Toy Retailers Lean On Mobile Text Marketing to Push Holiday Sales
Toy retailers like Toys 'R' Us lean on mobile text marketing to propel holiday sales.
Parents have long taught children the importance of sharing their toys. This year, toy retailers are hoping parents practice a different form of sharing. As the run-up to the holiday shopping season picks up speed, more and more retailers are using the powers of mobile text marketing to help propel holiday sales, urging shoppers to share product information, sale details and other information via text message to get cash registers ringing.
Target is among the retailers to develop a mobile website that allows consumers to tap their smart phone screens to recommend a product. The user is then given an option to share that recommendation on social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, by email, or by SMS. The inclusion of the text message option is an important one, more personal than social media and more direct than email.
It also represents a relatively new way to employ mobile text marketing to reach consumers. Shared short codes have largely been utilized by retailers in opt-in campaigns that connect traditional ads and ecommerce sites. The new use recognizes that text messages have become a widely accepted form of communication, capitalizing on the recent finding that 73 percent of all adults with mobile devices are frequent text message users.
Meanwhile, toy king Toys ‘R’ Us has planned an extensive mobile campaign this season, led by its inclusion of QR Codes with its much-anticipated catalog, “The Great Big Toys ‘R’ Us Book.” Those QR Codes will direct consumers to product information on the toy store’s commerce-enabled mobile site. While that mobile site doesn’t offer the “share” feature previously mentioned, it does make use of mobile text marketing by including a tab on its mobile site that collects user cell phone information.
That 10-digit piece of information is critical in today’s marketplace. Once a retailer has that, they can share information with consumers on a whole new level.
Read more about the SMS sharing trend at Mobile Commerce Daily. For additional details about the Toys ‘R’ Us mobile campaign, visit Mobile Marketing Watch. Do you have a mobile text marketing success story you’d like to share? Post it on the TXTin Mobile Marketing comment board. We’d love to hear from you!
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Mobile campaigns make a lot of sense, especially around the holiday season for sure. I would expect many businesses will see a boom in sales stemming from their interaction directly with consumers to their cell phones. It is amazing how much technology has advanced that businesses can interact directly with consumers in such a simple way like this! Many people always have their cell phones with them, and are likely constantly looking at them whether it be to text message or talk, surf the internet, watch videos, and so on. Reaching the consumer audience has really become far too easy for businesses, especially those major ones like Target who already have a very large hold on people. It will be interesting to see how this all plays out come the holiday shopping rush after Black Friday and by the dawn of the New Year when we actually get sales reports from these companies.