Mobile payments can make for a quick checkout experience, but that’s just the beginning of the potential this technology stands to deliver businesses across industries. By leveraging additional marketing features of mobile payments, businesses can optimize existing efforts, and potentially identify better methods of executing them. Here’s a look at some of the benefits mobile payments offer, beyond a faster customer transaction:
Less marketing waste; more relevance.
Marketing is a cost that ideally delivers a return on investment. Mobile payments equip businesses and marketers with a wealth of customer data that extends past basic contact information. Based on the frequency of customer interaction, mobile payments can help marketers gain insight into customer purchase history based on seasonality, trends and the competitive landscape. It can reveal a customer’s likelihood to respond to various price points and promotions, and even show the best times to release marketing offers to different customer segments based on customers’ past behavior. In addition to those analytical benefits, the cost to communicate such highly targeted offers can be extremely low. For some promotions, like those delivered by text message, there may be no cost associated with creative development other than writing a few words of copy and a promotional code the customer can receive and redeem, on his/her mobile device.
Increased exposure to new audiences by way of the old
Many mobile payment provider apps allow merchants to prompt customers to “check in” on social media in order to redeem a particular offer. Aside from being a tool that incentivizes the repeat purchase behavior that ideally leads to customer loyalty, the feature can build a business’s brand exposure to new audiences on social media. Nielsen’s Trust in Advertising Report reveals that 84 percent of consumers say their friends and family are their trusted resources for where and what they buy. Yet, social media and online communications have expanded the definition of how customers meet trusted “friends”— many of whom they may never meet in person. Social media has extended the potential pool of trusted opinions customers consider, and expanded opportunities for the businesses who credibly insert their brands into such circles.
Streamlined loyalty programs
A number of studies on customer loyalty indicate that customers like to be rewarded and recognized for their purchases and support of a business. In fact, respondents to a study conducted by IDC Financial Insights said the ability to earn rewards is a primary factor in the type of payment method they choose to use. For merchants accepting mobile payments, the appeal rewards have among consumers can be leveraged to incentivize purchases, and boost the efficacy of a proprietary loyalty program. A consumer who pays for his/her purchase with a credit card that offers rewards for making a purchase (including those used for mobile payment transactions), for example, will reap the rewards offered by the credit card issuer, along with any loyalty rewards the merchant offers for the transaction. Because many mobile payment providers are equipped to seamlessly integrate purchase behaviors with loyalty programs, it also negates the need for a customer to carry a key ring or paper loyalty card, allowing for seamless rewards redemption.
The ability to demonstrate brand values
Building a brand that is memorable and relevant to the target audience requires a significant marketing investment. Assuming those efforts go well, the business must then support the brand’s claims with the tools and infrastructure that foster the customer’s continued belief in the brand promise. Mobile payments can be a powerful and highly cost-efficient tool to demonstrate a host of positive brand attributes — regardless of the company’s size, history, product or location. Mobile payments demonstrate that a business is abreast of changes in customer behavior and how they use technology. By adapting to new ways of operating, and focusing on lean business methods and efficiency, regardless of the company or product sold, all of these qualities ultimately result in a better experience for the customer.
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