In the News

To survive and succeed in the era of the COVID-19 pandemic, retailers quickly adapted to meet customers' priorities and needs. Convenience became a touchstone of our "new normal," defining how, when, and where we shop. This trend will continue to be a hallmark of how consumers and retailers engage in the future. Read the full TotalRetail article here. 

Throughout 2020, we saw travelers shifting their traditional travel plans to "staycations" or local road trips and searching for new ways to redeem old rewards points. Despite some travel restrictions lifting over the past few months, consumers will continue to throttle back travel through the colder months and as the pandemic approaches its hopeful near-end.

Undoubtedly, one of the most affected industries as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic was the restaurant industry. As the world quickly came to a screeching halt in the early months of 2020, restaurants quickly accelerated an already existing shift towards digitalization to adapt to customers' new safety and priorities.

Christine Sullivan, director, product development for SessionM, a Mastercard company, explains why brands need to determine the best ways to understand and evaluate loyalty efforts to achieve success in the near term and assess readiness for 2021. Read the full article here. 

Even if you get blackjack, hitting a 17 is still a bad decision, because the odds are, in the long run, you’ll lose Data-driven marketers aren’t playing to win a hand or two. They’re playing to grow market share And as more companies mature from making impulsive decisions based on data in spreadsheets to making data-driven decisions based on statistics collected through automation, more marketers are minimizing risk to play their cards by the numbers This year at Dreamforce, some of the fastest growing, most admired digital brands laid their cards on the table. Read the full article here. 

Dal Gill, global head of programmatic at Seedtag, chats to Mobile Marketing about the programmatic landscape and the opportunities that exist. Mobile Marketing: Can you sum up how programmatic changed during 2019? Dal Gill: While there has been a lot of noise about programmatic audio, out of home, tv in gaming advertising amongst others there is still a large portion of advertiser spend in the more traditional and scalable methods of digital advertising across mobile/desktop. Read the full article in Mobile Marketing.   

Ninety percent of all the data that currently exists today was created in the last two years alone. Let that sink in. Sounds crazy, but less so when considering that each day, around 2.5 quintillion bytes of data are created, according to a recent report by Domo. As the scale of data is growing so quickly, the tools and trends used to make sense of all that information need to advance at a spectacular pace. And companies are clamoring to make that happen. By staying ahead of trends like open-source data warehouses and Bayesian optimization, local tech companies like Chewy and SessionM are placing all those bytes where they belong. Read the full article here! 

With venture capital money for ad tech and marketing technology businesses scarce and strategic buyers also hard to find, marketers are emerging as potential acquirers. The slump in optimism around ad tech and martech businesses hasn’t been enough to deter a growing number of advertisers. So far this year, several high-profile advertisers have swooped for companies that sat on the periphery of the ad tech and mar tech sectors. McDonald’s bought personalization platform in March, Walmart snapped up ad tech startup Polymorph Labs to deliver more relevant ads to online shoppers in April, Nike bet on predictive analytics company Celect in August; travel startup OYO Hotels and Homes-bought Danamica, a Copenhagen-based startup that specializes in dynamic pricing through machine learning in September; and the same month MasterCard cut a deal for customer data platform SessionM. Read the full article here. 

We can never tell with absolute certainty what the future holds. However, understanding the trends within an industry allows a professional to plan for the future with great accuracy.

Within the fast-changing communications industry, professionals need to be ready to adapt to new technologies and approaches in the field to ensure the success of their operations. To this end, communications experts need to develop critical skills to set themselves up for future success. Below, 13 experts from Forbes Communications Council examine what skills a communications professional should invest in today in order to stay relevant and be prepared for future trends. Read the full article here.

As CMO at SessionM, Patrick is dedicated to developing the most effective means of reaching individuals, individually via smart technology. There is a growing sense of the importance of “the now” cropping up in conversations, both real and social. Perhaps owing to a growing canon of literature on the benefits of meditation and “mindfulness,” or perhaps we have finally hit a breaking point where reality has inverted and the “gramming” of the thing has become more important than the thing itself. A child’s first goal or a tiramisu fit for the gods, there’s a dawning epiphany that too many of us have firmly put the cart before the horse in our day-to-day lives. Read the full Forbes article here. 

Consumers are awash in points. Starbucks gives them Stars, airlines give them frequent flier miles, Bee Built has Swarm Swag and Pixi Beauty hands out Pixi dust. Whatever they are called, they all more or less work the same way — the customer builds them up through brand interactions and gets to spend them on rewards.

The appeal of loyalty programs built on and around points, Francis Hondal, president of loyalty services, managed services and labs as a service at Mastercard, told Karen Webster is simple. Points-based loyalty programs are relatively easy to set up and many brands have leveraged them to great effect. Customers are drawn to the gamification of racking up points to get things for free — and as long as consumers keep doing that, brands will continue having that as part of their loyalty mix.

Read the full PYMNTS article here. 

Mastercard acquired Boston company SessionM to enhance its customer loyalty programs. SessionM is a customer engagement platform for retailers, airlines, restaurants and consumer packaged goods companies. With the acquisition, Mastercard can build out its rewards programs with partner brands. [Press release] Read the full Built In Boston Article Here. 

PURCHASE, N.Y: Mastercard (NYSE: MA) today announced it has entered into an agreement to acquire SessionM, a U.S.-based technology company. SessionM’s customer engagement and loyalty platform empowers the world’s most innovative brands—including retailers, airlines, restaurants and CPG companies—to forge stronger and more profitable consumer relationships. Read the full MarTech Article here. 

Mastercard announced it will acquire customer engagement and loyalty platform SessionM, according to a press release. The deal's terms were not disclosed. By acquiring the SessionM platform, Mastercard aims to improve its "ability to help brands around the world deliver personalized, real-time offers and comprehensive campaign measurement based on robust, data-driven insights," the company said in the press release. Boston-based SessionM's platform is used by the retail, restaurant and CPG industries, with clients such as Huggies, Chipotle, Coca-Cola, Air Canada and L'Oréal. Read the full Marketing Dive Article here. 

Mastercard rings up purchase of Boston tech firm

Mastercard made a transaction of its own. SessionM, a 250-person tech firm that helps businesses offer direct-marketing campaigns and loyalty programs, was snapped up by the credit card company. The terms of the deal, expected to close by the end of the year, were not disclosed. SessionM is led by chief executive Lars Albright and its current investors include Highland Capital Partners, Kleiner Perkins, Charles River Ventures, General Atlantic, and Causeway Media Partners. — JON CHESTO

Read the Full Boston Globe article here. 

Fast food and adult beverages have taken center stage in 2019 when it comes to supply and demand and the customer experience.

First, the great chicken sandwich war of 2019 (subscription required) commenced when Popeyes announced it had run out of its new chicken sandwich. The announcement prompted customer outrage on social media, while competing fast-food chains took advantage by running promotions about not running out of chicken at their stores. Read the full Forbes article here. 

If you care deeply about using data to make people’s lives easier, consider one of these companies as your next potential employer. So far, they’ve thought of out-of-the-box ways to track social engagement, created 3D foundational molds for scientific purposes, analyzed human emotions through voice, and much more. And they’re not showing signs of slowing down soon. Read the full Built in Boston article here.     

In recent months, alternative data has received a notable amount of attention from the finance industry for its usefulness in improving investment management, increasing financial inclusion by assessing loan credit risk and informing bond trading strategies. Many financial institutions and hedge funds have recognized the power of alternative data to change the way they approach their businesses.   Read the full Forbes article here. 

Over the past few years, many of the world’s largest airlines have made major changes to their loyalty programs. American Airlines, Air France–KLM, Delta Air Lines, Lufthansa, and United Airlines now offer rewards based on dollars spent rather than miles flown. While some high-mileage frequent flyers may quibble with the changes — saying they now get fewer benefits for the same amount of travel — the truth is that most airline loyalty programs were overdue for such major disruptions. “Travelers are less interested in the drumbeat of accumulating points and more in how they can use those points for unique experiences,” wrote Skift contributor Grant Martin earlier this year. “In short, they want faster gratification and deeper engagement from their loyalty programs.” Read the full Skift article here. 

