Shopping Center Marketing Online Innovation, Part 3

Posted by David Allred

Shopping centers have an opportunity with mobile marketing to push timely messages with the potential to attract attention and help win customers. According to a survey of Gen Y shoppers, email and text messaging are preferred ways to receive information. They would be more reluctant to give up email and text messaging (26%) than social networks (only 9%). While social media is an important part of the mix, perhaps text messaging has an edge in reaching the young shopper and retaining their business.

The challenge is having a presence in multiple communication channels and integrating new technology into the mix without blowing the budget. Consider mobile marketing in your social media mix. Take the first baby step by creating a text messaging campaign to generate a database of mobile subscribers. To start, this effort will allow shopping centers to touch interested customers with a form of communication that they want to receive.

Then, with time, centers can begin to reach back out to these “willing” customers with pertinent information, sale announcements, surveys, etc. Centers will also have the ability to run surveys and questionnaires that can help fill in valuable demographic information that can be tapped to make this relationship more meaningful.