As mobile phones become an increasingly competitive battleground for seeking consumer attention, Mobile Wallet can help cut through the noise to establish a convenient, functional, and secure touchpoint with your customers.
If you’re intrigued but still skeptical about how strong the momentum of mobile wallet as a channel has been with consumers, consider these statistics:
- The total number of digital wallet users increased by 57% since 2024, signaling how this channel is no longer considered just optional convenience
- Digital wallet users, on average, spend 31% more compared to those using other payment methods
- The functionality of mobile wallets is evolving beyond just mobile payments: 54% of consumers say they've made a purchase with a mobile wallet offer at a physical location, and nearly 60% have used their mobile wallet loyalty card when making an offline purchase
As a marketer, it’s not only important that you understand the true value Mobile Wallet can drive, it’s essential.
Vibes has helped enterprise brands run mobile wallet marketing since the channel's earliest days. Read on for the benefits and the many ways you can use this personalized channel to connect, convert, and retain your customers.
What is Mobile Wallet?
Mobile Wallet is the summary term for the native apps, “Apple Wallet” and “Google Wallet” built into all iOS and Android devices, requiring no extra download or sign-up by consumers to use. Vibes builds and delivers these passes for enterprise brands across both Apple Wallet and Google Wallet.
While Apple Wallet and Google Wallet are best known for holding consumers’ credit cards and enabling contactless mobile payments, they offer much more than just a digital payment option at checkout.
With Mobile Wallet, coupons, loyalty membership cards, boarding passes, event tickets, gift cards, and other items one might find in their back pocket or purse, are instead housed and organized as “passes” in a single location – a person’s mobile device – where they can easily be found and used.
Unlike physical versions of the said examples, their digital counterparts are impossible to lose track of: once a mobile wallet pass is saved to a user’s device it remains in their mobile wallet unless they take action to remove the pass.
And like any other mobile app, you can send notifications to consumers' lock screens to remind them to take an action or provide them real-time updates.
What is Mobile Wallet Marketing?
Mobile wallet marketing refers to the various ways brands can use the channel beyond contactless digital payments as a means of effectively engaging their customers on their mobile phones.
At Vibes, mobile wallet marketing runs as a managed channel: brands deliver offers, loyalty cards, tickets, and ID passes that can be saved into Apple Wallet and Google Wallet, then track every action on every pass through the Vibes Secure SmartLink.
6 Key Mobile Wallet Features to Care About
Here are just some of the many benefits that Mobile Wallet offers you as a marketer in order for you to instantaneously deliver relevant, personalized content to your customers:
1. Evergreen presence on the phone.
Once a mobile wallet pass is saved to a mobile device it usually remains in the consumer’s mobile wallet. For you, this means an always-on presence in the place where your customers are always connected to – their phones. In other words, once a mobile wallet pass has been downloaded by your customers, you have a huge advantage over competitors.
And since each saved mobile wallet pass, normally, has to be manually removed by the user, pass removal rarely, if ever, happens.
2. Continually update mobile wallet passes with new content in seconds.
The mobile wallet pass itself is completely dynamic, meaning all of the real estate on the pass can be updated at any time, as often as you desire, and in real-time.
By having the ability to update the content on saved mobile wallet passes with new information at any time, you have a versatile, persistent, visual way to engage with your customers.
So instead of static marketing collateral, Mobile Wallet can be used as an ongoing channel to continuously keep your customers updated and drive them to act.
Have a loyalty program? Create a rewards pass where you can keep members up to date on their earned points or rewards, status level, and member-exclusive offers and benefits.
Extending a duration of a promotion? Immediately update the expiration date so your customers know they have more time to take part in the offer.
Transform tickets into a dynamic mobile wallet pass where you can instantly let consumers know about unexpected changes, like a date change for an event or a gate change for a flight.
Never let your customers be inconvenienced again by not having their current health and auto insurance cards on them. With Mobile Wallet, you can continue to update the saved pass with the customer’s current policy information.
No matter the industry, Mobile Wallet plays an essential role in creating a seamless customer experience that will accelerate revenue growth and increase customer loyalty.
3. Stay top of mind with mobile wallet notifications.
Just like a mobile app push notification a user receives on their phone's lock screen, Mobile Wallet can also deliver a variety of notifications, giving you the ability to nudge your customers to act when they might not have otherwise.
Don’t consumers turn off their notifications?
Consumers have to go out of their way to turn wallet notifications off. So, if you’re wondering how many consumers with a mobile wallet pass a notification will reach – the answer is pretty much 100%.
Unlike other mobile apps where consumers can turn push notifications on or off for the app as a whole, wallet notifications have to be manually managed by the consumer for each individual pass that’s saved to their mobile wallet.
