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Sunday, February 26, 2012

Transactional marketing: a way to inject profit into the online banking service?(MARKETING NEWS)

WITH THE GROWING CONSUMER ACCEPTANCE of online banking, financial institutions now have an opportunity to introduce "transactional" marketing that offers online rewards and help convert online banking into a profit center, says Scott Grimes, CEO of Cardlytics, Atlanta.

Transactional marketing is a new type of loyalty incentive program that rewards debit, credit or prepaid card spending with offers that are based on an individual customers' actual spending and presented in a customer's online banking account, Grimes explains.

Over the past decade, the amount of stored customer transaction data has increased as many consumers have shifted the majority of their day-to-day purchases to debit instead of cash or credit.

"Transaction-based rewards are significantly more valuable than traditional card based rewards because consumer response to the highly relevant offers is so strong," Grimes says. Traditional online marketing targets based on information like demographics, which is meant to predict a customer interest. "Transaction-based marketing is not a guess," says Grimes. Offers are presented based on a customers1 actual spending: including the location, date, amount and merchant associated with every purchase. Transaction-based offers bring the relevancy needed to appropriately market in the banking channel.

Financial institutions have appropriately avoided loyalty programs that rely on others to protect the security and privacy of account information. The capability now exists to enable banks to act as matchmakers, pairing relevant merchant offers with appropriate customers. This occurs without customer data ever leaving the institution. Offers are securely paired with appropriate customers and presented alongside transaction records they review when they visit their online bank account.

To redeem rewards, customers activate the offers by simply "clicking" them within their online banking pages, thereby "attaching" those offers to their cards. The offers are automatically redeemed when the customers use their cards to purchase according to the offer's conditions. Such functionality does not burden customers with having to print coupons or enter promotion codes. The incentive provided by the merchant is not given at the point of sale. Instead, it is provided to the customer through the bank's rewards program.

An example of financial institution that is using transactional marketing is First Federal Savings & Loan Assn (assets: $3.4 billion), Charlestown, S.C. According to Bruce Copeland, senior vice president of marketing, customer redemption of offers has increased 30 to 50 percent each month since the bank began using its transactional marketing program in November 2009.

Perhaps the greatest appeal of transactional marketing to banks is that it does not present the cost-burden normally associated with other rewards systems, Grimes says.

If debit cards have thin margins (that are primarily based on interchange fees) and customer rewards must be funded in the online bank, how exactly do banks manage to realize a profit?

Grimes says: "Profits come naturally to banks that leverage transactional marketing because retailers are willing to fully fund transaction-based customer offers themselves." To the retailers, he says, these costs are well-worth the significant marketing potential provided by transaction data: The service is extremely advantageous to marketers primarily because of the superior targeting and visibility it provides without the wasted expense typically associated with traditional marketing tactics.

"Transactional marketing enables banks to realize the full potential of online banking as it increases customer loyalty and generates additional revenue," Grimes says. "All parties involved are able to derive benefit as banks are able to provide relevant rewards to their customers and generate profits through their online banking channels; customers save money on everyday purchases; and businesses are able to leverage data that helps them better reach customers and prospects."

Cardlytics offers transactional marketing rewards programs for financial institutions, www.cardlytics.com

First Commonwealth to Host Second Quarter 2011 Earnings Conference Call on Thursday, July 28, 2011.

INDIANA, Pa., July 6, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- First Commonwealth Financial Corporation (NYSE: FCF) announced today that it will host a conference call on Thursday, July 28, 2011 at 2:00 p.m. local time to discuss financial results for the quarter ended June 30, 2011. The call will be hosted by John J. Dolan, President and Chief Executive Officer. He will be joined by Robert E. Rout, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer and T. Michael Price, President of First Commonwealth Bank. First Commonwealth will issue a press release reporting its second quarter 2011 financial results by 9:00 a.m. on July 27, 2011.

