3 Reasons to Use Passbook for Email and SMS Campaigns

Our society is going mobile. Using a smartphone, a consumer can make calls (of course), send and receive texts and emails, and browse the Web. Now, using a digital “mobile wallet” such as Apple’s Passbook on iPhones or Google Wallet on Android phones, you can help the consumer do much more.

With all the “stuff” people have to carry around in their physical wallets, retailers compete with wallet space for their marketing-related items, such as loyalty cards and coupons. Physical loyalty cards take up too much space and may be lost or damaged. Consumers often forget coupons at home or just plain forget them until long after they expire. This situation is clearly lose-lose, but mobile wallets may be a silver-bullet solution that changes it into a win-win scenario. Let’s see how…

Q: What are the Main Benefits of Mobile Wallets for Consumers and Marketers?

A: As a consumer, how often have you noticed that you’re driving past a store where you need to buy something only to realize that you forgot your 20-percent-off coupon at home? Likely, you decided to wait until you had the coupon with you. This is frustrating and inconvenient for you, and represents a lost opportunity for the retailer. Using a mobile wallet, marketers can create and send digital coupons to their customers’ smartphones, available even if they just happen to come into the store.

Another benefit is doing away with the countless plastic loyalty cards retailers want customers to carry. These plastic cards are inconvenient and may be lost or damaged. A mobile wallet lets retailers create digital loyalty cards. Since the digital variety don’t take up space and can’t be lost or damaged, consumers are much more likely to use them each time they visit the retailer.

A third benefit is that with mobile wallets, consumers who opt in can get personalized offers when they enter a marketer-defined geographical area (geo-fencing) relevant for a specific store or when they walk by an iBeacon, for example, when they approach a relevant department in a larger store.

Finally, retailers can use mobile wallets to manage their offers more effectively. They can alert their customers when an offer is about to expire and even turn offers off and back on based on their marketing schedule. All these benefits translate to more convenience and less frustration for consumers, as well as improved traffic, loyalty, and conversion rates for marketers, all achieved in a targeted and therefore cost-effective way.

Q: What’s So Important About Integrating Mobile Wallets with My Email and SMS Campaign Management Solution?

A: Integrating mobile wallets with your campaign management makes it easy to deliver personalized digital “passes” to your customers’ Passbook or Google Wallet. These passes replace print versions of coupons, offers, and even flight boarding passes. You can (and should) use a single link that senses if the specific customer uses an iPhone or Android device, automatically providing the content in the right format.

By integrating with your campaign management solution, you can pass personalization information such as the customer’s name and loyalty card number, improving targeting and conversion rates, and thus driving up your marketing ROI.

Finally, your campaign solution can help capture information on resulting customer behavior, letting you automatically measure performance of different offers and identify which customers respond to which offers. This lets you personalize and optimize your offers, provide better value to your customers, and improve marketing results for your brand.

Q: How Do I Get Started Using Mobile Wallets?

A: First, as with any new project, define your objectives. Are you trying to get more people to take advantage of your offers? Want to increase traffic in your store? Take your loyalty program digital to make sure people get the most value out of their reward certificates and loyalty card? Or do you just want to improve convenience for your customers?

Once you know your objectives, decide which offer makes the most sense as your first push. This is the one you’ll use to learn how to do things and see how your customers react. That’s why you want to pick one to which most customers will respond.

Next, define your success criteria. This is where you envision what success would look like, which helps you identify what you’ll need to measure. These criteria might include the specific call-to-action (CTA) to which the customer responded, the channel (email or SMS), etc.

You can find detailed information, tips, and tricks in a downloadable report, Mobile Wallet Handbook: The ABCs of Passbook and Google Wallet from Vibes, an Adobe partner.

Takeaway

If you haven’t done so yet, you should start using mobile wallets to make your customers’ lives easier and your marketing results better. The above-mentioned handbook from Vibes can teach you the ABCs of using mobile wallets, including both the why’s and the how’s. Integrating this new strategy with your campaign management solution will increase your ROI even further, in a sustainable way.