prospective purchases, 44% of them turned to search engines and 28% to retail websites. But then it was off to the mall (or the phone) for 50% of shoppers. Another 15% said they ordered online but picked their items up in-store.

Digital is clearly the route for marketers to take in their first miles on the path, Forrester says, and here's the easy part: It doesn't much matter which vehicle you use. In the product discovery phase, 46% of consumers said they used laptops and 33% hooked into a desktop/smartphone combination. During product research, it was 51% laptop and 41% phone-and-desktop combo. Fourteen percent used tablets for investigating details.

The hard part for marketers in negotiating the digital path, Forrester points out, is keeping messaging relevant and consistent for each consumer across all digital touchpoints. The researcher offers three suggestions:

Maintain context during discovery. No matter what device they're on, 28% of consumers expect to see consistent ads, 23% want ads tailored to content they're viewing, and 21% welcome location-specific messages.

Practice device-optimization during exploration. More than half of those surveyed said they want to see consistent content that's optimized for whatever screen they happen to be on.

Make the purchase experience consistent. The majority of shoppers who've signed into retail sites expect to be recognized when migrating to other devices. One fifth of those surveyed demand this level of attention even when they haven't logged in.

Business Breaking News: Lenovo ThinkPad 10: Top 5 Business Features

Lenovo's ThinkPad 10 is a versatile business tablet with tons of handy accessories to make you more productive. The 10.1-inch Windows 8.1 slate improves upon last year's ThinkPad Tablet 2 with hardware upgrades and a better keyboard dock. Plus, the ThinkPad 10 remains one of the few tablets that ship with a stylus, letting you write notes and draw charts right on the display. It's also compatible with Lenovo's desktop dock, which lets you use the device like a desktop computer when you're back in the office. And while it's not the fastest business tablet around, it delivers good performance for daily use. Check out a full review of the Lenovo ThinkPad 10 on our sister site Laptop Mag, or read on for five features that make it great for business.

Hardware upgrades

Lenovo's new ThinkPad slate is much faster than last year's model, packing a relatively speedy quad-core processor with 4GB of RAM. That provides pretty fast performance and smooth multitasking compared to the ThinkPad Tablet 2. It's not as speedy as premium slates such as the Surface Pro 3, but it's much more affordable; the ThinkPad 10 starts at $599, while the Surface Pro 3 starts at $799. The ThinkPad 10 also sports a brighter, sharper display than its predecessor, with a resolution of 1920 x 1200 pixels. Other hardware highlights include either 64GB or 128GB of onboard storage, depending on which configuration you choose.

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Zeta Hub aims to help CMOs deliver on ROI goals by extending customer lifecycles.

Zeta adds a piece to the automation puzzle.

Zeta Interactive today introduced what it calls a “cross-channel, cross-lifecycle” marketing automation platform that merges the capabilities of its recent ClickSquared acquisition with its ZetaMail email platform.

Called Zeta Hub, the new platform's stated purpose is to help CMOs acquire new customers within their ROI targets, keep them longer, and increase their lifetime value. Capabilities include multichannel campaign management, social integrations, email execution, mobile campaign management, interactive reporting, and database hosting and management.

Originally founded as XL Marketing Corp. by tech entrepreneur David Steinberg, the company was rebranded as Zeta Interactive with the ClickSquared purchase and the addition of ex-Apple CEO John Sculley as a partner in January. In its Magic Quadrant ratings of multichannel campaign management systems last month, Gartner cautioned that Zeta's platform is heavily skewed to travel and hospitality businesses and that it needed to integrate its diverse products.

Business Breaking News: Samsung Galaxy S5 vs. Galaxy S5 Mini: Which is Better for Business?

The Samsung Galaxy S5 is one of the best business smartphones ever, thanks to its huge 5.1-inch display, great security features and handy multitasking tools. The smaller Galaxy S5 Mini, meanwhile, trades productivity for portability, with a smaller 4.5-inch screen. It packs many of the Galaxy S5'sbest features, including a fingerprint scanner built right into the home button — but the S5 Mini isn't just a scaled-down Galaxy S5. Business users who pick the smaller device will also sacrifice speed, battery life and multitasking performance. Read on for a head-to-head comparison of the Galaxy S5 and the S5 Mini.

