Shazam offers new m-marketing solutions for shopping centers.
Shazam offers new m-marketing solutions for shopping malls
Stationary stores and shopping malls are slowly entering higher and higher levels of mobile marketing. M-marketing based on geolocation is already familiar to most of us, but now a new aspect of mobile marketing has emerged – “stores” will be able to communicate with users based not on their location, but on the sounds they hear. Of course, geolocation still plays an important role here, but it has been “dressed up” in a new setting.
Shazam & Mood Media
Shazam is one of the most popular mobile applications, whose task is to recognize the songs we just hear. According to estimates, more than 15 billion titles have already been found using the app. What does Shazam have to do with in-store promotions? Shazam, in partnership with Mood Media – a company primarily concerned with the music we hear in stores – has created a product Shazam In-Store powered by Mood, which will bring a special type of advertising to customers’ phones.
Now, when a user enters a store and searches for the music playing in it using Shazam, unique content will be delivered to his phone – information about the store’s offer or special discount coupons.
Store owners must implement the system to send a special signal to users’ devices – the so-called “ultrasonic watermark”. When a user searches for a particular song using Shazam while in a store, the app will actually pick up the store’s “watermark” to offer the user a corresponding deal based on it.
Shazam & Adspace Networks
Shazam didn’t just stop at cooperation with Mood Media. Shazam also decided to cooperate with Adspace Networks, which resulted in a with interactive ads in more than 200 shopping malls across the United States. Here the original Shazam function and the idea of second-screen have been used again. The mall customer this time should run Shazam while watching special ads.
As with Shazam In-Store, the user will see special content and offers on their phone. All it has to do is try to search for a song that happens to be playing in a commercial, and as we all know, songs from commercials very much “like” to go through our heads, and we – like to search for them. The entire system again relies on an “ultrasonic watermark” that the app is able to pick up from as far away as 40 feet, or approx. 12 meters.
The partnership with Adspace Networks means 2,800 screens with interactive ads and a total of 58 million customers who are potential recipients of such a campaign.
New dimension of m-marketing
Solutions such as those offered by Shazam can make a significant difference in store customer engagement and loyalty. Thanks to them, stores avoid the basic problem of encouraging the user to download a special store app or sign up for a loyalty program. With the above campaigns, any Shazam user will be a potential target of the promotion, without the need to install additional applications.
This is not only a greater reach for stores and shopping malls, but at the same time a cheaper solution, without the need to invest in your own app. Especially since Shazam is installed by default on many mobile devices, with more than 500 million users.
Another advantage is not only the “accessibility” of such a form of promotion, but also its convenience. The user basically gets the entire promotional offer under his or her nose with a single click, without having to search or type in any strings of characters.
Stores can already use Shazam In-Store from now on, and there’s no denying that December is one of the best months for implementing in-store novelties and innovations. So far, the largest chain of stores using it is the US-based Office Depot. As we wrote above, also 200 shopping centers have been equipped with interactive “shazam” ads, a result of cooperation with Adspace Networks.
