Mobile wallet marketing campaigns aren’t just for breakfast any more.

Ha!  Got your attention with that one, I bet  😉

Welcome to 2017, we’ve started on Q2, and if you have still not gotten the message about mobile being your best bet to grow your business and make a bit more profit, we’ll explain it to you, yet again.  No worries.

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First things first – what is a mobile wallet?

Well, you cannot run mobile wallet marketing campaigns without a mobile wallet, for sure.  Everyone associates the mobile wallet with mobile payments, but there’s so much more to it than that.  In the space, you’ve got a few companies that are fairly dominant:

  • Apple Wallet (payment mechanism for Apple Pay)
  • Android Pay (sad little wallet app that it is, Google Pay was so much better but then the cleaved the two in half and crushed them both)
  • Samsung Pay (second runner up, sort of)
  • Paypal/Venmo (not really a wallet like you’re thinking but these guys have been handling money transfers since the internet was new)
  • And some other region specific (especially India, after that cash crunch thing a couple of months ago) technology like PayTM and others.

And while you can certainly make a payment with most of these (depending on where you live, of course), you can – most miraculously – do a more important thing at the moment…  you can use the features that are built in to some of these apps to run ad campaigns.

What’s the advantage to using a mobile wallet instead of a mobile app?

Ah yes, another horse that we’ve beaten to death around these parts.   But let’s do it again, why not?

[LISTENMobile wallet apps vs. mobile apps, who wins? – PODCAST EPISODE]

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Leveraging the existing mobile wallet apps, such as Apple Pay (or any variety of Android apps) takes the ugly cost of development and technical support – not to mention DISTRIBUTION and DISCOVERY – out of your hands and puts it squarely into more well funded companies pockets.  So yes, you’re a tad beholden to Apple, but then you would be as well if you were trying to push a stand alone iOS app.

So how does this mobile advertising campaign work?

Mobile wallet marketing campaigns only require you to ask a prospect or a customer to add a small card to their existing wallet apps.  It takes about 3 seconds and then it sits in there, doing the grunt work for you, at least until someone deletes the card because you messaged them too often about the specials in your bloody chip shop.

[CHECK IT OUT: Mobile Wallet Marketing Passes Made Simple]

Yes, that’s it.  Nothing fancy, nothing major.  Just a super easy way to use proximity marketing, location based advertising, geo-fencing, geotargeting and more, inside a permission based model that’s not violating anyone’s privacy or asking anyone to let you usurp their conversations or trigger their home monitors and start ordering fish and chips by the boatload.  (Really, Burger King, what were you thinking?)

What can I sell with mobile wallet marketing campaigns?

You can use a mobile wallet marketing campaign to sell nearly anything.  A couple of good examples include:

  • Specials at your shop (if you’re a retailer or run a salon or similar)
  • Post daily specials for your pub or restaurant (and send out customer notifications each morning)
  • If you’re friendly with your neighbors, you can cross sell each others’ products and services (this one is always a smashing success!)
  • Present offers to prospective customers when they are in a specific place (yes, real estate agents and brokers, this one is perfect for you)
  • Use geo-fencing and iBeacons to communicate via lock screen notifications in order to meet your customers at the door (don’t get too crazy, eh)
  • Run interesting contests, scavenger hunts, and more via the lock screen notifications and geo/location elements

And these ideas are only covering the retail and service sector – the things that you can do with conventions, trade shows, VIP events management, online coaching, digital marketing, etc are way to numerous to list in one article.

Feel free to browse through all our other content on the site, you can find use cases and studies for nearly any industry that interacts with actual, smartphone carrying customers…