Galaxy S5: The most obvious difference between the Galaxy S5 and the S5 Mini is screen size. The Galaxy S5 packs a huge 5.1-inch display that's bright, extremely sharp and a tad bigger than the 5-inch screen on the Galaxy S4. That's a boon for most business users, since extra screen space gives you more room for productivity tasks such as editing documents and managing your email inbox on the go. On the other hand, the large size of the Galaxy S5 makes it difficult to use with one hand.

S5 Mini: The S5 Mini packs an average-size 4.5-inch display. With a resolution of 1280 x 720 pixels, it produces decent images, but can't match the Galaxy S5's supersharp screen.But the S5 Mini is also a much more portable device that slides into your pocket more easily.

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The sponsor of the Senate Postal Reform Act says passing it now could delay Phase 2 of the Postal Service's 'network rationalization' plan for at least two years.

Carper: "Congress can't remain idle."

Following Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe's announcement this week that 82 postal facilities have been slated for closing in 2015, Sen. Tom Carper (D-DE) issued an appeal to his fellow Senators to work toward quick passage of his Postal Reform Act. Doing so, he maintains, will keep these plants open for at least two more years.

“I have heard from a number of my Senate colleagues that the Postal Service is failing to meet the needs of its customers in many communities throughout the country, including some of those that would lose a processing center under this most recent plan,” Carper said in a statement issued yesterday. “Closing more mail processing centers will only make these existing problems worse and hurt the Postal Service's efforts to generate new mail volume and remain competitive in the growing package delivery market.”

Donahoe said this implementation of Phase 2 of the network rationalization plan approved by the Postal Regulatory Commission could no longer wait for action by Congress. In a letter to customers dated June 30, Donahoe wrote that “the uncertainty regarding legislative reform and review of postal rates in the courts continues to delay needed capital investments to acquire package sorting equipment and replace an aging mail delivery fleet.”

The closings, which will be initiated in January of 2015 and are expected to be completed by fall, should generate $750 million in annual savings for the Post Office, Donahoe stated. Approximately 15,000 postal employees will be affected by the cuts, most of them being reassigned to other facilities. Phase 1, executed in 2012 and 2013, consolidated 141 mail processing facilities and trimmed $865 million from the Postal Service's annual budget.

Facilities to be closed include processing & distribution centers, network distribution centers, air mail centers, and logistics & distribution centers. As a result, the average time it takes First Class Mail to reach its destination will increase from an average of 2.14 days to 2.25 days. USPS claimed, however, that speed of package delivery will not be affected. It also noted that the load-leveling plan it initiated earlier this year for presort mailers would not in any way be affected by Phase 2 closures.

In his letter, Donahoe expressed confidence that the new schedule of cuts would “establish the low-cost, technology-centric delivery platform necessary to serve the mailing industry for decades to come.” Carper wasn't so sure.

“The hard truth is that these piecemeal efforts undertaken by the Postal Service are likely not enough on their own to fundamentally fix the Postal Service's serious financial problems. Only bipartisan, comprehensive reform can put the Postal Service back on solid financial footing,” Carper said. “Congress can't remain idle. I urge my colleagues to join me this summer in addressing these concerns.”

Business Breaking News: 5 Leadership Blind Spots (and How to Overcome Them)

Even the most effective leaders have flaws. Unfortunately, many leaders don't know what those flaws are or how to fix them.

No one understands this better than Robert Bruce Shaw, a consultant with Princeton Managing Consulting Group in New Jersey, who has been helping business leaders come to terms with their imperfections for more than 20 years. Shaw's new book, "Leadership Blindspots: How Successful Leaders Identify and Overcome the Weaknesses That Matter" (Jossey-Bass, April 2014), pinpoints many of the weaknesses, or "blind spots," that can trip up even the best of leaders.

Here are the top five blind spots plaguing today's executives and a few tips on how leaders can identify the flaws that hold them back. [Modern Business Leadership: 4 Challenges and How to Overcome Them]

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