Domino’s Pizza Mobile Coupons

Pizza chains are well-known big advocates of mobile marketing, as some of the major players, such as Pizza Hut and Papa John’s are already using mobile as an ordering medium, or to run sms-based promotions. Mobile orders in particular have proven to be very profitable for pizza chains, with Papa John’s claiming to have generated $1 million in Mobile Web orders, in less than 6 months. Domino’s Pizza is the latest pizza chain to be bringing in mobile marketing, using mobile coupons through SMS messages, and SMS marketing campaigns. Domino’s Pizza is rolling out a mobile coupon program that will serve its franchises nationwide.

The pizza delivery franchise has selected Air2Web to be the sole mobile services provider for Domino’s new mobile coupon campaign management platform. Domino’s will use Air2Web’s services to send coupon codes to opted-in consumers via text message.

Last year Domino’s more than tripled its number of opted-in consumers, the company claims. It plans to invest significantly in further growing its mobile consumer base. According to Forrester Research, 30 percent of consumers would like to receive mobile coupons. Redemption rates for mobile coupons range from 5 percent to 15 percent, which is much higher than typical print coupon rates of 1 percent or less.

Consumers must opt-in in order to participate in mobile coupon programs, accounting for higher redemption rates. Paper coupon usage has declined 40 percent in the last few years due to lack of immediacy and the manual effort of clipping, according to the Food Marketing Institute. Real-time offers, geographic targeting, personalization, time-of-day redemption tracking and a lower cost of delivery make mobile more compelling than traditional paper coupons.

The mobile has incredibly become more of a potential for coupons, than print advertising. It’s all about access (to the coupon), at the right time, in the right place, easily. Mobile coupons offers all 3, printed coupons struggle!

10 mobile content tips

Here are ten tips for getting the most value from mobile content services - by Leon Perlman, chairman of the Wireless Application Service Providers’ Association of South Africa

The mobile content and applications market is one of the fastest growing industries in South Africa, with millions of consumers downloading information, images, ringtones, music, games, video clips, applications and wallpapers to their cellphones every month. But to make the most of these services, it’s important to educate yourself about each service’s terms and conditions and technical requirements as well as your rights as a consumer.

Here are some tips to help you on your way.

1. Always keep your welcome message handy after you’ve joined a new service. This is the sms that all content providers must send you when joining a service. It should contain a contact number for the service provider and provide you with information about the costs of the service and the procedure for
cancelling the service.

2. Be aware of what you have signed up for - make sure you know how much content you’re entitled to in your subscription, how often you can access it
and how you access it.

3. Check whether you should fetch the content manually from your cellphone or you will be sent links to access it.

4. Always read the terms and conditions when you sign up for a new service -

scroll right to the bottom of the Wap page to see the terms and conditions and extra info about the subscription service. Check any advertisement for a mobile service very carefully before you send the SMS to make sure you know what you’re signing up for.

5. Unfortunately content is complex. There are so many different formats and each phone handles it in different ways. It is therefore never guaranteed that the content you purchased will work on your particular phone. Therefore you should ensure that your cellphone meets the technical requirements of a value-added service before signing up - for example, make sure that it is Wap-compatible or able to playback video-clips. If not, you could end up
paying for a service or content you can’t use.

6. If you’re a Vodacom prepaid customer, set up the online billing facility, so that you can keep track of who is billing you, how much they
are billing you for, and when they are billing you.

7. Before signing up for a service, make sure you know how to stop it if you decide you no longer want to use it. Sending STOP in reply to a message received should in most cases either stop the service or alternatively result in an error message which would contain details regarding how to properly unsubscribe from the service.

8. Be aware that while you are browsing the internet from your phone, by simply clicking on a “buy now” or similar mobile link on a website you could be billed on your phone account since the website owner could already have your cellphone number. Many content providers make use of number detection services, also termed MSISDN forwarding, to determine the mobile numbers of visitors to their website.

9. Learn about your rights as a consumer by viewing the Waspa code of conduct here. If you have any reason to believe the content provider is acting in an unethical manner, take action by complaining here.

10. Protect your children from unsuitable content and prevent them from signing up for expensive content services without permission. Parents on Vodacom can bar their children from accessing adult content by dialling *111*123# from the phone they want to block. As an MTN subscriber, meanwhile, simply dial *101# from the handset you would like to restrict content on and follow the menu prompts.