SessionM, a customer loyalty and engagement platform, has teamed up with food ordering platform Olo for new loyalty and discount offers within Olo, according to a release. Customers who order from quick-service restaurants (QSRs) will now have streamlined access to offers, and the initiative will be powered by SessionM’s data and loyalty management capabilities. Read the full PYMNTS article here. 

Hotels rely on three metrics for operational and profitability planning:

• Occupancy
• Average Daily Rate (ADR)
• RevPAR

If rooms are too expensive, Occupancy will be low and RevPAR will suffer as a result. On the other end, if rooms are too cheap, Occupancy will be high, but ADR will be low and RevPAR, similarly, will be commensurately off. Read the full Hospitality Tech article here. 

Even CEOs leading the most decentralized organizations hold themselves to a “buck stops here” mentality. After all, when the going gets tough — which it does, according to 89% of CEOs — leaders at both public and private companies take the heat.

SessionM was included in the 2019 edition of CDP Buyers’ Guide. As customer data platforms are becoming increasingly necessary for enterprise marketers, it is also becoming more complex to choose the best fit CDP platform amongst the pool of new and old vendors.

In this 4 part CDP Buyers’ Guide, you can find:

• Part 1 - The evolving needs of CDM and CDP users, in order to maintain competitive advantage and strengthen customer engagement in today’s omnichannel marketing space. This section ends with the 5 checkpoints for what a CDP should do to meet these requirements.
• Part 2 & Part 3 - a unique 3-tiered approach to vendor selection that outlines a comprehensive list of features based on your own context, use cases and outcomes.
• Part 4 - Provides a handy vendor directory with strengths and strategic focus of over 60 CDP vendors, so you can shortlist vendors best suited to your own unique organizational needs.
• Bonus segment - A list of vendors that specialize in identity resolution technology.

Read the full Buyer's Guide here. 

In late June, 2018, California passed a consumer privacy act, AB 375, that could have more repercussions on U.S. companies than the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) that went into effect this past spring. The California law doesn't have some of GDPR's most onerous requirements, such as the narrow 72-hour window in which a company must report a breach. In other respects, however, it goes even farther.   Read the full IT World article here. 

Lester Wunderman was the “father of direct marketing,” the forerunner to CRM as we know it today. He founded Wunderman in 1958 on a brilliantly simple premise: Acquire with the intention to retain, and retain with the intention to grow. Before Wunderman, who died earlier this year at the age of 98, consumer companies spent a great deal of time on the first part and not nearly enough on the second. Customer acquisition has long been the be-all, end-all for marketers. Before Wunderman and his colleagues, once a customer was “won,” usually at a cost via discounting and/or paid media, the whole hunt went back to the beginning. After Wunderman, marketers began to think in terms of “life cycle” marketing. Phase One: Acquire. Phase Two: Grow. Read the full DestinationCRM article here. 

In today’s business environment, customer loyalty is more important than ever. The competition is fierce, there is an unprecedented abundance of goods and services, and increasingly short attention spans make it challenging to retain consumers’ focus. What does it take to build a strong base of loyal customers and keep them happy? Read the full article here! 

Over the past decade the pendulum has swung heavily from memorable brand experience anchored by creative expression to data-driven campaigns fueled by all type of connected systems. In many instances, the push for data has pulled us too far away from the human element that makes the best products and services generational must-haves. Don’t get me wrong, data is important. But deriving wisdom to create consumer rapport using that data is integral to long-term success. Read the full Modern Restaurant Magazine article here.  

SessionM has created a platform that helps enterprise brands to engage with people in better and smarter ways, ultimately building relationships and earning loyalty. We do this by giving them the tools to envision, create and execute on personalized experiences, rooted in customer data. Read the full article in MarTech Series. 

When the Apple Card was first announced, most critics shrugged at its seemingly mundane perks. While it’s true that the incentives and rewards offered are nothing unique in the world of credit cards, we may have been too quick to jump on the judgment bandwagon. Here we take a look at how the Apple Card might play into a larger Apple Loyalty strategy for Apple that spans the company’s products and services ecosystem. Read the full article in Sales Tech Star. 

When working with vendors on data ingestion, CIOs and IT teams sometimes fail to take complicating factors into consideration. Here's what you need to know.

During yet another incredible NHL postseason, Patrick Reynolds, CMO of SessionM picks a hockey parallel to make sense of the MarTech landscape in the restaurant and retail business. I am passionate about hockey. Even its trite clichés resonate with me: “Go to where the puck’s going, not to where the puck is…” “100% of the shots you don’t take don’t go in….” Read the full MarTech Advisor article here. 

Full-service digital agency DEG, Linked by Isobar and SessionM, the leading customer engagement and loyalty platform, have formed a strategic partnership to enhance brands’ customer interactions, creating more impactful personalized customer experiences across every channel. As a SessionM strategic partner, DEG will work with brands to implement and integrate the SessionM platform, harnessing their data and leveraging those insights to create effective strategies and programs that deliver the right messages at the right time to the brands’ targeted audiences. Read the full MarTech Series Article here. 

Overland Park, Kan: Full-service digital agency DEG, Linked by Isobar and SessionM, the customer engagement and loyalty platform, have formed a strategic partnership to enhance brands’ customer interactions, creating more impactful personalized customer experiences across every channel. As a SessionM strategic partner, DEG will work with brands to implement and integrate the SessionM platform, harnessing their data and leveraging those insights to create effective strategies and programs that deliver the right messages at the right time to brands’ targeted audiences. Read the full article in MarTech Advisor. 

Fragmented data is a real and lingering problem for marketers. The question is whether a customer data platform (CDP) is the solution marketers seek and, if so, whether every marketer actually needs one. The TL;DR on CDPs is that they unify, or at least aim to unify, a marketer’s first-party data, including online and offline data, which usually sits across multiple systems, in order to create persistent profiles – CDP vendors like to call them “golden records” – that can then be activated across channels, and not just for advertising use cases. Read the full article in AdExchanger.

According to Deloitte, travel and tourism is one of the world’s fastest growing sectors, with bookings hitting close to $1.6 trillion. Travel is outpacing demand for goods, with consumers focusing on experiential spending—recreation, travel and eating out. While the consumer demand exists, the onus falls to the hotels and casinos to provide an optimal customer experience that captures customer spending and increases their lifetime value for the brand. The good news is that these venues already have the foundation to create these experiences, they just need to capitalize on it. True hospitality requires an understanding of how to meet and exceed guest expectations. Read the full article in Hospitality Technology.

NATIONAL REPORT — Equipped with loyalty programs, convenience store retailers are collecting more data on their customers than ever before and the reasoning behind it is clear to data experts. "It's imperative to use loyalty data to retain customers since it’s seven times more expensive to acquire a new customer than it is to encourage a visit from an existing customer," said Zach Goldstein, CEO of digital customer engagement platform Thanx. Read the full article in Convenient Store News. 

Are you treating one customer as one single individual (irrespective of where you meet them) or as multiple different individuals? Is their experience seamless and consistent no matter what platform or device they interact with your brand; or is their experience more like the film ’40 First Dates’, where the protagonist must begin each day afresh, without any memories of what happened the day before? (Which one of us hasn’t experience the trauma of having to repeat our ‘problem’ to 4 different agents at the ‘service’centre? In more evolved times, why should I have to be a card-carrying Loyalty Program member for your on-ground outlets to recognize my preferences?) Read the full article in MarTech advisor. 

Target has reported higher gains in last year's holiday sales, largely due to improved e-commerce strategies and store makeovers, and has offered an upbeat outlook for 2019. Target's success holiday success can be traced back to its broad appeal and its convenience, according to Patrick Reynolds, chief marketing officer at SessionM. Read the full article in Ecommerce Times. 

