Addtowallet.io offers a mobile wallet marketing platform that lets brands create, manage, and distribute digital offers and pass them on to Apple Wallet and Google Pay. Traditional coupons, loyalty cards, gift cards, and event tickets can be made visible and accessible to customers no matter where they are—dynamically updated in real-time and tracked from inception to intent-to-purchase to redemption.
After the Addtowallet platform was built, the company realized that there were not many marketers active in the digital wallet channel. The company saw an opportunity for marketers and brands to start learning about the technology as the team at Addtowallet believes the digital wallet channel is the next place for marketers to focus.
Mark Johnson, CEO of Loyalty360, spoke with Steven Douglas, Founder and CEO at Addtowallet, about how the wallet channel offers marketers the opportunity to personalize loyalty efforts and how customers’ interactions with coupons in their digital wallets can reveal an intention to buy.
Opportunities for Marketers
Addtowallet supports brands that have existing customer loyalty programs, creating simplicity and awareness while impacting engagement with its platform. The company has worked with many retail brands and has also made strides into the service-based business space. Retail brands typically send paper coupons through direct mail, and Addtowallet can transform that paper into a digital medium and port the offer directly into Apple Wallet.
“Customers can scan a QR code to make a digital coupon for their wallet,” explains Douglas. “This shows up in real-time native to the mobile device (Android or iPhone). When customers go into a store, they can present the retailer’s coupon for redemption. From there, the clerk scans it with a barcode reader.”
Marketers can identify when that pass is added to a customer’s wallet, which can indicate an intent to buy. This measurement is unique as it cannot be observed with a paper coupon. The “intent-to-buy” scenario provides an opportunity for the brand to send a reminder—via SMS or email—to potentially nudge the customer to act on the intention.
Brand outreach can be similar to running an email drip campaign. Push notifications can also be sent to wallet holders. Of course, care should be taken in how communications are made. Customers don’t want to feel that their wallet activity is being monitored. Additionally, brands want to avoid saturating customer wallets as customers can disengage easily. They can uninstall the pass to the wallet and remove the opportunity for the brand to build a relationship.
“Brands need to focus on the opportunity to engage with the customer to ensure that the intention is to buy,” emphasizes Douglas. “If that’s not their intention, they’re going to remove the coupon from their wallet. We want to encourage and educate marketers that the wallet can be used as a mechanism to get customers into the store or to make that purchase.”
Increasing Longevity and Visibility of Engagement Campaigns
Douglas shares a story of how AAA’s business line (AAA Car Care) includes automotive care and repairs, and the brand taps into the power of digital wallet engagement. However, when a customer adds a car care repair coupon to their wallet, they may not get to the store before it expires.
“With our technology, we can push a new coupon to replace the one that’s expired to encourage them to go to the store for a free oil change,” says Douglas. “While an oil change costs about $12 (internally) in the automotive business, the relationship a brand gains and the potential created for additional business is a great value.”
Douglas is also inspired by brands like Chick-fil-A, Target, Starbucks, and Home Depot, which all use a wallet mechanism to entice people to their stores. He acknowledges that these brands are not necessarily leveraging a native wallet but a mobile app. There are pros and cons to choosing the mobile app route.
“We found that mobile apps are extremely expensive to create, and it creates roadblocks for many brands to get into the wallet—or the mobile app— space,” says Douglas. “We realized we needed to reduce the barriers of getting into a mobile phone for clients. What we’ve seen with Apple Wallet and Google Pay is that they have the capability to simplify loyalty programs, making it easier for brands to access consumers from a different channel and mechanism.”
Customers Like Digital Wallets
Douglas notes that AAA Car Care witnessed 800 to 1000 customers in the store with the digital wallet (their mobile device) in their hands following the car service offer. This was a particularly telling moment for Addtowallet. Customers want to use the medium—they want to be engaged and activated.
“The surprising element was the clerks—they didn’t know ahead of time that customers would have these coupons in their digital wallets,” says Douglas. “The clerks were excited to see that coupons were being digitalized. We observed a higher redemption with digital than with paper.”
Updating Customer Loyalty Efforts
Loyalty360 talks to many brands focused on redoing, enhancing, and adding funding to their
customer loyalty programs. Addtowallet has also observed brands investing heavily in loyalty.
“We see many companies spending a lot of money upfront to design a loyalty program that is just like everyone else’s program,” admits Douglas. “They spend a ton of money setting it up before even trying it out to see if the customers really want what they’re planning to offer.”
Addtowallet advises brands to simplify their loyalty programs as much as possible to engage with customers sooner and determine if offerings are a good fit for their audience as they enter the market. Addtowallet educates clients to keep the process simple, test it, and then reinvest in it when results indicate that program efforts are paying off.
The Next “Big Thing”
The customer loyalty landscape is constantly evolving, and emerging technologies bring opportunities to strengthen customer loyalty efforts and improve member engagement. Douglas reiterates that he sees the wallet channel as the next big channel for marketers to leverage.
“It’s similar to the days when marketers didn’t feel like they belonged in the SMS channel,” explains Douglas. “The same is true for the wallet channel. Marketers might believe, ‘Yeah, we’re not a financial company. We don’t belong in the wallet. We don’t have a credit card.’ But now, brands are starting to realize that there are many items that can be added to a digital wallet.”
This is what Addtowallet wants marketers to understand. Douglas points out that if you open your physical wallet or purse, you will find more than bank cards. This is why education for brands interested in elevating their loyalty efforts is so important to the team at Addtowallet.
There are many options to consider and insights to gain. Key performance indicators (KPIs) can reveal the intent to buy, and whether customers are uninstalling or disengaging with the brand offer provided can be tracked. Understanding and paying attention to KPIs established to determine engagement success fosters better personalization, too.
Douglas also notes that many brands and marketers have prioritized using
artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance customer loyalty strategies and efforts.
“AI is a way to buy yourself more headspace and time to engage properly with all your audiences from a one-to-one perspective,” affirms Douglas. “Marketers need to get into that personalization level and find that right-time-right-moment touch. That’s where AI can help.”
The Future
Ultimately, Addtowallet is in the tech space leading to one-to-one personalization. Douglas acknowledges that the most challenging element for the company is the technology “on the other side.” Integration with brand CRMs and point-of-sale (POS) systems can cause hurdles. The company sees many point-of-sale systems that are technology dinosaurs—they don’t have the capability for barcode reading or scanning.
“That’s where a lot of brands are investing first: a better POS,” finishes Douglas. “But they don’t necessarily know what they need to ask for in barcode reading capabilities. That capability should be a one-to-one coupon. One coupon to one individual. Hyper-personalization is the way to go.”
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Quick-fire* Questions
What is your favorite word?
Efficient.
What is your least favorite word?
For marketing days: blast. Blasting emails.
What excites you?
Goals.
What do you find tiresome?
Negotiating.
What book do you like to recommend to colleagues?
The Power of Moments: Why Certain Experiences Have Extraordinary Impact, by Chip Heath and Dan Heath.
What profession other than your own would you like to attempt?
A real estate agent.
What do you enjoy doing that you don’t get to do often?
3D printing.
Who inspired you to become the person you are today?
He was a blind, old, grumpy, very clever inventor—my grandfather.
What do you typically think about at the end of the day?
Relaxing.
How do you want to be remembered by your friends and family?
Passionate about learning new things.