Rethinking Your Mobile Coupon Strategy

Rethinking Your Mobile Coupon Strategy

Everyone loves a discount, right? 

Consumers want to save money on everything from groceries to home goods. Most people are even on the lookout for a discount at their favorite restaurant! 

But as we all know, the world is quickly shifting to online shopping in a technological world. The newspaper coupon-clipping, a money-saving strategy that shoppers have used for years, must follow the transition. And while some clients still enjoy a good scavenger hunt for a paper coupon, there is an increasing opportunity for mobile coupons in the marketplace. So, how do companies use mobile coupons to build their brand through digital shopping? 

Digital Coupon vs Mobile Wallet Coupon

First, what is a digital coupon? A digital coupon is a discount or offer found online and provides a modern alternative to traditional paper coupons.

Next, let’s look at the mobile wallet. This is simply a digital version of the physical wallet someone carries in a pocket or purse. This is where mobile wallet coupons are stored. Mobile wallets, available on users’ smartphones, safely store secure information such as credit cards, debit cards, membership ids, and loyalty cards. In addition, event tickets, boarding passes, and promotions are accessible from the mobile wallet. 

So, here is the difference. Not all digital coupons are mobile wallet coupons. Instead, the digital coupon is a promotional offer or discount provided by a company, often discovered on the retail website or used on products within their store. 

The mobile wallet coupon is growing in popularity because it is easy for consumers to use. For the business owner, mobile coupon campaigns prove effective in marketing while being affordable for the company. This trend is not going anywhere as technology expands and improves shoppers’ experience. 

Simple for the Consumer is a Marketing Dream

With most of the population carrying a smartphone these days, mobile coupons are easily accessible and can add value to every consumer’s shopping experience. Customers are teaching themselves to use mobile coupons because it is an easy way to save money. For example, a consumer who is a reward member at their local grocery store can quickly access the rewards, promotions, and coupons from their mobile wallet to redeem savings. Studies show that digital coupon redemption volume is steadily rising among consumers of all ages. The youngest users follow brands and trends, while the older generations seek value and savings. With mobile wallet coupons, retailers can reach all demographics and provide a wide range of digitally available value to customers while building their brand. 

The pre-installed mobile wallet app on digital devices allows a company to send promotions effortlessly to a specific clientele. Marketing through mobile wallet apps enables brands to target customers with personalized products and offers. Push notifications offer a quick location-based reminder directly to the customer’s device. And mobile coupons can be saved, shared, or even redeemed immediately. 

For example, when passing by the store, a consumer receives a notification on their phone about a BOGO offer. The shopper can stop, shop, save and even share the fantastic promotion with family and friends. This simple alert brings the customer into the store to make a purchase.

The Effective and Affordable Marketing Strategy

For the marketing strategist, mobile coupon campaigns are very effective in the growing and changing digital marketplace. A mobile coupon strategy effectively attracts new customers, promotes products, and increases loyalty to the brand. 

How does this happen? 

The mobile coupon campaign attracts new customers by highlighting its brand through an attractive offer. Studies show coupons influence over 80% of consumers to try new products and encourage shoppers to make a purchase faster than they would without a coupon. Digital coupons are also effective in keeping products on shoppers’ lists, leading to a high redemption rate. So, whether the goal is to reach a new customer or promote a new product, the mobile coupon is a tangible reminder to the consumer to make the purchase. And the coupon will not only increase brand awareness but also encourage and increase brand loyalty. Overall, the mobile coupon campaign successfully creates more interest and traffic and increases consumer spending.

Ready to get started? 

The mobile coupon campaign is an opportunity for any business to increase revenue and get a strong return on advertising. Of course, affordability is an essential piece of this marketing strategy. Consider this, major tech companies like Apple include a pre-loaded wallet app, and to date, there are over 1 billion iPhones active worldwide. Google Pay offers a free mobile app in the Google play store. Google Pay has over 150 million active users across 40 countries every month. Consumer devices are equipped for mobile wallet marketing to billions of people. The opportunities to market through mobile coupons are endless. This includes the freedom to create a personalized campaign that genuinely highlights your brand using location-based services and push notifications to reach your audience. A well-executed mobile campaign will provide your company with measurable data such as consumer traffic, client spending, and increased overall revenue. As you can see, there is an opportunity for any brand, big or small, to achieve success using a mobile coupon strategy. 

If you want to explore how your brand can increase business traffic with a mobile coupon marketing strategy, reach out to us at Mobeo. We offer a complete solution to be customized mobile marketing that is measurable and personalized to fit your needs.