Target has reported higher gains in last year's holiday sales, largely due to improved e-commerce strategies and store makeovers, and has offered an upbeat outlook for 2019. Read the full article in CRMBuyer. 

Tulip, the mobile platform for retail stores and leader in clienteling and store associate mobility solutions, and SessionM, the leading customer data and engagement platform, announced a strategic partnership to enhance in-store customer engagements by empowering retail store associates with valuable customer data and insights. The SessionM platform will be integrated into the Tulip Mobile App, giving store associates the ability to view detailed customer activity from all retail touchpoints in a unified customer view. Read the full MarTech Series article! 

What does the career path and day-in-the-life look like a Senior Product Manager at SessionM? Check out Christine's interview with VentureFizz to learn more!

We believe that the best way to maximize profitability is to optimize every customer engagement in every channel every day. On the revenue line, that means building out an ideal path for each customer based off of historical purchases, what they’ve expressed interest in tacitly through observed behavior (cart, browsing, social sharing), expressed interests from the customer, and your own domain expertise. Read the full article in VentureBeat. 

While brick-and-mortar shops may find it challenging to compete with the inventory flexibility, low cost margins and single-click ordering convenience offered by Amazon, they can use shoppers’ reliance on technology to get customers in their door. Read the full article in Small Biz Technology.

Mobile commerce has changed the shape of the sales industry in recent times. Indeed, a study of the 2016 holiday period revealed that mobile retail sales had increased by 23 percent from the previous year, according to research carried out by Adobe Digital Insights, highlighting just how much mobile shopping has taken off.

Modern Restaurant Management (MRM) magazine polled restaurant and hospitality industry insiders on their predictions for 2018. Their responses include the Instagram influence, experiential dining, increased data mining and integration in restaurant tech.

There weren’t as many leadership shakeups in Boston tech in October as there were in September, but there were some notable ones, including the earlier-than-expected retirement GE Chairman Jeff Immelt and Zemcar’s appointment of a former Obama administration official as its new CEO. There were plenty of other personnel moves that happened last month, including Drift hiring an executive from HubSpot and edX naming a TripAdvisor executive as its president and COO. Other companies that made hires included Cybereason, Humatics and SessionM.

At first glance, millennial and Gen Z shoppers might seem to be sounding the death knell for the beleaguered brick-and-mortar retail industry. After all, these demographics are spending more of their time (shopping) on smartphones and mobile devices than any other generation. And while it may seem easy to draw a connection between this trend and the number of retail stores closing, it turns out that’s not always the case.

Enterprises have warmed up to the public cloud with the belief it can be at least as secure, if not more, than on-premises infrastructure. But IT teams still need to fortify their cloud apps, and some increasingly rely on automation and infrastructure as code to do the job.

On a recent Sunday morning, my 6-year-old son turned on the TV, launched Netflix, then turned to me with great satisfaction and said, “Dad, how does Netflix know me SO well?” I laughed and replied, “That’s true. It’s pretty cool, isn’t it?” What struck me about his glee is this is exactly the type of response that Netflix is hoping for as it leverages AI and machine learning to improve recommendations. It’s also exactly the type of response that all brands should aspire to achieve — make your customers truly feel valued and known.

Improving the shopper experience and catering to their growing expectations is rarely as simple as just upgrading the e-Commerce site, providing a greater merchandise selection or training store associates. Much of this improvement comes from aligning processes within the retailer’s back-end systems. The Retail TouchPoints Retail Strategy & Planning (RSP17) webinar series aired live last week, and all 10 webinars are now available on demand. Four of the sessions provided details and real-world examples on how to improve the shopping experience throughout the retail enterprise, including:

Macy's is betting that a fresh loyalty program will lure more shoppers to its stores. The department store chain is rolling out a reinvented Star Rewards program, where shoppers can accumulate discounts and offers like free shipping and priority customer service based on how much they spend at Macy's every year.

Well over a decade ago, before the dot-com boom, there was a wide gulf between marketing and IT teams. When the digital revolution first began, CMOs and CIOs began an earnest collaboration due to necessity. They had to work together to drive the earliest stages of digital transformation throughout their organizations.

In the US, engagement and marketing platform SessionM has enhanced its Audience Module, to help marketers understand customer behaviour and target specific segments.

SessionM, providers of a customer engagement platform, has enhanced its Audiences Module to help marketers better understand behavior to prevent customer churn and calculate next-best offers. SessionM customers can now go beyond simply defining and creating customer segments using generic demographics or attribute data filters, using more sophisticated data to target precise segments, like specific items purchased and customer spend thresholds.

SessionM, a leading customer engagement platform, announced this week that it has been cited in Gartner’s July 2017 report, titled “Gear Up for the Evolving Multichannel Marketing Landscape.” The company, a top mobile marketing platform solution, tells us that Gartner now confirms that “nearly one in two organizations actively use multichannel campaign management (MCCM).”

Loyalty is a two-way street — both in life and in rewards programs. Every quick-service restaurant (QSR) seems to offer its own loyalty benefits in increase its customer service, whether by app or by card tracking or, simply, via old-fashioned punch card. Yet the ones finding the most success have one thing in common, and that is treating loyalty as a give and take.

Successful loyalty programs are rooted in mutual understanding and fair value exchange — not just of goods and services, but of information. Customers agree to grant brands access to information about their habits, preferences and behaviors, IF brands agree to use that information to deliver them customized recommendations, offers and experiences. In fact, only by demonstrating an awareness of past and present engagements can mutually beneficial future ones be created, maximizing lifetime value for the brand and satisfaction for the customer in the process.

Prime Day may have been a huge sales day for Amazon, but it was also an important day for building consumer loyalty. The annual Black Friday-like shopping spree in July achieves three major goals for Amazon, according to Lindsay Bloom, senior marketing manager at SessionM, a leading customer engagement platform. First, it encourages new customers to sign up for Prime. Second, it strengthens the brand's bond with its customers. And third, it increases a consumer's frequency of purchase.

But before we even get to Net Neutrality Day, we have Amazon Prime Day to navigate. That's scheduled for tomorrow, July 11, but since it's scheduled to be a 30 hour day, it begins this evening. Essentially, Prime Day, an annual event since 2015, adds another big shopping holiday to the calendar. Because if Mother's Day, and Black Friday, and Cyber Monday, and Christmas aren't enough, Jeff Bezos can just decree another one. And it's global.

Amazon’s third annual Prime Day has come and gone. This year's event now ranks as the biggest sales day ever in Amazon history, surpassing both Black Friday and Cyber Monday, according to an Amazon statement emailed to Retail Dive.

Amazon Prime Day is a mid-year Black Friday of sorts, when Amazon offers its Prime members – shoppers who have paid $99 for a year of free or reduced pricing shipping – access to a treasure trove of deeply discounted products. It is one day a year when Prime members are treated like VIPs. Non-Prime members can sign up for a 30-day free trial of the service in order to qualify for the Prime Day deals. Some might claim that Prime Day is simply another excuse for a mid-summer sale, and that Amazon is no different from other retailers trying to boost revenue during slower summer months. But Patrick Reynolds, CMO at SessionM, sees Prime Day as an example of a superior growth strategy and a preview of the future of loyalty.

SessionM, a customer engagement platform, announced late last week that it has experienced high demand for its solution since announcing its expansion outside of the United States just over one year ago. “The enterprise brands we serve are global, and there’s incredible opportunity for SessionM to help them scale their customer engagement efforts around the world,” said Lars Albright, co-founder and CEO of SessionM. “At the same time, we’re learning a tremendous amount about needs in specific markets through our conversations with new prospects across Europe and beyond. Having coverage in place with qualified and experienced people helps us better serve existing clients, while building new relationships.”

Thanks to the data-tracking capabilities of smartphones and the web, companies can now gather an incredible amount of information about their customers. That big data explosion has led to a similar boom in technologies that promise to help sales, marketing and advertising teams make sense of all that information.