Conference Call Information:

What:		First Commonwealth Financial Corporation
		Second Quarter 2011 Earnings Conference Call
When:		2:00 p.m. local time, Thursday, July 28, 2011
Where:		First Commonwealth's Investor Relations webpage
		http://www.fcbanking.com
How:		Live over the Internet
		or
		Phone 1-877-317-6789

To listen to the conference call, either call the phone number above or go to First Commonwealth's web page at the address listed above, click on "Investor Relations" and then on the "Webcast" link and follow the instructions. After the live presentation, the webcast will be archived on this website for 30 days. There is no charge to access this event.

To Ask Questions:

Participants can e-mail their questions to us at InvestorRelations@fcbanking.com. E-mail questions will be accepted beginning at 10:00 a.m. local time on Wednesday, July 27, 2011, until the conclusion of the presentation.

Second Quarter 2011 Earnings Release:

The First Commonwealth Financial Corporation Second Quarter 2011 earnings press release can be accessed after 9:00 a.m. local time on Wednesday, July 27, 2011 at http://www.fcbanking.com. Click on "Investor Relations" and then on "News."

(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20030416/FIRSTLOGO )

About First Commonwealth Financial Corporation

First Commonwealth Financial Corporation is a $5.8 billion financial holding company headquartered in Indiana, Pennsylvania. It operates 112 retail branch offices in 15 counties in western and central Pennsylvania through First Commonwealth Bank, a Pennsylvania chartered bank and trust company. Financial services and insurance products are also provided through First Commonwealth Insurance Agency and First Commonwealth Financial Advisors, Inc.

SOURCE First Commonwealth Financial Corporation

COMMUNICATION: Yorkshire Water changes course on staff statements.

Yorkshire Water has switched providers for its total reward statements.

The utilities firm, which has provided total reward statements for its 2,400 staff for four years, switched to Benefex because it felt it was time to work with a new partner to ensure a higher level of accuracy.

The company provides paper statements because it has many staff in field roles who do not have regular access to the internet. It briefly moved to online statements in 2007 but switched back within a year because the offline version suited its workforce.

The latest statements, which were distributed at the end of 2010 to ensure staff had access to their details for a full year, will undergo a further design and content change for 2011.

Karen Rider, employee relations and reward specialist at Yorkshire Water, said: "We wanted to issue total reward statements to our employees before the end of the calendar year, therefore the timescales were tight." Jennifer Paterson

CHINA DEPLOYS NEW BALLISTIC MISSILE OPPOSITE TAIWAN: SPY CHIEF.

TAIPEI, May 27 Asia Pulse - China has assembled a new military unit equipped with a new ballistic missile system opposite Taiwan, National Security Bureau (NSC) Director-General Tsai Der-sheng confirmed Thursday.

The country's intelligence chief, however, stopped short of revealing any details about the new unit or missile system, in his response to a question by ruling Kuomintang Legislator Lin Yu-fang in the legislature's Foreign and Defense Committee.

Lin said information obtained from websites shows that China's People's Liberation Army (PLA) Second Artillery Force seems to be in the midst of expanding its ballistic missile infrastructure opposite Taiwan.

"A ballistic missile unit seems to have been posted in Guangdong Province in southern China under the command of the PLA's Second Artillery Force," Lin said.

"Is it a newly created unit?" he asked Tsai.

In response, Tsai said, "the unit, carrying the code number 96166, is indeed a new unit. It's probably a ballistic missile brigade, he added.

But Tsai would not go into any details about the newly deployed missile system. Instead, he said that over the past few years, the PLA has been stepping up its deployment of ballistics missiles opposite Taiwan, both in terms of quantity and quality.

According to an Internet report, China's Second Artillery 96166 unit is equipped with an anti-ship ballistic missile system.

Lin, a professor-turned-lawmaker who specializes in military matters, also asked Tsai whether the PLA had recently relocated a unit equipped with Dongfeng 21C ballistic missiles from Yunnan to Guangdong.

Tsai said he could not brief lawmakers on these matters because they were related to Taiwan's intelligence gathering capacity.

He agreed with Lin's views that China's continued expansion of its railway network had given it more flexibility in terms of missile deployment.

The extensive railway network has enabled China to transport its weapons swiftly to the coastal areas opposite Taiwan if necessary, according to Lin.