The different types of mobile wallet notifications include:
- Time-based: Time-based notifications can be delivered manually or can be set up for automated delivery, whichever option best fits your campaign.
- Behavior-based: Behavior-based notifications can be set up to notify an individual customer or segment of customers about relevant information based on their previous activity.
- Programmatic: When the content on saved mobile wallet passes is dynamically updated, you can follow up with a notification alerting your customer there is something new in their mobile wallet to check out.
- Geolocation: This precisely timed notification can be set to automatically send when a user is 100 meters or less away from a physical location as a means of prompting a visit to the nearby location.
4. Attribute and measure the ROI that Mobile Wallet drives for your business.
Several years ago, it was likely hit or miss when it came to companies having the right technology in place for customers to pay with their smartphone. But, since things like convenience and safety are two of the biggest drivers motivating consumer shopping decisions, contactless is now ubiquitous.
Mobile Wallet is compatible with all POS technology. If you’re not so sure of this because you know there are scanning limitations with your POS terminals, Mobile Wallet offers you a variety of barcode options to ensure passes can successfully be scanned. Since it’s easier these days for consumers to find and access a mobile wallet pass than digging through a pocket or searching in an app, the checkout process is dramatically streamlined.
However, it’s not just about the checkout process being easier. Mobile wallet passes can be easily identified and tracked providing unique pass attribution - in-store or online - paving the way for a better understanding of the business impact mobile wallet marketing has on your brand and offering a clear path to ROI analysis of your brand’s programs.
This level of attribution is made uniquely possible through Vibes' Secure SmartLink, a unique URL automatically generated for every mobile wallet pass that gets delivered to an individual customer. The Secure SmartLink tracks every action on that customer’s pass, from the initial viewing of the pass to the transaction where the offer is redeemed.
5. Security you can count on.
This is always a top concern for both brands and consumers, especially when it comes to the sharing of personal information. Everyone can rest easy with Mobile Wallet because it was built with security and protection in mind.
The Vibes Secure SmartLink is not only built to track attribution, but also encoded with parameters that provide fraud protection for any redeemable pass meant to be used only once, like a coupon, offer, or ticket. This prevents consumers from manipulating the Secure SmartLink to reuse an already-redeemed pass by deactivating the pass after use.
6. Enable instant, low-friction loyalty program enrollment.
Mobile Wallet can help enroll customers directly into your existing loyalty program via QR code, SMS or web form - you decide. You can even enroll them into SMS marketing via their initial interaction with their digital wallet card if you prefer, rather than the other way around. Mobile Wallet leads to more app downloads, too: over 30% of mobile wallet users also download a brand or business' mobile app.
Mobile Wallet Marketing Strategies
Across all of these capabilities, the common theme is a new way to engage your customers. Vibes groups mobile wallet marketing strategies into six activations: offers, loyalty cards, gift cards, mobile tickets, ID cards, and appointment reminders. Mobile wallet marketing for retail, restaurant, and hospitality brands typically begins with the first two.
There are a myriad of ways you can activate Mobile Wallet as a channel for your brand and make the most impact on your customers.
Offers
A mobile wallet offer is a digital offer or coupon that can be redeemed in-store and online.
A mobile wallet offer can easily be distributed through any existing marketing channel – from in-store signage, print and TV advertising, and direct mail to lower-cost digital channels like SMS, email, web, social and your mobile app – the goal is to create a frictionless experience as customers engage with your brand.
Why this is meaningful for brands:
Thanks to Mobile Wallet you can always keep your customers up to date on the latest promotions, flash sales, and limited-time offers based on their purchase history, deepening their brand loyalty and motivating them to shop more frequently with you over the competition. The seamless customer experience can also result in them buying more from you in a single shopping trip.
If you’re a brand with any type of offer or promotional strategy, Mobile Wallet provides an immense opportunity to increase how often a customer shops with you, and how much they spend during each visit.
Loyalty Cards
A mobile wallet loyalty card is a digital version of a physical membership card. In addition to the pass reflecting the member’s key account details, it can be regularly updated in real-time to reflect account activity such as points earned, progress to a new reward, and personalized loyalty-specific content.
As previously stated about how easily a mobile wallet pass can be distributed through any existing marketing channel, loyalty cards can also be distributed to current members without requiring them to download or sign up for anything additional.
Why this is meaningful for brands:
Members want to know their points balance, rewards progress, and available rewards without having to look too hard for them, which is likely why 75% of consumers say they would interact more with brands who offer a digital wallet loyalty card option for their loyalty / rewards program.
If members have this information handy, it will drive an increase in purchase frequency.
