Comment: We are smiling all the way to the bank! Why? You will know soon ;)

IKEA mobile campaigns average 5-10 percent response rates -

source: Mobile Marketer-Database/CRM

June 16, 2009

IKEA gets idea

When IKEA Seattle launched a mobile loyalty program in June to build a database of people interested in receiving discounts, the home furnishing retailer never even imagined that 23,000 consumers would sign-up.

The text-to-enter loyalty program is a means for IKEA to start a dialogue with interested consumers. BCode is powering the text discounts and has found that there have been more than 15,000 offer redemptions to date.

“The greatest thing about mobile and retail is the fact that consumers cannot bring their PCs with them everywhere, but they do bring their mobile phones everywhere,” said Michael Mak, CEO/founder of BCode, San Francisco.

IKEA is one of the largest home furnishings retailers worldwide, with more than 275 stores in 36 countries, including 35 in the United States.

The key demographic of users is female ages 18-49, with a secondary demographic of families.

Consumers love the BCode “iPhone-like” user experience and BCode claims that usability and user experience is key to consumer adoption and response rates.

Mr. Mak claims that IKEA campaigns average 5-10 percent response rates.

Specifically, the campaigns are sent out at times when the recipients are not in the store. This percentage shows the percentage of consumers that have been driven to visit the store as a result of the attractive mobile coupon offers.

The calls to action for the mobile loyalty program are posted online and promoted via email campaigns. 
In-store signage asks consumers to text IKEA1 to short code 30364.

Texters get a message back letting them know that they will be receiving at least one IKEA message per week with deals, games and alerts.

Examples include 20 percent off special products, or class of products, restaurant food offers or dollars off certain purchase size.

During Q4 2008, the BCode mobile coupon platform generated six figures in sales that were directly tied to IKEA Mobile members shopping in the Seattle store.

This figure is growing on an average of 10 percent every month. The “Closed-Loop” nature of BCode’s scanning service allows this type of sales statistics to be tracked down to per-customer and per-offer level.

IKEA traditionally sends out catalogs with special promotions and discounts.

The Swedish-owned company first began using mobile eight months ago, asking consumers to text-to-play IKEA trivia. All the answers could be found in the catalog.

Valassis aided in the development of the text-to-play. This was a push for the IKEA catalog, with players having to look through, interact with, and involve themselves with the catalog.

Sending potential customers coupons via their mobile phone as opposed to printed coupons is eco-friendly because the consumer only prints the coupon(s) if he or she is interested in the offer.

“BCode can track offers down to the actual transaction,” Mr. Mak said. “Consumers really love it as the results show. We have aided IKEA in increasing its revenue and have been helping drive people in-store.”

Associate Editor Giselle Tsirulnik covers ad networks, advertising, content, email, media, messaging, legal/privacy, search, social networks, television and video. Reach her at giselle@mobilemarketer.com.

March 05 2009

Latest enhancement of digital voucher platform allows mobile phone vouchers to be accepted at more than 20,000 UK retailers

Two years after BP’s pioneering use of mobile vouchers for their free coffee promotion at Wild Bean Cafe, the latest development from digital voucher specialist i-movo provides a number of improvements in consumer and retailer experience. I-movo has developed and patented a method of using credit card payment systems to redeem vouchers displayed as text messages on mobile phones.

Following BP’s campaign in November 2006, the system has been proven and used by brands including Financial Times, Lucozade, Nike, Associated Newspapers and News International. Since then i-movo has been building an extensive network of more than 30,000 retailers able to accept its vouchers. Included within this is the 20,000-strong PayPoint network, whose yellow and blue chevron logo is a familiar sight in convenience stores and independent retailers all over the UK.

Despite this, concerns have remained about processing the vouchers as the voucher number needed to be manually keyed into the credit card terminal. Agencies and their clients also want a better representation of the clients brand than can be achieved using text messages.

I-movo has now teamed up with Wapple to create barcoded vouchers that are displayed on mobile phones together with full colour brand imagery. The barcodes can be scanned at any PayPoint retailer, all of whom have a hand-held scanner integrated into the PayPoint terminal. Now the retailer simply needs to scan the voucher and accept the transaction with a single keystroke.

“It’s quite a simple strategy — over the last three years, we’ve led the market in secure digital vouchers, email, text messaging and contactless and magnetic stripe cards,” David Tymm, CEO at i-movo, explained. “The marketing possibilities are limited when you’re only using text messages, with no color or graphics, and when voucher numbers need to be captured at the point of sale manually and key entered.

“The advantage of our platform is that we can include images and graphics to deliver a richer brand experience for consumers,” he said. “Secondly, we can include a barcode that represents our voucher to make it easier for retailers to capture it.”

by Sarah Clark (Web Editor)

This article is tagged as: PayPoint branding SMS vouchers mobile i-movo barcodes customer experience