I’ve written about this before, but last week it resulted in me getting less food for my money – which my friends will tell you makes me very angry, so I’m bringing it up again.
I was meeting a mate after work for something to eat, the plan was to get onto Money Saving Expert and see what was on offer, print out the voucher and go munch. Giraffe had a 2 for 1 on main meals deal which fitted perfectly.
In the rush out of the office I forgot the voucher, because of this I changed my mind and we went next door to Wagamama instead. Why? Because paying full price for something when you know it’s on sale feels like a massive waste of money, you either can’t live with knowing that everyone else around you is probably eating for 50% less or you tell yourself that you’ll return another time with the voucher. Plus I like Wagamama that tiny bit more if paying full price but when it comes down to a good offer like 2-for-1, Giraffe would win every time.
If I could have sent that voucher to my phone rather than to a printer, Giraffe would have had my business. The same has happened in the past with vouchers from Gap, Urban Outfitters and plenty of others. It’s even more of a pain when you don’t have access to a printer.
How many times have you used a mobile SMS voucher compared to lets say, a printed email/pdf voucher? There is no comparison, how can the most commonly used mobile service in the world be overlooked for something you can only do if you have access to a printer? It makes no sense, ask any person who has used a printed voucher if they would rather use a text message instead, what do you think the answer would be?
The question is why hasn’t it happened yet?
Easy – there is absolutely nothing in it for agencies who advise brands by suggesting such a simple solution as it cannibalises their profits. Designing and managing online and email voucher marketing campaigns makes money, if that switches to mobile then someone loses revenue.
Setting up a standard SMS send is easy, cheap and quick, any extra costs will be made back instantly with higher conversion rates, ultimately making more money for the business overall.
All I keep hearing is “you need tracking” – No you clearly don’t, if brands were so hung up on tracking then printed vouchers wouldn’t exist simple as that. I’m not saying metrics aren’t important but why are we overlooking this opportunity based on something that no one is bothered about when it comes to the paper version? Anyway it’s not like you can’t measure uplift whilst the promotion is runnning and do smart stuff with the sales data.
The concept of vouchers on mobile is still new, the industry needs to help increase awareness and adoption by making it as simple as possible. New technologies like NFC payments will benefit immensely by preparing consumer mindset now. And what can be simpler than following the lessons learnt from paper vouchers? They are easy to use and successful. Show it, get your discount, leave happy. Done.
It seems like there are more and more ’solutions’ companies are creating Java, iPhone and Android applications that need to be installed before getting discounts. We’re not even at the stage where SMS vouchers are commonplace yet we suddenly expect people to start using these fragmented services , each providing different brands and offers. We should mimic existing behaviour with printed vouchers until showing your phone to staff at Gap or GBK becomes the norm. But then of course all these voucher solution companies become unable to justify using their tech if actually all you need is a bog-standard SMS.
I’m going to make it my mission to convert a large brand from using email vouchers to SMS. Rant over.
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I reckon an email is free but an sms is not.
That email still costs money to make and manage, I bet over a year it works out the same as a shortcode.
In my case that 3p cost for the SMS would have turned me into a paying customer, it’s far more actionable. So where is the loss? Plus people will only request a SMS voucher when the need them, it will always be on their phone until they delete it, multiple use makes more money etc
What’s your strategy to convince a big brand to use the mobile coupons/vouchers?
If we can be of any help, let me know.
I recognize, that you have to be as easy as possible to use for the consumer and for the merchant/retailer. iPhone App is nice and colorful, but not everyone has an iPhone and wants to download the app first. So any mobile channel: mobile web, app, sms/mms is good for couponing.
* Higher conversion rate
* Convenience
* Viral-bility
* First to market, PR opportunity
* Cheap
* Eco-friendly, the amount of paper and ink wasted by vouchers that aren’t unique and get thrown away must be immense. That responsibility lies with the brand.
* Number of people who own printers vs number of people who own phones
* Easier access = more sales
I could go on all day.
I don’t even think it should be mobile web, I’m talking bog standard SMS here, no bells or whistles. MMS would be great because of the creative opportunities but that costs alot more per message – 3p vs 10-24p!.
Article is right on, and we are doing something about it right now. Check us out at http://www.infinian.com and see the future.
“Infinian has created a patent pending technology that enables closure of the last mile in mobile coupons, promotions, loyalty cards, Mobile ticketing, and direct mail”
Again, you’re a solutions company when this doesn’t need anything fancy – just a standard SMS without tracking or redemption mechanics, just like the printed versions.
