Armed with coupons and sales promos, consumers do research via their smartphones while in-store. A WSL Strategic Retail study showed that 56% look to their devices to compare prices in-store, while 46% continue to seek coupons or discounts and 53% use their photo feature to snap images of product, according to eMarketer.

Through its mAcquisition solution, Hipcricket® offers mobile advertising, messaging, mobile web and Applications to provide brands and agencies the ability to reach and acquire customers in the mobile environment.

Mobile campaigns can be integrated with existing digital and offline communications and databases to trigger valuable additional messages based on response.

Mobile can be a very effective customer acquisition channel. Fundamentally, the major benefits of using mobile to acquire customers are many:

• Make existing print channel more effective. Add a mobile accessible URL or short code on all your print materials as a standard way to do business moving forward, just like you added your Internet URL a decade ago. Encourage your readers to interact with your mobile offering.
• Adding another channel to the mix should lead to increased exposure. A Nielsen study reported a 13 percent growth in traffic for Internet sites that added a mobile component.
• Reach to demographics that are hard or expensive to reach otherwise. Young, Hispanics, urban youth, and busy professionals are heavy mobile users.
• Mobile is the best medium to reach customers in a timely manner. Don’t disappoint customers who read about a one day special a week later!
• Make offers more convenient for customers. Allow users to receive coupons directly to their mobile phone. No more need for scissors.