Following Russell’s earlier thoughts on Google’s missing mobile coupons, I’ve got my own tale of mishandled fulfillment. A few weeks ago, news of Starbucks’ summer-themed mobile marketing campaign was making its way around the net. Being the intrepid type, I figured I’d give it a shot, and it was pretty cool, actually — the coolest part being that you could respond to the trivia questions with images as well as text, and still get a quick reply.
The effort was made worthwhile in some sense by the prizes on offer: I got a $5 Starbucks card as well as a coupon for a free 4-pack of some new canned iced coffee they’ve got. But that was tempered a bit when I was notified I’d receive the coupons in the mail. That was a little over three weeks ago, and I got the card and coupons in the mail this afternoon. I’d pretty much forgotten they were coming, which I guess may or may not be a good thing, but it seems like Starbucks could have generated a little more excitement by instantly fulfilling the offers — something it could have done, at least in some part, via mobile.
It seems like sending the Starbucks gift card via SMS should be pretty straightforward, I’d imagine their POS system supports manual entry of card numbers. The other coupon is made a little more complicated, as it appears I’m supposed to redeem it at a grocery store rather than Starbucks. Complicated, though probably not impossible. This isn’t a new issue, but it would certainly seem that a cool, relatively new mobile marketing campaign deserves some mobile fulfillment, rather than telling users to sit around and wait three weeks for the mail.
[tags]mobile, mobile marketing, starbucks[/tags]
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