Introduction

Over the past few years, the retail landscape has undergone a substantial transformation following the advancements in technology and changing consumer behavior and needs. As digital transformation reaches new levels, businesses are striving hard to adapt to new technologies and find ways to acquire new customers and engage and retain the existing ones. Data shows that consumers spent over $860 billion dollars online with U.S merchants in 2020, up an incredible 44.0% YoY.

Rise in Digital Coupons

With such a consumer-driven economy on such a large scale when E-commerce is just at the doorstep of digital transformation, consumers are constantly looking for the best deals and coupons to save money, and brands across all verticals are leaning more towards delivering digital coupons to their end-users to drive sales and brand awareness. There were a total of 307 billion coupons that were distributed throughout the U.S starting 2016 and the total value of coupons distributed in the U.S was reported to be $407 billion. www.Spendmenot.com reported that approximately 31 billion digital coupons were redeemed worldwide in 2019, and the total savings from coupons was reported to be at $3.6 billion. Digital coupon redemption is projected to surpass $90 billion by 2022 – up from $31 billion in 2019, as reported by both Retailwire and Juniper Research.

Why Coupon Now?

The traditional way brands and businesses advertised promotions using paper coupons and in-store coupons are now long gone. As the gap between paper and mobile coupons narrows, a majority (52%) of digital shoppers prefer to receive discounts and offers over a text message from their favorite brands, according to  RetailMeNot. For the longest time, brands and businesses relied heavily on using Email as the primary medium of promoting their deals and promotions to attract new customers and retain existing one’s, but that didn’t offer the growth the businesses were looking for given the Email open rate to be just about 20%.

As smartphone usage reached over 90%, SMS became the preferred way for every consumer to connect with businesses they like. There were 134 million mobile coupon users reported in the United States in 2018, up from 124.1 million in the previous year.

With an open rate of 98% and that over 90% of SMS are opened within 15 minutes of receipt, it’s a no-brainer why enterprises across various industry verticals are rapidly adapting SMS as their primary channel for customer communication.

StarStar Mobile extends the capabilities of the underlying Smart Dial Platform by providing a digital solution for brands and businesses to deliver coupons, deals, and promotions straight to their users mobile device via SMS and MMS using CouponNow.

How it Works?

The underlying Smart Dial Platform makes it a simple 2-Step process that enables your brand to deliver a coupon, a deal, or a promotion straight to your end user’s mobile device.

CouponNow eliminates the need for an end user to download a mobile app on their device or having a user go through an extensive search for a deal or a coupon on the internet or among plethora of websites.

Instead, the end-user can simply dial a number from their mobile phone and get a coupon delivered straight to their mobile device in a matter of seconds in an easy-to-follow 2-Step process.

Example: User Journey with Coupon Aggregators such as Groupon

Step 1. Go to Google.com or Groupon.com on your mobile web browser and search for coupons in your area

Step 2. Click on one of the links in the search results

Step 3. User is now at Groupon.com where he might be asked to download the app in order to view the coupon

Step 4. Enter your location where you want the coupon

User Journey with CouponNow

Step 1. Dial **Coupon from your phone

Step 2: Click on the link in the SMS and you have your coupon

The example above shows how an end-user can get access to the coupons relative to your business in an easy-to-follow 2-step process. The user can simply dial a number from their mobile device and CouponNow can deliver the coupons based on the user’s location in a matter of seconds.

CouponNow not only shortens the entire user journey of finding a coupon in their area or location, but it also eliminates any further need to download an application onto their mobile device before getting access to the coupon. The 2-step user journey can not only keep your end-users engaged, the whole process can help a business cultivate long-term loyal customers and grow sales and brand value.

Dial **Coupon to see how it works