During Thursday's hearing, KMT Legislator Liu Shen-liang also asked Tsai whether the expanding civilian exchanges and transportation links across the Taiwan Strait had resulted in escalated espionage attempts by China against Taiwan.

Tsai confirmed that security authorities had indeed often detected Chinese intelligence agents visiting Taiwan under the guise of tourists or participants in cross-strait trade and cultural forums or other activities.

"We have kept close tabs on such activities and have never hesitated to take action to protect national security," Tsai said.

Several serious cases have been prosecuted and some others are still being examined and probed, he said.

Tensions across the Taiwan Strait have eased since President Ma Ying-jeou assumed office in 2008. However, Beijing still refuses to renounce the possible use of force against the island, should Taiwan declare formal independence.

(CNA) ms 27-05 1013

Of course the McCanns did not harm their little girl. But that does not mean they are free of blame.(Editorial; Opinion, Columns)

Byline: Brenda Power

THE walk from the tapas bar to the apartment took less than a minute. It was dark, just after 10pm, when Kate Mc-Cann went to check on her sleeping children.

There was silence, a good sign as far as a mother of toddlers was concerned, but the children's bedroom door was wide open. She reached to close it and glanced in. All appeared normal in the dim glow from street lamps - she didn't want to switch on the lights for fear of waking the children - and she hesitated for a few seconds trying to make out Madeleine's sleeping outline in her bed.

I've heard these details so many times that I almost know them by heart and yet there's something in Kate McCann's retelling of this life-altering moment, in her new book on her daughter's disappearance, that makes it suddenly chillingly vivid. Somehow, I'd always pictured her looking into a softly-lit room, instantly realising that the child was gone, and racing out in a screaming panic.

Instead, that pause in the darkness, as her brain rebels against processing the information that her eyes are relaying, rings painfully true.

Her head would have been full of the happy chatter at the table she'd just left a minute earlier, a funny comment or a good anecdote being polished in her mind for the minute or so in the future when she would rejoin her friends, report that the children were all sleeping soundly, and get on with enjoying the last night of her holiday.

CONTRARY to the way I had imagined, it would have taken several moments for her to realise that there was something monumentally wrong with the scene before her.

And those were probably the last few untroubled moments that the poor woman's mind will ever know. Reading her minutely detailed account of that night, the perfectly happy and carefree days that preceded it and the stomach-churning hours that followed, it is almost impossible to believe that anyone suggested the McCanns could have harmed their daughter.

While it may have suited the bungling Portuguese police to point the finger at the parents to deflect from their own ineptitude, it's even more amazing that the story grew legs among a wider public and is still a hot theory in web discussions on the most baffling case in decades.

It is an absolute nonsense to cling to a suspicion that the Mc-Canns killed and dumped their little girl. If she'd died in an accident or even, as one of the more persistent theories suggests, was unwittingly overdosed with a sedative administered so her parents could party with friends, their biological instincts would have overridden fears for their own skins.

They'd have sought help, regardless of the consequences, and anyone who says otherwise hasn't a clue of the bond that parenthood forges.

And if it wasn't an accident, then the only other theory is that these people coldly planned the murder and disposal of their three-year-old child under cover of a carefree family holiday.

By contrast, the possibility that aliens landed a massive space ship in the centre of a small Portuguese fishing village and stole the sleeping child from her bed is far more credible.

The suspicions that linger, though, serve to articulate a more legitimate unease about the McCanns' culpability for Madeleine's disappearance. Just because they didn't harm her deliberately doesn't mean they are free of all blame for what happened. In her book, Kate McCann says that leaving her children asleep in an unlocked apartment bedroom, while they ate in a restaurant at the complex, was no different to putting them to bed in a home and having a summer drink in the garden. With hindsight, she says, it was a catastrophic mistake but 'it's easy to be wise after the event'.

I know this couple have to find a way to live with their actions, but that's the sort of glib comment that inflames detractors. Because they weren't in the familiarity of their family home, and even if the only danger was that the children would wake and wander in strange surroundings, the risk was still too big to take. But nobody, not even the most vicious internet gossips, will be as hard on the McCanns as they'll be on themselves.