I’m a frequent(ish) visitor to GBK, but I usually only go when I’m armed with a voucher, such as the one seen above. I would indeed love to wave my mobile infront of their faces and save some much cherished ink and paper, and the inconvenience of having to take it with me (folding it up etc).
I’m surprised that GBK in particular aren’t doing this already. I would’ve thought that as a “morally correct” company (as in, they’re nice enough to listen), they’d be open to the suggestion of digital vouchers.
You may be glad to hear that retail at least seems to be waking up to this idea. I have been talking to a number of retailers in the UK that are at least interested in this idea.
We at Datalogic Scanning recently announced (Sep 09) our first 1D / 2D barcode reader for Fixed Retail that has been designed with the specific illumination, decoding and motion tolerance required to read barcodes from a mobile phone.
You don’t need to wait for 2D though, 1D would be enough if you just want a unique code like a UPC-E or EAN8 type code that the retailer could add in their price lookup file. We have been producing linear imaging scanners for quite a while now and you will find that any retailer with our Heron, Gryphon and some QuickScan hand held linear readers can read most codes of a mobile screen (if not specifically designed for this purpose they do okay).
I think you have highlighted the key points there of the benefits of a mobile based coupon scheme. There are also opportunities for savy retailers to sell vouchers to mobile and probably quite key at the moment provide an app or MMS / email with a barcode that their customers can use as their loyalty card. Loyalty has been sighted as one of the key issues for retailers for 2010 and what better way to deploy a loyalty scheme quickly and ensure that the consumers always have their “loyalty card” in the form of a barcode on their phone.
Hi Paul,
The essence of the blog post was that the current situation doesn’t need scanners or any third party tech, printed vouchers certainly don’t, all it requires is simply, bog standard SMS.
The difficulty in trying to get nationwide restaurants and retailers to implement EPOS changes is notorious. Right now this needs to be a ‘show your SMS and get your discount’ solution.
MMS and email barcodes for loyalty – You need to consider that MMS messages go into the same inbox as SMS and will be lost under all your messages after a while. Also many phones only store emails over a certain period 30-60 days.
Orange (UK) uses SMS for it’s “Orange Wednesdays” 2 for 1 cinema ticket deal… simple and hugely popular…
I agree, but Orange spent hundreds of thousands of pounds installing those little EPOS add-ons all over the country. That isn’t going to happen for high street retailers so that’s why it needs to be a simple SMS with no unique-ness like the email ones
Hmmm. Interesting how some always want to defend their turf. i.e. Email is better because it’s cheaper the SMS. Checkout this US story that provides some stats on their email vs mobile efforts. Likely they still did their email marketing too. It’s not a question of dropping one channel for another! We need to be everywhere these days. SMS, Facebook, email, blogs…
http://www.mobilemarketer.com/cms/news/messaging/5836.html
Hi Murat,
very interesting topic and comments here. I am a big fan of simplicity and not messing with in-store operations. But how exactly would the use-case for sms coupons me? would it mean that I, the customer, would ‘redeem’ a coupon in-store which triggers an SMS that I show to the cashier? Who will send me the txt message? Or do you want me to subscribe/click or something else which triggers an SMS at a certain point and I then have to go find it in my phone in the store?
Curious to hear your thoughts, since I think you are right, but I don’t see the exact use case yet that would optimize both user & cashier experience.
Hope you can answer me!
Best,
Robbert
Hi Robert,
The use case would be the same as the printed voucher. You find out about the offer whether that’s through an email, affiliate site, or somewhere like Money Saving Expert, then you click the link to go to the retailers website, enter your mobile number, then get pushed the voucher.
Then any future coupons would be pushed directly to your phone, rather than you having to either seek it out again or print your emails.
You then should the SMS to the cashier who applies the discount.
If you want you can quickly and easier send the voucher to friends.
Check out this post: http://www.mobileinc.co.uk/2009/09/its-time-to-make-all-these-printed-vouchers-go-mobile/
Cheers
Murat
Hi Murat
How do you feel about a service that allows advertisers to send SMS coupons to an opted in consumer database ?
That would allow advertisers to target consumers who are intersted in the advertiser’s product with a simple sms coupon.
What I dont know is how many ordinary retail scanners can scan a simple SMS copupn barcode – do you ?
Paul
Hi Paul,
Many of those already exist, the trouble is getting the EPOS terminals to scan the screen. No one has cracked it yet although their are dozens of ‘solutions’, when in fact no solution is needed for the brands mentioned above.
Cheers
Murat