Business Challenge:
To distinguish itself from other mobile texting providers, Street Savings set out to provide a tracking method for mobile offers and the revenue they generate for small businesses.

Overview:
Street Savings offers a mobile couponing and rewards service for small businesses.  Tangs Pacific Bistro, a Street Savings customer in Keller, Texas has earned $2,153 by sending 1,039 offers via SMS among other successful promotions.

Background:
With Street Savings, a retailer’s current customers and prospects may opt-in to receive deal alerts via text.  Opt-in methods include texting a unique code to a dedicated short code, using a web form or IVR (Integrated Voice Response), or entering the customers’ mobile phone number into a credit card terminal or point of sale (POS) system.

When a retailer uses Street Savings, they are able to quantify the campaign response rates plus revenue generated by a specific campaign. These values are generated when customers redeem promotional value and add points in excess of that promotional value.  The “point add” is the total value of the transaction in excess of the promotional value.

Street Savings is not alone in understanding the business requirement for mobile deal and revenue tracking. Despite the simple “show your text to redeem” mentality of many mobile marketing companies, there are other mobile marketing companies that have made a serious attempt to track offers. These companies utilize a variety of methods including installation of an additional device adjacent to the retailer’s point of sale (POS), web-based “redemption” widgets or the use of barcodes and scanners.

Street Savings rejected these approaches in favor of working directly with the retailers’ existing credit card terminal or their point of sale (POS) systems. With this approach, the company is able to extract the information it needs to track mobile offers and redemption from the everyday financial transaction flow that is already occurring in the business. Credit card terminals and POS systems already occupy scarce counter space and are designed for the reality of a demanding retail workplace. Employees need little training and consumers understand how to use the PIN pads. Street Savings works with the majority of credit card terminals (e.g. Verifone/Hypercom) as well as many of the largest POS systems.

Results:
Street Savings offers several campaign types that automatically transmit text messages to customers when preset criteria are met. For instance, Tangs Pacific Bistro, a Street Savings customer in Keller, Texas recently achieved the following results using two standard Street Savings Campaign Types.

Campaign Type: “MISS YOU”    These are sent to “opted in” customers who have not visited a business within the last 21 days.
Tangs’ Message copy: “We miss u and because we’ve missed you we’ve loaded $5 on your account. Come back in the next five days to redeem.” (5 day expiration)

As of February 15th, the campaign’s cumulative results were:
1039 offers sent, 107 redeemed, 760 expired (as of 2/15)
10.2% redemption, $2,153.33 revenue  

Campaign Type: “Half Way There” These are sent to “opted in” customers who have reached the half-way level for the Tangs Rewards program.   
Tangs’ Message Copy: “You’re half way to earning your $5. Show this message and get 2 FREE egg rolls with any purchase.” (5 day expiration)

As of February 15th, the campaigns’ cumulative results were:
637 offers sent, 115 redeemed
18% redemption,   $2,949.41 revenue   

Pal Flagg, COO of Street Savings, explained the value for merchants, “Like any new technology, its promise to ‘dazzle’ must translate into measurable sales for daily operations. To be attractive to local merchants, service providers like Street Savings need to continually prove to retailers that their marketing dollars are being spent wisely.”

Business Challenge:
In April of 2009, the board of directors of HopStop met with new CEO, Joe Meyer, to pose the following question, “Should HopStop ‘double-down’ on mobile and put more resources against it, or should it focus its limited resources on the web and cede mobile to its largest challenger,  Google Transit?”

Overview:
HopStop is a city transit guide that provides subway, bus directions, and maps for top metro areas. HopStop CEO, Joe Meyer, urged the board in 2009 to proceed with mobile initiatives saying, “If HopStop wasn’t able to transition into being a mobile service then it probably didn’t have much of a future anyhow.  What does the company really have to lose?”  HopStop has since been recognized as a top 10 travel app by Time Magazine, AOL Travel, Travel & Leisure Magazine, and the Travel Channel.

Background:
In 2009, the HopStop board of directors strongly favored a strategy that focused in on the existing business that served travelers via the web.  At that time, the company had not had much success with its mobile offering.  It had an iPhone app with a user rating of 2 and less than 25,000 downloads.  Resources were limited and, in order to continue with the mobile efforts, additional resources would be required.  Meyer described this as “quite a dilemma” because Google Maps was then (and still is) the default navigational app on all Android devices and iPhones.  How could HopStop realistically challenge such an entrenched, pervasively-distributed competitor with unlimited resources?

In addition to competition from Google, Meyer anticipated that Bing Maps and MapQuest would enter this transit space.  Going up against 3 large brands would be more difficult than going against just one, which gave one more reason that Meyer was motivated to develop HopStop’s mobile offerings as soon as possible.

Meyer set out to improve the usability of the HopStop iPhone app as Apple was about to release its 3G phone.  Users at that time had been vocal about the need for improvement of the app.  Meyer said, “I figured that if our users didn’t care about mobile then they wouldn’t be proactively writing into us asking us to improve the app; so my choice of double-downing on mobile (and focusing on our iPhone app) became a much easier decision to make due in large part to the proactive and very vocal feedback of our passionate users.”

Results:
In less than two years, HopStop improved its user rating from 2 to 4 and has been downloaded more than 400,000 times.  The improvement was largely attributable to four large-scale updates to the app that originated directly from user feedback.  Users have been sending HopStop a few hundred emails per month with suggestions for improvement.  HopStop also monitors social networking sites for user comments about the app.  “Without such user feedback we would be flying blind,” according to Meyer, “but needless to say it’s very re-assuring to have millions of co-pilots telling us what they think and helping us to navigate the competitive landscape (much like we help them to navigate around their favorite cities).”

As a result of aggressively investing in its mobile app, HopStop leapfrogged to the #2 spot within the free Navigation category of the iTunes app marketplace in December of 2010. Additionally, the iPhone app has received recognition as a top 10 travel app by national publications such as Time Magazine, AOL Travel, Travel & Leisure Magazine and the Travel Channel.

HopStop now generates more than 30% of its total usage from mobile, compared to less than 5% two years ago, due to a multi-platform mobile strategy.  The recently released Android app has averaged almost 1,000 downloads per day December of 2010.  Mobile site improvements have helped mobile web traffic to exceed that of  the iPhone and Android apps combined.  Finally, in order to reach more than smartphone users, HopStop has introduced advanced SMS functionality to enable users to request and receive transit directions.

Meyer says of this experience, “It’s critically important to make quick, decisive decisions, particularly in business; otherwise the market will pass you by (especially when Google is your primary competitor.”