I was a stay-at-home mom staring at an empty nest. I do the shopping and meal planning for my family. I signed up for mobile coupons at a couple of my regular shopping locations and I love getting their coupons. I think it’s genius! It works for me. I get a discount and they see me in their business more times than I otherwise would have gone.
I wanted to share this strategy with other businesses and the possibilities are mind-blowing. Especially when you look at the statistics. 91% of Americans have a cell phone. 83% don’t leave home without it. 98% of text messages get read and 95% of them get read within 5 minutes of receipt! The potential for timing the message for the exact time when customers are making their buying decisions is all new to marketing. If you are a restaurant and you send a coupon or just a reminder to your customers at 3:00 in the afternoon, right when people are getting hungry, what are the chances they will make a plan to hit it for supper that night? Or if not that night one night soon! Or even if they don’t use that coupon now they have you on top of their mind when they next decide about dining out.
The best part is they have already opted in to your data base and you can blast reminders to them 2-3 times a month. People LIKE getting text messages. Opt-out rates demonstrate 92% retention. If you touch them on their mobile device multiple times the odds that they will respond with an additional visit to your restaurant are obvious. If you have 1000 people in your database and redemption rates are 4-12%, lets use 4% – 40 people redeem the coupon, take the average ticket – say $30 times 40 people, you get $1200 in additional revenue. That can be repeated and multiplied as the database grows (more people opt in) and more campaigns are pushed. No-brainer!
I love thinking of campaigns for different industries and developing them for my customers. I work up a 120-day marketing plan and after client approval I schedule it and it automatically goes out to their database at exactly the right time of the month, week, and day. We can track different types of marketing and provide proof of concept very quickly. They get a measurable return on investment and they’re sold on mobile.
