I'm sure you will all agree that those pikey 'money-off' coupons printed in the national newspapers, retailers' magazines and on till receipts are not only pointless, but annoying. Firstly they're totally not trendy and secondly if you do find the time to cut one out of a magazine (in the privacy of your own home of course), do you ever remember to take it with you when you go shopping and then redeem it? I for one have a plethora of handbags and purses and therefore never use the things.
Well thanks to some new funky technology by Mobile Marketing company i-movo, my street credability and purse can stay healthy. That is if retailers and manufacturers realise the true value of this technology and pass it onto their consumers. What this mean is that retailers and manufacturers can send marketing promotions via SMS direct to their consumers.
So why has this taken so long you might ask? Well, retailers such as Tesco's and Asda are reluctant to invest in any more POS (Point of Sale) systems since the launch of chip and pin in January 2005. Therefore technology companies have been forced to look at maximising retailers existing POSand payment systems to accept and redeem these vouchers.
i-movo, the mobile marketing division of Conchango, whose clients include Nectar, All-Bar-One and Cuervo, has extended its secure mobile marketing platform, which allows vouchers sent to consumers by SMS to be redeemed at retail outlets using existing payment terminal infra-structures such as stand-alone point of sale terminals and retail EPOS systems.
i-movo’s platform issues a mobile ‘voucher’, containing an individual identification number, which is delivered to a consumer’s mobile phone using SMS. Each number is checked at point-of-sale using the retailers’ existing EPOS or payment terminal devices. The electronic nature of the transaction ensures that the voucher cannot be used more times than is permitted by the issuer, and is limited to participating retailers within the duration of the promotion.
As the system is paperless, the retailer is refunded with the cost of the goods or promotion very quickly, and needless administration time and cost are greatly reduced.
The marketing professionals who run the campaign will also benefit from the new system – detailed reports and analysis are available in real time, so campaign managers can keep track of results as they happen.
What makes this a secure and stable solution is that i-movo worked with TS3 Interactive Ltd, one of the UK’s leading independent payment systems providers. With 8.3 billion card based payment transactions being processed in the UK every year through various types of electronic payment infrastructures. These networks are trusted implicitly by retailers and consumers alike.
Let just hope retailers and manufacturers embrace this new technology which can only leads to improved customer satisfaction and loyalty. The next step would be to know that I've walked into a shop and the retailer/manufacturer send me an SMS coupon based on my histoical shopping patterns. e.g offer me £1 off a bottle of Chateau Neuf du Pape as soon as i walk through the shop door, as I used to buy it on a regular basis but have stopped in the last month or so. Now that's what I call customer service! I would certainly be more loyal if my retailer directed marketing campaigns more intelligently.
The technology is here already...the retailers just need to understand this is what their consumers want.