What iBeacon Technology Can Offer to Retailers

The unique features of iBeacon truly offer the ability to revolutionise retailers’ in-store experience, by allowing a better understand of customers’ path, real-time interaction with their customers, which represents a huge potential to engage in new products and offers to increase sales. But automatically there are two questions that arise.

The first question is what is an iBeacon and how it works? Beacons are Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) devices, that work as small indoor positioning systems, to send information to nearby smart devices. In the case of a smartphone that information is delivered via the brand’s App or through Passbook, and then displayed as a push-notification on a pre-subscribed user’s screen.

This enables retailers to send-up-to date, contextualized and relevant information to a customer depending on their exact location in the store and based on their behaviour.

For example, imagine you’re in a department store that sells a vast range of products, each time you walk past each section and are near that particular beacon you’ll might get a different message on your phone, be it promoting a new line of clothes or a discount on French wine etc.

The second question that needs to be asked by the retailers is ‘What can Beacons offer to my customers?’ The answer to this question is very simple; Facilitate and improve their in-store shopping experience. iBeacons offer a cost-effective way to efficiently engage with customers on a platform they are familiar with, their smartphone.

These days, the smartphone goes everywhere with the customer and it’s already integrated into their shopping habits, particularly as many major retail brands offer an App to browse and buy all their products. According to a research carried out by Swirl, 85% of those who own a mobile shopping App use it whilst shopping in a store. Furthermore, 65% of them said they consult their smartphone whilst in a store to find out about products and offers. This means, that through the smartphone, retailers already have a ready-made platform to attract their customers’ attention, and a push notification from an iBeacon is one of the best ways to do that.

The benefits of this technology for both retailer and customer are endless, and the possibility to create more interaction between the two is one that can even bring more trust and build the relationship, whilst allowing the retailer to reap the rewards of offering them better service.

Finding the right equilibrium to make the best use of iBeacons is crucial. In the case of normal push-notifications, the balance of sending the right amount to users is a difficult thing for brands to gauge. However, with real-time location-based push-notifications, retailers can send information to customers at a time when they actually want to find out more about product offers, and best of all, since they are already in-store means they are in the perfect place to act on those messages and buy products.

iBeacon can also work side-by-side with a store’s existing technology, to give retailers a way to better understand their customer’s behaviours, tastes and needs, whilst offering them a more personal shopping experience.

For example, when iBeacons’ push-notifications are used in conjunction with the store’s App and existing CRM platforms, retailers have the ability to tailor the messages they send out to specific customer group.

How it works is that when the customer’s smartphone receives the information from the iBeacon, prompting the App to send a push notifications, the store’s system can also be notified who it is that has entered the store. Automatically, the staff working at that time will, have access to important information, such as purchase history or what tastes and prefer products that customer has. Likewise the message sent out by the iBeacon, could be totally personalized and can be sent only to a particular group of shoppers and thereby maximise the exposure of certain products to the right target group.

Summarising, iBeacons represent a neat and effective way for retailers to better understand and get closer to their customers by enabling them to easier access contextualized and relevant offers, and thereby increasing sales.

 

 

Adtile introduces FireMotion

Our good friends Adtile just launched an incredible mobile advertising product called FireMotion and we were so happy for them we couldn’t help ourselves to share their amazing news so we show you their Press Release about FireMotion. You can read it here.

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On the 11th February, Adtile Technologies announced mobile advertising industry’s first multi-sensor mobile engagement platform, FireMotion. This new mobile ad platform works like a lightweight operating system bringing motion technology to mobile advertising. As part of FireMotion, Adtile Technologies partnered with Passworks and Two Tap, two leading companies in the mobile commerce space, to ensure a seamless purchasing and reward experience on smartphones.

FireMotion’s proprietary technology accurately tracks the phone’s positioning and velocity, which allows the phone to function as an extension of the person. FireMotion gives advertisers a new set of creative tools to use in mobile advertising campaigns.

“People find most mobile ads are ineffective or annoyingly disruptive. That is because most of those ads are designed for desktop and don’t take advantage of the incredible sensory hardware already in smartphones.”

“My goal at Adtile is to help brands create the kind of advertising that creates human connections. I want to change the quality of mobile advertising and deliver fully integrated approach.”

—Nils Forsblom, CEO and founder, Adtile Technologies

The response from ads using Adtile’s FireMotion has been very positive. The initial reports show over 30% engagement rate and an average of 23 seconds of participation time with over 6% click-through rate, which are some of the highest rates in the online and mobile advertising industry.

