Gartner Pushes Focus on Continuous Authentication for 2019

Early this month (Dec. ’18), Gartner held their annual conference on Identity and Access Management (Gartner IAM) in Las Vegas. For those who don’t know, IAM is an umbrella term used to cover everything from identity provisioning, management, governance, authentication, etc. One of the topics that dominated their talking points was their self-coined term CARTA — Continuous Adaptive Risk and Trust Assessment. While they have been using the term at least since summer 2017, it was the sheer number of talks and topics in which the term was used (by my count over 80%) that drove home the analysis firm’s emphasis on its importance.

Inputs for CARTA, including “Behavioral Signatures” and “Historical Behaviors.” (Source: Gartner)

While CARTA as a concept can, and should, be applied across all levels of security, one of the largest areas of impact is around authentication. In fact, in their “Seven Steps to CARTA” self-help kit (paraphrasing) step number 1 is:

Imperative №1: Replace One-Time Security Gates With Context-Aware, Adaptive and Programmable Security Platforms.

Two things are fascinating here. First, this calls for continuous authentication, arguing for continuous de-risking, rather than one big identity check followed by a session with a fixed expiration. Second, Gartner clearly states that to accomplish the above, we need to be adaptive to real-time context. I wrote a PhD dissertation on context-aware systems, and it is my expert opinion that the vast majority of system context that relates to the user and their identity is synonymous with user behavior. In fact, in his talk on the subject, Ant Allen mentioned that we should be looking for the solution in the direction of what Behavioral Biometrics has done for consumer fraud prevention.

At TWOSENSE.AI, we have been pushing for a rethink of authentication. First, we hate sessions, and have been vehement about eliminating them in favor of continuous authentication. The main issue we have identified, is that no form of traditional authentication can be used continuously without some form of continuous user work. For authentication to be continuous, it must be effortless, and if it’s effortless it must be using what the user is doing anyway, and therefore be behavior-based. We have made it our mission to implement these principles in the workplace, bringing consumer behavioral biometrics technology to enterprise employee authentication, and we’re super excited to see industry thought leadership aligning with our own vision.

Preparation Converts Prospects: 5 Musts For Standing Out on the Trade Show Floor

Preparing for events requires equal parts technology and understanding of what will attract your prospects.

Unlike the digital sphere, you have the opportunity to captivate people through all the senses and convert prospects through genuine face-to-face conversation.

Getting ready for conferences and trade shows is work—from booth design to landing a sought out speaker to prospect attraction strategy—there’s a lot to do before the event itself, which is why 48% of marketers spend 6–12 months preparing for an event.

But, before you start preparing for the commotion of the event, use these five strategies for standing out on the trade show floor by attracting your ideal prospects before they even walk up to your booth.

1. Research, Research, Research

Events provide you with a wealth of prospect and competitor information, but most people don’t use any of it. Prepare for your event with all the low-hanging fruit you can gather, meaning take the time to do the research on attendees and sponsors before you invest your time and money.

General audience breakdowns are usually available online such as CES by the Numbers. They’ll provide a detailed look into the types of attendees at the given event. You’d be surprised how many gold nuggets are in an attendee prospectus that really help you prepare for an event.

If you’re sponsoring the event, even better. You likely received an attendee list (full or partial), which is a major resource.

Having trouble finding the attendee list or enough info to take action? SummitSync generates lists of predicted attendees for our clients using machine-learning intelligence.

Once armed with an attendee list, you’ll have a breakdown of the titles and roles of attendees, company names, and individual contact information and the opportunities for event success are endless.

The biggest thing we see companies doing when they have access to attendee lists is the “spray and pray” approach. They set up a generic, templated marketing email and send it out to everyone they possibly can.

You might land a few sales meetings that way…or you could take a more targeted approach.

Trust us, the entire ~120,000 attendees at CES are not your ideal prospect. Start by defining your audience within the larger event audience by taking the time to analyze and bucket attendees based on your buyer personas.

Then, begin looking at ways to connect with them before the actual event starts including on social media, through advertising, email, or even picking up the phone. While personalized reach-out takes more time, it also filters through the noise for which events are notorious.

Remember, the more you know, the easier it is to convert on the trade show floor.

2. Tailor How You Reach Out to Every Event Prospect

Why is the lottery so successful, despite the odds? Because it fuels our desire to be that one in a million winner.

Steal that sensation for your reach out strategy when setting up meetings at events. Attendees should remember two bits of information from your reach out efforts: how you made them feel and how to move forward with you and your team (to schedule a meeting, meet at your booth, etc).

Weeks, or even months before the event, you will find yourself with a valuable list of contacts, and the sheer size of it might tempt you to lasso them all into a vague but cordial email.

Sure, it’s simple. But is it effective?

