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Press Release: Singapore Shopping Mall Drives Footfall, Engagement and In-Store Sales with SKALE

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I wanted to share a recent piece of work we did with a leading Singapore retail mall; and how we worked with both the mall operator and more than 15 F&B / Retail operators to drive footfall, uplift sales and actually track sales ROI real-time.

The Challenge

We recently worked with a leading Singapore shopping mall and like many other mall operators, maintaining and growing footfall proved challenging in light of eCommerce and local competition.

In response to the challenges, the management team of the mall has been engaging in different initiatives and events to drive footfall. Putting aside the fact that organizing mall events are challenging to begin with, driving awareness, participation and actual sales for retailers / F&B operators is even harder and at times not measurable. Even the most creative and well-intent creative agencies or online marketers have thus far struggled with translating innovative concepts to measurable offline sales ROI.

Their Goal

We were proud to be able to work on this project with our client. The marketing team had 3 simple goals: (i) drive footfall and in-mall engagement (e.g. sign up for merchant workshops), (ii) drive actual sales conversion through the marketing initiatives and (iii) measure in-store sales ROI

Working collaboratively with our client, the team at SKALE deployed a range of our core online-to-offline retail technologies, riding on top of Facebook and Google digital advertising to achieve the intended business outcomes.

Their Results

  • 5x Return on Ad Spend
  • ~200 Signups of paid workshop sessions
  • 30% – 75% Conversion of online engagement to offline sales (plus collection of mobile details)
  • >$70,000 Sales generated for anchor merchant
  • World First App-less, social Augment Reality Art experience, that also drives sales

Driving relevant shoppers to the mall [restrict]

Creating beautiful and engaging digital ads is already status quo these days. Using digital ads to drive relevant online audiences into a shopping mall and then spend at participating merchants is an entirely different ball game that requires a full-funnel focus.

To drive visits to the mall, we deployed Skale’s Digital QR Voucher Management System for all the participating merchants in our client’s mall. Think of these Digital QR vouchers as online substitutes for flyers and printed coupons; except that each time a user downloads a voucher, our client collects phone numbers and pixel tracks users. Some of the participating merchants offered discount vouchers, others offered vouchers valid with a minimum spend. These vouchers gave consumers a reason to visit the mall and spend, while our clients are able to better profile their target customers and build up a member list.

Driving mall event signup

Leveraging our track record in driving luxury property event and retail VIP event participation, we were also able to drive more than 200+ paid signups for a series of baking workshops organized by one of the merchants. The usual challenge with event signup is “last minute no-shows” and collecting a small fee sometimes helps. However, consumers may get thrown away by lengthy payment forms and extra steps. In our deployment, Facebook lead ad signups were directly integrated with SMS follow-ups and frictionless payment integration.

All these came together neatly, and the merchant’s workshop was sold out in 2 days and extra sessions sold out the next day.

Uplifting Sales Conversion In-Mall: QR Vouchers + Personalized SMS Reminders

Throughout the campaign, we worked with various different merchants to drive downloads of the QR Digital Vouchers and drive actual in-store sales. Some of these vouchers were made available through Facebook and Google Ads, others were made available for download within an AR game experience.

To ensure shoppers who downloaded vouchers were turning up at the mall, SKALE’s system delivered personalised SMS reminders to shoppers. This resulted in up to 3x more voucher usage each time a reminder was sent. One of the merchants, a multi-brand sports retailer saw its vouchers fully downloaded within a week and 72% of all vouchers downloaded were redeemed and used in-store during the campaign.

Across all the merchants, 30% of all downloaded vouchers were used in store. Compared to the benchmark 5% usage rate of most other digital voucher systems, SMS reminders not only created a more complete and personalized “customer experience” on an end-to-end basis, it drove 6x higher sales conversion.

ROI: Real-Time Tracking of online-to-offline sales

Retailers and marketers have traditionally struggled to identify and segment the returns from their marketing initiatives, especially when it involves online-to-offline.

SKALE’s dashboard for our client and their mall merchants allowed an end-to-end view on classic digital marketing stats (e.g. cost per voucher download, cost per workshop sign up) as well as offline sales conversion (e.g. cost per voucher redemption, sales uplift through vouchers etc.). Our client and their merchants were therefore able to measure offline sales ROI across individual initiatives, customer segments and communication channels. Each time a voucher was used in-store, it was recorded on the dashboard and the team was able to work with SKALE to optimize campaign performance.

Tracking of online and offline statistics were all done through the same mobile dashboard, with no need for any additional point-of-sale equipment. All that the retail sales assistants needed to do, was to scan the digital QR vouchers with their mobile phone.

Augmented Reality: Creating with the Customer, not just for the customer

The team recognized that customers today were not just consumers, but creators too. To drive in-mall engagement and buzz, SKALE worked with the team to create an immersive Social Augmented Reality Art experience within the compounds of the mall.

A key component of it – the AR experience was app-less and required no app download. Users within the mall simply scanned a QR or followed a link to enter a fully web-based AR space. Users interacted, collaborated and build on each other’s ideas to paint a 3D model that leveraged the mall’s distinctive high ceiling. The result? A truly immersive and engaging piece of art.

Putting aside the fact that it was a world first in letting multiple users create an art piece in augmented reality space; the experience leveraged SKALE’s interest profiling to showcase a series of relevant promotions that users could collect within the Augmented Reality space. What are these promotions? The same QR vouchers mentioned above! Naturally, because these are engaged shoppers who are already physically in the mall, and by layering on data we have profiled on the customers, we could show them QR Code Digital Vouchers that were relevant and attractive for them!

Key takeaway

The outcomes of this campaign has shown that online technology, which has traditionally been viewed as a disruptor to the retail industry, can in fact be deployed in many ways to drive footfall to malls and uplift sales conversion for F&B and offline retailers in measurable and effective ways. We are naturally happy to see our client succeed in this campaign and achieve their intended business outcomes. More importantly, we believe that many like yourself can also benefit from some of the marketing approaches described above.

“Creativity in marketing is being redefined in this example. The true value of the initiative is the ability to integrate creative communication with measurable results, be it revenue, loyalty, traffic or otherwise.”

– Yuet, Founder of SKALE.

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