The perks of downloading Starbucks App

It’s 8:30 PM and you’re frantically finding a conducive place to burn your midnight oil. With finals being 2 weeks away, you can’t afford to waste your time away. Knowing the usual Starbucks outlet that you’ve always been going to would be closed in 2 hours time, you look for the nearest 24-hour outlet on the Starbucks App.

As you scroll past the App, you noticed a push notification under ‘Rewards’ that got you elevated.  Tapping to that navigation tab, you were delighted to learn that 60 stars (allowing you to redeem one free drink) has been collected. This motivates you, even more, to study as you get to grab your free drink.

Surprised at the number of stars you have collected, you search for your history payments and noticed how much you have been spending at Starbucks for the past weeks (guilty).

As you arrived in store, you made your way to the cashier and instantaneously ordered your go-to drink. You easily scanned your barcode from the App to redeem your free Starbucks drink.

This scenario shows how the Starbucks Mobile App and Payment have successfully placed itself in one of the top brand apps that customers are actively using. Starbucks has managed to maximize its mobile marketing with the aim to drive and engage its customers with the brand for a long time. In fact, statistics by Similar Web have shown a dramatic increase in the number of its daily active users in the first half of 2018. It is shown that the number of users was 10.6% higher than June last year!

Especially with how highly dependent we are on our mobile phones today, it is to no surprise that mobile marketing has been on the rise. People have become so plastered to their mobile that the idea of not using it for a few minutes might just become impossible for some.

Based on statistics, the average mobile data usage used by Singaporeans have increased from 15.78 petabytes to 16.47 petabytes by the first quarter of 2018. (The Statistics Portal) This further proves the heavy usage of mobile phones in today’s society and also, how much data are used for social media and applications. Apart from the obvious reason behind this statistics, it also shows a promising future for mobile marketing.

But what exactly is ‘mobile marketing’?

It is defined as “any marketing activity conducted through a ubiquitous network to which consumers are constantly connected using a personal mobile device.” (Kaplan, 2014)

Mobile marketing is also known to be personal, interactive, time relevant and location independent. A few tools of mobile marketing includes Apps and App payment. And as depicted in the scenario exemplified above, Starbucks mobile App has it all.

App features –

• Store Locator: Nearest store indicated based on customer’s geographic location.
• Easy Payment: Scan barcode for the instantaneous transaction.
• Track Rewards: Customers are able to easily track their Starbucks ‘stars’.
• Check Balance: Able to check card balance and top up on-the-go. In fact, the balance brightly appears at the main page when App is first opened.
• Personalized message panel: Includes a personalized Message system to inform customers of the latest offers and products they are currently having. Contest and quizzes are also included for a more interactive panel.

Starbucks App has integrated all of its features seamlessly in ensuring customers go through a smooth process and overall experience when they use the App.  With having App payment as an alternative method for customers, this may change the service process dramatically when they’re in-store. Hence, the App should always ensure a seamless process for customers.

Especially with the rise of cashless community,  Starbuck’s App payment has adapted itself in this growing trend that changes service process dramatically. A recent study by Google has shown more than 40% of online transactions are done today. In this fast-paced and highly advanced era, it is no doubt that App payments would be preferred by more and more people for its fast, accuracy and efficiency payment method.

Apart from that, Starbucks could easily connect closer to its customers through delivering personalized and relevant information in the App. They can easily depend on it to deliver a fast and relevant information on their cup of coffee.

So, for all the Starbucks fans out there, this App must have been one of the favorite App of all time! (You can never get enough of the push notification when there are rewards you can redeem)

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With all that has been mentioned, mobile marketing is still not sufficient to stand on its own. It is not mutually exclusive with traditional marketing. For example, integrating mobile advertising with the execution of sales promotion in the marketing plan is beneficial to drive awareness of the business’ products. With that in mind, more and more companies around the world are seen investing in mobile ads over the years.

Hence, consumers today could expect to see more ads coming up on their mobile applications! But with the availability of highly advanced technology today, the idea of mobile advertising may no longer be deemed intrusive and marketers could rely on big data to deliver advertising that are more relevant and enjoyable to consumers.

(Read about big data and IoT here.)

So even though mobile marketing alone may not be enough for businesses to rely on, this promising platform should not be disregarded to achieve better brand awareness and exposure!