Marketers want to engage customers while they’re in the moment looking to make a purchase, whether that’s in-app, online, in a store — or, today, when making a voice inquiry through what SessionM CRO Bill Clifford calls the “invisible storefront” of intelligent assistants like Amazon Alexa or Okay, Google. “What’s interesting is that if I’m in my house and I just say, ‘Hey Google, order me a pizza,’ it’s really up to Google what they come back with,” Clifford said. “So the platforms have more and more control for operating this invisible storefront that’s driven by an algorithm. Brands need to [figure out] how they’re going to deal with that.” Following a keynote at Brand Innovators Dallas in May, Clifford talked to GeoMarketingabout handling the proliferation of data points — and why brands must do more to stay top-of-mind in the age of intelligent assistants.

The highly anticipated annual report from the partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers has good news for lots of Boston-area companies.

SessionM launched in 2012 as a platform that increased user engagement by adding gamification and loyalty rewards to mobile apps. The system has since expanded to support more channels and message types. This puts it in competition with dozens of other customer engagement and personalization systems. Compared with these vendors, SessionM’s loyalty features are probably its most unusual feature.  But it would be misleading to pigeonhole SessionM as a system for loyalty marketers. Instead, consider it a personalized messaging* product that offers loyalty as a bonus option for marketers who need it.

How do consumers shop for retail items? How do smartphones influence their decisions? And how do they plan to use smartphones in the future? To survive, and more importantly thrive, in an evolving landscape, retailers must learn more.

Becoming the chicken salad chick was one thing. Growing the Chicken Salad Chick brand into a regional chain, and keeping repeat customers engaged was another.

Customer data management is hardly a new concept to marketers and the IT folks that support them. What is new however, is the emergence of technology that unifies a company’s customer data from marketing, sales and service channels to enable customer modeling and drive customer experience.

How do restaurants measure customer loyalty? Or, perhaps more importantly, how do they create it? With new players continuously entering the market, quick-serves are always on the hunt for ways to engage with consumers—not just to get them into the restaurant initially, but also to keep them coming back.

For a few years, analysts have blamed this period of dynamic change on “digital disruption.” Digital technology is a big part of this change. But it’s merely a vehicle for getting closer to the consumer.

What do you call a cybersecurity executive who works for a cloud provider, builds security into the commercial service and works with security folks on the customer side to keep their systems safe from intruders, insidious ransomware and other threats?

Boston startup SessionM doesn't just use cloud computing to deliver its product, a mobile-marketing software platform -- it taps the cloud for its own IT operations.

Consumers today are rarely without their smartphones throughout the day, even in-store. With an increasing number of sales coming from mobile, the need for an omnichannel strategy that reaches consumers and builds relationships is becoming a necessity for retailers of all sizes.

McDonald's, the world's leading global foodservice retailer with more than 36,000 locations in over 100 countries, recently unveiled a long-term global plan that outlines initiatives to unlock meaningful growth and increase guest counts that includes 1) enhancing digital capabilities and the use of technology to dramatically elevate the customer experience, 2) redefining customer convenience through delivery; and 3) accelerating deployment of Experience of the Future restaurants in the U.S. 

The best hotel companies know this to be true: Cultivating strong relationships with customers is a vital part of a successful business strategy to cement loyalty. It’s also the path of least resistance—and cost. Finding new customers to trust and engage with your brand takes more time and resources compared to pleasing and satisfying the ones you already have.

When the Atlanta Braves celebrate opening day this year, they will unveil more than just a brand-new ballpark. They'll also introduce their fans to one of the sports world's biggest experiments in augmented reality. Pokémon GO, meet Field of Dreams.

Spring Break is not just a highlight of the year for college students heading to tropical locations. With over 65.1 million people screened by the TSA during Spring Break in 2016, there’s a tremendous amount of travel for hospitality and travel brands to be excited about, too. With this large influx in travelers, hospitality and travel brands have an opportunity to harness data to nurture customer loyalty—and this can be achieved by focusing on mobile.

2017 is poised to be a banner year for travel. The US Travel Association estimates that direct spending by resident and international travelers in the United States is already averaging $2.6 billion a day, or $108.1 million an hour. Global business travel spend hit $1.2 trillion USD in 2015, and it’s on pace to reach $1.6 trillion by 2020, according to the Global Business Travel Association.

SessionM, the leading marketing automation platform for loyalty generation and customer engagement, announced the joining of MarTech veteran Michael Simon. Simon, the co-founder and Chairman of the Board of LogMeIn, will be part of SessionM’s board. He is known for his specialization in marketing analytics and personalization technology to product innovation.

Michael Simon, the respected tech exec who co-founded LogMeIn in 2003 and took it public six years later, is joining the board of SessionM, which specializes in marketing analytics and personalization technology.

Officials at SessionM, a Boston, MA-based mobile-first marketing automation and loyalty platform, believe that last month’s acquisition of LoyalTree, a Pittsburgh-based provider of integrated point-of-sale (POS) marketing software for retail brands, will significantly impact their customer loyalty and retention efforts moving forward.

If the world of digital publishing were a hockey game-- with the content providers on one team and consumers on the other-- the outcome of tomorrow's matchup would be all but certain:  The latter would trounce the former in a lopsided shutout.  That's because consumers have the ultimate goalie in the net:  ad-blocking technology, which prevents digital advertising such as banners and display ads from appearing on device screens. The odds of a content providers' victory have gotten worse since Apple rolled out its iOS 9 with a built-in ad-blocking option-a move that's bound to significantly expand the practice of ad blocking across mobile....

What is the one thing you never leave the house without?  For most of us, it's our phone.  After all, in our ultra-connected world, our phones provide immediate access to all aspects of life that are most important – a call to a family member, an email to a co-worker, a Facebook post to friends.  As technology evolves and improves, we are able to use our phones in more ways than ever before – for banking, entertainment and real estate to quote just three examples.

These days, it's a common scenario: A consumer walks into a store to test drive, try on, or take a peek at a product.  But instead of making a purchase, the consumer whips out her smartphone, presumably to seek out a better price online. This phenomenon, known as showrooming, can befuddle brands that rely on brick-and-mortar sales.  But a good mobile content strategy can turn showrooming on its head to persuade consumers to purchase.

SessionM CEO Lars Albright, an expert in mobile advertising, weighs in on ad-blocking software.

The holidays are upon us — a great time of year for bad sweaters, chestnuts roasting on an open fire, and parties with friends and family.  It's also a time when those friends and family might ask you (if you've been "good") what you want for a gift.  Or when it comes to my wife, sometimes she doesn't ask me what I want — she just watches what I say and do leading up to the holidays, and invariably arrives at the thing I want or need most. So why is it that 'Holidays 2015' still features so many brands and retailers that do neither?  They don't come right out and ask what I'm interested in, nor do they observe what I've done with their brand and arrive at an offer that's just perfect for me, showing clear insight into how I tick.  Rather, in essence they tell me what they want me to buy — which "coincidentally" was the same thing that every other male, age 20-50, in the state of Massachusetts, wanted too.

In a world now dominated by mobile and digital, brands must lead, not follow, consumers through the purchase journey, in order to motivate them to perform high-value behaviors that will make lifetime customer value grow exponentially. Just knowing that a consumer visited a store or a site after he or she left is no longer enough.  Today brands need to bring consumers to their sites consciously and lead them while they are there, engaging them on a very personal level, capturing their behavior in real-time and updating their personal profiles dynamically – all while having very relevant, contextual communication with them.

United States retail sales in the months of November and December are forecasted to increase 5.7 percent year over year, reaching $885.7 billion.  That is an increase from the 3.2 percent growth rate predicted earlier this year, and the highest since the 6.3 percent rise in 2011. According to another study, 43 percent of consumers reported that they will shop via their mobile device or smartphone this year, with another 54 percent of people saying they plan to research products while holiday shopping on their mobile phone or tablet.

