Mediaboss Marketing

Woobox, a two-year old social marketing platform, recently added support for Apples Passbook in its coupons app. The integration lets businesses create Passbook coupons using its system, and can even require customers to perform some sort of social action before gaining access to the coupon. For example, they may have to like the brand on Facebook or follow them on Twitter. But the company has also just added another feature which could really spur Passbook adoption at the small business level: support for Passbook coupons over SMS.

This feature is an option within the current Passbook coupon creation process Woobox just introduced last week. It means that businesses can advertise to customers to text a particular number in order to immediately receive a mobile coupon thats then stored directly in their Apple Passbook app. And most importantly, it means that businesses of all sizes can get onboard with Passbook, even if they dont have point-of-sale equipment capable of scanning QR codes, like the big-brand Passbook early adopters (Walgreens, Target, airlines, etc.) do.

I was able to test the system this morning, and it was incredibly easy to use. To those who say Passbook still has its kinks to work out, this is a drop-dead simple solution. In my test, I simply texted the word crunch to the phone number provided and immediately received a text back with a link to the coupon. All that I had to do was tap the link and the Passbook coupon appeared.

From there, you can tap the blue Add button to save the coupon to your Passbook app, if you choose. Of course, if a customer was planning to use the coupon immediately, that step isnt necessary they could just launch the coupon and show it to the cashier at point-of-sale without storing it for later use (as would be appropriate for one-time use coupons, for example).

Whats really clever about the Passbook couponing system that Woobox has created are the various configuration options that let businesses optionally create restrictions and other steps users must perform before theyre allowed access to the coupon. In this case, instead of the SMS-sentlink directly opening the Passbook coupon on the iPhones screen, it would direct the customer to an offer web page where they might have to take some other action, like become a Facebook fan of the business, follow them on Twitter, or tweet the offer to their Twitter followers, for example.

The businesses can also restrict the coupons to one per customer, configure them for one-time use, limit the total number of coupons that can be generated, and set expiration dates during the coupon creation process. The system supports the use of coupon codes as an alternative to scanning the QR code. QR code scanning is supported the business can use any scanning app to do so but its not integrated with point-of-sale systems. Instead, the scan will display whether a coupon has been redeemed. According to Woobox founder George DeCarlo, businesses are more likely to have a system that supports coupon codes in place already, which is why this method makes more sense.

The demand just isnt there [for POS integration using QR codes], because theres very low-tech simple solutions that they can use, he says. With Woobox, businesses can either download a list of coupon codes that Woobox generates for them, or they can upload a list of their own coupon codes to print on the vouchers. Weve had some big brand restaurant chainsexport out a list of codes from their point-of-sale system because they may not be set up to scan a QR code on a pass. But they can use the code thats on the front of the pass and type that into the POS and validate that coupon as legitimate, he says.

Woobox, for those unfamiliar, works with over a million brands that use its apps, primarily on Facebook. It has worked with Starbucks, Sams Club, Nordstrom, Warner Bros., Wendys, A&P, Quiznos, Jiffy Lube, Cold Stone Creamery, and many others, including small, mom-and-pop businesses. It offers coupon apps, sweepstakes apps, static HTML tab apps for Facebook, Pinterest apps (including a new Pin to Win app), and more. The company now sees over a quarter of a billion Facebook page app visits per month, to give you an idea of scale.

In other words, Woobox has the reach to begin making something like SMS to Apple Passbook a thing.

Continue reading here:
Social Marketing Platform Woobox Lets Businesses Send Apple Passbook Coupons Via SMS