And, the targeted messaging capabilities that come with Mobile Wallet ensures that you will always be able to provide relevant messaging to keep your most loyal customers interacting and engaging with your brand even more.
Beyond the expected increase in sales and customer satisfaction that Mobile Wallet drives, getting members to redeem their loyalty points or rewards benefits companies financially in another way. Outstanding rewards and points are captured as liabilities on the balance sheet, so by increasing customer redemption companies improve the health of their balance sheets.
Gift Cards
Showing an appreciation and saying thank you with a gift card is thoughtful but delivering the gift card in the form of a mobile wallet pass is the gift that keeps on giving. A mobile wallet gift card can reflect the same details as a physical gift card, but without the risk of the recipient misplacing it. And since the saved gift card is likely to stay on the phone, you have the opportunity to reach these customers even after their gift card funds are at $0.
Why this is meaningful for brands:
Gift cards often incentivize incremental purchases that would not have been made otherwise, so lost gift cards mean additional revenue lost. Not only can a mobile wallet gift card be stored and easily accessible for consumers to use, but it also gives you a new communication channel to send timely reminders about redeeming their gift cards, both of which are major driving factors that will get them to buy.
Mobile Tickets
Mobile Wallet eliminates the need to carry physical tickets, making it an ideal space for customers to house their concert tickets, airline tickets, hotel confirmations, and raffle tickets.
Once a customer saves the pass to their mobile wallet it’s safe from getting lost or stolen. But the convenience and reliability factor for customers is just scratching the surface.
Take concert tickets, for instance: Mobile Wallet meets concert goers in real time to update them if there are changes to a show's schedule or venue-specific details.
And because saved mobile wallet passes remain on the phone even after a customer uses it, you now have the ability to seamlessly update those passes with new, targeted content ensuring your brand remains top of mind.
Why this is meaningful for brands:
Going mobile with ticketing will save you costs, eliminating the need for expensive printers and fulfillment options.
Additionally, a bad customer experience can often lead to negative customer reviews, and when it comes to ticketing that bad experience can certainly be driven by long, immobile lines.
Lines are guaranteed to move faster, helping to drive stronger customer satisfaction.
ID Cards
Offers and loyalty membership cards aren’t the only types of plastic shifting to digital. As more consumers say they don’t need nor want a physical wallet anymore, you can take advantage of Mobile Wallet to also digitize certain forms of identification, such as business cards, proof of insurance cards, and in some states even drivers’ licenses.
Unlike static plastic cards, digital ID cards allow for immediate updates to reflect the most up-to-date information.
Why this is meaningful for brands:
Not only does Mobile Wallet offer a new level of convenience to your customers, it also provides you the opportunity to manage and service your customers more efficiently with more targeted content.
By collecting profile and behavioral data, you can use it to notify each individual customer about the proper information and services you deliver, at the right journey stage and at the right time.
Appointment Reminders
A prime example of using Mobile Wallet for something completely unrelated to driving purchases is the use case of appointment reminders.
Use Mobile Wallet to help your customers never forget when it’s time for an upcoming appointment by sending reminder notifications to make sure they come in or reschedule.
All of the relevant appointment details can be updated on the mobile wallet pass so that your customers can get to their appointment hassle-free instead of being concerned they don’t have accurate appointment details.
Why this is meaningful for brands:
With Mobile Wallet, you are able to consistently provide a positive customer experience that increases the likelihood that your customers will remain loyal to your brand.
Taking Your Digital Marketing to the Next Level with Mobile Wallet
Now that we’ve illustrated how Mobile Wallet can stand on its own as a persistent and powerful channel for brands, let’s dive into how you can implement mobile wallet marketing alongside your other mobile marketing channels as part of a singular program to effectively inform, motivate and engage consumers across the customer journey.
Anywhere you can embed a URL you can deliver a mobile wallet pass, meaning you can take a multichannel approach to promoting program signup as well as getting passes into more customers’ mobile wallets.
To drive awareness of your brand and help stay top-of-mind, start by opting customers into an SMS list. This is not to say you abandon your other marketing channels to pair with mobile wallet. However, SMS is already a personal, conversational channel, so customers are extremely receptive to engaging with brands through text messaging.
Since both channels are natively mobile, SMS naturally provides a seamless customer experience for delivering mobile wallet passes.
If you’re keeping score, customers only have to opt-in once, and you get two valuable, engaging channels to reach your customers with SMS and Mobile Wallet.
Vibes customers have seen as high as 19x more revenue per message from campaigns that use both SMS and Mobile Wallet, compared with sending SMS on its own.
In addition, the SMS and Mobile Wallet channels offer complementary segmentation and targeting capabilities to enable you to reach customers only in one channel, or in both depending on the urgency of the message.
