Push Notifications Archives

SMARTPHONE USERS WANT REAL-TIME PROMOTIONS

Mobile is fast changing the retail landscape, specially when it comes to real-time promotions. Accenture^* surveyed more than 10.000 adult smartphones users worldwide, who shopped both in-store and digitally for the past 3 months.

Consumers use their smartphone when shopping and receiving real-time promotions is one of top smartphone retail services they desire.

Nearly half of smartphone user worldwide said they can´t wait to receive real-time promotions from retailer on their smartphone device. Also, 42% said they want the ability to credit coupons and discounts automatically.

Despite the majority of the respondents mentioned they want to receive real-time promotions, the fact is that only 7% of worldwide retailers are offer that service to their consumers.

Retailers understand the benefits of higher mobile engagement and Mobile wallets are one of the methods that retailers can have to give to their customers what they want. With Mobile Wallets, such as Apple Wallet or Android Pay, retailers can send to their customers’ real-time promotions and offers without the need for an App.

By taking advantage of the non-payment side of Mobile Wallets, the retailers can create a Perpetual Coupon that once is installed on the smartphone opens a real-time communication channel between the retailer and customer.

The Coupon can be updated in real-time with new promotions or offers according to the retailers’ strategy.
Directly send a notification to the customer´s lock screen alerting them of the new promotion.
Creates geo-fences and/or beacons that tie for a more personalized experience.

^* Source: Accenture February 2016 “Retail customers are shouting – Are you adapting?”

Mobile Wallets: the ability to send Notifications

Even that you have a great App, not all your target clients will want it. This is supported by a recent Forrester research that found out “60% of US consumers have two or fewer retailer apps on their phones, 21% do not have any and only 3% had more than 10”.

Having said this, your customers will probably fall in one of two categories:

Brand loyalists who want your App, or
Not interested in downloading another App.

With the customers who have your App installed, you can use push notifications to send relevant information at right moment and time driving customer engagement and conversion. But as previously seen, only a part of your customers will have your App.

These facts impact your mobile marketing strategy and automatically brings questions that the marketers need to answer. How are you going to reach your customers? How are you going to create an active mobile engagement? How can I send push notifications to my customers?

The answer is Mobile Wallets Marketing.

With Mobile Wallet Marketing brands can create mobile wallet passes that can be downloaded in Apple Wallet or Android Pay (native Apps). This a great opportunity for brands and a brilliant solution for those customers who like your brand, but for some reason don´t want to install your App.

By using mobile wallets, brands can be on their consumer´s smartphone and engage with them in real time. One of the best things about mobile wallet is the possibility to send notifications that can appear on the smartphone lock-screen, similar to push notifications coming from apps. And since mobile wallets do not require any opt-in, they can act as a “small App”, allowing you to message your customer without them need to install your own App.

Basically, mobile wallet gives you the opportunity to communicate and engage directly with your customers without requiring a heavy commitment from them.

3 Tips to have in mind when defining a mobile strategy

In October 2014, the newspaper The Independent stated: “for the first time ever there are more gadgets in the world than there are people”. There are more than 7.2 billions of mobile devices in the world, which means that “mobile penetration has now risen above 100% in most developed markets, because many people have more than one live connection”. The acquisition of mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets are rapidly increasing per user, creating a bigger opportunity for brands to engage with their consumers.

It is important to have in mind that mobile isn’t only smartphones, so here are some important tips topics when creating a mobile strategy:

Social media

Smartphones allow people to stay connected to the world and social media has been the fundamental driver of this connectivity. That is why social Apps are among the most installed, in the UK. According to App Annie’s: 4 out of 5 free downloaded Apps for iPhone users in the UK are social.

Social influence is also a gamification technique. Being part of a social community and the act of “shareability” allows driving engagement with other users using psychological influences, such as, acceptance, competitiveness, companionship or even desire.

