Social media, bots drivers of customer engagement, coupon delivery - Juniper Research study

The number of coupons issued via mobile and online channels will grow by more than 60% by 2022, increasing from 224 billion in 2016 to 362 billion in 2021, according to Mobile & Online Coupons: Loyalty & Beacon Engagement 2016-2021 which has also found that the growth in digital coupon volumes can, in large part, be attributed to a greater retailer emphasis on the provision of highly targeted, personalised offers to consumers.

Brands will increasingly deploy bots, artificial intelligence applications which can interact with consumers via social media and messaging applications such as Facebook Messenger. The research cited Domino’s Pizza and Iceland Air as companies which have already utilised this strategy. Meanwhile, mass adoption of social media has spawned a number of dedicated coupon aggregators operating within that space, including Coupy in India and PennyCat in North America.

The research also found that large scale deployments of beacons - Bluetooth devices which can send offers to consumers whilst they shop - have been constrained. The research claimed that the key hurdle was the need for consumers to have opted in to online engagement with a brand or retailer, either through having installed a store’s application on their smartphone, or to be following their account on social media.

However, the research argued that with some beacons (such as Google’s Eddystone) allowing a wider range of online engagement channels including web browser interaction, retailers will have a far more encompassing product moving forwards.

Furthermore, as research author Lauren Foye pointed out, beacons enable retailers to collect and utilise a raft of valuable, relevant data points: “For retailers one of the major tools is knowing their customers. Tracking user movements in store via beacons allows for targeted marketing and offers, this can also aid in providing invaluable data and statistics to a company, this then later applied to drive sales.”