So maybe it's time, as they mark the fourth anniversary of Madeleine's disappearance, for a little more understanding about the context of their dreadful mistake. Every parent knows that it can take years to grasp how a child's arrival has changed your life. You quickly realise that a full night's sleep, spare cash and a tidy kitchen are things of the past. But, somehow, you cling to the illusion that holidays can still be relaxing and adult-centred.

YOU pack the books you'll read, the evening clothes you've been saving for a cocktail by the pool, the music you'll enjoy while snoozing on the beach. And after years of unpacking the unread books and the unworn clothes back home, the truth dawns: There's no such thing as a 'family holiday' - there are children's holidays, in which the adults participate as playmates, sand-castle builders, ice-lolly buyers, story-readers, theme park-chaperones and endless sources of hard currency.

The poor McCanns were still novices at the parenting game - Madeleine was only three, after all - and they just hadn't learned that a holiday with children is all about children, not about late-night drinks in nice places with grown-up company, and that it is foolish to resist.

In time, they'd have learned to develop a taste for fish fingers, water slides and early nights. But they thought they could enjoy themselves too, and that was the first mistake they made on the trip. It's one we all make in the early days, and, in time, we learn the rules. They didn't have time, though and, unlike most of us, they learned the hardest way of all.

Saturday, February 25, 2012

Angel guides and deities on pogo sticks; A WICKEDLY FUNNY TAKE ON MODERN IRELAND.(Features; Opinion, Column)

Byline: Anne Gildea

I try to have faith. There are so many things you could believe. Take God: The One who watches out for you. He may let bad things happen -- wars, tsunamis, earthquakes, nuclear meltdown, Justin Bieber -- but at the end of the day he's there for a chat if you want to talk out loud when you're alone, and not feel like a complete loony.

Plus he comes with a package of delightful stories, like the one that goes: imagine looking back over your life and you see your journey as footprints along a sandy beach, and you notice there are two sets of prints all the way along. And God pops up and says, 'That was me. I was walking with you the whole time.' Then you notice that at certain times along your life journey there was only one set of prints. You recall that they were the lowest, toughest times for you. 'Why did you desert me at my most difficult times?' you ask. And he says, 'I didn't desert you -- there's only one set of prints because during the tough times I carried you.'

Then you ask, 'But what about the times when there are no prints at all, just two deep recurring holes? That's when we were pogosticking,' he says. 'And the single pogo holes?' 'That's when times were rough, and I carried you. On my pogo stick, in the sand -- imagine the effort that took! But that's the kind of omnipotent benevolence that is my wont,' he answers.

And whenever you remember that story, you're suffused with the wonderful sensation that truly, no matter what happens, you're not alone and everything will be all right. (PS Some of that retelling is not quite the official version.) For people who find the idea of God too specific and macho, there are the angels. Apparently they may be seen in forms varying from mushy blobs of lovely light to the more traditional long-robed, bigwinged, handsome, Caucasian-featured creatures of storybooks.

I wouldn't know first hand myself; I don't have the magical sight claimed by some that allows them to view such visions. But I've heard such seers speak -- they say there are personal angels and gangs of general-purpose ones, and if you ask the angels for a sign of their presence, out of the blue, you'll find a little feather. I've tried that, and I have, actually, suddenly come across a little feather. Though my personal jury is out on whether that's more about the existence of angels or shedding pigeons.

As an adjunct to the idea of angels, there's the concept of the spirit guide. A clairvoyant once told me that my spirit guide is an American Indian chap. She said she could see him standing behind me, in the room where we were seated - a strapping, handsome six-footer, exactly the type I'd like to meet in real life. Just my luck that my perfect man exists in a different dimension. Do I believe in him? No. But if I asked for a sign, and a tomahawk suddenly fell out of the sky, I'd make that a 'maybe'.

