Recently I came across a link on ChiefMarketer.com to a blog post titled “Coupons.com Extends iPhone Grocery App to Loyalty Cards.” Almost daily, stories are appearing about mobile couponing and loyalty, but this one stands out in how mobile marketing is being woven into a coupon program strategically, and ultimately in line with the customer’s point of view.
The concept of replacing loyalty cards with mobile devices, and presenting digital coupons at the point of sale have the “cool” factor. However, in terms of broad implementation, the challenges are material – technically and process-wise. Coupons.com appears to have learned how to deal with some of them by focusing on the mobile customer experience.
“…integrating digital coupons with loyalty cards is the most practical solution to enabling downloadable discounts in busy stores where consumers often have multiple purchases eligible for discounts.”
“We’ve seen the [couponing] industry flirt with all things of digital format for some time, all the way from the absurd—the notion of presenting barcodes on phones in high-volume checkout lanes—to the legitimate and tested, including digital loading onto loyalty cards.”
With a shopping list iPhone application already under its belt, in taking its mobile strategy to the next level Coupons.com has done the following:
- Offer traditional and mobile optimized websites which allow consumers to register their loyalty cards, browse coupon offers, and elect to have certain offers digitally attached to their accounts so at the point of sale they are redeemed as a group, as opposed to one at a time.
- A revised shopping list application which allows consumers to take photos of product bar codes to automatically have items added to a grocery list. The application also integrates with the coupon program so that eligible products are flagged for addition to the consumer’s loyalty card account.
- Recognize the difference between coupon redemption associated with multi-product purchases (grocery) versus those associated with one large purchase (restaurant). To that end, the mobile site allows selected offers to be saved on mobile devices for presentment at checkout without need for a loyalty card or account.
The last point should be highlighted, as it recognizes that coupons and offers may not be one in the same, and can have different practical applications:
“Mobile presentment has been a technology looking for a use…Where it works best is in low-volume, high-margin transactions—consumer electronics and things like that– and at the local level. We have over 12,000 offers with restaurants, dry cleaners and professional services, and phone presentment works very well there.”
“It’s all about moving people quickly through those checkout lines…Searching for multiple coupons on your phone, then showing each one, perhaps dropping your phone in the process—those are not conducive to speed.”
Of this all accentuates the importance of the basic principles of marketing that still apply in the mobile world: what are the business objectives, and related characteristics of the customer segments of interest.
2 responses so far ↓
John Bastone // October 29, 2009 at 10:58 am |
Scott,
Great post. Interesting to note that you have ex-google and ex-yahoo employees heading up the technology and sales functions of coupons.com, and I suspect it is only a matter of time before a google or yahoo steps into the fray as well.
I think the easy thing to overlook in all of this is is how difficult it is for many retailers, especially in grocery, to perform the linkage of an electronic discount to individual loyalty cards. So many loyalty schemes have for many years simply been “me too”, 2 tier pricing schemes with no tangible benefit to customers for using the card, outside of a lower set of pricing on certain items every week. So quite naturally, the underlying point of sale technologies have evolved towards improved efficiencies in checkout times and to a lesser extent the checkout experience, and not around customer personalization.
My hope is that as mobile gains traction, and as the economy recovers, the focus on point of sale infrastructure will shift towards enabling companies to accomodate more in the way of individual behavior-based targeting and reconciliation of offers, across multiple channels. Until that happens, efforts like iPhone apps for couponing will have limited traction as a majority of retailers can’t integrate that within their checkout process, while also remaining disjointed from other non-digital promotional channels like direct mail.
John Bastone
Scott Radcliffe // October 31, 2009 at 10:18 am |
John:
thanks for the insightful comments based on your experience in retail, and coupon programs. Are there any good examples of retailers that are doing “individual behavior-based targeting and reconciliation of offers, across multiple channels” as you describe above?