TXT4 Blog

Target’s Mobile Couponing Misses Target

Posted on 12. Mar, 2010 by Carrie Chitsey in Blog, Mobile Marketing, POV

Target announced a few days ago that they had rolled out a mobile coupon program to all their stores nationally and were one of the first retailers to do so. While that’s great news for mobile marketing and others will follow, I’m disappointed that their strategy wasn’t more fully baked.

So here’s the details of their program:

• You can text the word COUPONS to 827438 (TARGET).

• Or go to m.target.com

• You get a coupon about once per month (no initial coupon)

• You get your first coupon two weeks after signup

• You are notified via text message to go to a link to get your coupon. No text coupon delivery.

• The coupon is a barcode that is scanned with “new” hand-held readers at Target.

Let’s talk about the texting part first:

#1:  I text in and don’t get a coupon immediately for texting in, this doesn’t engage me? Major missed opportunity.

#2: I text in to sign up (you captured my phone number when I text in), why are you giving me a link to go sign up and asking for my cell phone number again, you just duplicated this process and now I’m a frustrated customer. I didn’t even sign up when I had to go to your mobile web link b/c I thought I have already signed up via text, Target, you are going to have a big drop off rate.

#3: PS: you forgot MMA compliance: TXT STOP 2 END or HELP for HELP

Now to the Mobile Web:

#1: The link you have included on your marketing materials and in my text message is m.target.com. The mobile web technology today allows for me to just type in target.com from my cell phone browsers and it should recognize that I have an iPhone and redirect me to m.target.com. It should also render the proper screen for my proper handset.

#2: You are asking me to fill this out with my mobile # again? You just captured it via text message, sign me up please without the duplicate steps.

And you are not going to send me my first coupon for 2 weeks? What about now?

You didn’t ask me any questions on my preferences, what coupons I want to receive, just what time I want them delivered and my time zone. Really, what market research showed that these were two good data questions to ask?

I really don’t care when I get my offers however, I want them to be relevant. And given the article where you say they aren’t going to be personalized or targeted, this means I could get a diaper coupon as a single person. Your redemption rate is going to be very low. If you would have asked me a couple of relevant questions you might see 15% redemption rates.

Here is the other disturbing thing. You are going to send me a text message that says I need to go to this weblink in two weeks to retrieve my coupon. Now, why didn’t you just send me the coupon via text? You now want me to pay to go get the coupon.

Remember there are only 16.9% of Smart Phones in the US, only 25% of those are iPhones (hence your new iPhone app), which means the majority of Target shoppers will have to pay 3 times on their data plan to get a coupon:  1) view your coupon , 2) access it again to find the product in store 3) show it at the register. This is not a good customer experience and it just cost me 3 times.

Ok, so you are using hand held devices to scan these new barcode digital coupons. Let’s do the math: there are about 1800 Target stores, approximately 20 or so registers (on the low end) per location. So that’s 36,000 registers that now have hand held devices. Hand held devices that can scan barcodes range from $200-450 per scanner. Well go with $200 per hand held X 36,000, did you really invest over $7 million dollars just for this.

Here are some recent numbers (March 10, 2010) from ComScore a global leader in digital world market research. In the month of November through January 2010, of the 270 million cell phone subscribers, 63.5 percent used text messaging and only 28.6 percent used browsers on their phone.

So how could have you done this much better with the right strategy and technology?

1. Allow me to sign up via text messaging only (broaden your base)
2. Send me an immediate coupon when I sign up, don’t wait two weeks.
3. Ask me proper questions (2-3) via text message to target your coupons
4. Allow users to get coupons via text without having to the mobile web to get the coupon
5. Send me a unique coupon code via text message and get rid of the bar code or give customers both options not just one
6. Begin with the end in mind: what is the strategy? You are just building a mass database with no personalize information about me as a customer? How are you going to track coupon redemption back to an individual? How are you going to learn from what coupons I view or redeem to tailor future offers to me?
7. On the mobile website, ask me 2-3 questions to allow targeted coupons.
8. Have an integrated solution SMS+mobile web, you have developed two different solutions that are not integrated. You should have integrated solution and integrated reporting.

So the net-net, I give Target an A for effort but a D for a good mobile strategy. The good news is it’s not too late to implement the right strategy.