In addition, an overwhelming 80% show that federal government apps that are created by the public sector are the buggiest and least appealing to citizens. Whereas, local and state government applications that are created by private sector software show a higher degree of efficiency in performance as well as satisfaction.

The potential for mobile apps specifically for different branches of the government can really enhance how citizens receive and consume information. There are also special uses that government apps can provide.  Creating government apps in conjunction with private sector companies such as Parallel 6′s Captive Reach technology can allow these applications to do things such as send important push notifications to citizens in emergency situations. Enabling geo-location or geo-targeting Captive Reach technology to promote state and city activities, or even gamifying government apps to engage and increase citizen interaction.

In this day and age it continues to become gradually harder for the government to to engage with citizens. Gone are the days that people read newspapers regularly or watch the news every night. We are living in the age of mobile and digital consumption, trends continue to move to mobile technology. Different government agencies from the DMV to city tourism divisions can utilize this mobile technology to their advantage.

For example, a study showed that the City of Salem, Massachusetts developed an iOS app that promoted tourism; the app itself included a mobile brochure and tour guide, as well as listing events and providing coupons/tickets to different attractions around Salem. The app became a success, leading the city to look into the development of a residents application that would be centered around the city constituent, allowing residents to report problems in their neighborhoods such as potholes. We see trends within local and state government popping up throughout the nation (i.e. The New York State Senate app, updating citizens on the latest news pertaining to state legislation, meeting agendas, votes, and blog posts) slowly and the applications that do emerge are being received with much success.

The hope is that once local and state government grow their mobile presence and become more prominent within the mobile app space the federal government will do the same; we, as citizens desire this shift in technology and in the way we consume information.

The Parallel 6 team will be attending the Top Tech Exec Awards tomorrow, May 9, as a gold sponsor. At our booth, we’ll be showing off some of our mobile technology and digital marketing services, as well as holding a contest. For each attendee that comes to our booth and connects with one of our team members via the Top Tech Exec Awards app, they will be entered into a drawing to win a $50 Apple Store gift card.

In addition to the contest held at our booth, the Top Tech Exec Awards app is available for networking with other attendees, participating in a scavenger hunt, voting and live-tweeting. If you plan to tweet about the event, or post event photos on Instagram, be sure to use the unique hashtag, #TopTech2013. All of those posts will appear on a live-tweet board at the event.

We look forward to seeing everyone at the Top Tech Exec Awards 2013. If you still haven’t downloaded the Top Tech Exec Awards app, you can download it here:

For iPhone Users: http://bit.ly/ZqI8vQ

For Android Users: http://bit.ly/15cXEDp

Don’t forget to stop by the Parallel 6 booth to connect and win!

San Diego Top Tech Exec Awards Leverage Parallel 6 Captive Reach App to Engage Audience with Scavenger Hunts and Networking

SAN DIEGO (April 29, 2013) — In order to engage and connect its anticipated 1,000+ participants, San Diego Magazine’s Top Tech Exec Awards continues to utilize a branded Top Tech Exec Awards Mobile App powered by Parallel 6′s Captive Reach. The event’s mobile app supplements the awards event to not only recognize the most outstanding information technology executives who work in San Diego, but to also encourage networking through a social scavenger hunt.

The Top Tech Exec Awards mobile app gamification feature launches an interactive scavenger hunt for event participants. With the incentive of winning a prize, participants are encouraged to download the app and visit all areas of the venue to find and scan a special QR code. The more QR codes a participant scans, the more points he/she accumulates toward the prize.

“Having an interactive, event-specific mobile app adds a whole new level of entertainment and engagement with our participants,” says Sara Brown, Top Tech Exec Corporate Event Consultant. “We have San Diego’s brightest technology leaders under one roof, so we use technology to stay connected with them and connected to each other as they purposefully navigate through our whole event space.”

“Sometimes at large events, it’s easy to get caught up in one area of the venue and chat with the same people around you,” says David Turner, President of Parallel 6. “But we’ve seen that an enticing and engaging activity such as a mobile app scavenger hunt really helps participants move around and network with even more people, adding additional value to the whole experience.”

The mobile app is in its second year of use with the Top Tech Exec Awards. More than 47% of last year’s attendees downloaded the app and scanned more than 1,600 QR codes around The Paddock at the Del Mar Fairgrounds. This year’s event on May 9, 2013 is expected to draw more than 1,000 guests.