Although higher click-through rates are essential for mobile ads, Adtile Technologies wanted to remove any barriers to purchase by partnering with Passworks and Two Tap to create one of the simplest mobile engagement options available today. FireMotion ads can seamlessly connect to a universal shopping cart, Passbook, Google Wallet or Payments. A person who interacts with a FireMotion mobile ad can purchase the product in the ad instead of going to a different webpage, keeping the entire purchase and payment process extremely simple.

“The launch of Adtile’s new platform is a great compass for established advertisers who want to take full advantage of mobile capabilities, and Two Tap is very excited to power e-commerce interactions on the new platform.”

“FireMotion’s integrated approach will offer new and rich tools to build experiences that are vital to brands that want to stand out in the bland mobile banner ad-space.”

—Raz Roman, co-founder, Two Tap

Instead of spending a lot of time and money developing new sensor enabled mobile ads, FireMotion ad builds will be available through the password protected Adtile Motion Store. This online store will feature unique motion ad interactions that can be used by brands and agencies by simply incorporating design and storytelling into the flow. These result-proven ad builds incorporate very specific interface design and developer guidelines for quality and constraint purposes. All FireMotion ads must be approved by Adtile Technologies for quality assurance. Brands can also work directly with Adtile Technologies to create specific designed ads as well.

About Adtile Technologies

Located in San Diego, California, Adtile is a pioneer and developer of multi-sensor advertising technology for smartphones and tablets. We are working with leading technology companies and Fortune 500 brands. Adtile is on a quest to transform mobile advertising. We believe the best way to revolutionize mobile ads is to create an entirely new design that embraces the needs of mobile users by making it part of the user experience. We’ve created a mobile-first advertising solution from the ground up—challenging assumptions about how ads work and redesigning it for a world on the move.

More information is available at: www.adtile.me.

How social media can boost a Mobile Marketing campaign using Passbook

Social media will continue to be one of the key drivers in the customer-brand relationship in 2015. Brands need to effectively leverage this tool as part of their overall marketing strategy but need to be aware that primary emphasis should be on creating better customer support.

Brand interaction with customers, in recent years, has seen a shift away from traditional channels, as people have gradually looked for alternatives to the way large corporations typically communicate. Instead, the modern consumer needs to be dealt with in more personable, personalize, human tones, making it essential that all companies have a social media outlet for quick, open communications with customers.

Current consumers are savvier and will quickly catch on to when a brand’s marketing ploy looks too much like spam. However, if you give that customer high quality content or good value, they will be much more reciprocal and feel more appreciated at the attempt to reach out to them.

A social media referral campaign has huge potential to turn customers into brand ambassadors, as happy customers are powerful assets for any business. The traditional word of mouth is still as effective as ever but in today’s world on top of verbally telling someone, people will share a product with their friends via social media. Research shows that consumers are 71% more likely to make a purchase based on a social media referral. The potential there is obvious!

A Passbook campaign is ideal in creating an effective social media referral, as it offers great value to customers whilst rewarding them for sharing the Pass with a friend.

 

The mobile coupon could be shared and used by anyone. Customers are incentivised to access a Pass by sharing it with a certain amount of friends, thus increasing awareness of your brand and maximising exposure to products thereby creating new customers.

In the coming years we will see more uses of digital mobile wallets and beacons to facilitate customers’ experiences and provide brands an outlet to offer them more relevant content. Utilising social media for real-time communications will be key, but also important will be the ‘shareability’ of a brand’s products and whether they can effectively utilise social media to enhance and boost marketing campaigns.

Showtime’s innovative use of Passbook

Showtime’s recent use of mobile wallets to promote their new show, has demonstrated the innovative ways brands can utilize the mobile space and has widened the potential to use a pass as more than just a place to store coupons or tickets.

US TV network Showtime are using both Apple’s Passbook and Google Wallet to promote their new show ‘Penny Dreadful’ by creating a fan pass, a digital wallet pass that updates fans of the show when new content is available.

Shotime's use of Passbook

This new take on the uses of a digital is an ingenious way to give fans of the show effective, real time content without the need to create an app that would be impractical for both Showtime and its users. Best of all for the user, as an extra pass in a digital wallet it takes up no additional space on the user’s smartphone.

The practical nature of adding and deleting a pass to a digital wallet is what makes it ideal for storing promotional passes for a short amount of time, i.e. for promoting a movie or new product. In order to get updates about that product a user simply has to add a pass via an email or web link, use it when they want and then delete it when they no longer need it.

