While many merchants have embraced geofencing to deliver coupons in real-time to mobile users who are nearby a location, the redemption rates on these offers can be low. With this in mind, Quiznos is delivering ads to users who had visited a similar quick-service restaurant in the past 30 days.

“Location is important to make sure consumers are in the right geographic location, but it’s not about reaching them when they’re on the way to eat lunch; it’s about reaching them while they’re in the planning process,” said Tim Kraus, senior interactive manager for Quiznos, Denver, CO.

“Most marketers today are engaging in location-based advertising through geo-fencing – targeting everyone in the same areas, within a circle, with the same ad,” he said. “Through Sense Networks, we’re strategically moving away from that and targeting based on decisions consumers have made in the past.

“This is more about targeting ahead of time to influence where they’re going by knowing past behavior (i.e., they enjoy subs) and what they’re already planning to do (i.e. eat lunch).”

Mobile targeting at scale
Quiznos worked with Sense Networks on a test  last fall and based on the success of that effort, is continuing with the strategy this year.

The mobile ads were delivered to mobile users between the ages of 18-34 who had been at similar quick-service restaurants over the previous 30-days.

Additionally, the ads were delivered to users who were within a three-mile radius of a Quiznos in the Portland, OR, market.

When users clicked on the in-app ad, they were taken to a landing page where they could download the offer for $1 off a sandwich.

At the conclusion of the program, Quiznos saw nearly 3.7 million new impressions and had a 20 percent boost in coupon redemptions within the Portland area compared to other markets where the national campaign was running. There was no mobile component to the strategy in the other markets.

Mobile is integral
Mobile is playing a larger role in Quiznos’ marketing efforts as mobile traffic continues to grow as well as email open rates on mobile

“Mobile’s role in marketing is increasing every year and continues to be an integral piece to Quiznos efforts,” Mr. Kraus said. “It is not the primary marketing tool we use, but the results from our mobile campaigns continue to look impressive. 

“We are seeing mobile devices as the primary tool for reading email communications from Quiznos with 40 percent of our email subscribers accessing their content on a mobile device,” he said.   

“On Quiznos.com and other Web properties, we see a large increase and percentage of traffic directly from mobile devices.”

Planned purchase
Much of the focus in leveraging a mobile user’s location information for marketing purposes has been on where a user is physically a specific moment in time. However, real-time location has no correlation to whether a user purchases or visits a store, per Sense Networks.

Sense Networks tracks mobile location behavior to build profiles of users who are regular fast-food shoppers or frequent mass merchant visitors, for example, so that marketers can send content that is relevant to users.

The company uses real-time bidding to reach users of a variety of apps such as weather, news and social apps, ensuring that each impressions meets the campaign criteria before bidding.

“If I told you there was $50 off a plasma TV you probably wouldn’t hang up on me and run to the store,” said David Petersen, CEO of Sense Networks, New York.  

“Most of us plan purchases, so what you want to be able to do is advertise to people in advance when they are in the decision process,” he said. “Advertising to someone because they are near Target right now doesn’t really tend to really draw people to Target because we plan, we don’t shop on a whim.

“Retailers recognize this and want to get into the consumer’s decision cycle.”

Final Take
Chantal Tode is associate editor on Mobile Commerce Daily, New York