Cox Business is the title sponsor of the event and Parallel 6 is a gold sponsor. For more information about the event or to purchase tickets, please visit http://www.sandiegomagazine.com/toptech/.

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Parallel 6, a creative enterprise mobile technology company, is the creator of Captive Reach, an all-encompassing enterprise mobile platform. Captive Reach influences consumer behavior, enhances brand recognition and builds strong client-customer relationships. With mcommerce, geo-located content management, pocket insights, gamification, image recognition, and augmented reality, Captive Reach is the mobile strategy that allows brands to engage and activate their best consumers through the palm of their hand. Parallel 6 serves a wide array of B2B and B2C companies including retailers, daily deal companies, hotels, e-commerce, publishers and professional service firms around the globe. The firm is based in San Diego with development offices in Mexico, Ukraine, and China. For more information, visit http://www.parallel6.com.

Mobile Coupons Guaranteed Better Redeem Rate with Parallel 6 Captive Reach Mobile Technology for Grocery and Retail

To address the need for redeeming mobile coupons, Parallel 6 has created Captive Reach Enterprise Mobile Technology Platform 10.3.0 for Grocery and Retail. The platform is complete with features such as geolocation, push notifications, and customized grocery lists which offers grocery and retail businesses a mobile strategy to increase mobile coupon redemption, increase customer retention and increase customer loyalty.

SAN DIEGO (April 24, 2013) — US mobile coupon users will increase to over 50 million by 2014 because more and more people are utilizing smartphones. To anticipate the vantage of redeeming mobile coupons, Parallel 6, an enterprise mobile technology company, has created Captive Reach Enterprise Mobile Technology Platform 10.3.0 for Grocery and Retail. The platform prepares grocery and retail businesses with a mobile strategy to increase mobile coupon redemption and capture the attention of its users to turn them into loyal customers.

Captive Reach’s geolocation feature alerts customers when they walk on-site, sharing special offers and promotions specific to their brand. Imagine five of those coupon items aren’t already on the customer’s grocery list, but the mobile coupons have enticed them enough to purchase. Customers find those five items that they originally thought they didn’t want to buy, but actually do want to buy. They put those items into their basket for checkout. And instead of fumbling through paper-clipped coupons, the platform’s ability to integrate into the brand’s customer loyalty program allows the customer to easily scan their mobile phone at checkout or click on “redeem now” before they even get to the line.

“A lot of households don’t even bother sorting through their stacks of grocery store coupons stuffed into their mailboxes. But how easy and efficient would it be to see, shop, and redeem those coupons through a mobile device?” asks David Turner, CEO and President of Parallel 6. “We’ve designed Captive Reach with both the customer and the brand in mind. Customers get a much better shopping experience, knowing their grocery deals are easily accessible through the mobile app. In turn, powerful Market Basket and Loyalty Based insights track the effectiveness of a brand’s coupons so they truly understand the ratio between viewed and redeemed coupons to ultimately increase and optimize revenue for the store.”

Grocery and retail businesses that utilize the mobile technology of Captive Reach have the ability to reach their loyal customers and create new ones through the power of their mobile device. User-friendly features such as customized grocery lists created directly through the app helps increase profitability store-by-store. In addition, leveraging push alerts can influence consumers when they are on or near-site, thus transitioning a cherry picker (a customer who chooses a grocery store based upon enticing deals) into a consistent loyal customer, all the while increasing the market basket size at checkout.

Mobile apps backed by Captive Reach for Grocery and Retail can also be easily programed with the brand’s backend system to integrate into loyalty, pricing, promotion, markdown and coupon systems as well as sync with customer reward programs and other incentive options.

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Parallel 6, a creative enterprise mobile technology company, is the creator of Captive Reach, an all-encompassing enterprise mobile platform. Captive Reach influences consumer behavior, enhances brand recognition and builds strong client-customer relationships. With mcommerce, geo-located content management, pocket insights, gamification, image recognition, and augmented reality, Captive Reach is the mobile strategy that allows brands to engage and activate their best consumers through the palm of their hand. Parallel 6 serves a wide array of B2B and B2C companies including retailers, daily deal companies, hotels, e-commerce, publishers and professional service firms around the globe. The firm is based in San Diego with development offices in Mexico, Ukraine, and China. For more information, visit http://www.parallel6.com.

