Use Mobile Coupons in Your Marketing Campaign

By the year 2014, approximately 300 million consumers will have used mobile coupons. That is a lot of customers trying to get a good deal on the items they are purchasing. Many people like shopping with coupons; being able to take advantage of a special offer may encourage shoppers to try a new product or buy a larger quantity of something they had already planned to purchase.

Why use a mobile coupon as opposed to the traditional paper ones? There are some really good reasons to offer virtual coupons to customers. A customer who is in a store or other type of business and receives a coupon on his or her cell phone is more likely to act on that prompt and make a decision to buy. This type of highly targeted marketing simply makes good business sense.

Mobile coupons are a great way to encourage buyers to add related products to their purchase. Most shoppers are interested in getting a good deal, especially if the terms of the coupon offer an extra discount. For example, a discount is available on Product B if it is purchased at the same time as Product A.  This incentive may be enough to encourage the customer to add the second product to the order, boosting sales.  

Companies that will get the best results with these coupons are ones that know their customers well and can anticipate their needs before sweetening the pot with a discount coupon.

Mobile Coupons and Marketing Strategies Prove Appealing to Consumers

The Consumer Electronics Association recently released the results of a study and I found the information to be very interesting. Nine out of 10 consumers in the United States own a cellular phone, smartphone or a tablet, and 37 percent of them are using some type of mobile commerce.

I found it even more interesting that the average consumer plans to spend $575 on mobile purchases over the next 12 months. Not surprisingly, the items shopped for most often on mobile devices are consumer electronics, footwear, and clothing. These are items that people enjoy browsing for and comparing prices on before making their selection.

Mobile coupons are very popular with consumers as well, with most respondents stating that they planned to use them more often over the next year. Searching for coupons is set to become an activity in itself, with approximately one-third of respondents saying that they expect that they will use their mobile devices to search for them online more often.

Thirty percent of respondents revealed that they plan to use their mobile device to redeem mobile coupons, and 29 percent said that they use hand-held devices to search for coupons in e-mail.

Since consumers have already proven their love for mobile devices and finding coupons to save money, mobile marketing strategies should definitely include them. Offering a coupon has been an effective strategy in marketing, and using the mobile version is just the modern equivalent of the paper coupon.

Why Banks Should Adopt Mobile Marketing

Mobile marketing strategies are not just for retailers and other types of consumer product businesses. If banks want to remain competitive, I think they should be seriously considering adopting them as well. 

By now, most banks have an iPhone app. The next step in the plan is to make sure that the bank's website is mobile device friendly. Consumers want to be able to get information and advice on the go, and they are not going to wait until they can sit down at a desktop unit to check out the bank's website.

I think that the iPhone app is more likely to be used by existing customers. While this is an important feature that the banks definitely need to be offering, they also need to be mindful of the needs of new customers. Someone who may be thinking of changing banks is going to consider several factors, including whether they can get information about products and services that they need without waiting.

In this age where instant access to information is something that consumers prize, all service industries, including banks, need to be ready to meet their customers' needs. Not only does the banks website need to be mobile friendly, but it also must be easy to navigate when using a portable device. The banks that will continue to do well in the customer service arena will be the ones who anticipate their customers’ needs and take steps to meet them.

NFC is coming near you!

What exactly is NFC? NFC, or Near Field Communication, is the technology that allows certain devices to communicate with each other through radio communication by being in the same proximity of each other, usually no more than a few centimeters. This is based on the same technology as RFID (Radio Frequency Identification). Uses for this includes payments and ticketing, point of sale couponing, checking in with location based social media networks such as Foursquare, loyalty programs, smart posters, cards, and stickers, and many more.

To a lot of people, it could be the future, but to many others, it’s pretty scary. The thought of transmitting information through your phone just by walking by an external device would make many people nervous.

McDonald’s restaurants have already rolled out NFC in Japan, allowing customers to download coupons, place orders, redeem coupons, and pay for their order from mobile devices. Soon you’ll be able to get on a bus and swipe your phone next to a sensor that will read your account and automatically pay for your fare. In Paris, the Centre Pompidou museum will use NFC technology to allow visitors to learn more about artists and their work by waving their phone near exhibits. NFC also can allow users to share photos and videos just by touching their devices together.


Google, Apple and Amazon are all currently exploring opportunities using NFC. The technology is still very rare in the US but has become pretty common in parts of Asia and Europe, and as smartphone adoption continues to increase in the states, we will see an increase in NFC usage over the coming years.