Mobile Coupons

Juniper Research defines a mobile coupon as “a coupon sent to and stored on a mobile phone that can be exchanged for a rebate, a financial discount etc. at a retailer or merchant when the consumer purchases a product.

As consumer usage of mobile devices explodes, mobile marketing has emerged as a viable marketing channel, with eMarketer predicting mobile ad spending growing to $115 billion by 2013. Historically, privacy and spam concerns slowed the adoption of mobile marketing. However, the success of mobile campaigns, such as voting on American Idol or receiving mobile coupons, has revealed that consumers are
willing to participate in timely, relevant campaigns. Among teens surveyed in a 2008 Harris interactive poll, over half (56%) said they would be interested in viewing mobile ads with incentives, while over one-third (37%) of adults noted that they
would be receptive to such advertising. In fact, mobile may be the best channel to reach the 20% of U.S. households that no longer own a landline telephone.

With the continuing growth of smart phones and the mobile web, an increasing number of are launching coupon offers that are delivered by these routes. Many of the applications being developed now frequently include location specific services that will identify coupon offers – for example as you are entering a new city you might request advice of local pizza offers and where the restaurant is located. mobiQpons is one example of a location based service that brings consumers and businesses together. mobiQpons is available for the iPhone and will follow on for the BlackBerry and Android. There are many more apps including names like Coupon Sherpa (a coupon aggregator), Yowza (which works directly with merchants) and YOOSE (soon to be launched).

Bluetooth broadcasts (blue casting) is one approach to making users aware of coupon availability, within in a small local area such as a shopping mall. Bluetooth transmitters typically have ranges of up to 1 km. The Bluetooth message opens a connection to the consumer’s mobile phone and makes a request on the consumer’s phone to accept a message. The consumer will choose to opt in or out of
receiving the message. If they accept then the message is delivered and can be displayed on the consumer’s phone. The media delivered in the message can be pictures, audio, video or business cards to market particular stores or promotions including advertisements and coupons.

Currently almost all of the mobile coupon systems are based on delivering a code, usually a barcode, to the mobile phone. The code is either stored in the SMS or MMS inbox or is sent to a mobile coupon application that has been downloaded to the phone. Downloadable applications allow for the end-to-end coupon transaction to be managed from a single point and allow other mobile advertising applications to work in parallel to the mobile coupon function. With the growth of smart phones, coupon-specific downloadable apps have become very common over the last year, often linked to location based searches.

This entry was posted on Friday, December 11th, 2009 at 11:54 AM and is filed under Mobile. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.