Leverage the Power of Apple’s Passbook for your Business
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If you’re using an iPhone with iOS 6 installed, you may have seen, or even used, Apple’s new app, Passbook. Passbook aims to replace coupons, tickets, and customer loyalty cards with one centralized application. Instead of scanning your gift card at Starbucks, the barista can now scan your phone. Your new balance gets updated in realtime, right on your iPhone. Instead of bringing a printed 10% off coupon to Target, just whip out your phone. The app even features (optional) geolocation features that will automatically pop up the appropriate pass when you enter a participating store. Passbook is supported by a fair amount of major retailers, including Barnes & Noble, Old Navy, PetSmart, and potentially, your business.
How a Customer Uses Passbook
- Customer clicks a link from an email, app, or website
- Customer is prompted to save the pass into their passbook
- Customer presents pass at retailer
How your Business can Use Passbook
Passbook, from the consumer’s perspective, is quite easy. In order to offer coupons, tickets, and/or loyalty program cards for your business via Passbook, however, you must go through a more rigorous process (including obtaining an Apple Developer Certificate and doing a fair amount of coding). That is, unless you subscribe to a pass creation service such as PassKit or PassSource (both around $10 per month for basic service, or $100 per month for white-labeled, higher volume service). Both services make it easy to generate Passbook passes without doing any coding or having to work with Apple directly. PassKit offers superior analytics (open and usage rates, etc.) at the moment, though both services are planning to grow their analytics offerings in the near future.
As great as the Passbook concept is, iPhones aren’t the only game in town; although Passbook is an iPhone-only app, a third-party developer has already made it possible to use Passbook passes with non-Apple devices. PassWallet is currently available for Android and Blackberry, with Windows Phone and Symbian versions coming soon.
Passbook offers an extremely convenient way for businesses of all sizes to help grow and maintain their customer bases. If you would like to incorporate Passbook passes into your company’s overall marketing strategy, give us a ring. We’ll help your business create, promote, and track effective campaigns with the revolutionary power of Passbook.