Shopper Marketing Part 2:  What to achieve with shopper marketing

Shopper Marketing Part 2: What to achieve with shopper marketing

As we covered in “Shopper Marketing Part 1:”, Shopper Marketing is the process of ensuring consumers are correctly engaged at every stage throughout the path to purchase, from awareness to consideration to conversion. 

This article will explore what you can do to set up a shopper marketing strategy and what you can expect to achieve. 

How to create a Shopper Marketing strategy:

Brands that implement a shopper marketing strategy correctly possess a competitive edge because compiling a plan requires a deeper understanding of the consumer path-to-purchase from a holistic perspective rather than individual components. 

As a starting point for formulating your shopper marketing strategy, ask yourself these four essential questions:

  1. What does your brand represent, and does that resonate with your target audience?
  2. What is necessary for your target audience?
  3. What are your goals beyond making sales?
  4. What is your budget?

The answers to these questions should represent the heart and soul of your strategy, which can then wrap around each stage of your buyer’s journey:

  • Awareness Stage – Focus on brand recognition and storytelling to ensure you resonate with your target audience.
  • Consideration Stage – Deliver value and properly incentivize consumers to encourage them to purchase your products ahead of competitors’.
  • Conversion Stage – Delight with a positive customer experience and focus on building long-term relationships with your customers.
  • Retention Stage – Provide an easy way to connect and keep your customers coming back. 

Now that you’ve formulated your objectives for each stage of the buyer’s journey, it’s time to think about how you should execute it. For example, what marketing activities will you implement to ensure brand recognition? How do you want to incentivize customers? What channels will you use to communicate this to your target audience?

You can use the traditional marketing principle of the “4 P’s” to map out your plan for executing the shopper marketing strategy:

  • Price: discounts, bundled offers, price communication, and coupon
  • Place: eCommerce stores, bricks and mortar stores, visual merchandising, store layout
  • Product: Featured products, packaging, catalogs
  • Promotion: promotion communications, advertising channels, communicating brand and products to consumers

What can be achieved with a Shopper Marketing Strategy? 

By using a shopper marketing strategy as the lens for looking at the entire buyer journey as one, businesses can expect to:

  • Increase brand affinity by delivering more consistent marketing messages
  • Drive sales by looking at the entire path to purchase instead of individual stages
  • Improves long-term relationships with customers
  • Focuses on long-term gains rather than short-term objectives, which creates more consistency
  • Creates opportunity for data-driven decision making by looking at the entire lifecycle and proper data attribution
  • A deeper understanding of customer segments and preferences by looking at their behaviors across a broader range of activities rather than in isolation
  • Provide more personalized customer experiences by tracking progress through the path to purchase.

Want to implement a shopper marketing strategy for your business? Please speak to us about how Mobeo delivers value at every customer journey stage.

Missed the first part of this series? Read more about Shopper Marketing in “Shopper Marketing Part 1: What is shopper marketing and how has it changed lately?”Shopper Marketing Part 1: What is shopper marketing, and how has it changed lately?

 

Shopper Marketing Part 1:  What is shopper marketing, and how has it changed lately?

Shopper Marketing Part 1: What is shopper marketing, and how has it changed lately?

What is Shopper Marketing?

‘Shopper marketing’ can be thought of as the intersection between consumer psychology, customer experience, and experiential marketing. These three elements combine to convert shoppers into buyers and build the brand’s equity within the retail environment while fostering long-term relationships with consumers.

Their customer’s path-to-purchase will establish each retailer’s shopper marketing strategy. For example, whether the purchase is being made for themself or someone else, the purchase research process, and which channels the customer prefers to make the purchase, such as in-store or online. 

Shopper marketing builds its strategy on top of the unique path-to-purchase to create synergies and consistency in the messages presented to consumers throughout their journey to purchase. 

A good case study for this is how many retailers have adopted emailing receipts instead of printing them. By doing so, it opts the customer into their email funnel. 

Think about this – if a customer goes into the electronics department of a store and purchases a student edition of Microsoft Office and then provides their email address for the receipt to be sent to them, the store can now attribute that email address to someone who is likely a student. Then when it comes time for the “back to school” campaigns to roll out, that person will likely receive an email with various deals and promotions for other tools or products they might need and can drive them in-store (since it knows where they’ve made previous purchases from) or online with coupon codes. 

What’s new about Shopper Marketing?

Shopper marketing tactics have been popular since the 80s, but forty years ago, they only took place in brick-and-mortar stores. With eCommerce and social media, shopper marketing has evolved to include these new sales channels. 

The growth of the online space has paved the way for communicating and incentivizing customers, which plays a role in shopper marketing. For example, the ability to run loyalty programs or coupon promotions at the click of a button while seamlessly measuring conversions.

