mobileStorm Case Study
Success with Mobile Coupons
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Background:
Planet Funk, a chain of fashion-forward clothing stores for men and women, epitomizes the west coast hipster. The company has 21 branches in California, Texas and Colorado, as well as an online retail website. Visitors to the shops and website will likely find high-end denim jeans from True Religion and Frankie B; trendy young menswear from lines such as Marc Ecko; tattoo-inspired fashions from Brad Butter and Ed Hardy and cute-yet-edgy handbags from Betseyville, an offshoot of Betsey Johnson’s quirky line of women’s wear. Planet Funk’s core customer is young, trendy and never without his or her cell phone.
Challenge:
Facing what many experts were saying would be the worst holiday shopping season in decades, Planet Funk knew that they had to think outside of the box. With both “brick and mortar” stores and an online presence, digital marketing would need to be a key component of a winning strategy. The company knew it needed something that would work in their stores and online and would be both simple and trackable. And, understanding the demographic they serve, it was clear that a mobile marketing campaign might be ideal.
Solution:
Planet Funk is no stranger to digital marketing, having successfully used email campaigns for years. The Planet Funk blog, which covers celebrity trends, has also helped drive traffic and business to its stores and website. However, they hadn’t experimented with mobile marketing because of pre-conceptions about cost, time and effort.
With mobileStorm as their long-time email provider, it was a natural fit that they would also use the company to launch their mobile marketing strategy. Representatives form the two companies analyzed the best way to leverage the unique nature of mobile messaging with Planet Funk’s target base and concluded that a mobile coupon campaign was a perfect answer.
The mobileStorm 4.0 digital marketing platform’s mobile coupon system features allowed Planet Funk to quickly set up and launch a mobile coupon program (measured in days, not weeks or months). Planet Funk wanted discount tiers based upon customer spending at coupon redemption, which is a built-in feature in the mobileStorm platform. The program offered discounts in the following tiers:
- $100 – 249.99 – $10 off
- $250 – 399.99 – $30 off
- $400 or more – $60 off
With time running short to a project goal on “Black Friday,” Planet Funk wanted the campaign out quickly. mobileStorm was able to accommodate a fast launch using a shared shortcode–38714–and secured the keyword Pfunk for branding purposes.
The Launch:
The Planet Funk mobile coupon was launched on November 21, 2008 in preparation for the crucial Black Friday shopping day. Signage placed in the stores showed the shortcode and key word (see image below) and promoted a coupon as an incentive for joining the Planet Funk mobile club. Planet Funk also pushed the mobile coupons via its web presence, blog and a number of websites belonging to malls in which Planet Funk is located. Importantly, the discounts could only be redeemed via the mobile coupon.
Results:
By the end of the campaign on December 31st, 2008, Planet Funk discovered they had created over 20% of their total December revenue via the mobile coupon. Almost 2,000 coupons were generated with a redemption rate at a staggering 91%. Because of the relatively inexpensive nature of mobile coupon campaigns, Planet Funk produced an outstanding return on investment of 377%, based on the cost of the campaign versus revenue generated from the coupons.
Additionally, 15% of those that redeemed the coupon opted-in to receive future mobile campaigns, which helped build Planet Funk’s mobile database.
Conclusions:
Using a form of digital marketing that is highly effective with their core target customers, Planet Funk was able to identify and develop a new, highly-profitable promotions channel for its holiday season. From their first try–just one inbound mobile marketing campaign–Planet Funk achieved amazing results and now plans to expand their mobile strategy.
“Mobile is a natural fit for our customers and being able to give them such coupons–both in the store and online–that can be instantly received on their phones is a no-brainer,” said Kitri Lomaka of Planet Funk. “The results we experienced proved this, and we look forward to continuing our partnership with mobileStorm to drive future mobile campaigns. We now realize that mobile marketing can not only be affordable for companies like ours, but also wildly profitable if handled the right way.”