Showrooming has changed and as well, the responses to this behavior have changed accordingly.  A mere three years ago the entire retail industry was in full panic mode because they had just begun to realize that shoppers were pulling out their smartphones in their store and, cue gasp, actually looking elsewhere to make the purchase. Initial responses to this phenomenon ranged from doom to confusion and everywhere in between.  But a few smart marketers started wondering how to leverage this change by consumers in order to turn it into retail gold.  And some of them have succeeded.

AT&T Mobility's (NYSE: T) Cricket Wireless prepaid brand is launching its own rewards program and is touting it as the first such program from a no-contract U.S. operator. Customers can earn rewards by taking actions in a variety of different apps and signing up for Cricket services, and then redeem them for gift cards, the ability to enter sweepstakes and make charitable donations. The rewards program is a result of an exclusive deal between Cricket and SessionM's Mobile Marketing Cloud and mPlus Rewards. The carrier said that the program, dubbed "Cricket Rewards," is accessible through the Cricket Rewards app, the MyCricket app or Cricketwireless.com website.

The digital ad industry has lately been hit by a kind of triple whammy: bot fraud, viewability issues and ad blocking. Notwithstanding these challenges, money continues to pour into digital from traditional media because it’s where consumers are spending their time. In parallel, mobile devices are making it possible to measure whether an online or mobile ad exposure has caused someone to visit a physical store. Already a wide range of marketing providers and analytics companies are measuring offline actions or visits: xAd, NinthDecimal, PlaceIQ, Placed, YP, Acxiom, Marchex, SessionM, Belly, Google, Yext, Facebook and others.

Cloud software provider, Salesforce, is an impressive Silicon Valley success story. But a Boston startup says that it’s winning business from its customers. Should Salesforce shareholders be worried? Before getting into that, let’s look at why startups survive and grow into big public companies. The short answer is that one in five million unfunded startups become worth at least $1 billion.

As more marketers and agencies grow wary of the effects of ad-blocking on mobile budgets, the key to coming out on top is providing such valuable experiences and content that consumers will not be prompted to banish ads on their small-screen devices. Ad-blocking platforms may actually improve site performance and reduce distraction for some users, which could lead brands to focus their efforts on providing a better mobile site experience...

The team at SessionM tells MMW that several more category leaders have signed on to its Mobile Marketing Cloud. The platform combines marketing automation with personalized messaging and data management, enabling brands to engage directly with consumers via mobile while guiding them down the path to purchase and loyalty.

“The customer is always right…” It’s something we’ve all heard before, but now marketing teams are starting to see the truth behind it. Rather than building a marketing calendar that’s “inside-out” (promoting what the company wants to promote, when it wants to promote it), brands are being rewired to enable “outside-in” marketing, where customer behavior triggers actions, and those actions are served up individually rather than collectively.

Advertisers that are currently in the process of churning out holiday marketing campaigns in anticipation of the upcoming shopping season should take note of these five digital trends.

It's not even Halloween yet, but according to a survey, 26 percent of people have already started their holiday shopping, according to SessionM marketing VP Patrick Reynolds.

Today’s that day. That day in time when hover cars were to ferry us from here to there effortlessly. Despite Elon Musk’s protestations to the contrary, we’re not quite there yet, though that day is clearly coming. While it’s not as interesting as hover cars (but infinitely more practical), mobility has ushered in a “forward to the past” aesthetic for today’s brands-- particularly retailers.

Residents in four states are far more likely to believe Patriots quarterback Tom Brady is completely innocent in the Deflategate scandal, while people in the rest of the country are much more likely to believe he is completely guilty, according results of a recent national survey. You can probably guess which ones have No. 12’s back.

Tom Brady was in a Manhattan courtroom Wednesday for a hearing over his involvement in the “Deflategate” scandal. But in the court of public opinion, the New England Patriots star has been found overwhelmingly guilty, according to data from SessionM. Except for—surprise, surprise—in virtually all of New England.

It’s hardly a secret that many consumers use their phones in stores, even though most of the actual purchases are from the store itself. Almost three quarters (73%) of smartphone owners have made an in-store purchase within the last three months and more than half (53%) see in-store shopping as the best overall shopping experience, according to a new survey. The study comprised a survey of 12,000 randomly selected smartphone users conducted by SessionM.

Winning new customers is increasingly tough. Advertising, long the staple of that initiative for larger companies, has become an exercise in crawling through glass with the rise of media fragmentation, proliferation of subscription media, paywalls, ad blocking technology, and mobile behavior which has turned much media consumption from passive and one-way to (very) active and two-way. While winning new devotees has become harder, nobody has offered relief on the topline. Growth is still required. So where does that leave you?

Customers want options when they’re out shopping. They want to check their phone to see if their purchase could be cheaper at a different store, if they can get a better deal by buying it online or if there are any coupons available. SessionM, the self-described market leader in mobile data management and engagement tools, recently conducted a survey of more than 50,000 randomly selected mobile users. The purpose of the study was to gain a better understanding of how using our mobile devices impacts and influences decision-making while shopping for consumer packaged goods (CPG).

SessionM, the market leader in mobile data management and engagement tools, and Phoenix Marketing International (PMI), a top 20 market research company known for its excellence in product innovation, customer experience, communications and brand insights, today announced an exclusive partnership that will redefine how traditional market research is gathered, delivered and executed via a breakthrough mobile-first approach.

Across all industries and segments, global and national brands are spending more time on researching, studying, and implementing mobile marketing strategies. From mobile advertising and mobile wallets to mobile sales mechanisms and reward-based mobile advertising, executives are realizing the current benefits and planning for the future opportunities mobile has in store. Here are some thoughts about the present and future trends associated with mobile marketing, according to industry and marketing association thought leaders.

The world’s greatest technical genius couldn’t build a company by himself. To do that, a founder must build relationships with co-founders, investors, customers, partners, and employees. Here’s how.

SessionM, a provider of mobile-first loyalty and engagement solutions, has some new money to invest in making some good things even better.

SessionM, a mobile loyalty and advertising company, has raised $12m in its latest funding round, bringing its overall total to more than $38m. Causeway Media Partners led the round, and it has attracted investment from Highland Capital and Charles River Ventures.

Startup SessionM, which runs mobile-loyalty and advertising programs for companies and apps, has closed a funding round of more than $12 million as it expands to serve large corporate clients. Causeway Media Partners led the effort with Commerce Ventures and existing investors Charles River Ventures, Highland Capital Partners and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers taking part. The round brings Boston-based SessionM’s total funding to $38.5 million.

SessionM, the market leader in mobile-first loyalty and engagement solutions, today announced that it has closed a new $12M investment round led by Causeway Media Partners, a growth equity firm focused on investments in technology and media relating to sports founded by Boston Celtics principal owner Wyc Grousbeck, with additional participation from Commerce Ventures and existing investors Highland Capital Partners, Charles River Ventures andKleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.

After closing on a $125 million fund in the fall, Cambridge-based Causeway Media Partners has made its first investment into a prominent local tech company by leading a $12 million round for Boston ad tech firm SessionM.

The Boston-based digital marketing company, which has raised about $12 million in new investment cash, also says it reaches 100 million mobile devices a month.

SessionM, a mobile marketing startup based in Boston, is on a hot streak. The latest win came Tuesday, when the company announced it has raised a $12 million funding round. The round brings the total SessionM has raised to $38.5 million since it was founded in 2011.

The Boston Business Journal today announced the 80 honorees for its annual Best Places to Work program.

As anyone on either side of a loyalty-points transaction knows, rewards drive engagement. Especially when the transaction involves planes, hotels and rental cars. But how about rewards for engaging with professional sports, such as the PGA Tour? The Tour has, in fact, launched a points rewards platform to drive fan interest and interaction across desktop, mobile web and app properties.

Golf fans surfing PGA Tour’s websites and apps can now score rewards points in the golf organization’s efforts to reach younger audiences and fantasy game players, a tour executive said Wednesday. More than one million daily visitors to the tour’s various platforms will be accumulating PGA Tour mPoints in conjunction with SessionM in a loyalty program launched this week.