Consider the lackluster reaction from one attendee on that list when she realizes she’s just another email you salvaged from a friend of a friend of a coworker. Her motivation to act dwindles once she recognizes your general message is meant for a crowd.

Reaching out before the event is the single most important moment to connect with your prospects before having to share their attention with thousands of others. Make it memorable.

Whether you choose email, social ads, social media personal messages, PPC, direct mail invitations, a phone call, or even a coffee date, make things familiar, easy, and enjoyable for your client or prospect. If you’re looking to stand out from the crowd even more, use a game-changing DIY mobile message design service like OpenMessage to set yourself apart from the commotion before it even starts.

Branded Mobile Message Design Conversations by OpenMessage

3. Design Your Event Experience Around Your Prospects (and Forget Everyone Else)

Snapchat showed up to the Cannes Lions advertising festival with a giant ferris wheel, spurring a wave of oohs and ahs. So why doesn’t everyone show up with a giant ferris wheel? Snapchat was showing up big for advertisers and creatives with a strategy. They wanted to be the first thing you see miles before prospects arrived. They knew exactly who they were targeting, and it just so happens a ferris wheel made perfect sense.

But that doesn’t mean a ferris wheel makes sense for you.

On the trade show floor, you’re sharing the stage with thousands of other booths so standing out on the floor is key to success. The good news: you don’t have the exact same audience as everyone else. Knowing how to spot your prospects and how to get them to spot you are equally important. So cast your net strategically.

Do start by strategizing the size of your presence. Generally the more prospects attending the higher your investment should be.
Do use your budget to optimize opportunities for conversation and engagement.
Don’t plan every second. There’s an element of action and reaction in event marketing, and this organic interaction calls for on-the-spot experience creation.
Do bring resources and materials to craft parts of your experience at the event. Google, for example, stomped the competition with voice activations at CES 2018. Nikon arrived with dancing camera robots and Bell chopped a 1.5 hour train commute down to 6 minutes in their virtual reality demo of their Air Taxi.
Do make things personal or solve a problem. Host a mini-event that showcases innovative technology, or take a new spin on a classic and set up a headshot station with The Headshot Truck.
Don’t forget about your current clients while on the trade show floor. While the majority of your budget should be strategized toward prospect acquisition, you want to make your clients, partners, and VIPs feel special.

The Headshot Truck will host headshot sessions for your target audience.Whether you’re small and doing everything on a budget, or having a large multi-million dollar presence, do everything with your audience and event goals in mind. You don’t need to reinvent the wheel, you just need to make yours the most fun to spin.

4. Aim Before You Shoot

Own your prospect knowledge, it’s a tool. Your booth workers should know your prospect personas so well they can target them and immediately strike up a conversation with them about their needs.

Understand how your type of buyer walks and talks. Seriously—it sounds weird, but it’s a serious conference hack. What does a VP of Sales look like? Well, if she was speaking at the event, she’s probably dressed nice, in heels, and will be at the company’s booth ~30 minutes later. Don’t be afraid to hang around other company’s booths waiting to snag a minute of someone’s time for a productive conversation.

5. Coordinate, Don’t Complicate

Seamless event marketing requires proper manpower planning. Once you know the approximate number of your prospects attending, not only do you know how many team members to send, but also who are the best to send. Know a certain account executive who has 20 personal prospects attending? Send her. Then you can efficiently coordinate schedules around meetings, the keynotes and sessions the team wants to attend, as well as your booth traffic.

If you need help managing your team’s schedule at events, our meeting automation platformmakes it easy to schedule, track, and analyze your team’s performance at events, with just the click of a button.

How Will You Stand Out on the Trade Show Floor?

Take the time to sit down with your sales and marketing teams, or whoever is attending the event, and really prepare for the event. Go over your event goals, understand everyone’s role, and then really take the time to understand the event audience and how to best reach them and standing out on the trade show floor will be a breeze.

Foremost Insurance Review: From an Industry Expert on Home Insurance – YA

Foremost

Foremost is a national insurance carrier operating in 50 states. While they offer all kinds of insurance products, they are best known for covering mobile homes, vacant homes, and multiple landlord properties. Foremost actually created the first ever mobile home insurance policy!

Given they specialize in these areas, they are often referred to as a specialized insurance carrier and can write many hard to price risks. They are quite competitive as they have been covering these markets for 65 years.

They also have a non-standard auto carrier called Bristol West which can cover the harder to insure personal auto drivers. If you had an unlucky string of events that are stuck on your driving record, they may be worth checking.

Both Foremost and Bristol West are owned by Farmers Insurance Group, which was founded in Los Angeles, CA in 1928.

