Marketing Strategies

Introduction to mobile wallet

Learn about Mobile Wallet and it's influence on modern marketing

It’s remarkable how much the marketing landscape has changed over the last decade and how much it continues to evolve each year. Traditional offline marketing, while remaining strong, has taken a back seat to the advent of digital starting with email and web, and expanding into the mobile, display, and social channels.

As digital channels rise, change, and get adopted by marketers, Data Axle wants to keep their finger on the pulse of what’s new and what works. One of the unique up-and-coming digital channels that can prove extremely effective for marketers is Mobile Wallet.

Meet the expert
Kyle Henderick
Sr Director, Client Services

As Senior Director of Client Services, Kyle is responsible for helping major clients implement new programs, processes, and data-driven strategies to create campaigns that drive revenue. With a passion for technology implementation and a background in database, email, web, and social media marketing, Kyle turns his real-world experience into actionable tactics that help clients see incremental revenue, subscriber engagement, and customer retention. A lover of all things Chicago, when Kyle is not reading up on latest marketing practices or focusing on improving client programs, he can be found enjoying the city’s great restaurants or wearing his heart on his sleeve while rooting for all Chicago-based sports teams. A curious individual willing to try any and every food that does not include raw onions, he is always looking for exciting dining options and new adventures around the city.

1

What is Mobile Wallet?

Mobile Wallets are native mobile apps that come pre-installed on both iOS and Android devices. For all of you iPhone users out there, that app is called ‘Wallet,’ while the Android alternative is named ‘Google Pay.’ These apps make it simple for smartphone-toting customers to save, store, and revisit things like loyalty cards, coupons, offers, boarding passes, event tickets, VIP passes, and more for convenient use on their mobile devices.

Mobile Wallet also benefits marketers because it provides the ability to pass these pieces of digital collateral directly to their users, thus allowing brands to streamline content and boost engagement on a novel digital front. Because it’s simple to use and easy to add to existing marketing streams, Mobile Wallet empowers marketers to quickly create and deploy mobile offers that prompt subscribers to download and save offers to their smartphones.

According to the 2016 Vibes Mobile Consumer Study, today’s consumers understand the inherent value and convenience of mobile offers – about a third (32%) of all smartphone users currently utilize their Mobile Wallet as a passbook for offers, loyalty cards, and more. 94% of consumers using Mobile Wallet have said that they’re likely to save personalized Mobile Wallet offers and coupons sent by brands, making it a highly relevant and actionable communication stream for many marketers. In fact, since the announcement of Apple Pay in September 2014, Vibes has seen a 1,143% increase in Apple Wallet content installs across 2,000+ campaigns run by more than 30 leading brands. The signs are clear: Mobile Wallet adoption is only going to grow as smartphone users begin to recognize its convenience and versatility and become comfortable with its capabilities.

2

What kinds of communications can be sent using Mobile Wallet?

Marketers can tap into two types of communications that can be sent to their subscribers:

  • Offers/coupons: brands can send their subscribers an in-store coupon or an online offer via Mobile Wallet. This content can be saved to and accessed via the Mobile Wallet app on both iOS and Android devices alongside credit cards, tickets, and more.
  • Loyalty cards: Mobile Wallet enables users to save their loyalty or club cards easily to their mobile devices. This allows customers to access and track loyalty points, member status, and other details in real-time – and enables marketers to keep their brands top of mind (and top of phone).
3

What’s in it for the marketer?

Marketers have the ability to deploy trackable, updatable, location-aware content that is standardized for both major mobile operating systems. Mobile Wallet helps brands drive in-store and online visits, coupon/voucher redemptions, and ROI. The channel establishes a direct connection with a marketer’s consumer base, much of which is constantly connected to mobile devices.

4

What’s in it for the customer?

Mobile Wallet users can save and organizWhat’s in it for the customer? e offers, coupons, and loyalty cards in a single digital place, easily accessible on their mobile devices; gone are the days of needing a paper coupon or a plastic loyalty card/keychain fob for redemption. Since this content is readily available at users’ fingertips– and automatically updated by savvy marketers – Mobile Wallet provides a timeless connection between brands and consumers.

5

How is a consumer’s location used in Mobile Wallet campaigns?

Marketers can leverage the location feature on consumers’ phones and deliver push notifications to those users who have saved a brand’s Mobile Wallet campaign as they get within a specific radius of a store location. This Mobile Wallet functionality can be very effective for savvy brick-and-mortar retailers; imagine a consumer walking around on her lunch break and having her Mobile Wallet ping her with the latest offer as she walks by a store whose content she’s saved! It’s both timely and convenient.

In addition, this Mobile Wallet feature can be extended to beacon support for more targeted messaging tailored to consumers’ locations.

6

What are the basic elements of a Mobile Wallet content?

To lay the groundwork for marketers less familiar with this channel, here are the basic elements of a Mobile Wallet campaign:

  • INSTALLATION: Both Apple Wallet and Google Pay come pre-installed on iOS and Android devices. This means they are native apps and are already included with the purchase of almost any mobile device.
  • STORAGE: Coupons/offers and loyalty cards are stored within the Apple Wallet and Google Pay apps on a user’s mobile devise. Consumers can collect and save multiple passes, coupons, loyalty cards, etc.
  • LAYOUT: The layout for both Apple Wallet and Google Pay are visually similar, with guidelines and restrictions to standardize the look and feel of the content. Both iOS and Android collateral can be branded and personalized, so marketers can easily design Mobile Wallet campaigns using branded templates that communicate their unique brand value.
  • DELIVERING NOTIFICATIONS: For both iOS and Android, marketers have the option to send notifications to passholders and cardholders (users of Mobile Wallet who have downloaded their content). These communications are sent like Push Notifications and appear on users’ phones at the top of their locked screens. This means that after a user downloads and saves a brand’s Mobile Wallet Campaign, that brand can further message them by updating their offer or coupon (called a ‘pass’ in Mobile Wallet). When a brand does update a Mobile Wallet offer or coupon, the consumers who had saved it to their apps receive a push notification about the change.
  • ACCESSING OFFERS AND LOYALTY CARDS: Campaigns containing brand offers or loyalty program updates can be distributed via virtually ANY marketing channel: SMS/MMS, email, push (apps), web, direct mail, and more. This means that marketers can deliver a Mobile Wallet campaign in many different ways using existing marketing channels. All consumers have to do is download/save the offer!

To provide further context into Mobile Wallet, here is what a campaign actually looks like:

Campaign details:

  • Sample Offer
    • Nearly all elements of this campaign were customized – logo, offer graphics and text, barcode style and number, etc.
    • Personalize the offer/coupon with dynamic content based on various customer attributes, such as first name, local store, etc.
    • Back of pass (flip side) can include further details such as legal verbiage, Terms & Conditions, URL, contact details, links, etc.
  • Sample Loyalty Card
    • Similarly, nearly all elements of this loyalty card were customized – logo, graphics /brand imagery, barcode style and number, etc.
    • Personalize each user’s loyalty card with various consumer attributes, such as first name, member number, membership points total, etc.
    • Back of pass (flip side) can contain longer text such as store locations, Terms & Conditions, URL, etc.
    • iOS recognizes certain types of content and automatically links it to an existing app
    • Messaging block can provide updates to cardholders
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