The Looming Crisis of Location Spam

Ten years ago, I was giving a lot of presentations on the topic of mobile commerce¹

As I envisioned it, cell towers would be used to locate our phones and we would receive something similar to a text message when we neared an establishment with an offer to make like a special or time-limited discount.

That’s pretty much come true, although so far there aren’t any truly “push” marketing messages out there — the kind that show up on your phone suddenly, like a text message does.

Apps like Foursquare and Gowalla are pull-based — you have to be in the app and ask to see any nearby specials if they’re available. Clearly, a much better solution.

Still, though, I’m beginning to see what can only be called location spam appear on our phones.

Take, for instance, the deal Starbucks made recently with Foursquare. Any time you’re within walking distance of a Starbucks outlet, a special offer appears to give the mayor² a discount.

I live in Vancouver. There are more Starbucks in this city than stop lights. One intersection even³ has two Starbucks! That means that pretty much any time you use Foursquare in Vancouver, you’re going to get an offer from Starbucks.

Problem is, the Starbucks offer is lousy. It’s only for the person who has checked in the most — and even then, it’s a cheap offer: $1 off a limited number of their cold beverages.

I’ve stopped touching the “Special Nearby” banner because I know it’s just going to be a Starbucks promotion I can’t take advantage of.

I can only imagine this getting worse.

The real problem is that Starbucks — and other places that offer Mayor deals — aren’t being particularly strategic about their Foursquare placements.

Foursquare lets you offer a special to people who’ve checked in x number of times — a far more rewarding offer to your loyal customers. Or for a new store, offer a discount if it’s the first time someone’s checked in.

These cheap and prolific Mayor deals will be piling on top of each other soon and, if that happens, the whole concept will become pretty much unusable.

UPDATE: Rob Cottingham has some excellent thoughts on this here.

I’ve just started booking my new presentation Using Location-Based Marketing to Drive More Revenue: Six Key Strategies for Mobile Commerce. If you’re interested in booking it, please inquire about a date.

1. I used to own the domain mobilecommerce.org; I really should have kept that. [↩]
2. the person who has checked into that location the most [↩]
3. Robson and Haro [↩]