If all of the above doesn't pique your fancy, how about just believing that we're all one energy field? And that the third eye will become the portal of the unityconsciousness we're all going to develop, quite soon, at the end of the Ancient Mayan calendar, 21 December, 2012? There'll be an apocalypse then but, don't worry, it'll be a nice one. Hopefully. This projected event is also linked to the Dawning of the Age of Aquarius, the Second Coming, the fulfilment of the Hopi prophecies and the advent of a new, universal appreciation of the magnificence of the lentil. It's the kind of information that's inspiring, when you read about it on the internet, in the middle of the night, while watching telly and quaffing a demijohn of red wine at the same time.

Or you could just believe in astrology. I've mentioned it here before: I'm a regular reader of Susan Miller's online Astrology Zone. She gives a free detailed forecast every month. This is a good one for us Pisceans according to Sue: 'In April there is a staggering development - Neptune is about to move into Pisces for the first time in your lifetime on April 4. Neptune has not been in Pisces since 1847-1862!'

'Whoopee,' I found myself going, even though the Irish-history bit of my brain went, 'Hang on, 1847? That wasn't too salubrious was it?' It's not remembered as 'Black '47' for nothing. So, what do the stars predict? That I'm going to emigrate to America and develop a deep distrust of potato crops? Sue continues: 'You will find yourself within a golden circle of monetary reward unlike anything you've seen in your life so far.'

Oh, I want to believe that so badly. I do. Who wouldn't? But I can't. I'm going through a phase of not being able to muster up faith in anything at all. Maybe it's the times that are in it: this era of The Bald Harsh Facts. Yet, I still, intellectually, believe in belief. I hope faith will return.

Meanwhile I just tell myself: 'You're not alone and everything will be all right.' Whatever you do or don't believe, that's not a bad mantra.

anne.gildea@mailonsunday.ie

THE CONNEMARA MUSSEL FESTIVAL runs from Friday 29 April to Sunday 1 May

The 6th annual festival takes place at Galway's Renvyle Peninsula, in an area that is rated as one of the 40 places to see before you die

Killary Harbour produces 2,000 tonnes of mussels annually, grown on ropes over a 2-3 year period

3 tonnes of the distinctively sweet-flavoured mussels will be harvested for the event

Did you know?

There are more Americans who believe in angels than those who believe in evolution: 55% say they believe angels exist; 39% accept the theory of evolution

Mozambique - Telecoms, Mobile, Broadband and Forecasts.

Research and Markets (http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/063e36/mozambique_telec) has announced the addition of the "Mozambique - Telecoms, Mobile, Broadband and Forecasts" report to their offering.

Almost two decades of peace and radical reforms have transformed Mozambique into one of the fastest and most consistently growing economies in the world. It is expected to escape the global economic crisis with only a mild drop of GDP growth in 2009 and 2010, before achieving 6% or more again from 2011.

The country was one of the first in the region to reform its telecommunications landscape, immediately after a long civil war ended in 1992. The mobile sub-sector has experienced excellent growth rates following the introduction of competition in 2003 between Vodacom Mozambique and mCel, the incumbent mobile subsidiary of the national telco, TDM.

However, market penetration is still well below the African average. The licensing of a third mobile network in 2010 is expected to deliver a boost to subscriber growth in the sector but also drive the average revenue per user lower again which had already stabilised following the introduction of mobile broadband services and higher tariffs.

The government is intent on introducing competition to the fixed-line sector as well, but it is hesitating to privatise TDM. All other services are open to competition, subject to licensing by the industry regulator, INCM.

Internet usage in the country has been hampered by the inadequate fixed-line infrastructure and the high cost of international bandwidth, but this market sector has started to accelerate following the introduction of various kinds of broadband services including ADSL, cable modems, WiMAX wireless broadband and mobile data services, and then the landing of the first international submarine fibre optic cable in the country (Seacom) in 2009.

Further improvements can be expected from the ongoing rollout of 3G mobile services and a national fibre backbone network as well as the landing of the second international fibre (EASSy) in 2010. The lower cost of bandwidth has already started to trickle down to lower consumer prices in some service segments, while others have remained unchanged.

Keywords: Electronics, Mobile Broadband, Networks, Research and Markets.