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NFC Smart Posters will affect Marketing.
Smart Poster Proximity Marketing: Adding value to Brands by connecting with consumers wherever they are and whenever they want.
We live in a world in which soon NFC Smart Phones linked to NFC Smart Posters will change the way we access marketing messages and interact with Brands.
Loyalty services including discount coupons and promotional vouchers delivered to an NFC Smart Phone from an NFC Smart Poster offer the possibility of overcoming the limitations and challenges of marketing traditional loyalty programs.
Marketing should ‘Pull’ NOT ‘Push’
With a Smart Poster solution, companies can showcase their Brand more effectively by enabling consumers to interact with a loyalty program and to be rewarded wherever they are and whenever they want to interact with the Brand. The consumer reacts with the Brand and ‘pulls’ information an alternative to the Brand ‘pushing’ marketing messages at the consumer. This ‘pull’ strategy is a example of Seth Godin’s Permission Based Marketing. The consumer will give a Brand permission to communicate with them simply by holding their NFC Smart Phone in close proximity to an NFC Tag imbedded in a NFC enabled Smart Poster and a connection is established.
The user experience of an NFC Smart Phone loyalty and vouchering program is compelling. Consider a promotion in which consumers receive a notification from the Smart Poster to their NFC Smart Phone that a coupon, discount or promotional offer is available to them. They tap their NFC Smart Phone the NFC app opens the NFC coupon which appears on their NFC Smart Phone screen.
Consumers can then go to the company, to their physical location or website and cash in their NFC Coupon using their Near Field Communication app on their Smart Phone. This contactless technology allows data exchange from the customer’s NFC Smart Phone to the company’s NFC Reader.
Instead of having paper-based vouchers or offers stuck in a bureau, car or handbag, Smart Phone Technology delivered vouchers are instantly available on a consumer’s NFC Smart Phone. In fact, the NFC device can remind a user that an offer is about to end. As Proximity Marketing become more widely available, the application can also alert users from a Smart Poster when they are in proximity to a store where they have an active offer pending. Former RFID Proximity Marketing initiatives using Bluetooth Technology that ‘pushed’ offers at consumers were invasive.
This type of marketing has already demonstrated value to companies. A Harris Interactive survey, found that one-third of Americans who are currently signed up for mobile marketing alerts indicate that such services influence their decision to go into stores, and 27 percent report that such marketing programs have influenced their buying decisions in physical retail locations. Smart Posters using NFC can be very influential in new customer acquisitions, fostering loyalty programmes and Brand recognition; it will make it easier for consumers to communicate with Brands.
The Smart Poster Value Proposition
The value proposition that retailers offer to their NFC Smart Phone consumers can then be dramatically improved with Smart Poster Web Based Management Software. By understanding consumer needs and preferences in more detail, organisations can invite consumers to ‘pull’ offers in a timely way. They can develop a more comprehensive view of how, when and where a consumer is interacting with the Brand, away from a physical location or a website. This enables a company to leverage predictive analytics to reveal consumer trends and tendencies which can be used to encourage more frequent visits and purchases.
Proximity Marketing: Integration with social media
Integration with social media is another innovative and important aspect of the Smart Poster Proximity Marketing system. There are tools like the “social listening tool,” which mines specific websites to see what customers are saying about a Brand, then matching that information against general customer segments to reveal trends in perceptions about products and services. It’s a way for companies to harness the chatter on social media sites to their advantage. The Smart Poster Web based Management Software has the capability to track its promotions they can see when and where their marketing messages are received. The retailer can also monitor social networking chat, see how often an offer is then mentioned on sites such as Facebook—then watch the click-through rates. This helps the company see how effectively its customers are marketing on the company’s behalf and encourage customers to foster Brand awareness.
(NFC) Near Field Communication apps
NFC applications are also an important part of the mix. At their best, such apps are more than just opportunities to sell more products. They need to be resources that people will want to return to for information. For example, the Best Buy app for the iPhone shows detailed information about products a customer is interested in, as well as user reviews. We will sure see many apps developed for Google’s Android OS Gingerbread that powers NFC Smart Phones like the new NFC Samsung Nexus S. One of major new features of Android 2.3.3 is NFC (Near Field Communication) development capabilities. Google felt that the functionality wasn’t comprehensive enough for developers when they released Android 2.3 in December. With the latest update developers now have a new set of API’s, which they can communicate with different NFC standards
(NFC) Contactless Payments
Integrated NFC contactless payments are critical as well. The actual transaction can take place either by using a NFC Smart Phone as an equivalent to a credit card or wallet—payments are taken directly through the phone—by using NFC Technology to execute a payment directly. NFC capabilities give the Smart Phone a kind of “point and tap” functionality on the phone: Imagine pointing a phone at a vending machine from about 6 centimetres away and paying for a drink through the device rather than fumbling for coins or bills.
