How to Interact With Holiday Shoppers Via Mobile Engagement

by Mike Wehrs

This story was originally posted on the Digital Marketing Remix blog. According to the results of Deloitte’s 2013 Annual Holiday Survey, seven out of ten respondents plan on using their smartphones during their holiday shopping this year. With a smartphone in the hands of so many customers, how should retailers and brands make the most of connecting with the mobile shopper this holiday season? One fantastic way is to integrate managed in-store mobile triggers such as QR Codes, Microsoft Tags or NFC to enhance customer engagement, increase sales, extend advertising and marketing campaigns, and develop greater loyalty among mobile consumers. Mobile engagement is on the rise. In Q3 2013, Scanbuy processed a record 24 million consumer engagements, demonstrating continuing growth in usage and interest by mobile consumers. But don’t take our word for it. A recent Columbia Business School study showed 36% of shoppers with smartphones are using QR Codes in retail stores to assist in their purchase decisions. That statistic is supported by the Deloitte survey for holiday shopping as well.

With mobile engagement, shoppers save time by scanning codes for on-the-spot product information without waiting for store employees who have many other people waiting in line. In addition, each scan, if managed by an intelligent backend platform, can provide shoppers with relevant gift ideas, product upgrades, and instant opportunities to share the holiday spirit—all factors that can help consumers make purchase decisions and help retailers shorten the sales cycle and drive brand engagement. A key element in any retailer’s strategy this holiday season should be to provide their own contextually relevant and targeted store-branded mobile content to shoppers and fully realize their omnichannel marketing objectives. By deploying managed mobile engagement triggers, current marketing campaigns can be transformed into big bonuses for the holidays without a huge media investment. One major development now available to retailers is to place mobile triggers directly on product tickets or price tags. With a comprehensive mobile-enhanced packaging solution, retailers gain control of the in-store mobile consumer channel. This solution gives everything a retailer needs to rapidly implement a store-branded QR/NFC product marketing program, including product and shelf labeling, mobile microsite design, a vendor compliance program to manage all content, and powerful analytics. With these analytics, retailers can examine important data points collected with each scan such as previous interest, age, gender, and scan location with the user’s prior consent, as well as device type, and operating system and much more. Companies can use that information to deliver highly customized mobile experiences instantaneously and evaluate the effectiveness of promotional campaigns in near real-time. We predict that smart retailers who take full advantage of in-store mobile engagement this holiday season will be ringing in a very happy New Year.