In my childhood days I brought home the Sunday newspaper and clipped coupons from it. But like many people today, I tend to look for coupons delivered to my smartphone while I am on the go.
Delivering mobile coupons to customers have altered the value coupons have for marketers. That value is now a meaningful connection to customers carrying mobile devices. Shoppers are acclimated to digital retail offers. Take loyalty programs for example. Customers in these programs want rewards for their loyalty. A coupon associated with a reward level can be a natural fit in saying “thank you” to customers.
Marketers should appreciate shopper attitudes that have arisen from better smartphones and programming technology. Recent research notes that mobile smartphone users are more likely to act on a purchase. Chain Store Age illustrated in a 2012 post that four our of five smartphone users access retail content through their phone.
The end result is a steady surge of mobile coupon usage. eMarketer noticed that mobile coupons are becoming more popular for in-store deals, albeit with a slow growth. The research firm predicted that over 100 million customers would use a digital coupon by 2014. In 2015, MediaPost reports how consumers are adopting mobile tools, especially coupons.
Coupons can be combined with other digital marketing media to increase awareness of a retail event. Mobile coupons for products advertised on a digital signage can be the impetus for customers to try a new product or to head towards a nearby store. In either case coupons can take advantage of smartphone-owning customers propensity to act.
In fact, a coupon strategy integrated into an overall digital marketing campaign may be the best bet in attracting fence-sitting customers into a retailer’s store. eMarketer also noted in a separate NPD survey that US internet shoppers indicated price as the number one consideration in deciding where to shop. The second ranked consideration was sales or special deals. These influences overrode shopper interest in receiving one price across multi-channels, implying a strategy for personalized pricing through coupon offers. The strategy can also serve as a countermove against showrooming.
To make the most of a coupon trial campaign, retailers can add an analytics tag to the coupons or a landing page related to the coupon. Custom variables can also be used for tracking response to several groups of coupons organized across several campaigns. Incorporating analytics tracking can reveal how well a given campaign succeeds.
The behavior associated with the Sunday newspaper may be gone, but customer appreciation for a sale is not waning. Digital coupons on mobile devices can potentially change that appreciation into a meaningful connection with retailers.
[…] to have the highest mobile device penetration among African nations. As I noted in my earlier post How Coupons Can Influence Mobile, US mobile users are increasingly taking action through their phone. Reports like the Google Africa […]