NASCAR has updated its mobile application with a new loyalty and rewards experience as the racing organization looks to build closer relationships with the fans already accessing news and other information via the platform. By leveraging SessionM’s loyalty offering, NASCAR is enabling app users to collect rewards for visiting the app and engaging with its content features. Rewards can be redeemed for NASCAR gear and gift cards at participating retailers.

NASCAR this past weekend quietly integrated its new loyalty reward program, created by SessionM, into its mobile app. The opt-in program will reward users with points based off of acts like frequent visitation, exploring content or sharing it on social media, signing up for NASCAR’s fantasy game, engaging with brands, checking in at tracks and buying NASCAR merchandise. In exchange, fans can get items such as merchandise, gift cards and the chance to win experiences or the opportunity to donate their points to charity.

When discussing the Patriots’ innovative and efficient use of tech, Fred Kirsch is one individual that should come to mind. Kirsch, the Vice President of Content and Publisher for New England, spearheaded their first blogs of the 90’s, cleverly titled “Kirschwords” at the time, and continues to develop new digital methods to engage fans. In an interview with SessionM, Kirsch mentions the growing app and media market in which the Patriots franchise must compete with other media sources to attract fans to their content. In other words, the millions of loyal Pats fans around the globe support the same squad on the field, but remain loyal to separate media outlets for coverage. To combat this divergence of allegiances, Kirsch’s team has connected with Boston-based SessionM, a media loyalty and advertising platform.

We’re surrounded by amazing tech gadgets on a daily basis — constantly connected — checking emails, tweets, texts … Playing, pinning, and snapping. But this Holiday season, more people than ever before are using their gadgets — and mobile technology in particular — to give back to the world at large. Here are a handful of ways you can use today’s top tech to do some serious good.

A new commercial check-in mobile ad product is now available to retailers. SessionM, a Boston-based digital ad firm, developed the offering for its hundreds of clients with apps, which are now able to push rewards to consumers’ smartphones. Consumers are notified of deals that can be redeemed by checking in at stores. The service works by sending messages to smartphones for brands to alert consumers about where they can buy a product, such as Leap Motion pinging users with a promotion at a nearby Best Buy.

Virtual currency is one thing, but a number of startups are beginning to help developers offer physical goods as a way to boost engagement.

Those who braved the stores last weekend know that despite technological advances in retail mobile integration through coupons, branded apps, and more, some 54% of shoppers used their mobile devices during Black Friday for entertainment while waiting in line, according to SessionM. Shoppers — at 41% — also pulled out their phones to check prices to ensure they were getting the best deal. Interestingly, only 39% of shoppers on Black Friday entered their retailer of choice with a particular item in mind to purchase, suggesting that consumers were more excited by the great bargain versus a particular store item, per SessionM.

Nike is building up awareness and mobile sales for its products with a new advertising campaign that rewards consumers for using mobile applications. Nike’s mobile ads are running within SessionM’s network of mobile apps, including the ScanLife iPhone app. The ads are part of a Thanksgiving-themed campaign from Nike called Turkey Bowl to promote the athletic brand’s line of Hyperwarm clothes.

Deborah Powsner is the VP of Consumer Insights at the mobile advertising firm SessionM. Before SessionM, Powsner did research and marketing for Google+. During her time there, the bright 30-year-old co-developed Google’s first e-book on the consumer behavior theory “ZMOT”–the Zero Moment Of Truth. Now Powsner is advising SessionM on mobile consumer behavior. Session M’s advertising style is a far cry from the usual ill-fitting banner ad that chokes up your screen. Instead, it provides brands like The New England Patriots, Honda, and Livestrong with customized mobile advertising plans that are based on a reward system in which mobile users earn points for viewing and engaging with ads. Powsner’s deep understanding of mobile consumer behavior can be translated to anyone working in the mobile realm.

A SessionM executive at the ad:tech New York 2013 conference said that simply relying on a reward to lure a consumer to click on a mobile advertisement is only half of the mobile advertising equation. During “The Rules of Engagement: How to Drive Mobile Brand Loyalty” session, executives from Millward Brown and SessionM spoke about the role of mobile for increasing brand favorability that sticks with consumers after they click on a mobile ad. Rewards-based mobile advertising has received a significant amount of attention from marketers, but brands also need to be thinking about how incentivized advertising plays into a bigger mobile advertising strategy.

Dana Ortiz, VP of brand marketing for cable channel Syfy, relies on mCAST from SessionM to target fans. The start-up offers a mobile loyalty and rewards platform that combines first-party data with self-reported survey data to target consumers with ads and deals.

Welcome to the sixth annual edition of Mobile Marketer’s Classic Guide to Mobile Advertising. In this edition are thought pieces and best-practice tips on the ins and outs of mobile advertising. Featured among them, is SessionM’s byline – “Value at first glance: Making mobile ads worth watching.”

Mobile advertising is growing rapidly, but the jury is still out on its effectiveness for brands. And targeting consumers with mobile ads is inherently tough, since there aren’t cookies to follow users around the Web on smartphones and tablets like there are on the desktop Web. But SessionM, which rewards mobile users for engaging with apps, believes it has a solution. The company, which delivers both loyalty programs and mobile ads for companies like The Weather Channel and AOL’s Moviefone, is introducing mCAST (an acronym for “Mobile Custom Audience Segmentation Tool”), which takes SessionM’s first-party registration data and marries it with in-app surveys to create custom audience groups that can be re-targeted with ads, explained Bill Clifford, chief revenue officer at SessionM.

Twice a week, Adam Bryant talks with top executives about the challenges of leading and managing. In this column, he speaks with SessionM CEO and co-founder, Lars Albright.

“Everything starts with an active audience.” Those are the words of SessionM co-founder and CEO Lars Albright as he breaks down the success of his company’s new partnership with Glu Mobile. SessionM, a loyalty and rewards platform for mobile applications, is teaming with Glu on games like Frontline Commando: D-Day, Zombies Ate My Friends, and Deer Hunter 2014 to increase gamer engagement by providing digital currency called mPOINTS to users for doing everything from clearing a level to simply checking in on a daily basis. These mPOINTS can then be redeemed in the SessionM storefront for real world value like gift cards or the ability to make a charitable donation

A chat with Scott Weller, CTO of SessionM about how monetizing mobile apps has changed.

It is no surprise that mobile display has become increasingly sophisticated in the past year as marketers get a better understanding of the medium’s strengths. However, with search expected to continue dominating most mobile ad spend, it is becoming trickier for marketers to balance a mobile ad budget.

Marketers have placed a significantly bigger focus this year on mobile native advertisements as an alternative to static banner ads. Although fragmentation and scale remain issues, the value proposition of integrated ads that do not feel intrusive is catching on with both advertisers and consumers. “Consumers have a deeply personal relationship with their mobile devices and so there’s a higher expectation for how brands reach them through this medium,” said Deborah Powsner, vice president of marketing and consumer insights at SessionM, Boston. “Mobile ads need to feel like a seamless, relevant piece of the experience.”

Old Navy is one of many brands to try native, rewards-based mobile advertising this year. In May the brand ran a mobile ad campaign within Session M’s network of mobile applications as an extension of its summer “Camp Old Navy” campaign. As marketers increasingly look to break out of banner ads that basically squish desktop copy into smaller-sized screens, native advertising has generated a lot of buzz this year as an alternative for marketers, and Old Navy is smart to jump in on the trend.

One day, we’ll get paid to play games. But until that day comes, in-game rewards are the next best thing. SessionM and social gaming publisher Zynga have partnered to provide in-game, real-world rewards for players. Boston-based SessionM specializes in such rewards through its mobile loyalty and ad platform. It will embed its redeemable rewards in Zynga’s Scramble With Friends mobile social gam

Reciprocity is the idea that we’re much more open to engage with people and brands after they’ve provided us with real value. A classic example is the way charities include pens in their postal mail-out appeals. The facts the pens are low quality and we already have lots of pens are overwhelmed by the feeling that the charity – perceived as a needy organisation – has given us something. We need to give something back. This kind of thinking also works in the world of virtual goods, which is why companies such as SessionM are finding success.

