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Mobile Marketing Case Study: Crocs Mobile Coupon Experiment

07/18/2013McKay Allen

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While we are focused on mobile click-to-call, we still want to occasionally discuss other mobile case studies.

This one is about Crocs efforts to launch in-store mobile coupons.

Summary: Crocs launched an in-store mobile coupon campaign. 94,000 people redeemed the coupons in 30 days. The source for this case study was Mobile Marketer.

Objective: Crocs’ objective was simple: generate additional customer engagement, loyalty, and revenue while the customer was in their stores. Strictly speaking, their goal was to get retail customers to request, receive, and redeem a 15% off coupon all while in-store

Strategy: Encourage retail shoppers to engage with the brand via their smartphone and redeem coupons directly and instantly in-store.

Tactics: Crocs placed brightly colored and specific signage in their retail stores. These signs contained instructions, a call-to-action, and the details of the offer. They placed these signs in each of their 185 Crocs retail stores nationwide. Crocs needed to ensure that their call-to-action was urgent and useful:

“What is a foot’s best friend? Find out and save 15% off today! It is as easy as one, two three…”

Text ‘CROCS 1234’ to 63103
Instantly receive a 15% off coupon code.
Show cashier the code at check out

Results: The in-store mobile experiment (it was marketed nowhere else) generated 94,000 coupon requests during the first 30 days. Customers loved the 15% off coupon. Store staff also enjoyed the promotion and encouraged customers to take advantage of it.

In Their Words: “Being able to connect with [our consumers] in a meaningful way on their mobile device allows us to create a valuable shopping experience and to have a one-on-one dialogue with our customers,” Jay Custard, Global Online Marketing Director at Crocs Inc. said. “Mobile helps us reach out to customers.”

Analysis

Even though the campaign was hardly ‘one-on-one’ (94,000 people participated after all), customers felt like it was one-on-one. That’s the beauty of mobile marketing. When something appears on our smartphone we somehow feel like it is only for us, even though 93,999 other people received the same coupon.

Obviously the campaign worked. However, the question still remains: did the lost revenue from the coupon actually produce more loyal customers and more long-term revenue? This is, perhaps, a larger question about coupons and limited-time offers—something every business must decide.

Do you want to lessen your margins in the short-term to gain brand loyalty, more revenue, and happy customers in the long-term?