The Coverage – Mobile Homes

Foremost Mobile Home Policies include:

Comprehensive Coverage – which covers the below perils:
Optional Replacement Cost – allows you to be covered at replacement cost instead of actual cash value.
Agreed Loss Settlement – if your home is destroyed by something covered above, you get the full amount of coverage for your home (minus the small deductible).
Liability Coverage – if someone sues you.

Foremost also offers add-ons (not included by default) such as

Additional Living Expenses – if you are forced to live somewhere else why your home is repaired
Trees, Shrubs, Plants and Lawns
Debris Removal – surprisingly expensive to remove a fallen tree
Emergency Removal/Repair Services
Credit Card and Check Forgery
Fire Department Service
Food Spoilage Coverage

The Coverage – Vacant Homes

The DP1 is your most basic homeowners insurance policy. It provides the bare minimum coverage for a vacant property. It’s also a named perils policy. This means that it only offers coverage from a short list of events. Common named perils for this policy are fire & lightning, smoke, explosion, and a few others. If damage happens to the property outside of the named perils, it would not be covered.

One important note, DP1 policies tend to be Actual Cash Value (ACV) policies. This means that if you have a claim on your house under this policy, it won’t be valued at the replacement value, but at the ACV. As a result, you aren’t guaranteed to get your entire house back, and sometimes will just get a check for the ACV coverage amount on the policy.
The Coverage – Landlord Homes

This DP3 policy covers houses from single to multi-family that function as rental properties (excluding apartment complexes which would be insured through a commercial real estate policy). The DP3 is the policy for anyone who rents out property, covering the building’s structure and rental income from the property. However, it does not cover the renter’s belongings (coverage can sometimes be purchased as an add-on).

If you own a duplex, triplex, or quadplex and live in one of the units while renting out the others, then you will sometimes need a DP3 as well to protect the areas of the home not inhabited by the owner.

The Carrier

Foremost is rated “A” by AM Best so I wouldn’t worry about them going anywhere anytime soon. They are well financed under the Farmers Insurance umbrella.

The Claims

Claims are always a contentious subject and a lot of the confusion and frustration in claims comes from not knowing what is covered in your policy. Do your best to understand what is covered up front so you are not surprised down the road. As with some older insurance carriers, Foremost is known to be slow at processing/paying out claims. Something to consider when evaluating them for your insurance options.

The Reviews

Foremost reviews have been mixed. A lot of this may be due to the fact they are on legacy technology that is slower to process and pay claims. We hope they can improve this technology over time to better serve their customers!

Check your Foremost quotes and so much more:

Get Foremost Quotes

At your service,
Young Alfred

Disclosure: Foremost is one of the many options Young Alfred offers for home insurance. Young Alfred did not receive any compensation or direction from Foremost in writing this review.

Diversity & Inclusion in Practice: A Conversation with Our CLO

Organizations of all stripes are struggling to figure out how to make their team members feel engaged, included, and capable of speaking in their authentic voice at work so they thrive in their roles and stay with their companies. Their desire to create forward-thinking and effective diversity and inclusion programs is palpable. The question is, how?

Lingo Live CLO Jesse Abing joins a panel of Diversity & Inclusion experts to answer that question next month at the Humans not Resources meetup. They’ll discuss practical, time-tested ways to foster inclusivity at your workplace.

We pulled Jesse aside, (right after a recent trip to China and India), to ask why this topic resonates with him, and how he has seen it evolve of the course of his tenure at Lingo Live.

Why are you interested in diversity and inclusion? What personal experience have you had with it?

About 18 years ago, I started working with immigrant communities in my local area. I was a Spanish major in college in Iowa. Hasidic Jews had set up two turkey factories nearby and brought immigrants from Eastern Europe, primarily from Hasidic Jewish communities, Ukraine, and Mexico to work in these turkey factories. They had a sign at the border that advertised working at the factory. I would go into these communities door-to-door evenings and weekends and I would census the community. We would talk over a can of Coke. They were super-inviting.It was really clear to me that these communities were very separated from the old timers who had always lived in this town. They brought all these new ways of thinking and being, and they weren’t integrating at all. In a lot of ways, the people who had been there for a long time really tried to control the space, and would let the newcomers move into the center of the community–they literally lived on the periphery, in a trailer park on the outside of the town.

It was weird for me to see that. I wanted to do whatever I could to make these people feel welcomed and included, and to become part of the fabric of the community. I wanted to bridge the gap between the existing and incoming communities, but it was really difficult to do. If I talked to the pre-existing community members, some were very hostile to the idea that the newcomers would change what it meant to be a part of that community. Others were super welcoming and wanted to provide free legal and medical services and host community dances. It was difficult and heartbreaking to see that not everyone was that open-minded.

