Apple's Passbook used to drive coupon campaign at UK restaurant chain
UK restaurant chain Harvester has taken advantage of the Passbook feature in iOS 6 to drive a wave of customer interest and new sales.
Looking for a way to drive customer traffic and increase buying, Harvester and their technology partner developed a voucher campaign based on Passbook. Harvester created a coupon that could be used at any Harvester restaurant across the United Kingdom, with users able to redeem the coupon directly from their mobile devices.
The campaign allowed customers to get ?5 off their bill when spending ?30 or more.
Harvester's campaign was the first of its kind in the UK to take advantage of Apple's Passbook app. Within two clicks, users received a unique voucher code on their devices, stored automatically within Passbook. The voucher was redeemed when the customer paid the bill, with restaurant workers able to input the voucher code into their point-of-sale terminals, allowing Harvester to track the efficacy of the campaign.
"The campaign exceeded our expectations," a Harvester representative told Millennial Media.
Harvester issued almost 16,000 vouchers in two weeks of campaign operation. Of those, almost 700 were redeemed during the course of the campaign. Overall, the campaign had a cost per action of ?3.41.
"Clearly Apple Passbook users love a great deal as much as they love their technology," said a Harvester rep. "[The] platform gave us real-time data and secure redemption we needed to control the offer with confidence."
Launched with the release of iOS 6, Apple's Passbook allows users to store items like digital tickets, reward cards, and more. The feature has seen some uptake from a number of large service providers and venues. Major League Baseball, for instance, has been steadily integrating Passbook into its ticketing operations at a number of ballparks.
In December, American Airlines and Sephora expressed excitement quicker-than-expected growth of iOS users storing boarding passes and more in Passbook. Credit card company Discover now allows users to store and redeem eCertificates through Apple's Passbook app.
Looking for a way to drive customer traffic and increase buying, Harvester and their technology partner developed a voucher campaign based on Passbook. Harvester created a coupon that could be used at any Harvester restaurant across the United Kingdom, with users able to redeem the coupon directly from their mobile devices.
The campaign allowed customers to get ?5 off their bill when spending ?30 or more.
Harvester's campaign was the first of its kind in the UK to take advantage of Apple's Passbook app. Within two clicks, users received a unique voucher code on their devices, stored automatically within Passbook. The voucher was redeemed when the customer paid the bill, with restaurant workers able to input the voucher code into their point-of-sale terminals, allowing Harvester to track the efficacy of the campaign.
"The campaign exceeded our expectations," a Harvester representative told Millennial Media.
Harvester issued almost 16,000 vouchers in two weeks of campaign operation. Of those, almost 700 were redeemed during the course of the campaign. Overall, the campaign had a cost per action of ?3.41.
"Clearly Apple Passbook users love a great deal as much as they love their technology," said a Harvester rep. "[The] platform gave us real-time data and secure redemption we needed to control the offer with confidence."
Launched with the release of iOS 6, Apple's Passbook allows users to store items like digital tickets, reward cards, and more. The feature has seen some uptake from a number of large service providers and venues. Major League Baseball, for instance, has been steadily integrating Passbook into its ticketing operations at a number of ballparks.
In December, American Airlines and Sephora expressed excitement quicker-than-expected growth of iOS users storing boarding passes and more in Passbook. Credit card company Discover now allows users to store and redeem eCertificates through Apple's Passbook app.
Comments
Quote:
Originally Posted by jasonfj
"Have you ever been to a Harvester...?"
I haven't been there, and it may very well be a crappy restaurant. That doesn't matter. Some have dinner at McDonald, some at a steakhouse. The point is they are using a cool technology to replace coupons. You phone stores everything nowadays.
Next up: International Harvester!
Quote:
Originally Posted by AppleInsider
[...] Harvester's campaign was the first of its kind in the UK to take advantage of Apple's Passbook app. Within two clicks, users received a unique voucher code on their devices, stored automatically within Passbook. The voucher was redeemed when the customer paid the bill, with restaurant workers able to input the voucher code into their point-of-sale terminals, allowing Harvester to track the efficacy of the campaign.
I'm glad to see Passbook is finally being used for something other than coffee and flying, but I still don't really get exactly what it's supposed to be and what need it's supposed to fill? Couldn't this have been just as easily accomplished via email? Text message?
I'm trying to understand what this whole Passbook thing is about, but I'm just not getting it. Of course, I'm just not that bright so it's no surprise...
Technology? Coupons?
Why not just drop the price by $5 for a certain period of time?
Quote:
Originally Posted by markroder
As a UK resident, I'd say Harvester is much more in the Android user demographic.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Michael Scrip
Technology? Coupons?
Why not just drop the price by $5 for a certain period of time?
Away with you... with your common sense and simple solutions.
Me neither. In fact, I've never opened the app. Just dumped it in a 'AppleZooi' folder.
Congratulations to Harvester - this is a very positive move for the UK, the FnB industry and of course the consumer.
It also further shows the extremely high ROI for Passbook campaigns, and while this might have cost of £3.41 per action, this will be the cost per initial action. By using perpetual coupons, companies can easily simply send a push update (with a new offer) to their customers (holding Passes in Passbook).
In addition to coupons, innovative companies worldwide are seeing significant customer attraction (and retention) by offering Passbook Passes (as stored value cards, loyalty cards and season tickets).
It's still early days for Passbook as a platform (think of when the app store was only 6 months old and now look at it) but innovative businesses worldwide are starting to play with this and using services like PassKit makes it very easy for any business of any size to offer their customers cool looking, engaging and 'active' digital wallet content. In contrast to today, 4 years from now the norm will be to issue a Pass (or your digital wallet/Passbook) as opposed to that plastic or paper card that so often gets forgotten or mislaid in the traditional wallet.
Actually that was a reference to an old ad campaign Harvester ran in the Eighties here in the UK.
Although the aspersions remain!