Written by: Stefanie Gray
Providing mobile coupons across channels is a sure-win for retailers seeking to improve coupon redemptions. One CodeBroker retailer customer recently launched a wildly successful omnichannel mobile coupon marketing promotion that spanned three channels: promotion text messaging, email, and Passbook.
Omnichannel Coupon Promotion
Why: Having already realized significant success driving in-store redemptions with promotion text-only promotions, the retailer wanted to learn if they could realize even higher in-store redemptions by text message marketing with additional delivery channels.
How: The retailer created an A/B comparison campaign consisting of 2 three-day promotions. Both promotions were scheduled to run Thursday through Saturday. Promotion 1 ran in early-May and promotion 2 ran 6 weeks later in mid-June. The retailer’s SMS marketing list contained approximately 450,000 subscribers.
The first promotion consisted of two promotional text messages that were delivered to all of their customers who were subscribed to the retailer’s SMS marketing list. The second omnichannel promotion delivered an email message followed by an promotional text message to the 375,000 customers who were subscribed to both the retailer’s email and SMS marketing lists.
Using CodeBroker’s single-use coupons, the retailer elected to deliver a generous offer of 10% off an entire basket, both sale and regular-priced merchandise. Single-use coupons ensured that each consumer could only redeem an offer once. To facilitate speedy checkout, all coupons contained a unique barcode and corresponding number that the sales associate would scan at the point-of-sale. The offer was good for in-store purchases only.
Customer Experience
Text Message Marketing-only Promotion: Customers received an promotional text message on the Tuesday before the campaign started announcing the three-day promotion. The promotion text message contained a link the customer clicked on to view their offer in the web browser on their mobile device. Both the promotion text message and mobile coupon clearly articulated the promotion start and end dates. Because it was a single-use coupon, the customer could not use it before the promotion start date or after the promotion period ended. A second promotional text message encouraging the customer to redeem the coupon before it expired was delivered on Friday – the middle of the promotion period – to those customers who had not yet redeemed the mobile coupon.
Omnichannel Promotion: In lieu of the initial promotion text message, customers received an email message on the Tuesday before the campaign started announcing the three-day promotion. Because email is supported on both the desktop and mobile device, the customer had the option of which channel to view the offer. If the email coupon was viewed on the desktop, the customer was able to print the coupon. If viewed on a mobile device, the customer clicked-thru to view a mobile web coupon. On Friday – the second day of the 3-day promotion – the retailer delivered promotional text message to the customers who had not yet redeemed the coupon reminding them that they had one day left to use the mobile coupon.
Customers who had iOS mobile devices had the option of saving the mobile coupon to Passbook.
To redeem the offer, the customer presented the mobile coupon to the sales associate during check-out and the cashier scanned the bar code on the mobile offer (either paper-based or on the customer’s mobile device). The POS system cleared the coupon and was marked-as-redeemed letting the customer know that the offer could not be used a second time. The retailer elected to use the marked-as-redeemed feature providing a better customer experience. If the customer stored the mobile coupon in Passbook, the offer was marked as no longer valid in Passbook as well. Updating the mobile coupon in all of the channels the customers chose to view it provided a cohesive customer experience.
Results
SMS-only Promotion: The retailer realized a 5.5% redemption rate (a little less than 25,000 redemptions). The SMS-only promotion brought in incremental revenue of approximately $1,000,000.
Omnichannel Promotion: The retailer experienced an average 19.2% redemption rate from the omnichannel promotion period (approximately 72,000 additional consumer redemptions) totaling more than $2.5 million.
Single-use coupons ensured that once the mobile coupon was redeemed, it expired in all of the channels in which the customer received it (SMS, mobile email and Passbook). In addition, the retailer was able to track who received the mobile coupon, who viewed it, and which customers redeemed the mobile coupon. A comprehensive picture of each campaign provided the retailer with insight into the entire purchase funnel.
The retailer continues to realize outstanding redemption rates mirroring the omnichannel promotion framework previously outlined. Based on the A/B campaign results, the retailer discovered that exceptional revenue results can be realized when text message marketing promotions are layered with additional channels and coupled with reminder messages.
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