Another advantage of a saved mobile wallet pass is that individual passes can be updated to reflect new promotions and content without needing to send another message to the customer nor requiring them to have to sign up for anything additional.
And if you’re trying to drive your customer to make a purchase, Mobile Wallet eliminates steps to streamline the purchase process. Instead of sending your customers to search various inboxes or input different passwords, Mobile Wallet is accessible with one tap or one swipe.
What if I already have a mobile app?
Mobile Wallet doesn’t replace or compete with the value of a brand’s mobile app. Rather Mobile Wallet provides tremendous value in the ways it complements mobile apps by making the customer experience more convenient and providing you with easily accessible, persistent communication channel. And even with the most sophisticated and widely used app, you could still be missing customers that mobile wallet can help you reach.
Here are a few ways Mobile Wallet can help you in ways that your mobile app could be limited:
- Mobile wallet passes are easier to find and access. Two taps to reach a saved pass, versus six taps and two swipes to reach that same information in an app. And this convenience factor is applicable to more than just finding an offer, it is just as valuable if you want to surface and summarize key messages you need your customer to see. No opening and searching through an app required.
- Wallet notifications are harder to turn off. A mobile app’s push notifications can be turned off rather easily, and once a customer turns them off it’s much more difficult to get them turned back on. However, the native mobile wallet app is unique in that notifications sent through cannot be turned off at the app level, rather they have to be turned off for every saved mobile wallet pass.
- Mobile Wallet does not require any internet connection. If a customer is having a tech issue like a poor signal or is in an area that has poor or no connectivity, they won’t be able to access your app. Mobile wallet can reach these customers because it’s native to all devices and saved passes do not require any cell service
And as a bonus? Mobile Wallet can cross-promote an app to help increase downloads. Of the many dynamic content capabilities mobile wallet has, it includes an option to add to prompt pass holder to download your mobile app.
Conversely, there's no need to force another app download when you can reach your entire customer base with Mobile Wallet and RCS, two device-native channels that are guaranteed to boost engagement and loyalty.
Mobile Wallet, in conjunction with SMS and RCS bring more consumers into a program, while also driving a deeper connection by serving as an effective, impactful communication channel.
The Bottom Line
From a persistent promotional channel to incremental purchases, mobile wallet marketing gives brands many ways to build lasting customer relationships, which is why Vibes has helped customers integrate it as a core channel rather than treating it as a payments add-on.
Mobile Wallet Marketing FAQs
What is mobile wallet marketing?
Mobile wallet marketing allows brands to engage with customers by digitizing their coupons, loyalty cards, event tickets, and gift cards that can easily be saved in a user's mobile wallet. Since the content on mobile wallet passes is completely dynamic, brands can update the content as often as they want, offering you an additional channel for you to effectively engage with your customers.
How can I do mobile wallet marketing?
Partner with a mobile engagement platform like Vibes whose platform supports Apple Wallet and Google Wallet, helping our customers create, distribute and manage millions of mobile wallet passes. Once your mobile wallet passes are created, you can promote them to your customers anywhere you can embed a URL - on your website, via email, behind QR codes, or - as recommended by experts - SMS. Marketers see up to 19x more revenue per message from campaigns that use both SMS and Mobile Wallet, vs. just sending SMS messages by themselves.
Does mobile wallet marketing require a mobile app?
Mobile wallet marketing is run through the native apps Apple Wallet and Google Wallet built into all iOS and Android devices. As a result, they require no additional download or signup by consumers to engage with your brand.
How do retail brands use mobile wallet marketing?
The most common mobile wallet marketing use cases for retail brands are offers/coupons and loyalty cards if they have a rewards program. Retailers use mobile wallet offers or loyalty cards as a way to drive more foot traffic to their physical locations, especially because mobile wallet gives you the ability to track in-store attribution.
How do you measure ROI from mobile wallet marketing?
Vibes' mobile wallet marketing platform offers brands Secure SmartLinks, which are unique, trackable URLs that are automatically generated for every mobile wallet pass. This feature enables you to track transactions unique to every individual pass, helping you better understand the impact Mobile Wallet has on overall sales.
Mobile Wallet Marketing: Where to Go From Here
As leaders in the mobile wallet marketing space since its inception, we at Vibes hope you have a better understanding of mobile wallet marketing, how it works, and how it can help you drive conversion, learn more about your customers and ultimately create stronger 1:1 connections with them over time.
For more strategic examples and insights into how it has the power to impact your specific industry download our comprehensive guide, The Power of Mobile Wallet as a Channel.
If you’re interested in taking the next steps with Vibes to effectively activate Mobile Wallet for your brand, get in touch with us today.
