This could prove to be highly effective as the primary market for this technique is typically youth.
As youth have always been the primary market for the majority of mobile marketing campaigns, it makes sense that college bookstores are planning to implement the technique in order to ramp up their business, particularly during the down seasons.
The channel is going to be used to drive business year round instead of solely during the peak seasons.
The Follet Higher Education Group, a college bookstore operator, has just announced its intentions to invest into mobile marketing in order to help to boost its businesses. Central to this effort will be the use of SMS ads that they hope will work to increase sales throughout the parts of the year during which business is slower.
Follet believes that there is a great deal of potential for boosting business using mobile marketing.
The company operates brick and mortar bookstores as well as online shops for over 900 colleges and universities. Its hope is that by implementing mobile marketing, it will help to enhance the communication that it has established with consumers and it will boost its sales both online and in store.
The mobile marketing will begin this week and will continue onward as a trial of the effectiveness of ads over this channel. The company plans to actively test various techniques and promotions over the smartphone and tablet channels, especially for driving foot traffic into its brick and mortar locations.
According to the company’s manager of emerging media and loyalty marketing, Leeann Fecho, the mobile marketing pilot was first unveiled at the 2013 Internet Retailer Conference & Exhibition which was held in Chicago. The customers for the company are typically between the ages of 18 and 24. Among them 67 percent had smartphones. Fecho explained that by next year, they expect that 90 percent of that age group will own smartphones.
She explained that “Mobile presents unique opportunities to connect and consolidate the customer experience.” She went on to say that “The value of mobile isn’t just about building offers or mobile commerce—it’s all of that, but while doing that and blending the in-store and online experience.”
