How to Manage Rewards and Promotions in Mobile Marketing?

This guide was written for product managers, marketers, CMOs and everyone involved in the process of designing, launching, distributing and tracking marketing campaigns of all sizes and budgets. Its goal is to establish why and how you should invest in incentive-based marketing and expand your brand via mobile channels.

Adaptability is a crucial ingredient in a recipe for a successful business. With the advent of social media and mobile culture, your business is faced with two options: tapping into the potential of mobile advertising or missing the boat and sticking to traditional communication channels and hence lagging behind competition. 

Are you ready for mobile-first world?

Looking at the US, approximately one-in-five American adults are “smartphone-only” internet users - that’s around 28 million people using smartphones as their only source of information. With Google report stating that a smartphone was the most common starting point for online activities.

Statistics are even more telling in the Asia Pacific regions - with the increase in accessibility to faster internet services, the current number of 2.7 billion unique mobile subscribers is expected to grow every year by around 3% - that’s 200 million people a year. 

What is mobile marketing?

Mobile marketing is a set of practices that enable organisations to communicate and engage with their audience in an interactive and relevant manner through any mobile device or network – Mobile Marketing Association.

Mobile marketing has become the latest marketing craze thanks to the benefits it offers to potential customers as well as to businesses. It is a multifaceted approach and involves much more than sending SMS messages to your customers as it includes channels such as:

• App-based marketing
• Push notifications
• Email
• In-game mobile marketing
• QR code marketing
• Bluetooth
• Location-based services
• Mobile Site Redirection
• Optimisation of your page for mobile devices
• Social media
  

What does mobile marketing mean for your business?

Now that we know that mobile use and mobile marketing are on the rise, we may want to know how it translates into business objectives and performance. 

Let’s take a look at some statistics:

• Phone based CPCs cost 24% less than desktop and have a 40% higher CTR. (Source: Aum)
  

• Mobile market share worldwide is 52.1% compared to desktop market share of 44.2%.(Source: Statcounter)
  

• 52.2% of all website traffic worldwide was generated through mobile phones in 2018. (Source: Statista)
  

• Online shopping on mobile increased from 8% to 15%, while on desktop dropped from 78% to 63%. (Source: Invesp)
  

The data points to a rapid growth in the sphere of mobile advertising across all industries. However, if you are still not convinced of the hidden potential of mobile marketing, perhaps incentive-boosted mobile marketing will make you tick. 

What is promotion marketing and why your company needs it?

Promotion Marketing is the use of prizes and rewards to market or advertise a product, or to encourage people to buy or sell it - Cambridge Dictionary. 

Promotion marketing offers many benefits, namely:

• Increases business’ sales growth.
  

• Increases exposure.
  

• Creates an emotional bond between your brand and customers.
  

• Engages customers in your brand’s activities.
  

• Influences customer behaviour and buying patterns. 
  

• Motivates sales teams across industries. 
  

Promotion marketing distributed via mobile channels is one of the most powerful tools for nurturing customer loyalty. Why bother? Because of the data:

• The top 10% of your customer base spend 3x more than your average customer.
• 67% of customer churn is preventable if the issue is resolved during the first interaction.
• Customers with an emotional connection to a brand have a customer lifetime value that's 4x higher than the average customer.
• 75% of consumers would engage more with loyalty programs that make rewards mobile-friendly.
  

Mobile and promotion marketing make a perfect match

Impulse and change are the common denominators for mobile and promotion marketing. 

There is a number of incentive-based campaigns that can be considerably enhanced by using mobile channels and all of them can be implemented using Voucherify flexible promotion engine:

• Geolocation with unique, one-off coupons

Send a one-off coupon code with a push notification to a customer who matches the predefined location criteria. It can be a simple send-out to a segment called “Londoners” or, a more advanced solution like a notification triggered every time a customer enters one of the geofences you’ve defined.

• In-app cart-level discounts‍

With real-time segments, you can trigger an in-app message informing a shopper about an exclusive offer like buy product X get 50% off for X accessories. Voucherify will apply the discount automatically if the cart structure matches the criteria.

• Time-sensitive vouchers 
  

Vouchers can be given an expiry date, so that you can make sure customers will redeem codes in limited timeframe. SMS or push notifications can be used to send a message with a timer to provide additional incentive to your shoppers.

