m.Net Blog

Posted by Scott Johnson, Chief Marketing Officer

Australians (unlike our US counterparts) are not known for having a coupon-clipping culture. Sure we have “shopper dockets”, some specials arrive in the mailbox from time to time for pizza, and we have been trained to keep our grocery receipts to get discount fuel… but responding to such offers is not ingrained in our behaviour.

This may be changing through new advertising products available now on mobile devices. m.Net is increasingly providing mobile coupon solutions for clients seeking to drive foot traffic in store and to close the loop on their advertising in other media.

So what is a mobile coupon? Generally it is a mobile Internet (WAP) site that is only one page in depth. It typically contains the logo of the product, some imagery and copy on the offer and where to redeem it, and in some cases a unique number or identifier. Some recent examples driven out of print executions are shown below.

So why are leading advertisers experimenting with mobile coupons?

1. In Australia this is a mass-market opportunity. Just about all consumers have a mobile phone
2. It’s personal. Advertisers depending on their opt-in database or the call to action on surrounding media can profile and target the offer to the consumer.
3. It is not intrusive. In most forms that m.Net executes for brands, the consumer requests the coupon by texting a keyword to a premium number, so the consumer is requesting this coupon.
4. For FMCG it can reduce switch selling at the point of sale. The consumer goes into the store armed with a rich photo of the product for instant identification.
5. It drives traffic in store to redeem the offer and can be tracked for campaign effectiveness.

So what is in it for consumers?

1. It is not spam or junk mail; the customer requests it by texting in for the offer.
2. It is more portable; it is always with the customer as a bookmark or a link in an SMS message.

This entry was posted on Monday, October 22nd, 2007 at 6:55 pm and is filed under mobile coupons, Australia, mobile advertising, mobile marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.