Natural hair care products brand and retailer Carol’s Daughter launched a mobile application five months ago and has since seen a 45 percent mobile coupon redemption rate along with a 4.1x return on investment.

The app included quizzes, instructional videos, store locators and mobile coupons and was powered by Funmobility. The new mobile coupon and loyalty program helped Carol’s Daughter capture data about consumers, increase foot traffic, enhance consumer relationships and reach new consumers.

“What was interesting about it was that consumers totally figure this stuff out pretty fast,” said Adam Lavine, cofounder/CEO of Funmobility, Pleasanton, CA.  “If you incentivize them to do something they’re totally going to go do it if there’s a little reward in there somewhere. It’s almost less about the offer than the fact that they get a reward.

“What we’re doing in the app is that we’re asking the consumer questions about their hair type and their concerns about their hair and what Carol’s Daughter did is they figured out based on how somebody answers those questions what offer would work for them,” he said. “So I think that was also a big factor in the high offer rate.

“You want to get the right offer targeted for the right person. You can do all this fancy data analytics or you could just ask someone, and that’s sort of the beauty of surveys.”

Mobile coupons
Carol’s Daughter came to Funmobility because it wanted a quick-to-market mobile solution to reach its consumers in a new way (see story).

The company then created an app using Funmobility’s SmartWidgets which can be customized for different brands.

The Carol’s Daughter app includes SmartWidgets for store check-in, videos, surveys and news.

Consumers can earn points by downloading the app and engaging with its features. Once they earn 100 points, they receive a $10 promo code that they can redeem at any Carol’s Daughter store or online.

Carol’s Daughter also asked consumers to fill out surveys so that it could serve more personalized offers.

For example, consumers could take a survey about hair care. When they completed it, they would be taken to a page that corresponded with the consumer’s responses.

Mobile results
Five months after launching the app, Carol’s Daughter has seen 4.1x ROI and 45 percent coupon redemption rate.

Additionally, 48 percent of consumers participated in the apps surveys.

Carol’s Daughter also plans to leverage consumer feedback to keep improving the app.

For example, consumers complained that they had to link their Facebook account in order to earn points, so Carol’s Daughter will be making that optional. Consumers will soon be able to earn points by linking to Facebook instead of it being required.

Besides for the complaints about the Facebook, consumers provided great feedback for the app, per Mr. Levine.

“Everybody loves to feel like they’re getting a special offer or a deal,” Mr. Lavine said. “Coupons have been around since the late 1800s. In that sense we’re not doing anything new, we just have a new medium to reach the customer in better measuring capabilities. We’re really building on a grand American tradition of promotions and incentives using coupons.

“Consumers are way out ahead of where marketers are in terms of their mobile behaviors,” he said. “It’s interesting that a lot of marketers are putting mobile in the same silo as digital, but it’s a different channel.

“I think it’s imperative for marketers to catch up with where their consumers are. Over 50 percent of consumers look at their phone in a retail environment, if you’re not reacting to that reality you’re going to get left behind.”

Final Take
Rebecca Borison is editorial assistant on Mobile Commerce Daily, New York