I think the future of the world, if it’s going to be a successful human race, is one where we have to all see each other as equal and one of the same. The more we can get people to come together and connect and learn about each other. That’s how we will get through the xenophobia and the hate that keeps us divided, and move us toward a more inclusive mindset where we can work toward mutual respect, acceptance and understanding. That’s where it started for me, and that’s where I see this diversity and inclusion work going.

How have you seen the conversation about diversity and inclusion change over the course of the past few years?

When we first started talking about language and communication coaching as it related to diversity and inclusion, people didn’t see us as a part of that conversation. They thought our space was language teaching. That’s changed. People now understand more and more how connecting people of different backgrounds and empowering them with linguistic and cultural knowledge and skills, and giving them a voice to speak up for themselves is a part of that diversity and inclusion process.

The notion of belonging has also come into the picture. It’s moved away from the notion on engagement and into belonging–the idea that people should feel safe being themselves in the workplace. We’ve started thinking about how we can effect and measure belonging, instead of engagement.

People are also starting to understand that diversity is nothing without inclusion first. Inclusion is a mindset, and with it, your diversity initiatives actually have a chance. Without it, you get a bunch of different groups of people who stay with their own kind in the workplace. Now the thinking is more inclusion-first, because it leads to a more meaningful kind of diversity where people actually connect with others who are different from them.

What is “authentic voice”?

It’s about the way we understand and express our truth, free from fear of the expectations of others or fear of consequences. We’re usually constantly mitigating how we express ourselves because we’re afraid we might get an adverse reaction, or we might get fired.

Another piece of it is finding out what your authentic voice is. It’s not just speaking without a filter. It takes work to uncover it. Sometimes you don’t even realize what filters you’ve placed on your communication because it’s so ingrained. Most of us, when we speak to someone, we often project past experiences onto them which affects the way we communicate. Part of the process is becoming aware of those filters and figuring out who you are apart from all of that. It requires a lot of self-reflection and risk-taking, and the freedom to push boundaries in a safe space where you can get genuine, constructive feedback. We have to take chances to really uncover who we are and what our authentic voice is.

When we’re talking about multilingual speakers, it’s also about equipping people with the tools to make informed choices about how they express themselves without prescribing a certain way of being or acting or speaking. So we’re not saying, that as a Chinese engineer in the American workplace, you have to speak and act in a particular way to be accepted. Rather we are equipping you to make choices about how you want to act with the knowledge of how people may perceive you if you make those choices. The idea is that you are able to speak from your truth, free from fear of consequences, with the tools to make informed choices.

For example, I grew up in a rural area without a lot of access to academic or professional ways of communicating, but through my education, I’ve gained access to an academic way of communicating. My mom doesn’t have that access, so she would have trouble being taken seriously at an academic conference. She’s more limited in what she can do. For me, there’s an identity crisis involved in that, but I can choose when I want to flex those muscles and when I don’t. When you give people more options, then they’re more empowered to make that choice, instead of only having one communication option.

How does this all relate to employee retention, in your experience?

When we can align with true selves more fully in our environment, then we can just be instead of trying so hard to fit in all the time. We feel like we belong. We feel less tension with the world around us and less like we have to find another place to be, so we’re less likely to leave.

Do you think it’s important for HR and other leaders to come together for events like Humans not Resources? Why or why not?

Yes, absolutely. This kind of dialogue helps us to evolve our mindsets. It helps to start the conversation in these spaces, where we can share our different experiences and opinions. I would encourage us to take it one step further and invite each other to come into each other’s organizations for a few days to experience our problems and the successes, so that we can have a deeper understanding.

No one will have the full answer in isolation. The more we talk, the more momentum we will have. It won’t just be these companies in Silicon Valley who are woke and who get it.

I hope that people who come to this event will realize resources they have to draw upon there. I’m always interested in talking to people about these issues. I would invite people to lean on us (the panelist). I’m happy to consult with them about these issues.
I hope that the event will also start to shift people’s mindsets. I think a lot of the time people talk about why diversity and inclusion is important, but what the panelists and I bring to the table is specific paths to inclusion and belonging, ways to implement it–through the research that I’ve done in social learning theories for example. Hopefully what we have to share aligns with what people are thinking, but maybe it also creates some “aha” moments that challenge their current approach, like, “Oh, I hadn’t thought about it that way. Maybe that’s why this initiative hasn’t been working. We should something with this underlying philosophy rather than the way we thought about it before.”

Humans not Resources is a Meetup for human resource professionals and other people & culture leaders. They host industry leaders who share about the latest trends in people operations and culture, so that you can keep up with the rapidly evolving needs of your modern workforce. Come and hone your skills while growing an amazing network of people-focused professionals.