The dynamic features of a digital wallet pass can then be utilised by the brand or company to update it with content whenever necessary, including push notifications on the user’s lock screen. There is even scope to use geo-location technology to interact with the dynamic pass, as Showtime are considering doing, via a push notification whenever the user passes the ‘Penny Dreadful’ billboard.

There really is genuine potential for marketers to be creative and use a digital wallet pass as a multi-purpose informational source, as a communication tool, deployed in any way a brand might want in order to get quick, relevant promotions out to their customers.

Why is mobile at the center of the new commerce and how can we help

“Digital is becoming at the center of nearly everything we do”, said Joe Megibow, Chief Digital Officer at American Eagle to Open Mobile Media.

Nowadays most of consumers are digital enabled and, with it, their attention is much shorter and divided across multiple brands at the same time. The shift to the digital world put the highlight back onto the consumer, pushing brands to go further in order to not become obsolete.

Brick & Mortar stores provide a physical experience that communicates with the emotional side of the brain of the consumer. People feel and touch the product. That feeling creates the identification between the product and the person necessary to a purchase and in the digital world it’s not so easy to create that emotional bondage. Brands need to think how much are consumers willing to wait and pay for the comfort of access to a certain product and, also, how further are brands willing to go to retain consumers? With digital technology it’s not a question of brands crossing to online stores, it’s about how to make sure that brands leverage the digital in the right way in order to really engage with the consumers.

“More and more brands want to communicate with their customers at the moment and place when they are ready to make a purchase. Hence, the most efficient way to communicate is through mobile however the most appropriate tools weren’t available until now which changed with rise of the Digital Wallet.” said Francisco Belo, Passworks’ founder and CEO to Energy of Portugal. So how to scale 1:1 marketing? How to promote and, above all, how to reward consumer loyalty? That is where the concept of omni-channel kicks in.

Omni-channel is how brands explore the different aspects of the business and of the brand personality, bringing all different available media together, in a seamless way in order to engage more effectively with the consumer. That is why lately the center of commerce is mobile. Mobile is the closest way to reach a consumer because mobile marketing allows brands to empower consumer mobility and to communicate at the most relevant time. With the launch of Passbook, an iOS native app that gathers digital consumer-interested content, from mobile coupons, membership or stores cards and tickets, product marketing went mobile. But it was only with the launch of Apple Pay, with the introduction of the payment capability, that the whole commerce interaction and business changed both retail and consumer experiences.

In practice, everyone can create content for Passbook. However, this is a market that is still rising and already raises many questions from the consumer side and, regarding the brands, it takes awareness, knowledge and practice to work with the platform.  This is where we come in. Passworks acts as an intermediary between brands and the targeted audience, without retaining the brands consumer information. But why should brands use Passworks? We allow brands to create, distribute and manage mobile content through all the major mobile wallets platforms, such as Apple Passbook, Google Wallet or Windows Phone Wallet campaigns (all three major available OS), which means that basically every person that has a smartphone can be reached and impacted with content created by our platform. Furthermore, in just one platform, a brand can not only design and create content, but also specify a targeted audience and share it through different distribution channels and manage each campaign results.

For brands that previously developed their own apps or want direct integration with their systems, Passworks has an API solution. The API can serve as a link between the online platform, either web or app and the mobile campaigns creation SaaS, which allows the brand to keep control of everything they already do, integrate with their existing solution and let us empower the brand in a more vertical audience-based way.

In addition to opening the path to mobile for brands, Passworks platform also allows brands to integrate with iBeacons technology. Due to its low but more precise range, Beacons outweigh GPS by improving consumer experience with very accurate 1:1 communication. iBeacons can be used as a strategy to drive consumers into the store which, as a consequence, increases the chances of purchases and sales because they act as a communication channel between the brand and the end consumer through relevant push notifications. Nevertheless, since the consumer needs to identify with what’s at stake, the crucial piece of the puzzle is the mobile content itself and the brand’s strategy to guide the customer into the store plus the in-store consumer experience.

In the end, Passworks acts as a powerful mobile marketing tool, creating a new distribution channel for brands but also aims to empower consumer experience and mobility. From developers, to retail marketers or communication agents it is possible to create mobile content to promote a specific brand, no matter the business market, directly to the consumers.