On being highly measurable, data analytics and business intelligence have come a long way. Having access to these insights has given retailers greater clarity around their customer’s purchase trends and habits, which can make informed business decisions to provide the best possible shopping experience. 

What does the future hold for Shopper Marketing?

One pitfall of shopper marketing that many retailers fall for is the lack of personalization in their marketing communications. This is often because they’re often purchasing data from third-party vendors and applying it to their business, which is like trying to jam a square peg into a triangular hole – it just won’t fit. The future of shopper marketing is utilizing technology to customize the shopping experience better to suit personal preferences. In a hyper-competitive retail world, the winners will be the early adopters of technologies designed to influence purchase decisions.

If you want to stay ahead of the technological curve, speak to us today about how Mobeo drives revenue growth through personalized customer experiences.

Challenges around product availability at local stores

Challenges around product availability at local stores

ACCORDING TO EXPERTS, the COVID19 pandemic has led to a massive disruption in the global supply chain, which shows no signs of easing anytime soon. 

This supply chain crisis results from factors such as changes in consumer demand, shifts to online shopping due to lockdowns, factory closures, shipping delays, raw material shortages, to name a few.

With economists predicting that the current conditions won’t improve until 2023, here are a few ways that businesses can navigate supply chain issues in the new year.

Moving Excess Stock:

  1. Geotargeted Ads: Having the ability to target potential customers according to their proximity to local stores could be a powerful way to let nearby patrons know that their favorite products are in stock. 
  2. Mobile Wallet Coupons: This allows businesses to create various promotions or coupons and send them directly to a customer’s mobile wallet in return, giving them a nudge or encouraging them to purchase from your store next time they’re looking to make a purchase. Once the coupon has been added to the customer’s wallet, the business can share updates about it through notifications. 

Dealing With Limited Stock:

  1. Take control of stock levels: Research shows that 43% of retailers believe better stock level visibility would help serve customers and increase the overall customer experience. You can implement an effective stocktake system to keep track of stock accurately.
  2. Digital transformation: As many countries begin to move away from lockdowns and restrictions, bricks and mortar retailers are starting to recover; however, foot traffic is still not where it used to be pre-pandemic. Many businesses are benefiting from moving online to supplement income lost due to lower than average levels of in-store shopping. 
  3. Source locally: It could be a valuable exercise to source alternative products or components and materials locally instead of relying on existing shipping routes. This will vary for different businesses and depend on where they currently hold inventory and are presently sourced or manufactured. This will help companies determine their options and perhaps uncover even better solutions.
  4. Network: Speak to other retailers who might be experiencing similar things to your business. Not only is it essential to have a strong support network around during challenging times but keeping your finger on the pulse and staying informed will help with decision making and forecasting. These networks may also be beneficial for sourcing new products or stock.

As supply-chain disruptions persist, volatility and uncertainty remain for the foreseeable future. However, retailers can grab the opportunity by the horns and address disruptions head-on. This will help in the short term and, if executed properly, could also help build resilience against future disruptions. 

Mobeo’s suite of solutions can be customized to fit your individual business needs while driving traffic locally to your product or store. In addition, we offer the ability for businesses to create scalable, personalized digital offerings that are seamlessly added to shoppers’ mobile wallets, allowing for online-to-offline conversions in-store. 

Talk to us today about how we can help boost your digital footprint.

Mobile Wallets in the new Contactless World

Mobile Wallets in the new Contactless World

With a global shift away from paper cash, physical loyalty cards, and checks towards digital payments and contactless transactions, more than 68% of consumers now use mobile payment apps for their everyday purchases.  

Mobile wallets have digitized payments, loyalty cards, coupons, public transport, tickets, airline passes, and car keys. 

The University of Illinois published a study in 2020, which found that there had been a 54% increase in the number of consumers using mobile wallets while shopping in brick-and-mortar stores compared to 2019. Interestingly, transaction size increased by 2.4% and purchase frequency by more than 23%.

But you may be asking what’s contributed to this supersonic growth and adoption?

