Written by: Stefanie Gray
CodeBroker retailer customers – some of the largest in the US – deliver creative and engaging mobile experiences to consumers. Employing CodeBroker’s offer marketing platform, our retailer customers can:
- Quickly set-up engaging mobile promotions.
- Minimize the liability associated with rich offers.
- Easily track and measure campaign success
Over the course of the next month, we will highlight some of our retailer customers best mobile promotions – promotions that wildly exceeded expected results in driving traffic to stores (both online and brick & mortar) as well as sales revenue.
Mobile Promotion: SECRET OFFER
Why: Increase basket size during a non-peak shopping weekend.
The retailer elected to deliver a variety of mobile offers to their customers through promotional text messages that were redeemable in-store only. In researching alternatives, the ability to set up all aspects of the promotion themselves ensuring a quick turn-around was a key consideration in deciding to use mobile offers as the incentive.
How: The retailer decided to randomly deliver one of three offers to consumers who participated in the mobile promotion. Neither the consumer nor the retailer knew which consumer would receive which mobile coupon. The three offer options included: 10% OFF, 15% OFF and 25% OFF a customer’s entire basket.
Delivery of the offers was completely randomized. As part of set-up, the retailer determined that 20% of the delivered offers would be 25% OFF mobile coupons, 35% of the delivered offers would be 15% OFF mobile coupons and the remainder of the delivered offers would be 10% OFF mobile coupons. The retailer could pause the promotion and change the percentage distribution at any time during the course of the mobile promotion. In addition, the retailer had complete control over when the mobile offers could be delivered to consumers (for this campaign, they did not restrict delivery). The campaign ran across all 750 stores across the US.
The retailer advertised exclusively through social media and in-store one week before the mobile promotion. The promotion ran for three days – Thursday through Saturday.
Customer experience: In response to a Tweet, Facebook post, Pinterest post or a text message sent to customers subscribed to the retailer’s SMS marketing list, the consumer texted-in the keyword “SECRET” to the retailer’s shortcode.
In response, a promotion text message was delivered to the consumer’s mobile device. The text message contained a link the consumer clicked on to view the delivered mobile offer. The mobile coupon displayed in the web browser on the consumer’s mobile device. Once the consumer viewed the offer, she could save the offer to Passbook.
If the consumer inadvertently deleted the offer or could not find it, she would text in the term “REMINDME” to the retailer’s shortcode. Regardless of the number of times or channels the consumer viewed the offer, it was always the same offer (i.e., same unique barcode). Even if the consumer entered the keyword SECRET to “play” more than once, they would receive the original offer.
During the three day in-store promotion period, the consumer would select the merchandise they wished to purchase and proceed to checkout. During checkout, the sales associate would scan the barcode on the consumer’s mobile device and the discount was automatically applied. Once the barcode was scanned, it was marked-as-redeemed so that the consumer would know not to use the coupon again.
Results: The retailer ran the mobile promotion for a single weekend in spring – just as the summer merchandise was arriving in stores. On average, each store realized an increase of 27% in store visits and a 23% increase in basket size. Since the majority of offers were 10% and 15% OFF coupons, the increase in store visits and basket size more than offset the discount. In addition, redemptions were through the roof. The retailer saw redemption rates as high as 74% in some stores.
Subscriptions to the retailer’s SMS marketing list increased by 12% during the mobile promotion as consumers wanted to have access to additional SMS exclusive promotions.
Using one-time-use mobile coupons and offers, the retailer was able to limit liability as well as track coupon usage. Information such as when the offer was delivered, viewed and redeemed helped the retailer analyze results and better prepare for the next time they run the Secret Offer promotion.
Overall, the retailer realized close to $5 million in incremental revenue for the three day mobile promotion.