Mobile coupons can be incredibly powerful marketing tools. For marketers who want to employ the three dimensions of personalization, mobile coupons are the best vehicle. They allow businesses to send the right message, to the right person, at the right time.
Personalized Offers
Businesses can use mobile coupons to send custom-tailored SMS messages to a specific person, or a specific customer profile, based on their preferences. When using mobile couponing, businesses have the ability to factor in a person’s location, and therefore what might be happening around them at that specific time. For example, if the weather has been unseasonably hot in New York on a certain spring week, a marketer can send customers located in the city a coupon for 50% off a scoop of ice cream for that weekend, knowing that the offer will be redeemed at higher rates thanks to the implementation of offer and location personalization.
Making offers with this level of accuracy is near impossible with other more traditional forms of marketing. Some may argue that brands could send email coupons, but email only truly hits two out of three of the dimensions of personalization. Email allows brands to send the right message based on customer preference and location, but misses the aspect of timely delivery as most emails are opened 48 hours after delivery. This means that by the time your customer reads the offer, the rain has started again, and your catchy one liner telling them to get outside and enjoy the weather with a half-off scoop of ice cream is less motivating.
Cater to Your Most Loyal Customers
Mobile coupons allow you to target your most profitable customers. When someone subscribes to your text club, you already know that they want to receive marketing from your brand – and these are your most loyal fans. This means your marketing efforts are more highly targeted and will therefore produce a higher ROI. On average, repeat customers account for 80% of a business’ total revenue.
Once you have your text club subscriber list, it doesn’t have to be all about sending coupons. Your loyal customers will want to get updates on new products, events, and even reminders for offers you may have already sent them. In fact, not only are your subscribers more loyal to your business, they are more vocal as well. Customers who sign up for a text club are 70% more likely to spread the word about that business.
Increasing Value, and Increasing Redemptions
The personalized nature of mobile offers means they have a much higher redemption rate than any other coupon delivery method. Redemption rates for subscription based SMS coupons are between 3% and 10%, with some businesses seeing redemptions as high as 13%. Compare that to email, where redemption rates are around 2.7%, and to free-standing inserts (FSI), where the widely-accepted redemption rate is between 0.5% and 2%, and the decision to choose mobile is an easy one.