NFC Archives - Tactify

Using Mobile to Drive Engagement for CTI and the South Sydney Rabbitohs

February 20, 2015

At Tacitfy we make mobile marketing simple. Connecting traditional marketing materials like posters and flyers with mobile can create highly engaging campaigns and drive results for brands. By allowing users to interact with mobile apps or webpages, your brand can provide more information and relevant content. Having well-designed physical materials, apps and websites with content that is engaging and relevant to your users are key factors to a successful mobile marketing campaign.

We worked with Capital Training Institute (CTI) to build a mobile marketing campaign for the South Sydney Rabbitoh’s members weekend campaign. CTI is a Registered Training Organization (RTO) and the official membership partner of the South Sydney Rabbitohs national rugby team. Their goals were to increase brand recognition, direct users to enter the Grand Final VIP ticket competition and encourage user generated content on social media with the hashtag #trainlikesam in reference to the Rabbitoh’s team captain.

To engage fans and drive them to the Grand Final ticket draw, we created custom Sharetapes that were handed out during Australia’s popular “The Footy Show” and printed Sam Burgess face masks equipped with QR codes to be distributed on game day. The QR codes (and banner advertisements) drove users to a special microsite where fans could enter the competition, stream a customer Spotify playlist and view more information on CTI.

The microsite received over 1,000 unique visitors and hundreds of entries for the Grand Final ticket draw. The hashtag #trainlikesam trended at number five on Twitter and was tagged on more than 430 posts on Instagram. By combining traditional marketing materials with mobile we were able to drive more user engagement and brand recognition for CTI and the South Sydney Robbitohs.

Bringing Back the Mixtape with NFC-Powered Sharetapes

January 26, 2015

From lyrics that perfectly describe a feeling to a song that brings you back to a moment in time, mixtapes are one of the most classic and unique gifts to share with friends, family or a significant other. But who has cassette or CD players anymore?

At Tactify, we created Sharetapes–a throwback to the classic mixtape but upgraded for the digital age. Here’s how they works:

Upload digital media, like a Spotify or YouTube playlist, to a blank Sharetape online.
Share the physical card with a friend or significant other.
They can simply tap the Sharetape using an NFC-enabled phone (like these), scan the QR code, or enter the code from the back of the Sharetape online.
The media will automatically start playing!

Sharetapes are the perfect way to celebrate Valentine’s Day. Share a collection of love songs, romantic movie clips or original songs with your significant other, or celebrate the single life with a weekend playlist for your friends!

Sharetapes are available for $2.49 each, or a pack of five for $9.99. Order soon to make sure you have them in time for Valentine’s Day!

Get your Sharetapes here!

How will the Internet of Things Impact Retail In 2015?

January 19, 2015

The Internet of Things has exploded over the last couple of years as smartphones and the ability to be always connected has become an increasingly integral part of our lives. Bonnie Cha at re/code describes the Internet of Things as “the connection of everyday objects to the Internet and to one another, with the goal being to provide users with smarter, more efficient experiences.” You can see her “Beginner’s Guide to Understanding the Internet of Things” here.

Google’s acquisition of Nest last year set the stage for IoT to expand this year and the conversation about IoT’s impact on everyday life was discussed widely at CES. Consumers are increasingly aware of connected homes and cars. A study by Affinnova showed that consumers mostly want connected home appliances and products like refrigerators that enable remote viewing of your contents and recommends recipes, smart light bulbs that notify you when a bulb has gone out and connected sprinkler systems.

But how is the Internet of Things impacting retail? First, connected home sensors that send notifications to your phone to indicate when you out of a product like washing detergent, milk, or light bulbs are great for retailers. Creating a easy way for consumers to order these products right from their phone means that retailers have the opportunity to improve customer experiences and loyalty.

Next, connected technologies like beacons and NFC will likely increase in 2015. These technologies enable retailers to communicate with consumers in a meaningful way based on their location, delivering deals and notifications that are relevant in real time. The iPhone 6 and ApplePay will also influence retailers to adopt NFC technologies for easy checkout experiences.