A new partnership was announced this morning, as Zynga and SessionM are looking to bring real-world goodies into the hands of Scramble With Friends players. Soon to launch this month, an updated SwF app will feature more, how do I put this, immersive advertisements, allowing players to earn things like iTunes and Amazon gift cards.

Monetizing mobile apps through advertising has been challenging and there are many competing options for a developer’s attention. That said, successfully monetising an app through mobile advertising doesn’t need to be quite as challenging as many make it out to be.Amplifying an app’s ad-based revenue depends deeply on identifying who your core audience is, understanding their usage behaviour, and employing retention techniques to foster a more loyal user base. Here are a few key steps we’ve seen work successfully…

It is no secret that customers have become dependent on their mobile phones. According to research by The Pew Internet Project, as of May 2013, more than 90 percent of American adults had a cell phone and almost 60 percent own a smartphone. And because many of us carry our phones wherever we go and keep them with us 24/7, mobile provides a fantastic opportunity for organizations to reach out to both their customers and prospects anytime and anywhere. But while mobile ads are becoming more prevalent, not all companies are leave a lasting impression on their customers. Deborah Powsner, vice president of marketing and consumer insights at SessionM, shares three tips for a successful mobile ad campaign.

According to a new research report, Exploring the Role of Value in Mobile Advertising, conducted by Millward Brown, in partnership with SessionM, brands have an opportunity to break through low favorability of mobile advertising by offering more tangible value in their marketing content. Rewards change the equation, concludes the study. The study found that reward-based ads succeed when the creative execution is timely, relevant and chosen by the consumer, and when the reward is predictable, tangible and also chosen by the consumer.

By providing tangible value, mobile ads can result in more loyal customers, but if done incorrectly – no tangible value or delivered without regard to the customer’s user experience – the ads can turn off customers rather than driving more sales and customer loyalty.

A new study shows that mobile consumers seek value from brands in exchange for their time, which increases customer engagement and loyalty. According to the study, consumers use a value exchange equation to assess mobile advertising and they are more likely to engage when brands offered them tangible value in exchange for their time and attention. “Mobile advertising experiences that create a more balanced consumer experience — ones that respect time and provide a useful outcome — open the door of receptivity and have a positive impact on the brand,” Jayne Dow, Director of Qualitative Research and Digital Innovation at Firefly, Millward Brown’s global qualitative practice, added. “This simple truth has powerful implications in improving the perception and effectiveness of mobile advertising.”

Nothing makes mobile marketing more effective and engaging than content and opportunities that offer real value. According to the findings of a new study conducted by Millward Brown in partnership with SessionM, mobile consumers are more receptive when brands offer value in exchange for their time

SessionM, in conjunction with researcher Millward Brown, is releasing a study today stating that consumers react positively twice as often to mobile ads when they get something valuable, relevant and/or engaging in exchange for their time.

Consumers who routinely use mobile applications are not only interacting with content, but also reward-based advertising, according to a new report from SessionM. SessionM’s new “Q1 2013 Power User Report” looks at how mobile power users, which are defined as the top 33.3 percent most active mobile app consumers, engage with content and ads. The report also suggests that there are specific apps and times of day that mobile power users are more responsive towards.

A new look at mobile power users finds that they spend a disproportionate amount of time using apps compared to average users. For purposes of the data analysis by SessionM, power users were defined as the third of people responsible for the most in-app actions on the company’s rewards-based network. These power uses accounted for most (78%) of the total time spent in apps. This reminds me of the old 80-20 rule, where 80 percent of a given activity is done by 20 percent of the people, among various other iterations.

Power users accounted for 78% of the total time spent in apps in the first quarter, accounting for nearly five times more sessions per month than average users. “Power users” are defined as the third of people responsible for the most in-app actions on its rewards-based network in the quarter, according to new data from mobile ad platform SessionM. Through its in-app ad platform, SessionM promises to boost engagement rates by investing apps with game-like features that reward users with mPoints toward retail gift cards in return for completing actions like watching promotional videos or sharing content on Facebook. The company says power users complete 10 times more in-app actions per month than average, regardless of whether they collected mPoints.

Every time a customer goes online, she must wade through all sorts of content vying for her attention: emails, tweets, Facebook alerts. How’s a brand to stand out? Reward users, says Lars Albright, CEO of SessionM, a start-up that creates loyalty campaigns for brands such as Viacom and Honda. He talked to Inc.’s Jeff Haden about a better way to rise above the noise.

A survey carried out by TIME Magazine last year describes the dependence on mobile. In the United States alone, almost 90 percent of adults carry a mobile phone. A quarter of respondents check their phones every 30 minutes and a fifth cannot spend 10 minutes without checking their mobile devices. Further, a third of respondents admitted that being without their mobile phones for even a short time leaves them feeling anxious. This huge dependence on mobile is an opportunity for marketers to engage customers and prospects on a device that’s rarely out of arm’s reach. Experts share six tips for a robust mobile marketing strategy.

A number of fast-growing startups in the Boston area are offering digital solutions that they say can help brands connect with consumers online in a more effective and deeper way than Facebook.Sean Corcoran, digital media director at Boston ad agency Mullen, cites three Boston-based startups in particular. He points to: SessionM, which offers rewards for loyal users of mobile apps; LevelUp, whose mobile payments app allows users to earn credit toward future purchases; and Dailybreak, which creates customized online challenges such as trivia and games.

The American Express executive dished on what works and what does not work in mobile during the “Keynote Conversation: Where We Are and Where We’re Going” session. The session was moderated by Lars Albright, cofounder/CEO of SessionM, Boston. “We work with SessionM and we are able to create a great little value exchange with people that actually drove a 95 percent view-to-completion rate and a 24 percent click-through rate – those things were very much optimized for the mobile environment,” said Lou Paskalis, vice president of global media content development and mobile marketing at American Express, New York.

Hey all you smartphone stat savers, I recently received some interesting information from the folks at SessionM, you know, the creators of that awesome mobile rewards loyalty program which pays you for using some of your favorite websites with mPoints which can then be redeemed for all sorts of cool products. It’s pretty cool info which they compiled in a joint effort with the MMA, (Mobile Marketing Association), so rather than simply list the information here as text, I decided to make a slideshow version for your enjoyment and edification.

A week ago I attended the second of their new “Inside the Mind” series, where the focus is on innovative people in the industry, rather than innovative companies. It’s reminiscent of an annual piece we do in the iMedia publication: iMedia 25 innovators. The focus on people is what’s so intriguing. Everyone wants to hear from the Apple’s and the Facebook’s of the world, but the people within these companies are the ones driving collaboration and innovation. In this breakfast session, Sarah Fay, Former CEO of Aegis North America moderated a discussion with Lars Albright, Co-Founder & CEO of SessionM and also of Quattro which was sold in 2010 to Apple and Martin Nisenholtz, Former CEO of the New York Times Digital.

There’s no secret recipe to building and maintaining customer loyalty, but there are essential ingredients that marketing, in particular, can add to the customer experience mix. From relevant and proactive communications, to customer listening and personal connections, to preference-based multichannel interactions, marketers have myriad opportunities to build customer trust, bolster engagement, and cement customer loyalty. The challenge, and opportunity, is selecting the precise blend of those ingredients to cook up a loyalty strategy appealing enough to satisfy today’s exacting customers. With that in mind, Direct Marketing News asked several industry insiders the following: What is one essential ingredient to loyalty marketing today? Here, industry leaders share their opinions of current loyalty marketing must-haves.

When developers talk about success, they often reference download numbers, but that, of course, doesn’t tell the whole story. The reality is that the average mobile user will only use 40 percent of the game apps they’ve downloaded in a given month. So how can you guarantee your app will not fall prey to the 69 percent of users who install an app and never open it again? With that end in mind, I present SessionM’s three top tips that will help developers turn their average users into power users.