Announcing Research Hub: Build a research practice with the system to seamlessly manage all your participants in one place

It’s here! 🎉

Bring your own audience (BYOA), participant management, the beta formerly known as BYOA, and all the various other—mainly internal—working titles are a thing of the past, because Research Hub is here to stay.

Research Hub you say, what is that all about?

We created Research Hub to help companies make research a habit, to build a research practice. Research Hub is your central command to seamlessly manage all your participants in one place. As our CEO and Co-founder Dennis Meng puts it

We saw far too many product managers, designers, and marketers coordinating research efforts over spreadsheets. We built Research Hub to help companies develop a true research system. We hope teams will now collaborate and coordinate research efforts in a fraction of the time.

If you were part of our beta, perhaps you have tried some of the features already, but you haven’t tried them all, as we’re rolling out some of the most exciting features today.

Here’s what you can do with Research Hub:

Populations – Build your own participant database. Invite users by link or CSV import. No need for them to create User Interviews accounts!

Custom data to build flexible populations – Add labels, custom attributes, and saved filters to your database so you can invite individuals or large groups to a study in a couple of clicks.

*Saved filters are new as of today, and we think they’ll be a game changer for how you organize your participants and quickly add them to any kind of user research session.

View participant history – Use participant profiles to view their session history—invites, applications, participation. You’ll also be able to see custom data you add like notes, scores, who has talked with them, etc.

Private projects – Create private projects from your populations using our recruiting and research logistics tools like scheduling, screener surveys, incentive payments, and more. You choose who you want to see and invite to your projects.

Manage session logistics – Use our scheduling, incentive payment, screener and profile matching tools with your own users for fast, flexible recruiting.

Free User Interviews audience recruiting credits – For a limited time all subscription plans include free credits to recruit from the User Interviews audience of over 100,000 vetted consumers and professionals.

This is just the beginning for Research Hub. We’re excited about what we are offering you today, for a very reasonable price and with a 2-week free trial we might add, and even more excited to see how it will develop in the coming months and years.

We can’t think the design partners who helped us get here enough, you know who you are. JH, our VP of Product, wrote all about the whole process of deciding to build Research Hub, and the research and iterations that got us here today. Definitely check out The Research Hub Story blog post if you like a good product story.

Your feedback is crucial to that effort, so we’d love for you to try it out FOR FREE, let us know what you think, and sign up to join our future beta programs for ongoing feedback.

Learn more about User Interviews.

The Importance Of Personalization In Business

We live in the day and age of personalization. Facebook creates personalized stories for each of their users on their anniversary of using the social media site. Target sends personalized coupons based on customer buying history to increase the likelihood of a future sale. Amazon does something similar their “You Might Also Like” feature after purchasing a product to potentially up-sell complementary or similar product.

And the push for personalization makes sense, too. When we think of something as ‘personal’, we think of something we have a bond with, a certain intimacy if you will. Personalization, according to Tech Target, is a “means of meeting the customer’s needs more effectively and efficiently, making interactions faster and easier and, consequently, increasing customer satisfaction and the likelihood of repeat visits”. This isn’t to be confused with customization, which is when a customer manually changes things to fit their preferences.

For example, in the music app Spotify, customization would be a customer building a playlist with all of their favorite songs, whereas personalization is when Spotify creates a “Daily Mix” for their user based on an algorithm that analyzes that users song history and preferences.

Essentially, personalization is customization in real-time. But why is personalization so important in business? According to a recent study, 79% of customers are only willing to take advantage of a brand promotion if it’s tailored to their previous interactions; additionally, 78% of customers say that personally relevant content increases their buying intent. The more personalized something feels, even if it’s an advertisement or offer, the more it feels like the business is paying attention to your particular needs.

So where do opportunities for personalization exist within a business?

Email

There are plenty of easy-to-use, powerful tools that allow you to personalize emails, even when they are being sent to the masses. Mailchimp, Robly, Drip, and Autopilot are all easy-to-use platforms that can help you build a personalized email campaign. The personalization of the email often depends on the data you have collected from your customers.

The easiest way to personalize an email is to put the person’s name in the subject line. Making sure the content is relevant to the customer based on past buying history is also important. Even the timing of the email can be customized, as many campaigns allow you to segment by time zones and ensure the email reaches the customer’s inbox at the right time. Depending on the data you’ve collected from the customer, sending a birthday email and offering a freebee or discount is a simple way to gain customer loyalty.

Personalizing emails is worth the effort, too. Personalized emails had 29 percent higher open rates and 41 percent higher click rates than emails without any personalization.

Websites

Many feel that Amazon is the king of personalization in their website and for good reason, too. Based on past buying patterns and behaviors, Amazon is able to immediately recommend other products for customers as soon as they log on.

What are some more practical ways for businesses to personalize web page content?