Here are a few contributing factors that have played a role:

  1. Hygiene: With the advent of COVID-19, consumers are more conscious of cleanliness than ever before. Contactless payments provide an easy way to avoid having hundreds (if not thousands) of people touching the same surfaces, like the touchpad of a credit card terminal. 
  2. Security: Mobile wallets offer better protection against fraud because customers must unlock their smartphones before wirelessly connecting to a POS reader. They also use biometric authentication to secure fingerprint or facial recognition payments. Biometric technology is more secure because it checks something that cannot be changed or passed on, like a pin code or password. Additionally, the wallet cannot be accessed without getting past lock screens and biometric checks if the phone is stolen. Mobile wallets don’t store credit card numbers on the device. Instead, each transaction is “tokenized” using cryptography which verifies payments without sharing sensitive information. 
  3. Speed: Transaction processing times are up to ten times faster on mobile devices than with credit cards. The mobile wallet and POS terminal are connected to the internet, which means data can be transmitted much faster than the traditional one-way data transfer.
  4. Convenience: It’s easy to leave home without your wallet accidentally, but it’s much harder to leave your mobile phone at home since we’ve come to rely on them more and more. Also, mobile wallets remove the need to remember different pin codes or how many points are stored on each loyalty card, as all of this information is retained within the mobile wallet.

Mobile wallets have snowballed in popularity, with most shoppers carrying a smartphone with them at all times, making it a more accessible form of payment rather than cash or credit cards. Looking further into the future and at countries that already have widespread adoption of mobile wallets, it’s possible to conceive that almost all transactions will be digital within a few years.

Mobeo’s mobile wallet platform seamlessly supports both Apple Wallet and Google Pay. If you’re ready to explore how mobile wallets could boost sales for your business, speak to us today.

Why retailers need to get on the mobile wallet steam train

Why retailers need to get on the mobile wallet steam train

Mobile wallet marketing is an effective way for brands to engage customers without installing any other apps or opt-in for notifications. To do this, the brand creates digital loyalty cards or coupons that customers can access and use on their mobile devices.

Mobile wallets present businesses with a new channel to communicate with their customers and improve brand loyalty. Urban Airship, one of the most powerful platforms in the world, reported that “Mobile wallets are now among the top four ways consumers prefer to stay updated on sales, offers, and coupons, alongside decades-old channels including websites, email and text/SMS.” 

However, it is still early days. Given that this is a very new marketing strategy, an average of 19% of consumers report noticing retailers implementing offers and loyalty programs in their mobile wallets, but this percentage is expected to skyrocket. 

So, you might be asking yourself, “what does mobile marketing involve?” and we’re here to answer that question:

1. Coupons

This allows businesses to create various promotions or coupons and send them directly to a customer’s mobile wallet to give them a nudge or encourage them to purchase from your store or location the next time they’re looking to make a purchase. Once the coupon is added to the customer’s wallet, the business can share updates about it through notifications.  

2. Location-based

Mobile wallet marketing allows businesses to send notifications and coupons to customers based on their location. This is done via hyperlocal ad campaigns or sometimes even geo-fencing campaigns. When the customer enters the vicinity of the business, the wallet sends a notification to the customer’s phone with a coupon, and clicking this notification redirects straight to the mobile wallet. 

3. Cashback

Cashback offers have become increasingly popular over the past couple of years. This is attractive to customers because they receive a rebate of the retail price when they purchase using their mobile wallets. In addition, this is a great way to incentivize repeat purchases and brand loyalty.

4. Notifications

Mobile wallets provide businesses with numerous notifications that they can schedule according to time, date, frequency, and other triggers like the customer’s purchase behavior. For example, notifications can be sent in a push notification, SMS, or in app-message. A lot of the time, the customer can manage the types of messages they wish to receive in the settings section, which helps ensure that they get to digest information in the way they choose to.

Now that you know how mobile wallet marketing works on a practical level, some of the benefits include:

  • Mobile-only experience: No need for printing or clipping coupons. Keeping the coupon digital and stored on the mobile device ensures it’s always accessible to the customer.
  • Right time and place: Because mobile wallet marketing can be geo-targeted, you can send reminder notifications about the coupons they have available when they’re within a set radius from that store. Research indicates that up to 63% of customers are likely to enter a store if they receive coupon expiration reminders when they’re nearby. 
  • Real-time offer updates: Due to mobile wallet marketing being an entirely digital customer experience, businesses have the power to update promotions and offers in real-time by simply pushing updated offers straight to the customer’s wallet. 
  • Personalization: Thanks to the highly detailed customer analytics with mobile wallet marketing, coupons can be targeted and personalized based on triggers such as previous products they’ve purchased, timestamps for when previous purchases were made, and more. This ensures that you’re delivered promotional offers for products that you know the customer already likes.

With more and more people using their mobile wallets, it creates a win-win between businesses and consumers. It gives customers access to the best deals while driving brand loyalty and repeat purchases. 

Mobeo offers the ability for businesses to create scalable, personalized digital coupons that are seamlessly added to shoppers’ wallets, allowing for online-to-offline conversions, driving traffic in-store. 

Talk to us today about how we can help boost your digital footprint.