Posts Tagged "Restaurant"

Today I came across a link on ChiefMarketer.com to a blog post titled “Coupons.com Extends iPhone Grocery App to Loyalty Cards.”  Almost daily, stories are appearing about mobile couponing and loyalty, but this one is unique in how mobile is being stitched into a coupon program strategically and ultimately in line with the customer’s point of view.

Similar to how Interactive Mediums client Newser recently extended its service to mobile via an iPhone application as part of an ongoing mobile channel strategy, Coupons.com is also making progress beyond its initial steps.

Although the notions of replacing loyalty cards with mobile devices and presenting digital coupons or bar codes at the point of sale are very sexy, in practice these face all sorts of challenges – technically and process-wise.  Coupons.com appears to have learned how to overcome them by focusing on the mobile customer experience.

“…integrating digital coupons with loyalty cards is the most practical solution to enabling downloadable discounts in busy stores where consumers often have multiple purchases eligible for discounts.”

“We’ve seen the [couponing] industry flirt with all things of digital format for some time, all the way from the absurd—the notion of presenting barcodes on phones in high-volume checkout lanes—to the legitimate and tested, including digital loading onto loyalty cards.”

With a shopping list iPhone application already under its belt, in taking its mobile strategy to the next level Coupons.com has done the following:

• Offer traditional and mobile optimized websites which allow consumers to register their loyalty cards, browse coupon offers, and elect to have certain offers digitally attached to their accounts so at the point of sale they are redeemed as a group, as opposed to one at a time.
• A revised shopping list application which allows consumers to take photos of product bar codes to automatically have items added to a grocery list.  The application also integrates with the coupon program so that eligible products are flagged for addition to the consumer’s loyalty card account.
• Recognize the difference between coupon redemption associated with multi-product purchases (grocery) versus those associated with one large purchase (restaurant).  To that end, the mobile site allows selected offers to be saved on mobile devices for presentment at checkout without need for a loyalty card or account.

The last point is notable as it recognizes that coupons and offers may not be one in the same, and can have different practical applications:

“Mobile presentment has been a technology looking for a use…Where it works best is in low-volume, high-margin transactions—consumer electronics and things like that– and at the local level. We have over 12,000 offers with restaurants, dry cleaners and professional services, and phone presentment works very well there.”

“It’s all about moving people quickly through those checkout lines…Searching for multiple coupons on your phone, then showing each one, perhaps dropping your phone in the process—those are not conducive to speed.”

What is speeding up is the rate at which mobile marketers are learning from, evolving and improving upon their initial experiences.  Exciting times for mobile marketing.

Pushing special offers to customers’ mobile devices in real time, based on their proximity to your stores is a great one, but retailers need to realize just how powerful this tactic can be given recent studies.  Yesterday on eMarketer.com was an article titled “Relevant Marketing with Mobile Alerts,” highlighting results from a Harris Interactive survey which suggests retailers not engaged in this activity today are leaving major money on the table:

“42% of 18-to-34-year-olds and 33% of 35-to-44-year-olds are at least somewhat interested in receiving opt-in mobile alerts from their favorite places.”

“Among respondents who would opt in to location-based alerts on their mobile phones, more than one-half were interested in messages from restaurants, followed by movie and event tickets, weather, and clearance sales.”

Just like any business strategy, however, it isn’t just a question of attitude toward mobile communications; it is as much about actual consumer behavior “on the go.”  Mobile can be a powerful tactic, but its ultimate value derives from programmatic use as part of a broader strategy targeting the mobile customer experience – in this case competing for consumer dollars in a down economy.  The research supports use of mobile as an ongoing customer relationship management strategy which takes advantage of natural shopping behavior:

“90% of consumers have made impulse purchases while out shopping because of a sale, and 22% of mobile users did so weekly. Marketers that let consumers know about local offers at the right place and time might take advantage of such behaviors.”

The fact consumers will make impulse purchases independent of mobile interactions represents a major untapped source of business for retailers.

To take advantage of this quickly, retailers need to partner with firms like Interactive Mediums who will help shape the best path toward meeting business objectives.  Starting by developing a mobile marketing strategy map is a logical first step.

Sorry for the bad pun but today’s lead story at MobileMarketer.com jumped out at me, not for that reason, but because the restaurant chain claims sales increased 32 percent due to a hybrid video on demand/text messaging promotion offering discounted food items in exchange for a mobile interaction.

Positive results for programs like this are increasingly commonplace, but if this is true, then it goes without saying that return on investment based on a 32 percent increase in sales is phenomenal.  What is most interesting is how Hooters approached the project with an eye on confidently determining its effectiveness.  For example:

• Business Objective: “..the overall strategy was to increase Hooters’ store traffic.”
• Targeted Mobile Experience: “The aim of the promotion was to make it more convenient for viewers to learn how to join the Hooters Mobile Text Club.”
• Measurability: “..Hooters wanted a way to track the number of responses to the VOD (video on demand) and the number of people choosing to opt-in to the program.”

This is an approach similar to our view of targeting the Mobile Customer Experince based on business objectives.  In this case Demand Generation was the marketing initiative.  We also prescibe a focus on data collection and reuse via a Mobile Customer Data Asset.  While the article doesn’t state as such, you might imagine Hooters interested in understanding the quanity and velocity of customers going through the process, not unlike how salespeople gauge the movement of prospects through a sales cycle.  Like this:

• (Suspects) Top of funnel: “…the number of customers clicking the remote to see the longer Hooters VOD, as well as the time spent watching it.”
• (Prospects) Middle of funnel: “…the increase in the number of people added to the mobile database. State of Text provided tracking consistent with TV day-parts.”
• (Sales) Bottom of funnel: “State of Text compared the data with the TV schedule to determine the effectiveness of individual programs. Hooters tracked redemption rates at the store.”

This is yet another great example of a retail/restaurant taking a strategic view of mobile and leveraging it to achieve real business value.  It suggests that should Hooters at some point utilize reality augmentation you can be sure it targets a business problem and isn’t just a clever novelty associated with its somewhat offbeat brand.