Some companies who offer a specific product have their customers take a brief survey to personalize content. For example, clothing company Bombfell has their customers take a brief ‘style survey’ to give them the most relevant offers.

Others have an advertising ‘overlay’, where depending on the frequency of visits for a customer, an advertisement can pop up on screen targeted at the customer or offering a one-time discount.

It’s important not to pigeonhole customers into certain product lines in a form of hyper personalization. Letting customers discover new things while offering suggestions is the way to go.

Again, much like emails, website personalization has shown to yield positive ROI. Gartner predicts a 15% profit boost by 2020 for those who successfully handle personalization in eCommerce.

Social Media

Many think personalized content on social media is the next big thing (if it isn’t there already).

Some businesses offer their target demographic exclusive social media invitations to try new products in the hopes of those customers posting content featuring that product. It’s not a bad strategy, after all, about 71% of the consumers respond according to the feedback and recommendation of social users regarding a particular brand.

Keep in mind, it’s important to know what social media platforms your audience engages the most with. Homogeneous approaches are rarely successful and amount to wasted time and energy. A visual product would likely succeed more on Instagram or Pinterest, whereas Facebook would be a better platform for long-form posts.

Benefits of Personalization

Some of the statistics above emphasized the potential increase in conversions by targeting personal preferences and past purchases. In addition, conversions can be made more quickly (think ‘one-click’ purchasing) but there are other benefits as well.

It can build passion with your audience. For example, a sports apparel business who knows a batch of customers avidly support a particular team can send a blog article about that team to that group. That group doesn’t just love sports. They love that team. Targeting that niche level of passion can create long-lasting loyalty.

Along those lines, monotony is a killer of engagement, and that includes your website. Website and content personalization keeps things fresh and makes it so the customer doesn’t feel like they’re always going back to the ‘same old, same old’.

In addition to existing companies, personalization can nurture new customers. Depending on how they entered into your website (social media, through a campaign), there can be a customized welcome even without knowing any of their specific information.

Notice, all of these pros of personalization are meant to make the customer feel special and like an individual human being as opposed to just a ‘sale’.

Conclusion

Personalization is a major factor in modern-day business to having the customer come back for repeat purchases. With a little bit of customer data and knowledge of your customer persona, you can have a real-time customization of their buying journey.

Learn more about SaleMove.

You’re Most Likely Tipping More than a Millionaire—Here’s Why

In the past, we’ve written a lot about the relationships between restaurants and their customers, customers and delivery platforms, and delivery platforms and restaurants. But one relationship in the game that we’ve yet to address is that between delivery drivers and the customers they deliver to. Namely, the issue of the tip.

This week, we set out to do just that, analyzing the order delivery data from New York City’s highest earning industries to give you the lowdown on the city’s thriftiest tippers.

Background

It’s common knowledge that New York City is a leading center of finance in the world economy — financial services account for more than 35 percent of the city’s employment income. Average compensation is the industry is $388,000 per year—five times higher than the average New Yorker’s salary in the private sector. New York also has the highest concentration of jobs in the legal profession, only behind California, with lawyers in the empire state earning an average yearly income of $165,260.

Investment bankers love food delivery just as much as the next person. The ease of giving your order the team member in charge of lunch orders and having hot food being delivered to your office desk can’t be beat. But is the delivery person who endures traffic, adverse weather conditions, and the MTA all day getting fairly compensated for your convenience?

The average salary of someone in finance is $388,000. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics on the other hand, food delivery or sales workers earn an average of $28,090 per year, with most deliverers working seven days a week.
The national average delivery tip on Seamless is 13.9 percent per order, with New Yorkers falling below average at 13.1 percent.

And as we found, employees at New York’s biggest banks and law firms fare even lower.

Let’s set up some context.

Tip Etiquette

Our initial hypothesis was that companies in finance would be hefty tippers, or at least, they have the means to be hefty tippers. A similar level of gratuity was expected from the other industries — Legal Services, Venture Capital, and Software. We expected there to be some data points showing 0% tip, to which we attributed tips paid in cash. We also expected those who place frequent orders to tip less on average, justifying their low tip with their order frequency.

Tipping etiquette can be the source of hot debate. Most people who’ve worked in the service industry say tipping is always mandatory and a 20 percent tip should be the standard. But when to tip and how much can often be a source of confusion for customers, especially now in the age of on-demand delivery.

The Emily Post Institute recommends a pre-tax tip of 15-20% — and this is pretty much the standard across other sources as well.

The confusion and remiss may be attributed to the fact that apps like Seamless and GrubHub charge a delivery fee. As a way to offset the high commissions that third-party delivery services take on each restaurant order, restaurant owners often put in place an additional charge for orders placed through an app. These delivery fees rarely, if ever go to drivers, and should not be considered a substitute for tip.

The other confusion could be around whether tip is mandatory. Seamless and other apps don’t make users pay a tip. Instead, they offer suggested gratuities on their checkout page, but Seamless’ website recommends that delivery people get paid between 10% – 20% of the order total. The site’s order page even has a default tip amount of 15%.

In summary, this is what we know:

There’s certainly confusion about order delivery tip vs. order delivery fee (why do I have to pay twice?)
There’s definitely ambiguity around who it goes to (the third-party app, the restaurant, or the deliverer?)
There’s also a bit of psychology involved (if the delivery guy who orders my food is also delivering 5 other orders of food to my company, does that justify giving a lower tip, since I know others are going to tip him too? Cue an Econ lesson in free-riders)

What did we find?

Here’s what we found.

We dove into the last three months of order delivery data from a dozen of the restaurants we work with. We made sure our sample accurately represented the distribution of New York City restaurants on delivery platforms, offering everything from fast food to fine dining, catering to a diverse clientele, and serving multiple corporate accounts through Seamless.

We looked at the data from 383 distinct companies in the Finance, Legal, VC, Software, Consulting, and Consumer Goods industries who all hold corporate accounts at these restaurants.

- 2.3 percent of diners gave no tip.
  - What it means: Let’s be optimistic and say these customers gave a tip in cash.
- 13.33 percent of customers tipped a positive amount less than 8%
  - What it means: Confusion around how much to tip, dissatisfaction with delivery service, general disregard for the delivery worker.
- 17.54 percent of customers gave a tip lower than 10%.
  - What it means: Here, there’s no way to justify a low tip by saying you paid in cash. Seeing as though over 70% of the Seamless orders placed at these restaurants are from recurring customers, these customers definitely made the conscious decision to add a measly tip to their card on file.
- The highest tip percentage was a 40% tip.
  - What it means: A really happy customer coupled with quick delivery? Or they just did the math wrong.
- The median order value was $22. The average order value was $30.11.
  - What it means: There are a wide range of order types coming from offices, from large office-wide orders to one-off dishes.

The Consumer Goods and Financial Services industry verticals lie on the lower end of the tipping spectrum, while Consulting and Law take the cake.

The national average lies at 13.9% for delivery tips, and it’s clear that these banks are trailing behind (all but Morgan Stanley). UBS didn’t even come close, with a strikingly low tip percentage of 9.67%.

As the data shows, Morgan Stanley is leading the pack at 14.24%, with Barclays close behind at 13.40%. As for law firms, Allen & Overy impressed at 15.68%, with the entire legal sector demonstrating higher numbers across the board.

One thing to keep in mind while looking at aggregate company data is that obviously, there were individuals within the company who gave generous tips. These conclusions are not to say that everyone who works in these industries are looking to save a few bucks on tip.

The Bigger Picture

In the end, this tipping data gives us a lot of insight into the psychology and habits of those who order through delivery apps, and into shifting consumer behaviors aided by delivery apps. We could draw conclusions about the type of people in each profession, or we could also realize that across the board, tip percentages are all lower than the industry standard.

Delivery technology and the ‘gig economy’ has given an old issue a new platform, namely the issue of designating workers as independent contractors not entitled to benefits and protection.

Fundamentally, the relationship to capital has not changed, and one could argue these apps have negatively affected the way consumers conceive of and interact with delivery workers, especially through tipping.

Tipping a faceless delivery person through the anonymous touch of a button seems to encourage a veil of thrift to hide behind, and is exacerbated among those who actually have the means to do otherwise.

As a restaurant owner, data about your customers is not only useful for exposing the tipping habits of multi-billion dollar corporations; it’s actually really important for you to monitor as a restaurant owner. If you’re on multiple delivery platforms, your focus should be on regaining control over the information they withhold from you.

Knowing what motivates your customers, what their lifestyles and preferences are, how loyal they are to your restaurant, and even how much they tip delivery personnel is extremely valuable.

To sum up, the restaurant delivery funnel is a tricky one. Everyone along the way is trying to make money: restaurants are trying to mitigate the high delivery commissions, consumers want to pay as little as possible for convenience, third-party delivery services have steep competition, and in the end, the delivery service workers get the short end of the stick. Maybe this brings to light some of the changes needed in the industry if we want everyone to have a fair shot.

Learn more about Bikky.

Report: Data from Rubik Shows Great Market for NYC Residential Real Estate Investors

Rubik is apartment pricing software for residential real estate investors. Our AI-powered algorithms have been scouring millions of New York City past sale records, uncovering a market ripe for investment opportunities.

Surprised? We weren’t because this $1.5 trillion asset class in New York is highly outdated and lacks data-driven investment decisions. Whether for rental investment purposes, appreciation, or even arbitrage through a quick buy and resell, there are opportunities to capitalize on mispricing.

Let’s show you some results from predicting the selling price of over 5,000 active listings in greater New York City.

Here’s what we found:

Condominiums are on average underpriced, listed at 6% below their optimal selling price. Considering the current average asking price of $1.7M, sellers are failing to capitalize on over $100,000 per sale.
59% of all condos are listed at one-fifth lower than their potential selling price.
1,000+ listings are priced at 14.6% above their expected selling price.

Here are some neighborhood extremes surfaced by the Rubik algorithm.

Have a look at Brooklyn Heights vs Midtown:

Multiple studio units in Brooklyn Heights are listed at 17.2% below their optimal selling price.
Brooklyn Heights is the neighborhood with the greatest discrepancy between optimal selling price and listing price, with condos listed at 10.4% below their optimal selling price.
One-bedroom condos in Midtown are listed at 16.3% above predicted selling price.

Find this summary interesting? Contact us to learn more about how we can help you unearth your next residential real estate opportunity at [email protected].

Image Credit: www.fassinoimmobiliare.com

Future of Mobile Wallets: NFC and Mobile MetroCards

Picture this: It’s 8:20 in the morning and you’re rushing off to work with your umbrella, apartment keys, and shoulder bag in hand. You head down the block and into the subway station. You rummage through your bag in search for your MetroCard as your train approaches the station. You swipe hurriedly, but when you look down, you read this message: Please swipe again at this turnstile. Your train has just arrived. You swipe again only to get more bad news: Insufficient fare. Your train pulls out of the station.

Anyone living in the Big Apple knows what a hassle it can be to keep track of those flimsy MetroCards. Since the ‘90s, MetroCards have been the “modern” way to pay for public transportation. Today, however, physical cards are becoming outdated. They are a hassle to refill, easy to lose, and can be unreliable—so what’s the alternative? Mobile MetroCards.

Many large European cities have successfully adapted to mobile payments within their transportation system. Thousands of London commuters pay for their rides by waving their cell phones (or enabled credit or debit cards) at the subway turnstiles or bus fareboxes. Similarly, the fashion-forward city of Milan has just announced that their new transportation system is supported by Apple Pay, allowing users to pay for tickets with their iPhone or Apple Watch.

The New York City transit system is recreating a comparable program for its buses, trains, and subways. This transition is already underway and is expected to be completed by 2023. According to The New York Times, “the system will work through apps like Apple Pay, Google Pay and Samsung Pay as well as “contactless cards” — credit or debit cards with embedded chips that rely on a wireless technology known as near field communication, or NFC.”

NFC is the same technology already used for in-person payments with the mobile wallet. NFC allows two devices to communicate and share data when they are close together, and is highly encrypted to maintain security. It has enabled contactless payments, and has the potential to replace that faulty MetroCard swipe with a quick wave or tap of a smartphone. Not only would mobile MetroCards be more convenient for millions of daily commuters, but it would also make keeping track of travel expenses much more reliable. Never again would you have to worry about a lost, stolen, or empty MetroCard.

And mobile MetroCards are just the beginning! For years, mobile wallets have supported boarding passes, loyalty and gift cards, tickets, and offers. With newly developed mobile college IDs, the list of mobile wallet capabilities will only continue to grow. Smartphones and other mobile devices are so heavily ingrained in our daily routines that it won’t be long before the mobile wallet becomes a day-to-day necessity. One thing’s for sure: in the realm of possibility for mobile wallets, we’ve only reached the tip of the iceberg.

Click to learn more about Popwallet.

Sources (1)(2)(3)

What is Actual Cash Value (ACV) vs Replacement Cost in Home Insurance?

Actual Cash Value vs Replacement Cost

When you buy insurance, you often are offered the option between actual cash value and replacement cost. BEWARE! While the actual cash value option will be cheaper, it means your stuff will be drastically under-insured in a loss.

Actual Cash Value means if your personal stuff gets destroyed or stolen, you will only be refunded the used value of your property (often called the depreciated value).

Example: You have a big couch that you bought for $3,000 five years ago. It get’s destroyed in a fire, and the insurance company says the average life of this type of couch is 10 years. They say they will only pay you $1,500 for this couch because it had 5 useful years remaining. (1/2 the value to buy a new couch)

So basically, you got back…. half a couch

Replacement Cost means your stolen or damaged stuff will get replaced like new. A full replacement, restoring your stuff back to its original condition. In the above example, you will get the full $3,000 for the couch.

Young Alfred never recommends you choose Actual Cash Value in your home insurance policy and always quotes home insurance policies with Replacement Cost. It’s what you need.

Click to learn more about Young Alfred.