SessionM announced on Tuesday that it teamed up with Ludia to improve player retention for the Family feud game app. A rewards program known as mPOINTS has been added to the game in an effort to get players to return. While the number of downloads of an app is certainly an important statistic, it can often be misleading, especially if users download a game but only play it once. “Knowing that around 72 percent of users only visit a game app once after it’s installed, we’re focused on delivering a platform that encourages mobile users to become more deeply engaged with in-app content,” said Bill Clifford, chief revenue officer for Session M.

Power users are the 33 percent of users who account for 76 percent of all time spent on the average app. Call them core consumers, fan-boys or simply your best customers, this is the active audience you should encourage to grow because without them, you don’t have a business.

Last month, iMedia published my article, “5 ways we’re still botching mobile,” in which I interviewed experts in the space about areas where mobile is falling short. Since then, I’ve gotten feedback from other industry participants concerning what’s not being botched. They were eager to publicize the better side of mobile, and so I invited them to answer a few questions. While only two were interested in this proposal, their responses were thorough and informative.

A company called SessionM prepared two infographic to show us mobile user behavior and trends. Their focus is on the most active mobile user group that is also known as power users. The research looks to answer questions like where they are from, what days they are most likely to use apps, how much they use apps on their phones, and so on.

Founded in 2009, Runtastic has rapidly grown into an innovative suite of apps, products and services that track and manage health and fitness data in order to motivate individuals to get in shape, stay healthy and improve overall fitness. Now, through the partnership with SessionM, users can earn mpoints every time they use Runtastic apps to help get in shape and stay that way. These points can be redeemed for all sorts of products and services on the internet. How’s that for motivation?

SessionM has a term for users who are constantly using their mobile device. The rewards-based ad network calls them power users, which are defined as users who generate the most in-app activity — including interacting with mobile content, social activities and in-app ads — across all app categories. The company’s co-founder and chief technology officer Scott Weller — formally of MDI, GameLogic and Gamesville.com — lays out five tips on how developers can turn average users into power users, resulting in a higher potential for the success of an app.

We’re still using the term ‘whale’, despite Nicholas Lovell’s attempts to replace it with ‘True Fan’. Perhaps US mobile monetisation outfit SessionM will succeed with its ‘Power User’. Significantly, it’s putting numbers behind the concept too: it defines a ‘power user’ as the third of users who complete the most in-app activities across the apps it tracks through its network. Each quarter it consider the behaviour of this valuable cohort in its Power User Report. It’s just released the report for Q4 2012.

H&M is leveraging mobile to not only show off its new bodywear collection by David Beckham, but also incentivize consumers with in-application rewards. H&M is running a campaign in apps such as MTV News that incorporate video to let consumers learn more about the items featured in the brand’s current TV spot. H&M has tested a variety of different initiatives in the past to drive in-store traffic and sales.

All the initial marketing and publicity may help attract interested users, but converting them into die-hards is, of course, another matter. Scott Weller, CTO of app loyalty program provider SessionM, said fans become super-fans only through significant efforts around personalization.

The latest front in the East-West skirmish is in mobile marketing. Once again, the U.S. marketplace finds itself at a perceived disadvantage. So it’s fair to ask the question once again: Are we ever going to catch up to Asia? Indeed, America could be leaving Asia in the rear-view mirror when it comes to mobile ads, as promising mobile purveyors like SessionM, LeadBolt, MoPub, Greystripe and Millennial Media stockpile clients. Additionally, Facebook and Twitter’s iterations can’t be underestimated as brands warm up to social-mobile ads. But could the country that brought the world Jackson Pollock and the Jackson 5 still trail the land of math and science when it comes to mobile creativity? Absolutely, say those who have worked in digital marketing in both regions. The U.S. is still pretty much the bird dog chasing sky-high Asia when it comes to innovation, particularly in mobile commerce, they contend.

From Google to startups like SessionM, a look at seven would-be mobile titans.

The rapidly changing digital media that have helped create the real-time, rapid-fire rhythms of business information are themselves subject to these truncated narrative cycles. To wit, as soon as some “conventional wisdom” seems to take hold about the inherent weaknesses of mobile advertising, the supply chain rushes in with examples designed to respond.

This year, Super Bowl watchers were more willing to divide their attention to the on-field action with second screens than they were to take a break from the commercials. Apparently, the ads were simply too important to miss. According to data that the Mobile Marketing Association and mobile ad company SessionM compiled, 59% of viewers used their phones more during the games as compared with 41% who did so more during commercial breaks. The study is part of a monthly series called “mPulse” (Mobile Pulse), which researches and analyzes the impact of mobile engagement across annual milestones and major events.

During the Super Bowl, 91% of viewers used their mobile devices during the commercials — most responding to the ads — but only 35% reported completing a follow-up action on their phones after an ad aired, according to data from the Mobile Marketing Association and mobile ad company SessionM. The finding, which come from a study series that SessionM and the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) will jointly release called mPulse or Mobile Pulse, suggests that brands are not capturing consumer demand. While the majority of respondents did not take action on their mobile devices based on a commercial during the Super Bowl, they would like to do so. Most of the TV commercials did not present a clear call to action.

The majority of consumers watching the Super Bowl would like to take action on their mobile devices, based on television commercials — but most didn’t, according to findings released Monday by the Mobile Marketing Association and SessionM. In fact, 21% want to see more commercials inviting them to interact with the brand on a mobile device and be rewarded with incentives and content for their actions.

With TVs, computers, phones and tablets almost always within our reach, it’s rare our attention stays with one device for long. The Super Bowl is no exception, which presents marketers with an incredible opportunity. Leveraging mobile as a ‘second screen’ can bring interactivity to a whole new level.

Last year, marketers incorporated mobile into their Super Bowl marketing via second-screen initiatives and advertising opportunities. This year, marketers can expect to see social play a critical role in how mobile is used for branding and driving sales.

HBO recently ran an in-application holiday mobile campaign where 30 percent of consumers who watched a video made a post-click action to redeem a gift card.

As mobile continues to grow, marketers are beginning to explore emerging channels such as the mobile Web, video and social, but recent numbers from Apple point to the continued relevance of applications as a marketing vehicle.

Every successful product has them, and they can go by various names. To some, they are the superfans. To others, they might better be called the die-hards. According to experts in the mobile marketing space, however, app developers should figure out how to get closer to what they refer to as “power users.”

Hey all you “resolutioners”, you “starters”, “stoppers”, “changers” and “promisers”, it’s day three of 2013 and what have you done? If you’re like me you’re telling yourself that because the new year fell on a Tuesday, I may as well just take the rest of the week off to get ready for my life changing routine which I “promise” will begin on Monday! I do have something here to help you though, my loyal readers. I recently did an article on a mobile platform called SessionM which works in conjunction with many app sites that you all visit on a daily basis, rewarding you for your loyalty with mPOINTS.

Energizer is running an in-application advertising campaign that lets users learn more about the brand via a mobile game and sweepstakes. The Energizer campaign is running in Session M’s platform. In-app rewards are a tactic that more brands are eyeing as a way to target groups of engaged users.

Interesting news in the mobile scene today. SessionM, a new Boston-area startup, announced it has raised $6.5 million in Series A financing from Highland Capital Partners, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (iFund), and mobile industry leaders…

Boston mobile entrepreneurs launch stealthy SessionM. Lars Albright, co-founder of Quattro Wireless, which was previously based in Boston and acquired by Apple Inc. in 2010, has launched a stealthy mobile-focused startup in Boston again and has already secured initial funding…

Lars Albright, who co-founded Quattro Wireless, the mobile ad startup that Apple bought and that became iAds, has a new startup called SessionM…

After selling mobile ad startup Quattro Wireless to Apple (AAPL) in late 2009, Lars Albright took a job helping the iPhone maker work with its community of mobile app developers…

Lars Albright, the entrepreneur whose technology now powers Apple’s iAds, has a new startup, and it just raised a $6.5 million round led by famed venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers…