SMS Marketing: Offer Reminders from Lidl
Written on Monday, January 26, 2009
Yesterday, I went for a quick food shopping trip to Lidl, a multi-national supermarket chain with plenty of branches in my town, here in Crete, Greece. Lidl, are especially known for putting on special offers, renewed every couple of days of the week, with very cheap prices on different ranges of products. (Please note at this point, that I'm not trying to advertise them -- not like they'd
need advertising on my blog -- it's just that I was pretty impressed by
their newest services and wanted to share it with you all).
These offers are always handed out in leaflets in advance, and you always see next week's, or upcoming offers, and this causes a problem. You might sometimes end up in store the same day, expecting to buy something on offer, which is, however, not yet available. This causes obvious confusion to a lot of consumers, and this seems to be one of the main criticisms from people here of this supermarket chain. I've heard it being said time and time again, that offers from Lidl are 'fake', because you see it in the leaflet, but it's not in store.
The problem, for consumers, is that the call-to-action is too far from the benefit of the action, and if the call-to-action has no real benefit for the consumers, they are often disappointed. (Note: I am well aware of the reasons behind these marketing decisions, and the particular marketing policy Lidl are following, but I am not discussing their policy here.)
To overcome this issue, I always check online to find out what the current offers are, before my supermarket trip.. Checking through the website's 'Current Offers' yesterday, I couldn't help but notice -- doing what I do for a living -- that on certain labels in there is a special 'pencil' icon, accompanied on some labels by a 'mobile phone' icon. Clicking around, I found the two following available services:
The first service is provided by the 'pencil' icon, that allows you to create online a shopping list, which you can then print out and take with you. Pretty cool, right?
But the second is even better. Using the 'mobile phone' icon, you can insert your mobile phone number, to receive an SMS reminder the date the offer comes into effect. I don't know about you, but for someone as forgetting as I am, SMS reminders are perfect, because they are delivered directly to my mobile, which is always at hand, and also the coordination center of my everyday life.
On a side note, Google does this too, by the way, if you didn't know already, on Google Calendar (for free!) and, not to sound overdramatical, but this really has 'just changed my life'.
There you have it then. Offers from Lidl delivered onto your mobile phone, (apologies -- link in greek) at the right point in time.. Problem solved!
I realise, of course, these services are hardly innovative, or cutting edge stuff, but I enjoy it when I discover new uses for current technologies, that come to make people's lives more convenient! In some cases, these are worth even more than new experimental technologies and campaigns, because, well, they work!
need advertising on my blog -- it's just that I was pretty impressed by
their newest services and wanted to share it with you all).
These offers are always handed out in leaflets in advance, and you always see next week's, or upcoming offers, and this causes a problem. You might sometimes end up in store the same day, expecting to buy something on offer, which is, however, not yet available. This causes obvious confusion to a lot of consumers, and this seems to be one of the main criticisms from people here of this supermarket chain. I've heard it being said time and time again, that offers from Lidl are 'fake', because you see it in the leaflet, but it's not in store.
The problem, for consumers, is that the call-to-action is too far from the benefit of the action, and if the call-to-action has no real benefit for the consumers, they are often disappointed. (Note: I am well aware of the reasons behind these marketing decisions, and the particular marketing policy Lidl are following, but I am not discussing their policy here.)
To overcome this issue, I always check online to find out what the current offers are, before my supermarket trip.. Checking through the website's 'Current Offers' yesterday, I couldn't help but notice -- doing what I do for a living -- that on certain labels in there is a special 'pencil' icon, accompanied on some labels by a 'mobile phone' icon. Clicking around, I found the two following available services:
The first service is provided by the 'pencil' icon, that allows you to create online a shopping list, which you can then print out and take with you. Pretty cool, right?
But the second is even better. Using the 'mobile phone' icon, you can insert your mobile phone number, to receive an SMS reminder the date the offer comes into effect. I don't know about you, but for someone as forgetting as I am, SMS reminders are perfect, because they are delivered directly to my mobile, which is always at hand, and also the coordination center of my everyday life.
On a side note, Google does this too, by the way, if you didn't know already, on Google Calendar (for free!) and, not to sound overdramatical, but this really has 'just changed my life'.
There you have it then. Offers from Lidl delivered onto your mobile phone, (apologies -- link in greek) at the right point in time.. Problem solved!
I realise, of course, these services are hardly innovative, or cutting edge stuff, but I enjoy it when I discover new uses for current technologies, that come to make people's lives more convenient! In some cases, these are worth even more than new experimental technologies and campaigns, because, well, they work!
Posted in
mobile services,
sms,
sms marketing
|
SMS marketing is pretty genius really. There are so many benefits both for the business and the consumer!
True.. the only thing is that it must be done right, otherwise it ends up just plane annoying! Now that it's becoming more and more widely adopted and the novelty has started to wear off, it's important to think through your SMS marketing campaigns, to ensure you won't end up annoying the consumers.
What’s most important to collect are an e-mail address and a cellphone no. Whenever the restaurant wants to fill up its slow days, an e-mail blast or even better, an SMS Broadcast to its list with special offers at the right time of the day will likely bring a number of them back, with very little extra marketing cost