13 January 2010 - 13:09
By Wendy Knowler (Consumerwatch)

Customer Acquisition Made Easy

Let’s say that you own a restaurant. Sarah has never been to your restaurant before, but she comes in one day for lunch because she is in the mood to try something new. She sees on your in-store poster that she can instantly receive 10% off her meal just by texting a special number code from her cell phone.

Sarah sends the text message and in seconds she is enrolled in your list and has a 10% off coupon that she will show her waiter or the cashier when she leaves.

Reminders are the gold

But as many restaurant owners know, without some prompting, there is only a 20% chance that Sarah will ever come back. It doesn’t matter how great the food is or how good the service was, the fact of the matter is that people are creatures of habit. Unless you can create a habit for Sarah to regularly visit your restaurant then her business will be lost forever. This is where mobile outshines traditional coupons and marketing methods…

It keeps on working

Now imagine being able to send Sarah a text message a week later for 10% off her lunch for today. You can send this message directly to her cell phone at exactly 11:30… the time when Sarah is thinking about where she wants to go eat lunch. OR you could send her the offer for 10% off her dinner meal for today… and you can send this message at exactly 5:00 when Sarah is leaving work and starting to think about dinner.

Sarah is back in your restaurant (probably with new customers that she will bring with her) and you are creating a habit of her and her friends to have lunch with you, or her and her family to have dinner in your restaurant.

AND the really amazing part is the sheer number of targeted customers that you can get to sign up every single day… It’s the snowball effect.

If you only get 10 customers or clients to sign up every day then at the end of 30 days you will have 300 customers on your list receiving notices and incentives to buy from you again and again.

And we’re sure that you can sign up 10 new customers everyday without even trying!

Coupons are back - thanks to recession

Restaurant Vouchers UK Save

Since the recession is still going on in the UK, vouchers of every kind are still in very high demand. This includes restaurant vouchers, which consumers are using to save as much as their mobile bill (an average of at least £50 per month).

Restaurant vouchers UK can be found all over the internet. There are new vouchers offered by restaurants regularly, and websites like DiscountVouchers.co.uk make it easy for diners to find them by posting them online. Customers can also get vouchers directly from restaurants by signing up for their newsletters.

There have been a bunch of new restaurant vouchers released for the new year. One of these is 50% off food at Pizza Hut until January 31. Customers will be able to get half off their food bill, but any drinks or sides will be charged full price.

Another available voucher is 2for1 Main Meals at ASK restaurants. Customers will be able to get the cheaper of two main courses for free until February 1. Slug and Lettuce is offering a voucher for 50% off food bills. This voucher will be valid until January 17.

One of the best offerings out for vouchers right now though is from Burger King. They are offering 12 mini vouchers to use at their restaurants until February 14. The best ones in the deal include Buy 1 Get 1 Free Wopper or Bacon Double Cheeseburger; Buy 1 Get 1 Free Angus Burger; and Buy 1 Get 1 Free Sweet Chilli Royale or Chicken Royale. These can be printed at www.burgerking.co.uk/files/documents/Jan_10_voucher.pdf, and consumers can print this more than once in order to use the vouchers they like the most as much as they want.

There are tons more restaurant vouchers UK available right now, including some for Cafe Rouge, GBK, ha ha, Caffe Uno and more. No matter where you go to dine out next, be sure to look for a voucher first to save!

Game over for cellphone scratchcard culprits

There’s been a rather satisfying conclusion to the story of the scratchcard competitions, which were really just a means of hooking people up to a cellphone content subscription service.

To recap briefly: In July, Waspa - the Wireless Applications Service Providers Association, which regulates the industry - held an emergency meeting about a scratchcard competition which was inserted into several high profile magazines - some seven million of them in all.

By entering the competition in the hope of winning a holiday, a car or cash, many people unwittingly subscribed to a mobile content service which would add R210 to their cellphone bills every month.

Waspa ruled that the promotional material fell short of the requirement to “prominently and explicitly” identify the service as a subscription service.

“Consumers are unlikely to be making a request with the specific intention of subscribing to a service, but will most likely be intending merely to claim a prize or enter a competition,” the panellists said.

They also found the pricing information was not clearly and accurately conveyed and was thus “likely to mislead”.

The Wasp in question - Opera Interactive, delivering services such as ringtones, games, music and wallpaper supplied by Clarion Marketing - was ordered to stop the competition immediately; to stop charging those who were being billed for the subscription service after entering the competition, pending the formal review of the complaints, and to inform all “entrants” of the ruling and offer them a refund.

