Mobile wallets have been talked about within the loyalty industry for quite some time now, but, according to a new report from Urban Airship, more businesses are jumping onboard amid a significant consumer shift regarding brand interaction.
According to The State of Mobile Wallet Marketing report, regardless of age, gender, and location, consumers want to use mobile wallets to communicate with brands about sales, offers, coupons, loyalty programs, and more.
The report surveyed 1,000 U.S. and 1,000 U.K. adults to analyze their attitudes, expectations, and adoption of mobile wallets.
“Businesses are looking for new lightweight, service-oriented ways to communicate with customers on mobile, and our findings make it clear that mobile wallets will lead the next wave of mobile engagement,” said Brett Caine, CEO and president of Urban Airship. “There is a shift underway in how consumers want to interact with brands. They want relevant, personal and useful content with as little friction as possible. Billions of dollars are at stake as offers, loyalty, ticketing and membership shed paper and plastic to become items in a mobile wallet, and virtually any type of business can gain tremendous advantage from the simple, persistent and addressable customer connection they provide.”
Mobile wallets are native to iOS and Android with Apple Wallet and Android Pay allowing smartphone users to receive and store content like event tickets, boarding passes, coupons and loyalty cards, as well as make mobile payments with credit and debit cards. Brands are increasingly using the non-payment capabilities of mobile wallets to reach and engage consumers, and the report finds that customers are responding. Overall, the majority of consumers (54%) have now used mobile wallets, with 30% of respondents using them in the past week. There are large gaps, however, between what consumers have in their mobile wallets and what they want, suggesting strong demand for a wide-range of purpose-built mobile wallet items.
“GameStop's PowerUp Rewards™ program is one of the fastest growing loyalty programs in retail and we continue to make enhancements so rewards can be issued monthly and customized to each customer's preferences,” said Darin Smith, Senior Director of GameStop’s PowerUp Rewards program. “Mobile wallets give us another highly visible and convenient way to reach more customers with the personalized benefits of our exclusive loyalty program.”
Additionally, today Urban Airship released the latest version of its mobile wallet offering, rebranded as Urban Airship Reach, an easy-to-use solution supporting diverse, large-scale wallet engagement campaigns for brands like GameStop, POLITICO Europe, Sprint and SXSW. New user interface enhancements enable non-technical business users to import data from other systems to instantly create individualized passes en masse. Together with the industry's first performance based pricing, Urban Airship Reach makes it easier for any business to take advantage of mobile wallet marketing with cross-platform passes that update in real-time, are location-aware and can message customers on their smartphone lockscreens -- all without building an app.