Setting up a Mobile Coupon Program

To set up a closed system coupon program, you have two choices:

You can manage the program yourself: This is done by using a general text application providers direct response are alerts service applications are alerts service applications. In order to send coupons, you need only send text messages that contain the offer you want your audience to redeem. The offer can be all text with instructions on how to redeem the coupons, and you can also include offer codes and other information that gives the coupons specialized features.

You can work with a specialized mobile couponing firm: Companies that enable mobile coupons include lots of specialized features such as offer codes, personalization, and database integrations. Some of the best at mobile coupon companies are iLoop Mobile (www.iloopmobile.com), Hipcricket (www.hipcricket.com), Money Mailer (www.moneymailer.com), Where (www.where.com) , eKwipper (www.ekipper.com), and 8coupon (www.8coupon.com). You

Setting up coupon redemption at a point of sale

When someone receives a text coupon from you, they’re going to have to tell him how to redeem the coupon. Several methods are available for point – off – sale redemption, include

Asking the customer to show her coupon to a clerk in the store. With this method, the store clerk simply reduces the price of the purchase and maybe records the coupon in the system or on a less formal record keeping tool, like a clipboard with a place to write down the details of the transaction.

Giving the customer an official ID to share with the person in the store. Use your coupon system to generate a randomly assigned code that is unique to each customer, and then record each redemption code to prevent people from redeeming a coupon more than once.

Any of the aforementioned methods of point – of – sale redemption requires some type of system for recording the details of the coupon. Methods for recording the coupon can get pretty sophisticated, and you should get sophisticated if you want to track interactions with your customers. Any information about coupon redemption can tell you a lot about what your customers are buying and how they are buying.

Mobile barcodes are often referred to as 2-D or 3-D codes.

One mobile couponing company, bCODE (www.bcode.com), combines text and scanning. You should also check out Scanbuy (www.scanbuy.com), NeoMedia (www.neom.com), and Neustar (www.neustar.com), for more on the latest in 2-D codes. These companies send the coupon via text, MMS, websites, and applications, and they can provide you with a scanner that you can put in your store to scan fonts and redeem coupons.

The mobile marketing industry has made great strides in delivering mobile POS technology and gaming consumers acceptance of mobile coupons. The companies that are leading the way include mDot Network (www.mdotnetwork.com), Hipcricket (www.hipcricket.com), iLoop Mobile (www.iloopmobile.com), and Infinian (www.infinian.com).

Bar codes: More than just for coupons

Quickmark, shortcode, Connexto, Beetagg, Qode, JagTag, and others. Some of the leading companies enabling barcodes for mobile include ScanBuy (www.scanbuy.com), NeoMedia (www.neom.com), JagTag (www.jagtag.com), Microsoft (http://tag.Microsoft.com) and others. In the United States, Neustar (www.neustar.com) is actively helping to drive a common standard for bar codes. You can also find out more about 1D and 2D codes and Google’s project zxing at http://code.google.com/p/zxing. On the flip side, a number of companies enable consumers to scan the bar codes on products for price comparison shopping and for gathering information, including Redlaser (www.redlaser.com) and big in Japan’s ShopSavvy services (www.biggu.com).

Companies like Microsoft or working on the next generation of POS systems which will run on the Internet as opposed to being installed on proprietary hardware in the store. These companies will provide connectors (called APIs or Application Programming Interfaces) so that mobile marketers can integrate directly with that POS software.

In the next few years, you will see mobile marketing at POS take off as the technologies for connecting mobile devices to the POS system in real-time become mature and widely accepted. Just like with ATM machines in this 1970s and 1980s.

Setting up Internet and application coupon redemption

In addition to points – of – sale redemption, mobile programs can also be redeemed on a mobile Internet site or through a mobile application. Companies such as a Cellfire (www.cellfire.com) can enable coupons through the download of their applications. The application maintains all the coupons locally on the phone and continuously reaches out to the coupon server via an Internet connection on the phone to update itself automatically. Companies like mDot Network enabled coupon redemption at the point of sale.