Here’s an overview of what was discussed regarding Parallel 6 and the success of the Del Mar Thoroughbred Club app:

“Del Mar was originally skeptical of the Parallel 6 app developed for them, thinking it might get 4,000 downloads over the July-to-October season last year.

“What we ended up seeing was about 30,000 downloads across 37 race days,” said David Turner, CEO and president of Parallel 6.

The numbers also show that attendees in floppy hats and bow ties crave alternatives to the traditional race-day ways of flipping through programs and staring at the large screen above the track. Users watched videos more than 88,000 times and looked at programs more than 64,000 times.

“You start doing math on this stuff and you can see the popularity of the mobile app,” Turner said”

It was a great opportunity being able to sit down and discuss mobile apps and Parallel 6 with The Daily Transcript. To read what else Turner has to say about future projects, mobile app builds, and the Parallel 6 team, read the entire article at http://bit.ly/ZEtxzN.

April 6, 2013, marked the inaugural year for VinDiego, the San Diego Wine & Food Festival. As sponsors and social media team for VinDiego, Parallel 6 was filled with high hopes and fears, anxiety and anticipation that any event planner feels leading up to an event date. As we stepped onto the Broadway Pier at the Port Pavilion, last Saturday, all of our worries disappeared.

The Broadway Pier is a gorgeous site and the perfect venue for VinDiego. Surrounded by massive cruise ships and the USS Midway, the Broadway Pier also served as a reminder of the event’s charity, Freedom Station. By the end of the night, the silent auction raised $7,200 for veterans of Freedom Station. An additional $1,200 was raised from direct donations at the Freedom Station booth, making an accumulated total of $8,400 in donations for Freedom Station.

As for the wine and food, there were over 200 wines to taste, from wineries across the state, as well as over a dozen food booths that served anything from bread and cheese, to short rib sliders and fresh oysters. Not sure if it’s a good thing to be constantly tempted throughout the night, but the Parallel 6 booth was placed right next to Nothing Bundt Cakes. The cakes were delicious, to say the least.

At the Parallel 6 booth, we weren’t allowed to serve wine, but we still had fun showing off our social media line of wine bottles. To explain our services to VinDiego attendees we added some of our social skills to the bottles. Our Creative Director, Dan Bucko, created bottles for Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn and Pinterest.

At Parallel 6 we love holding contests and since we did social media for VinDiego, we decided to give away a free social media consultation to one business at VinDiego. Here’s Community Managers’ Miranda May and myself, at the Parallel 6 booth before the start of VinDiego, excited and ready to meet all of the attendees.

Overall, it was a fabulous event with an incredible turnout of wine and food vendors, especially for it being VinDiego’s first year. We’re already excited to start preparing for VinDiego’s 2nd annual event. Until next year, VinDiego. In the meantime, here’s some of the highlights that we were able to capture during VinDiego. First, our booth neighbor, Etching Expressions. We had such a great time getting to know them!

There were some delicious olive oil tastings.

We tried some great selections from Pomar Junction. They were also giving away free wine charms to attach to the stem of your wine glass.

There was just the right amount of food to accompany all of the wine tastings, too. Thank goodness for Sadie Rose Baking Co. Their pretzel bread was a great balance to the wines and it accompanied the olive oil tastings, also.

We cannot express how fantastic the culinary creations from the private chefs that attended the event were. From Flagship Cruises & Events, award-winning Chef Brian Gist served a Short Rib Slider paired with Lobster Macaroni and Cheese. Chef Brian Overhauser from Hahn Winery served a spoon full of creamy herbed cheese with sweet Thai chili sauce. Special thanks to blog, This Tasty Life, for taking these great pictures of the food!

Cheers!

Photo Credit:

This Tasty Life

Dan Bucko, Parallel 6 Creative Director

Social media marketing is usually thought of reaching out to users through a computer screen/online medium; engaging the people who sit at their computer, on Facebook, constantly refreshing their page to see updated statuses on their news feeds. This is a misnomer as more than 60% of people who actually interact with brands and business are doing so through a mobile screen (tablet, smartphone, or other device). An article published on PR Daily calls attention to ways businesses can mobilize their marketing strategy to target more customers.

