h.h. gregg Gets Creative With Mobile To Boost Business
By Anna Rose Welch, Editorial & Community Director, Advancing RNA
Company explores mobile gamification, push notifications, and responsive design, to engage with customers
h.h. gregg is hoping 2014 will be the year mobile gives business a much-needed boost. The retailer is currently working on a large mobile push in order to meet its tech-savvy customers as they enter the store armed with smart devices. As Kevin Lyons, newly promoted SVP of e-commerce, says, “More than three-fourths of shoppers walking into our stores with smart devices means we have to be prepared and serve up content that keeps those shoppers inside our brand.” Indeed, 30 percent of the chain’s web traffic comes from mobile; more specifically, 15 percent of all web sales occur on tablets and 8 percent comes from smartphones, Lyons told Internet Retailer. The company expects mobile to continue increasing at such a clip that it will eclipse desktop traffic next year. In order to keep mobile users immersed in the h.h. gregg brand, the company is working with geo-targeted marketing, push notifications, text messages, mobile-optimized e-mail, and mobile gamification. There will also be a mobile shopping app for iPhone and Android phones launched this summer.
Apps have been particularly popular with h.h. gregg customers in the past. In particular, the foot-ball-themed mobile app called “Endless Blitz” was particularly popular and was a key part of the company’s strategy to sell larger items like refrigerators and televisions. During the 2013-14 football season, the retailer partnered with electronics and appliance manufacturers to offer big prizes to game players that earned the top scores. The app was a significant investment for the company, costing $100,000 to build a market. However, in a six-month period, the app saw more than 170,000 downloads — combined from Google, Apple, and Amazon app stores — and was played 4,474,608 times, Lyons told IR. While Lyons hasn’t said whether the app led to any increases in revenue, he still believes that the investment was worth it to drive in-store traffic and customer engagement.
Apps have also been an important tool for the company to reach out to customers via push notification. The app uses GPS technology to detect when a customer is inside or approaching an h.h. gregg store. Once the customer has entered a geofenced zone, the app sends a push notification to the customer, reminding them about current promotions or encouraging them to play the app game to win certain prizes. This app is also integrated with a customer’s desktop activity so that it can offer customers promotions for items the customers have browsed in the past or have left in their online shopping cart.
Beyond the app, the company also recognizes the importance of marketing via email and has turned to responsive design to optimize emails read on a mobile device. Seventy-two percent of h.h. gregg’s emails are opened on mobile devices, and since the company implemented responsive design, the open rates for mobile-optimized emails has jumped 50 percent higher.
As of late, the company has been facing financial pressures as consumers turn to other channels, such as Amazon, to purchase electronics. It’s hard to say whether these mobile initiatives will help the company improve its financial standing, however Gartner analyst Kevin Sterneckert tells the Wall Street Journal that it’s certainly a step in the right direction. “Their play is to differentiate, and this is definitely a way for h.h. gregg to do that,” Sterneckert says.