Making Mobile Marketing Work
What Retailers Need to Know
By Rick Segel
When was the last time you saw someone who didn’t have a cell phone? You might have to stop and think, since cell phones have become so ubiquitous. Everyone has one, from children not yet out of grade school to their great-great-grandparents.
This presents a marketing opportunity for forward-thinking retailers who want to connect with their customer base. The speed and ease of sending and receiving text messages, coupled with their low cost, have made them an increasingly popular tool for retailers and customers alike. This practice is known as m-marketing.
Here’s some of what you need to know to get started with m-marketing.
Opting In to Information
An m-marketing technique that’s being used with increasing frequency involves using signage that says “Text (number) for today’s specials!” Customers who reply are directed to a Web page with the day’s best deals or featured merchandise.
They’ve opted in to connecting with you – and will do so again, if you’re local and convenient to you. This technique has obvious appeal for furniture retailers. It allows customers to overcome some of the hesitancy for trying an unknown store: The simple text message allows them to preview your shop without ever having to step inside. Additionally, customers can check out new arrivals from the comfort of their own home.
Get To Know Your Customers!
M-marketing also means refining our marketing techniques so they become even more individualized and personally relevant. Customers are responsive to text message marketing – such as the announcement that the perfect table to complement their living room set is now on sale – because they feel it has been crafted specifically for them. It represents a level of individual customer service. If you can make your customers feel individually recognized and valued, you’re that much closer to closing the sale.
This requires a renewed emphasis on the type and quality of information you’re collecting from your customers. Your database needs to include more than contact information: You want to know what type of buyer your customer is, what type of offer appeals to them and what they like to buy.
A Focus on Value
Another area where m-commerce can be used by even the smallest retailer is the use of coupons. Rather than have the customer fumble with envelopes full of paper or try to keep track of yet another card or key fob, why not consider coupons that can be delivered via cell phone and redeemed by showing the cashier the image?
Value is the customer’s highest priority right now. This makes coupons an appealing tool to reach more customers, because they appreciate a good deal. It’s only the rich that can afford to buy cheap. This is a particularly good way to highlight your better brands: Customers are particularly responsive to the opportunity to buy “more” than they could normally afford.
Feeling Lost?
GPS functionality is changing the way we do business as well. Not only is it being used to help consumers find the closest store of a given type, larger retailers are using it to help customers locate merchandise within the store!
This “mission” shopping means that there must be higher value placed on merchandising and store layout. If the customer knows where they’re going, we must work smarter to present additional merchandise. Strategic use of signage can educate the customer about what they need to go with the one item they came into the store for. Don’t lose out on those additional purchases!
Take Action
One thing is clear: This trend toward m-commerce is coming, and it’s going to change how we do business. People live their entire lines tethered to their phones. We need to be there too!
However, we must be cautious. The reason that customers are more responsive to text messages than they are to e-mail marketing in part because text message marketing is novel, and we’ve not yet abused it. This window will not last long, so be sure to reserve your outbound text message marketing for those times that are high value for both you and your customer.
About the Author:
Rick Segel is the author of more than a dozen retail books, including the best-selling Retail Business Kit for Dummies, and creator of www.theretailersadvantage.net. Segel writes a regular weekly column for the specialty retailer you can read at ricksegel.com.
This column appeared in Home Accents Today and is reprinted with permission.
