frankly speaking

Checking Out of Foursquare…

Look, I like foursquare a lot. It has added a lot of value in the way customers and small time merchants interact with each other. As I posted earlier this year, it’s a marketing tool that rewards customers for their loyalty - you check in enough, you become the mayor, and possibly get a discount at the merchants store - easy, peazy. But, as I tweeted earlier this week, I’m starting to get over it.

I’ve been a steady user of foursquare for about six months now and have become the mayor of more than a few establishments. However, the only time I benefited from a Foursquare check in was when I happened to tweet my check in to a local coffee establishment and it was picked up by the establishment’s social media team on Twitter. Sure, foursquare has scored deal after deal with merchants willing to run social media campaigns and promotions through it, yet, even in the middle of Silicon Valley (where I live) I have yet receive any reward for multiple check ins to a location.

So why isn’t it working? A couple things come to mind, first, most offline merchants, while very business savvy, don’t understand the life time value of their customers and can’t manage it effectively enough to know how to run a mobile marketing campaign that targets their most loyal users. Sure, it’s easy to target mayors, but why not target users who come and check in to your establishment multiple times. And, maybe it’s not that they don’t know how to value that customer properly, or even to run the campaign, maybe it’s just that they don’t have time.

Secondly, where’s the value to the end user? Even if I’m the mayor of my local frozen yogurt shop, who cares if it doesn’t get me $1 off of my next purchase? What is the point of checking into a location, if said location does not reward my loyalty? Further, people use foursquare to let people know where they are. Can’t I let those same people know where I am via SMS, Facebook or Twitter (odds are more than pretty good that my foursquare followers are also my Twitter followers and Facebook friends).

Finally, foursquare is also missing the boat online. There’s tons of potential on allowing people to tell their friends where they’re shopping and what kind of deals they are finding. Sure, companies like Blippy and Swipely are trying to jump on this, but foursquare already has all the credibility, brand recognition and the technology in place to make this happen, cheaply and effectively for both online merchants and consumers.

I’m not saying I’ll never check in again, but for the time being, if you want to find out where I’m at, hit me on the text or twitter.