Walgreens is experimenting with a variety of mobile initiatives that include social media and location-based services. The mobile check-in service alerts consumers to deals and events that are happening in-store.
“With more than 8,000 locations, nearly two-thirds of which are within three miles of the United States population, we get a lot of check-ins,” said Rich Lesperance, director of marketing and ecommerce at Walgreens, Deerfield, IL.
“It is important for us to learn what they are most interested in, why they check-in at Walgreens and what we do to make their experience even better,” he said.
LocalResponse’s technology pings check-in services, including Facebook Places, foursquare and Yelp among other location-based services. Once LocalResponse knows that a user is at a certain location, the service can send out relevant, store-specific offer via Twitter.
In order to connect with a user, consumers must post their check-in information to Twitter, which has public data that LocalResponse can use.
LocalResponse then sends a tweet from the Walgreens Twitter account within 60 seconds to the user with the offer. Each tweet includes a link that users can click on to view the deal.
Walgreens is currently sending out the Twitter deals to promote Halls cough drops.
Once a user opened the piece of locked content, they could text a time-sensitive keyword to a short code to receive a mobile coupon.
According to LocalResponse, the average click-through-rate for campaigns such as the Walgreens example is 40 percent, showing the connection that social media plays in location-based check-ins.
Paul Bryan is Director of User Research and Design Strategy at Usography Corporation.
