Getting the message out

Mobile-technology firm Eagle Eye Solutions has developed a clever way of

drawing in more punters through drinks promotions. Noli Dinkovski reports

Drinks promotions are all very well, but it seems the real challenge these days is to actually get enough people into pubs to see them. Print, outdoor, TV and online campaigns are all ways of getting the message across, though they rarely come cheap and so are hardly suitable for small, targeted promotions of individual brands.

A mobile-technology firm called Eagle Eye Solutions says it has the answer. Specialising in creating vouchers for mobile phones, it has recently completed a promotional campaign for Corney & Barrow (C&B) wine-bar group, for New Zealand's Monteith's lager.

Using an email list of people who had previously signed up on its website or through previous promotions, C&B invited its customers to claim six free bottles of Monteith's at any of its dozen London sites. All they had to do was request a voucher to be sent to their mobile phones.

The campaign, which ran during February, proved a success as 38% of the people who took part managed to visit a Corney & Barrow bar to redeem the mobile voucher and enjoy their promotional beer.

C&B marketing director Tristram Hillier was happy with the result. "We were over the moon with the number of people coming into our bars and restaurants during the promotional period. Equally, Monteith's was delighted with the very high sampling rate."

As well as providing a clever way of placing the Monteith's brand into customers' hands, the campaign also allowed C&B to capture important customer data. Before receiving their mobile voucher, customers were invited to click through to a data-capture page and asked to enter their mobile number and fill in some profiling questions.

Eagle Eye Solutions chief technology officer Steve Rothwell says the mobile-voucher campaign was designed to introduce a new beer brand to a highly brand-conscious and affluent audience. "It shows how using a mobile phone as a redemption tool can drive customers into pubs and bars," he adds.

So what do pubs need in order to be able to mimic such a promotion? Well, little more than an EPoS system to validate the code.

"The mobile vouchers are delivered to customers' mobiles in the form of an SMS, which contains a unique eight-digit code," says Rothwell. "Because our voucher-redemption platform easily integrates with any EPoS, C&B staff are able to validate the code through the till."

Designed with pubcos in mind, the cost largely depends on how many outlets are supplied and what equipment they already have in place. "The cost can be as cheap as £100 per year for access to the system," says Rothwell. "There is also a small transaction fee for the redemption of a mobile gift voucher."

Eagle Eye also powers C&B's "Buy me a drink" service, which works in a similar way. By going onto a dedicated website, buymeadrink.co.uk, customers can buy their friends gifts in the form of beer, a bottle of wine or a bucket of beer and so on. By entering their friend's mobile number, an SMS voucher is sent to the friend that, again, can be redeemed in any C&B bar.

Rothwell's masterplan is to grow the website so that eventually all pubs can support the system, effectively building a national gift service for the licensed trade.

In fact, it's his ambition to roll out the gifting part of the buymeabeer.com service to as many pubcos as possible and he is actively inviting them to join in.

"Once a pub redeems the vouchers we can provide almost limitless mobile services to help drive footfall," says Rothwell.

"The promotions we run through this mobile technology will continue to grow," he adds. "We will be working tirelessly with the promotional agencies to make sure the services provided are of a high quality, offering the consumers some real value while generating revenue for pubs."

Monteith's promotion: how it worked

n Customers were sent an email offering six free bottles

n To claim them, customers had to enter details online, receiving a mobile voucher to their phones

n Almost four in 10 went on to redeem this voucher at one of Corney & Barrow's 12 London bars

n Customers got to sample a new beer brand, and the wine-bar group built a healthy database for further promotions