• Messages automation
  

Set up messages to be automatically sent when the given action occurs to ensure a smooth and natural customer journey. You can react in real-time to events such as cart-abandonment, cart being eligible for discount or user’s inactivity. 

Why mobile and promotion marketing combined work?

• It creates a sense of intimacy between your brand and the customer that's hard to recreate with standard array of hit-or-miss sales promotions.
• With mobile-first promotion marketing you can react in real-time to actions taken by customers in the selected session.
• Mobile marketing is an affordable option for growing businesses.
• With mobile e-commerce on the rise, mobile channels are becoming essential for engaging sales promotions.
• Efficient tracking of CTR on mobile devices lets your precisely calculate the promotional ROI and make data-driven decisions in the future.
• The average cost per thousand impressions is 75 cents for mobile while desktop campaigns cost on average $3.50.‍
  

And more:

• Possibility to use location-based services

As you’ve seen earlier, with mobile devices you can easily launch various promo campaigns based on your users’ current location. Mobile devices allow for far more precise estimation of your user’s location that standard IP addresses which allows you to prevent mistakes and inaccurate geolocation messaging. 

• Mobile numbers make better customer IDs than email

Talking about tracking, mobile numbers serve as much better customer IDs because by and large a person has only one mobile phone number and several email addresses. It is also much easier to jump from one email address to another than to constantly change phone number which results in more stable tracking. 

• Creating an omnichannel experience

To get the serious ROI from your promo campaigns, you need to target customers at the right time with the channel they prefer and actually use. Be it email, SMS, push notification, in-app message, live chat, newsfeed, banner, or whatever your customers keep in touch with.

Obstacles and how to turn them into assets with Voucherify?

Security and Data-related policies

Mobile marketing is widely permission-based and as such requires direct permission from your customers. This policy is regulated via documents such as Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) or GDPR. In order to successfully launch a mobile-based incentivised campaign you need to comply to the regulations enlisted in these documents. 

Now you may be thinking to yourself that this is going to only slow down your campaign and put your company at risk of losing time, money and energy. But let’s put ourselves in customers’ shoes – this seeming hindrance can be easily transformed into an asset. Become the champion of data-related policies and truly respect the privacy of your customers. 

This attitude will allow your customers to rest easy knowing that their data is in safe hands. 

Voucherify is a GDPR-compliant software and we also stick to the strict Anti-Spam policy giving you a guarantee that your messages won’t be considered spam or a nuisance.

Know your limits

Mobile phone numbers are much more private in nature than email address so make sure not to abuse the trust of your customers by sending them 50 discount coupons a day, rather focus on targeting the right customer in the best possible place and time to significantly increase the probability of a successful interaction. That’s why Voucherify allows for smooth personalisation of your incentives. 

So proper geolocation and segmentation are the key and so are the timezones. If your company operates globally, make sure not to wake your customers up in the middle of the night just to let them know that they have 10 minutes left to redeem a 5% off coupon. 

Trust us, they’ll disappear from your customers database faster than a twinkie at a weight watchers meeting. 

Become a trend-setter in mobile-first promotion marketing

Incentivised mobile marketing is still a relatively new area in marketing and you may find yourself overwhelmed with new data and the swiftly changing marketing landscape. We know that being a trailblazer is a heavy cross to bear but keep in mind that the saying “the last shall be the first” doesn’t really apply to marketing and only at the forefront of the mobile revolution you’ll be able to ensure real gains for you customers and your business and Voucherify can help you in achieving these goals. 

Remember that mobile marketing is slowly becoming the norm for many businesses, but in order to stand out you may enhance your marketing strategy with personalised promotions and rewards by distributing promo campaigns via sms, email, live chat, push notifications and many more.

Data shows that incentivised mobile marketing is an amazing way to boost your customer retention and acquisition rates while at the same time lower CPM rates. You can apply coupons and discounts on chosen customer touchpoints to create a sense of reciprocity and increase overall customer satisfaction. Creating omni-channel mobile experience for your customers makes shopping not only an activity but a vibrant journey – journey that is sure to bring numerous benefits to your customers and your business.

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