Passworks: a passport to be closer to the clients

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Francisco não teve a ideia mas executou-a: foi convidado pela Faber Ventures para ser a cara da Passworks, start-up que quer aproximar as marcas dos clientes

Poder comunicar com os clientes de maneira personalizada, sempre que eles passam perto da sua loja, é possível sem sair da porta: avisá-los de promoções, dar-lhes um presente de aniversário, estar presente.
A Passworks, empresa pensada e criada por uma equipa ligada ao fundo de capital de risco Faber Ventures – que investiu no primeiro ano um milhão de dólares no negócio, com retorno esperado nos próximos três anos – trata de tudo. Através do Passbook, uma carteira móvel que guarda informação em smartphones, cria e atualiza cupões de descontos, promoções e outro tipo de informação, de maneira direcionada e personalizada. Depois de criado o conteúdo, basta que os seus clientes descarreguem a aplicação nos respetivos smartphones para terem acesso a todas as novidades: uma espécie de anúncio porta-a-porta. “Se estão a chegar ao ponto de venda, por que não dizer-lhes que aproveitem alguma oportunidade? Isso inclui estar no aeroporto e receber uma mensagem com uma promoção de uma loja no aeroporto“, explica Francisco Belo, CEO da empresa.

Published by dinheirovivo

12 Readings to start 2015 up to date!

2014 is gone and what a year, it was! To start the year fresh, we selected 12 articles for those who are interested in hot topics as mobile wallets, the mobile marketing revolution or mobile payments and mobile coupons!

  1. #GoogleWallet : Make your phone your wallet
    In May 26, 2011, Google launched the first mobile wallet. Google Wallet is an native app for Android users to store cards, coupons and tickets into their smartphones whilst a mobile payment system. It works with NFC – Near Field Communication that allows users to interact with their stores only using their smartphones. From seeing an offer to using a coupon and adding points to its store card it can be a great tool and strategy for retailers.
  1. #Passbook : Apple’s Passbook
    In September 19, 2012 Apple introduced Apple Passbook: a native app for iOS that serves as a mobile wallet to substitute all cards and paper coupons. However, while Google allowed payments —which raised the first wuestions about mobile security and privacy issues — Passbook wasn’t related to payments and opted for a different strategy: create a better product integrated with Siri and Maps while improving a service that could end consumers’ doubts.
  1. #ApplePay : Apple Announces Mobile Payment Solution
    In September 9, 2014 Apple launched its first mobile payment service for the United States. A system that connects with Apple Passbook and, instead of using safety pin codes, it using touch ID to bullet proof payment security and it doesn’t collect any payment history, in order to ensure its consumers. With over 800 million registered users and a good partnership based network, Apple moved to the top list of competitors in the banking businesses.
  1. #Mobile Wallets : A Recap in the World of Wallets
    With the emancipation of the mobile wallets as Google Wallet and Apple Pay, the payments market raised and developed a mobile payment ecosystem, all of them fighting to be part of this innovative channel. Samsung created its own wallet for Samsung devices. Paypal and Visa started a race for partnerships. Third party apps emerged to act as easy-in distribution channels such as Loop Pay and CurrentC.
  1. #ConsumerEngagement via Mobile Wallets: There’s No Way It Won’t Become a Norm
    “Consumers prefer to have a unified mobile payment app that can be used in multiple stores while integrating individual store coupons and loyalty programs among millennials (55%) and users 35 years and up (46%) alike, the report says. But, 34% of consumers weren’t even aware if their favorite stores offered mobile payments or not.”
  1. #Omnicommerce : The Best of Omnichannel in 2014
    “    The news aboutApple Pay in September generated an unusual amount of mainstream media attention. Since it was announced, it has already changed the way we talk about mobile payments and has unlocked (and will continue to unlock) new sources of value for consumers and merchants. Apple also has a unique ability to mobilize an entire ecosystem – and that prompted Karen Webster to ask: Can Apple Pay shape the future of omnicommerce?”Now, omnichannel is no longer a trendy word but a requirement for all sort of businesses. Now it’s not just about what you do. It’s about how you communicate, how you reach the end consumer and, most importantly, when and where you reach them.
  1. #iBeacons : 15 Companies from Airports to Retail Already using iBeacon Technology
    With the introduction of iBeacons — One end, Low Energy Bluetooth devices — to the mobile payments world, a new form of marketing was born: Mobile marketing. The concept of mobile marketing allows brands to empower consumer mobility and communicate with them at the most relevant time opportunity, with the most relevant content considering timing. Displaying only the information that particular consumer wants at the most convenient time is one of the best way to drive store traffic and increase consumer engagement.
  1. Google Wallet won’t let you buy digital goods on the web past March 2015
    With the rise of mobile wallets and the crushing power of Apple Pay, Google Wallet announced in November 2014 that in March 2015 it would no longer allow the payment for digital goods. However, it can still be used for physical goods since last month Google Wallet announced a partnership with Disneyland in Orlando.
  1. Do people really use Apple Passbook?
    Mobile wallets bring a lot of innovative thoughts and interactions. However, it is normal to stop for a bit and ask ourselves: Do people really use this? Yes, technology is fast and the market goes 360º everyday. Nevertheless, when playing with consumer — people — interaction, it’s a totally different thing. We’re talking about mass movement and mass cultures and it takes time for people to adapt and adjust, to learn new concepts (that are in constant change) even if they’re here to help.
  1. Apple Pay Might come to the UK in early 2015
    Finally, Apple Pay is coming to Europe! UK is already aware and prepare to take in Apple Pay and, like every Western Country in Europe, it can’t wait to put the hands on it to see how much it will change the economy, specially because now Mesh Beacons are on the table.
  1. #MeshBeacons: Move over iBeacons, here come Mesh Beacons
    Instead of receiving and sharing information from one end to another, mesh beacons allow to track information once shared with the end consumer. So when entering a store, a mesh beacon can guide you within the store until you reach the specific product that you wanted to buy because it can receive the GPS signal of your smartphone and use it to give directions to point X.
  1. #Passworks: Passworks raises 1M for Passbook Campaigns
    We were born.
    Passworks is, like Passk.it or Passwallet, a third party platform that allows brand to create, communicate and distribute mobile marketing campaigns using Passbook of Google Wallet.Since the beginning of 2014 we are here to be part of this mobile ecosystem. To make it easier for users to connect better with their favorite brands and to allow brands to become relevant for consumers, to penetrate in a new channel and explore mobility as it’s only being discovered to achieve the best of omnicommerce.

