Marketing to Smartphone Women: M is for Mobile Coupons!
May 22, 2012 § Leave a Comment
The old saw “Shop ’til you drop” may have to be modified to “Shop ’til you drop your phone”. According to a Harris Interactive survey done for CouponCabin of over 3300 U.S. adults, 40% of smartphone owners have redeemed a coupon on their mobile device.
What are those coupons they are redeeming? Harris learned that 39% of redemptions from smartphones involved grocery store coupons and 34% involved online coupon codes. Less than a third of redemptions (29%) were printable coupons and less than a quarter (24%) were free samples or trials.
I think the actual bar code coupons on your phone are going to gain traction in the future for in-store shopping. Walgreen’s was one of the first to provide mobile coupons on their app. Every week a series of coupons are provided in the app for your convenience. I look at the coupons provided every time I walk into the store.
The study says that 29% of smartphone owners search for mobile coupons at least once a month, and 72% of advanced phone owners say they would be at least somewhat likely to use a mobile app that offered different kinds of coupons.
So I assumed that CouponCabin has an app that delivers coupons. I decided to give it a try. The grocery coupons seemed good but I had to email them to myself. There were options for some of the deals that were scannable from my phone. I already have Coupon Sherpa and honestly I tend to forget that I have it since only a few of the stores are near me but their coupons have barcodes that can be scanned directly from the phone.
Currently 50% of all mobiles are smartphones and the number of smartphones will only continue to increase. Some 59% of smartphone owners think it is important to be able to make purchases from their smartphones. One out of four smartphone users are like me – they have searched for a coupon to use in a retail store – or scanned a barcode for comparison shopping.
Marketers should be ready for the coming onslaught of mobile coupons and comparison shopping. Customer service, ease of check-out and speed of acceptance will be defining moments for the retailers that use mobile coupons.