Some highlights include: timing, decrease in web travelling, and design.

Timing is putting yourself in the customer’s shoes. What time and what emotion should you leverage when posting an update for your customers to see? Pertaining directly to Facebook posts, a Socialbakers’s study has shown that the most posts get 50% of their reach and engagement within 30 minutes of posting. This is not a large window to make an impact, engage users, and produce the call to action you desire. Which is why it’s important to stretch this 30 minutes to your company’s benefit.

If your company is related to health & fitness, schedule your Facebook statuses, Tweets, and Pins right before your consumers get off work; for instance, schedule them around 4:30 to 4:45pm, a time most people are about to get off work, or have gotten off work and are checking their phones before they venture back home. This serves as a reminder to your customers that maybe they should swing by the gym and get a workout in or swing by the store to pick up ingredients to a healthy recipe you posted. This might not directly benefit your company’s profits, but it will in turn positively engage a customer in a way that they will continue to want to check your company’s profile for motivation – providing your company continual engagement and potential to make a call to action for whichever service you offer.

With the increase of social media engagement through social media, consumers are expecting the same interaction and experience they would if they were using a mobile app. This includes little to no travelling via web. Users browsing through a computer screen tend to be more forgiving with brands linking out to different websites and windows, but when users are seeing these posts on a smartphone or a tablet, they are not going to want to wait for external websites to load, closing different windows, and finding their way back to your company’s original post. This will significantly decrease user engagement, as their web travelling tolerance tends to be lower when using mobile devices.

When designing or updating your website, start with designing your mobile website or application. Many companies will design for desktop and anticipate that their mobile version is just as responsive and engaging. This is a false truth, as many websites will not show up on mobile devices the same way. The recommendation is to design your mobile site or app first and work backwards into desktop.

Changing and adapting your social media strategy to the emerging mobile market will lead your company to faster growth and greater user engagement.

Trying to decide whether to invest your money into creating a responsive website versus a mobile app for your business? It is a conversation that many companies have before taking a leap into the mobile space. Compuware’s global study showed that 85% of smartphone users preferred mobile applications over mobile websites; with the number one reason being convenience. It is the convenience of logging onto an app, retrieving information, finding a company’s location, and being able to communicate in real time. Consumers desire and expect these results from their apps, as it is the same information they could retrieve from an actual website; just faster and again, more convenient.

Aside from convenience, here are some key takeaways to remember when creating a mobile application:
Users want their apps to be fast.
Some key findings are that 4 out of 5 consumers desire their apps to launch in 3 seconds or less. The explanation for this really dwells down to choosing to use an app versus a mobile website. Consumers want to use an app that is faster than a typical mobile website would be.

Users rarely give third chances.
Studies also showed that a whopping 79% of customers will launch an app only once or twice again if it fails. Mobile app users are easily deterred if an app doesn’t work properly. A failing app attributes to a failing business; users will most likely not buy the “paid” version of your app if the free version was “buggy.” In all likelihood they will probably will switch to a competitor’s app. That is why it’s in your business’s best interest to create an app that is fully functioning.

Users prefer function over form.
Some businesses will concentrate too much on how an app looks while losing sight of how their app is actually working. While aesthetics are important and attractive to any potential customer. In the end, users want to see what the app can provide for them and care less about how visually appealing it is.

Another important concept is to create apps on devices that your users uses most. While it might be logical to create an iPhone compatible app, your users and consumer base might be a majority Android users. If you’re going to invest into creating a interactive mobile application, create it first for your target and largest customer base.

Whether, you’re a business looking to making a mobile app or just interested on how to make your app more appealing for your customers; remember that it’s always important to do your research. Who do you want to attract, how fast can you attract this group, and what can you do to make them stay. It is the key to making sure that your mobile app will make a larger impact than any one of your competitors.

Our recent press release, “Captive Reach Mobile Technology by Parallel 6 Produces More Heads in Beds for Hospitality,” was picked up by San Diego Business Journal this week! Here’s an excerpt from their coverage:

“Parallel 6 has rolled out a new software product that lets hoteliers, theme park operators and others in the hospitality business interact with their customers via smartphones.The company’s Captive Reach Enterprise Mobile Technology Platform pushes out customized messages to help influence guest behavior.”

To read the entire write up visit, http://bit.ly/179N5iv.