    2014 was a great year that allowed us to learn more about this world, to develop with new achievements and to be prepared for what’s next. With a new year, new challenges are ahead. We are excited to be here for 2015 and we can’t wait to share our next projects we have stored for and with you.

 

Here is to 2015! Happy New Year!

The Benefits of Apple Passbook for Brands

Passbook offers brands a significant opportunity to drive engagement with customers and increase store foot traffic through one convenient app.

Passbook is an app native to Apple devices, pre-installed on all operating systems that run iOS 6 or later. The essential premise is one place to store coupons, event tickets, loyalty cards and the like, but more than just being a digital wallet, it also represents huge marketing potential for brands.

The fact that Passbook is a default app means a target audience already exist that are accustomed to using it. In the US Passbook is already the 4th most popular mobile commerce app and a fifth of all iPhone users already use it to download coupons. Furthermore, with over 300 million iPhones around the world and all future devices set to have Passbook installed, the wide range of users that brands can reach is vast.

The convenience of having all a wallet’s non-payment aspects in one app is beneficial to both brand and customer. For example, the easier access to both coupons and loyalty cards allows brands to offer their customers a seamless interchange between the two whilst increasing sales and providing better customer service.

Location-based notifications enhance the dynamic features of a Passbook pass allowing brands to send updated information to their customer’s phone via push notifications, which highlights the potential to refine marketing strategies with more personalised, relevant offers. Apple’s iBeacon technology has already paved the way for geolocation to play a key role in brand to customer interaction.

Incorporating Passbook passes into a brand’s existing mobile marketing strategy has been shown to boost sales and increase coupon conversion rates, with 64% higher conversions compared to regular mobile web coupons. It also provides a totally different platform to a brand’s app, as consumers don’t want to fill their phones with apps for every different shop or restaurant, and require a simpler, more expedient way of utilising their smartphone whilst in-store.

Crucially for smaller brands, Passbook doesn’t need an app to work alongside it, as passes can be added straight to it via email or SMS. This opens up the barriers to entry, enabling brands with smaller resources to have a cost-effective way to offer their customers mobile content and drive up sales. However, there are also Passbook-enabled apps which prompt you to add a pass straight to Passbook allowing both to work in conjunction together.

Apple’s latest updates to iOS7 have made Passbook even more brand and user-friendly with features such as a barcode scanner allowing passes to be easily added on-the-go by scanning a QR and a share icon on the pass. These features make Passbook more accessible, ultimately helping to increase brand loyalty by allowing maximum exposure of a pass.