The retailer has provided its sales associates with the ability to send these SMS images of merchandise.
Nordstrom Inc. has announced that it is providing its sales associates with a new mobile marketing tool by way of the ability to provide customers with photo texts of merchandise that may be relevant to those shoppers.
The company has started to use a new service through Twilio, a business that offers new messaging capabilities.
These mobile marketing tools are being provided by Twilio to a number of different websites and is now working its way into Fortune 500 companies. Nordstrom has chosen to take on this new capability at a time in which online and mobile commerce is greatly picking up in momentum. Brick and mortar shops are finding themselves in a highly competitive market and those that do not keep up with the technological element, including features for smartphone users, risk rapidly falling behind.
Nordstrom discovered that nearly one in three customers would prefer text based mobile marketing communications.
According to Dan Evans, a spokesperson for Nordstrom, “Almost one-third of our customers have told us they prefer to be contacted by text message and more importantly text messaging with pictures to share fashion images or photos of merchandise with each other.”
Before working with Twilio, sales associates from Nordstrom were able to text customers who had opted in to receive notifications about new merchandise that they might like. However, when using the old system, it was too costly for the retailer to send images along with those messages. Moreover, the retailer was required to wait for months in order to receive the necessary short code to which a given mobile ad could be sent via text. According to Twilio’s data, when all is said and done, a company could spend over $10,000 on each individual short code, per year.
Twilio was able to come up with a mobile marketing deal with three telecom carriers, making It possible for the company to instantly obtain a standard 10 digit phone number for all MMS communications, eliminating the need for those short codes at $10 thousand, each. Its clients pay prices as low as $1 per number, $0.02 to send messages and $0.01 to receive them, offering volume discounts.
Kraft Foods tests capabilities of mobile marketing tools
Consumer goods giant Kraft Foods has been quietly trialing NFC technology and QR codes over the last few months. The company has taken note of the growing popularity surrounding NFC technology and has been using tags embedded with NFC chips to market certain products. These NFC tags have been used alongside QR codes which have been implemented for the same purpose. The two marketing tools were pitted against one another to determine which was more effective with consumers.
NFC wins in popularity, but not in accessibility
Kraft Foods has finished its trail and found that NFC tags are indeed more popular than QR codes. According to Kraft Foods, NFC tags are more attuned to mobile shoppers than QR codes because they are easier to use. The trial took place at five, high traffic grocery stores in San Francisco, California. A multitude of Kraft products, as well as those from its subsidiaries, featured both NFC tags and QR codes that provided shoppers with information regarding the products and, in some cases, discounts. Kraft Foods notes that engagement with the NFC tags was nearly twelve times greater than engagement with QR codes.
NFC tags only available to those with capable mobile devices
NFC tags may have been able to beat out QR codes in terms of popularity, but they were not able to compete in terms of affordability and accessibility. NFC tags are somewhat more expensive than QR codes, considering the fact that QR codes can be generated for free. The codes can also be scanned by any mobile device that has a camera and a code scanning application. NFC tags can only be accessed by NFC-enabled mobile devices, which are still very rare. Furthermore, using NFC tags would alienate the entirety of consumers with Apple mobile devices, as none of these devices supports NFC technology.
QR codes remain leader of mobile marketing tools
While NFC may be a more engaging marketing tool than QR codes, the audience for NFC tags is still very limited. For this reason, QR codes are expected to remain the most favored mobile marketing tool in the business, at least until more consumers get their hands on NFC-enabled mobile devices. Few companies have been won over by the advertising prospects of NFC technology, nonetheless, so QR codes may remain dominant even after NFC-enabled devices become popular.
