The following is an exclusive guest contributed post from David Giannetto (@dgiannetto), the author of Big Social Mobile, How Digital Initiatives can Reshape the Enterprise and Drive Business Results.
Mobile is full of big promises. But if you are like most companies, you’re still waiting to see it actually lived up to the hype of reinventing corporate-consumer interactions. This case study from my new book, Big Social Mobile, How Digital Initiative can Reshape the Enterprise and Drive Business Value (Palgrave Macmillan), shows how mobile can be used to maximize the value of every consumer.
National Oil and Gas (Marathon, Phillips 66, Sunoco, Clark and other gasoline brands and co-located convenience stores) used it to overcome common industry problem—and so much more. Their goal was to get consumers who often didn’t know the area to pick their stations over the competition, to completely fill their tanks, and then to also shop in their convenience stores where the higher margin products were located. These behaviors maximize revenue and profit. This is how mobile technology made it happen:
- They installed mobile sensing antennae along highways near their locations. These served up an SMS offer personalized based upon the device and user data. Upon acceptance (over 15% success rate) the consumer received directions to the local station.
- The coupon required the consumer fill their tank (over 8,000 extra gallons sold) and redeem the coupon inside the store, exactly where the company really wanted them.
- Once inside additional mobile offers were served based upon the shopper’s location (pass the coffee stand early in the morning… how about a little caffeine? You might be tired on the road ahead). These were so effective they could prompt a teenager to purchase over 74% of the time.
- They integrated these mobile driven offers into physical signage that changed based upon local variables such as time of day and weather to create the perfect profit maximizing market basket.
- Consumers were also prompted to join a loyalty program which they did 54% of the time. Social media campaigns then kicked in to gather more data, shape future interactions and improve customer lifetime value.
Think of what National Oil & Gas did in the context of your own company. They crossed internal divisions—one division realizing lower revenue for higher overall profit in another—they used mobile to generate big data analyzed to create coupons that were tightly integrated into store operations infused with local physical and digital marketing assets the led to a long-term social media and loyalty campaigns that maximized profit and benefited the consumer.
This is what I call “Big Social Mobile” behavior; creating an omni-channel experience that molds consumer behavior during every interaction with your organization, regardless of medium, channel or department, to your best advantage. Mobile pays a key role, but only when it is integrated into other digital initiatives and also into the traditional objectives, processes and data of your organization itself. Compare this approach to your mobile initiative. Is it mobile or your approach that’s holding you back?
