How effective are mobile offers?

A new survey sheds light on the value of mobile as a channel for customer promotions and interaction.

According to the annual 2024 Consumer Insights study from mobile engagement platform Vibes, 75% of more than 1,000 surveyed mobile-centric consumers said that text messages from brands routinely drive them to make purchases. SMS text messages have a 98% open rate.

In addition, nearly six-in-10 respondents said they have used a mobile wallet-stored loyalty card when making an offline or online purchase, and more than half (54%) of respondents have made a purchase based on a mobile wallet offer they received from a brand.

In other mobile wallet-related findings, slightly more than half (52%) of respondents said they use mobile wallet for storing items other than credit cards, such as loyalty cards, offers, coupons, gift cards and event tickets. One-in-our respondents said that they now use their mobile wallet passes more than once a week, with surveyed mobile wallet users 40% more likely to also currently be signed up to receive text messages from brands.

“Every time we’ve conducted the Consumer Insights survey, we’ve seen tremendous year-over-year gains in consumer enthusiasm for SMS from the brands they love, as well as how they’re adopting and using mobile wallet,” said Alex Campbell, Vibes’ co-Founder & CIO. “Vibes’ comprehensive research has shown that marketers see 19x more revenue per message from their campaigns that use both SMS and mobile wallet, as opposed to just sending SMS messages by themselves.” 

Survey reveals how in-store shoppers use smartphones

In other recent mobile-related research findings, according to the 2023 Consumer Product Content Benchmark Report from product content orchestration platform 1WorldSync, 87% of surveyed U.S. and Canadian shoppers use their smartphone to research a product while in-store at least some of the time.

Popular information in-store shoppers research via smartphone include price comparisons (72%), customer reviews (69%) and detailed product descriptions (52%). In data indicating that many consumers shop across channels, two-thirds (66%) of respondents have purchased an item online in the last 12 months that they previously only ever bought in-store.

The most popular items purchased online that were previously only bought in-store are clothing & accessories (50%), health & personal care (42%) and beauty & cosmetics (35%). The survey also found that six-in-10 (61%) in-store shopping trips begin online, a 25% increase from 2022.