Waspa has since held formal adjudications about two Opera Interactive scratchcard insert campaigns, run in conjunction with different content providers, Clarion Marketing and Oxygen Marketing.

Despite protestations from the companies that there was no intention to deceive consumers or trick them into subscribing to their services, Waspa found they had transgressed the code in terms of transparency in several respects.

And because Opera Interactive has fallen foul of the code several times in the past, and been given lenient sanctions, this time the sanctions were tough.

In respect of the first complaint, Opera Interactive is to forfeit to Waspa R200 000, or all its revenue share relating to the subscriptions, less VAT and any refunds paid after the competition was stopped, which-ever is the greater.

Plus, Opera Interactive is to pay a fine of R400 000 to be collected from Clarion, or all of Clarion’s remaining profit share generated by the service, again minus VAT and any refunds, whichever is the greater.

In the second case, Opera Interactive was ordered to forfeit to Waspa R100 000; or all its after-deductions revenue share from the campaign, whichever is greater, plus the content provider is to pay Waspa a R200 000 fine or all its after deduction revenue share, whichever is greater.

The adjudication documents provide an intriguing insight how lucrative these cellphone content services are.

In response to Waspa’s emergency panel ruling in early July, Clarion Marketing states: “The current subscribers in respect of which Clarion has ceased billing constitutes 80 000 subscribers; the total loss of revenue to date as a result thereof being in excess of R1 000 000 …”

The final adjudications effectively wipe out all the profits all the players derived from these scratchcard inserts.

Cellphone banking overtake online PC banking

The number of people banking from their cellphones has exceeded that of people banking from their PCs in South Africa

The number of people banking from their cellphones has exceeded that of people banking from their PCs in South Africa, with more than a quarter of bank customers turning to their cellphones for services ranging from informational transaction types such as balance enquiries to financial transaction types which include account payments.

This was one of the key findings from the consumer phase of the Mobility 2009 research project, released today by leading market research organisation World Wide Worx.

“It is encouraging to see that not only in FNB, but across the country, cellphone banking is now part of people’s lives,” says Len Pienaar, CEO, FNB mCommerce.

The Mobility 2009 study revealed that, while 16% of banking customers in South Africa use the internet for banking, 28% use their cellphones. A total of 34% of banking customers use one or both of these channels. Outside of the branch and ATMs, only 6% relying exclusively on the internet, while 18% rely only on cellphone banking.

“The fact that services like cellphone banking are taking off so strongly shows that consumers no longer see their cellphones only as voice and text messaging devices, but use them stay in touch with everything that matters in their business and personal lives,” says Deon Liebenberg, Regional Director for Sub Sahara Africa at RIM.

The study revealed that the main services driving cellphone banking were balance enquiries and notifications of transactions, with three quarters of cellphone bankers using these features. Just under half view statements on their cellphones, 35% transfer between accounts, and 28% pay accounts on their cellphones. In contrast, only 8% add beneficiaries via the cellphone, indicating both security concerns and set-up issues.

“Our research shows that South Africans are becoming comfortable with cellphone banking, but precisely half of general banking customers are still nervous of it, citing trust as their major concern,” says Arthur Goldstuck, MD of World Wide Worx.  “However, this concern must be seen in the light of 34% also saying the issue is not knowing how to use the service.”

“Although we have made great inroads, two-thirds of banked people still don’t use electronic channels, other than an ATM,” says Pienaar.

At the same time, two thirds of cellphone banking users were satisfied with the security of the channel. This suggests that, once customers start using cellphone banking, they grow increasingly confident in both security and usability aspects.

“We have seen this rapid adoption driven by our USSD menu service, although I believe that WAP will start to play a more important role in future,” says Pienaar.

Liebenberg adds: “The success of cellphone banking shows that there is a strong demand in South Africa for powerful and easy to use mobile data services and applications that help people to save time and stay in control of their lives at all times. With mobile penetration at more than 114% in South Africa, we can expect to see the adoption of mobile banking and other personal services and applications ramp up quickly.”

The study also shows purchasing via the cellphone beginning to take off, with 24% of cellphone banking customers purchasing prepaid electricity and 21% making general purchases like movie tickets and flowers. Purchase of airtime still leads the way here, accounting for 61% of cellphone banking users.

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