(NFC) Electronic Wallet
In this sense, the NFC Smart Phone functions as a wallet—that is, an electronic wallet that can hold one or more payment mechanisms such as credit and debit cards. A specific sequence of Near Field Communication enables the system to verify if the person has sufficient funds in his or her wallet and then to authorize a deposit or withdrawal transaction. In a shop the transaction is always done in close Proximity to an NFC Reader and is a very secure encrypted way of purchasing.
A Satisfying Consumer Experience
A Smart Poster rewards program can deliver a more satisfying experience for participating consumers. Most loyalty participants rarely know their loyalty points balance except on the day they receive a letter or monthly e-mail update, and then the process of looking through catalogues or trawling through pages on a Website to consider redemptions is arduous.
With an NFC loyalty program, on the other hand, it’s easy. Consumers simply check their real-time points balance from their NFC Smart Phone. Then they pull up the catalogue on their NFC Smart Phone screen, browse through available products and services, and redeem their loyalty points with a few easy clicks on the NFC Smart Phone. Delivery is processed immediately. Easier for the consumer, and for the company as well, which now has less need to print and distribute expensive catalogues.
Pass it on Possibilities
The NFC Smart Phone is capable of passing information and coupons on to friends with similar enabled devices simply by tapping them together, giving promotions the chance of going viral.
Ultimately, combining NFC Smart Phones with Smart Posters, couponing, discount programs and promotions can increase the redemption ratio of coupons and discount vouchers from the right kinds of consumers—both because offers are targeted to users who wish to receive information, and because cashing in offers is far easier. This will increase overall consumer satisfaction with the programme and the desire of a consumer to continue communicating and doing business with the Brand.
There’s something more than meets the eye in those posters that have been part of our urban lives all these years. Yet colourful and sometimes riveting as they were, those posters used to be still and “lifeless.” Nowadays, chances are that soon you will find them coming to life, in a figurative sense, and be able to interact with them, las if you were in front of a desktop or laptop monitor.
The new-generation promotional posters are embedded with NFC Tags that can communicate with devices that are Near Field Communication (NFC) enabled.
What is Near Field Communication (NFC) ?
NFC is the widely-accepted term used to describe a new technology which utilizes applications based on a short range, high frequency, wireless communication protocol over distances of less than 10 centimeters.
NFC tags and NFC chips in mobile phones, cards and other similar devices allow digital information (such as contact details) to be exchanged by putting those devices within range, or by touching them altogether.
NFC’S compatibility with existing RFID (or radio-frequency identification) standards allows great flexibility and versatility in its operations, such as in contactless payments and ticketing systems, collecting/redeeming vouchers, rating or reviewing products or services, accessing information, and purchasing goods from a smart poster. That might not be all. As they say, the best of NFC-supported mobile phones and devices is yet to come. The Samsung Nexus has NFC chip fitted and in future all Smart Phones will be NFc enabled. With so many applications available and can be further developed, NFC’s benefits could quickly ripple over various sectors: events and leisure, transport, retail, media and telecommunications, payments (banks and finance), social networking, and much more.
Smart Posters
People call any poster that is embedded with RFID tags as “Smart.” Such tags can contain several kilobytes of digital data, like promotional data, security data and location data. They link the physical universe to the cyber world (or internet, to be less fancy). Picture this: a mobile phone touches a poster tag which brings the phone user to a URL and then a website; as enabled applications authenticate data, the user get the information he or she needs, either signs up or logs in, gets vouchers or purchases goods, and so on.
A few examples of how interactions with tagged posters would go like these:
· Media content can be downloaded from a poster.
· User visits Amazon.com website and buys a book. After several days the book arrives at the user’s shipping address.
· URLs shared among many phone users, creating viral effects on the promotion.
While it is true that technology offers various ways of obtaining virtual information from physical promotions or advertisements, the NFC Smart Posters offer distinct advantages.
One is short messaging services. This has an edge in terms of range, but users have to contend with hidden charges, high costs, and spam.
Another is bluecasting. Bluetooth has wide applicability in handsets, but it is also relatively costly, and is intrusive.
The snap/scan barcode is time consuming, requires specialist scanners and sometimes unreliable.
On the other hand, the advantages of (NFC) Near Field Communication Technology include the following:
· NFC is versatile and compliments presently-used SMS-driven marketing campaigns. It is more convenient to use, cheaper, and its being novel has its attractions.
· It has inherent security properties (with possible enhancements).
· User has complete control (must opt-in physically to access data, or to bluecast).
· The RFID/NFC Infrastructure is compatible with existing cards and readers.
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