There are many social Apps and tools that brands can use to interact with users. Since social is a personal contact, consumers feel more involved and are driven to a stronger relationship with brands, which increases the engagement and ultimately increases sales.

Mobile Wallets

Mobile wallets are apps that allow to store cards, coupons, boarding passes, credit cards and much more in one single space. The most known mobile wallets are Apple’s Passbook and Google Wallet.

Passbook is a pre-installed app, which means that every person with an iPhone has automatically access to Passbook. Since 2013, Apple has already sold more than 200 million iPhones, this means that more than 200 million of consumers has direct access to Passbook (which will be rebranded as Wallet).

Google Wallet, on the other hand, is an App that has to be downloaded on the Google Play Store and is only available for the US market. Nevertheless, it has around 20 million users. Google Wallet is on the process of being rebranded as Android Pay and will be available globally which will allow to grow faster.

Beacons

Beacons are small Bluetooth devices that act as a dynamic geo-mapping tool by emitting signals, and are currently a trend that keeps growing across industries.

Beacons empowers the brand’s App, because it allows to makes the content more dynamic and relevant since it is delivered according to the consumers’ location, without being to much intrusive for the consumers. This means, that a brand or retailer can send web links, discount promotions and notifications to the consumer, depending on its in-store location.

The hype around beacons is because they allow brands to create a richer, contextualized and personalized in-store consumer experience while getting to know better their customers.

For retailers or brands without Apps, Facebook just released their own beacons for retailers to use that integrates with Facebook App. This is an interesting solution for brands or small retailers without their own App because it takes advantage of Facebook and their social engagement since most users already allow Facebook App to send push notifications. In addition to this, Facebook links its own geo-located ads to the brand’s content, which minimizes the risk for brands.

Individually, each of the above tips explores mobile marketing as a channel to increase engagement with the consumer and to drive store traffic. Combined, the results are exponential, resulting in a much stronger mobile strategy to acquire, engage and retain customers.

The Benefits of Digital Event Tickets

In a world where we can download and add into our smartphone all sort of things, such as music, books, etc., doesn’t it makes sense to have that same with event tickets?

The waiting for a post delivery of the paper ticket, having to print a ticket beforehand or to go somewhere to pick them up can be a hindrance in an age where time is increasingly important.

The promise of digital wallets can change all that, and with Passworks you can create a pass for an event, turning a paper ticket in to a digital ticket, allowing the user to safely and easily keep it on his smartphone.

Once a pass is created it’s easy to distribute it to customers via email or SMS, with a straightforward link to open and add the digital ticket into their phone in Passbook, to be kept until it’s needed on the day of the event, be it a movie, concert, museum, sporting event etc.

The convenience of not having to carry around a physical ticket makes the whole process of buying and attending an event that much easier for the customer. There’s no longer the worry of losing the ticket or the hassle of having to find it in your wallet, not to mention the printing costs saved by all the new process.

The most impressive aspect of a digital pass over a paper ticket is that fact that it’s dynamic, meaning it can be updated with new information in the lead up to the event or to send a reminder the day before. That pass is also fraud-protected being each digitally signed.

The fumble around in your pocket in the queue is also eliminated via location-based technology implemented in the pass to appear on the users’ lock screen when they are in the proximity, further aiding an easy, stress-free way to store event tickets.

Digital event tickets make it even easier for event organisers to manage their customers as you can easily track their demographics as information is sent back to them from the pass, increasing understanding of their actions and behaviour.

Paez & Passworks – A Visual Case Study

Over the last few months Passworks has been working with Paez, a worldwide shoes brand born in Argentina.

In January, Paez launched a campaign in Portugal which with new campaigns it will be updated with new information, alerting the customers who previously downloaded the pass. For portuguese readers, if you wish to have access to this pass and consequentially to the pass updates, just click here.

With this case study we share our experience together, with numbers and a visual flow of how Paez created their first mobile coupon:

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.