Predicting What Consumers Want to Buy

Ok, so I took off two weeks and disappeared for several months.  Reminds me of Gilligan’s Island.  Back now.

Off for a 2 week family vacation in Nova Scotia — posting will resume after the break.

Cheers,
Eric

There are growing indications that Mobile coupons work. This is important for two reasons:

1. Users respond to them; and
2. You also get to track redemption.

You get to track a coupon twice: once when they click on it and once when they redeem it!

Over at Local Mobile Search, Greg Sterling talks about some of their recent survey results:

In our most recent survey (3/09, not yet published) we found that 57% of respondents agreed “strongly” or “somewhat” with the statement: “I’m interested in any ad that offers me a discount or way to save money.” Here’s a related question and answer from and online survey we conducted in August, 2008 (n=789):

He then goes on to discuss some recent experience from ValPack:

What ValPak told me in a follow up conversation on the phone is that they quietly optimized ValPak.com for mobile in March. Leiser said they were happily surprised by the adoption and response with no promotion or formal announcement.

Now for the significant information: I was told that for every four site visitors to ValPak.com on the PC the company sees one coupon print (25% response/conversion) on average. But in April, with a smaller base, the company saw four coupons selected/downloaded for every mobile site visitor (400% response/conversion). This grew from 200% in March.