The most important thing for retailers to take advantage with the Internet of Things right now is data. Whether connecting your products to home sensors or using in-store location technologies, analyzing data will enable retailers to better understand their customers. When are they shopping? Are they accessing your app while in store or at home? Do they prefer app notifications, or SMS? The more brands and retailers understand their customers, the more they will be able to connect with them at the right time, place and in the right manner.

How do you see IoT impacting retail this year?

The Difference In Using NFC and Beacons

December 11, 2014

More and more brands are recognizing the value in adopting mobile marketing and location-based technologies to reach consumers. For brands new to these tools, it’s important to understand the different options available and the best scenarios to use NFC versus beacons. Choosing the right technology for your campaign and brand is critical in reaching your consumers in the most meaningful way, and achieving desirable results.

Cary Stemle has one of the easiest breakdowns of different location technologies:

“Think of it this way: Cellular communications provide wireless coverage with a footprint measured in miles; WiFi’s footprint is measured in yards; BLE’s is measured in feet; and NFC’s in centimeters.”

Let’s talk about beacons first. Beacons work on Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) which communicates a signal between a bluetooth-enabled device and the beacon’s transmitter. If you want to reach consumers in a wide, general vicinity, beacons are the way to go. You can push coupons, store promotions and messages at very inexpensive prices. Using the Tactify platform, you can easily update your messaging and branding, and measure engagement and conversions. Beacons are great for high traffic areas, entertainment venues and events.

NFC, on the other hand, is a more personalized experience. NFC tags communicate with mobile phones only when the phone is in extremely close proximity – usually a few centimeters – which gives consumers more control over when they get notifications (and who can see their data) . NFC is best for payments and specific tickets and access cards. For example, you could place an NFC tag on an event poster. Interested consumers would be able to tap the tag with their phones and access more information. With beacons, every bluetooth-enabled phone that passed by would receive a message about the event, which may be overwhelming. Another use case is handing out NFC-enabled rewards or business cards.

There are a number of creative ways brands are using both beacons and NFC to market to their customers – and reach them right on their phones! Check out Tactify’s solutions here – load, update and track your campaigns from one central dashboard.

Optimizing Mobile For Holiday Shopping

November 21, 2014

With Black Friday only a week away the holiday shopping madness will soon commence. Shopping this holiday season is projected to reach $72.4 billion! That’s $10 billion more than last year’s spending. For brands prepping their marketing and advertising, mobile and digital continue to play a huge role in influencing shopping and purchasing decisions. Check out these stats from Yahoo:

Half of holiday sales will be influenced by digital interactions
84 percent of shoppers use digital tools before or while shopping, and convert at a 40 percent higher rate
101.7 million US consumers will purchase on their mobile devices
86 percent of retailers expect their 2014 online holiday sales to increase

(more…)

What Does Apple Pay Mean for Marketers?

October 20, 2014

Starting today iPhone 6 and 6 Plus users can opt to store their credit and debit cards in Passbook and make purchases with the simple tap of their phone using Apple Pay. Apple finally adopted near field communications technology with the release of the iPhone 6 in order to power Apple Pay. With Apple leading the way, experts are predicting mobile payments will become mainstream. While Google Wallet has been around since 2011, the hype of Apple Pay may lead to an increase in mobile payments among Android users, too. Forrester predicts they will increase fourfold to $90 billion by 2017!

How to Set it Up

Download iOS 8.1 and open the Passbook app
Tap Set up Apple Pay
First select your card that is linked with your iTunes account and confirm
Then, you can scan new cards with the iPhone camera.The first card added will be your primary card.

How It Works
Once Apple Pay is set up, it’s easy to use in stores. At stores using Apple Pay, iPhone users can simply tap their phone to the point of sale (POS) terminal and verify the payment with Touch ID or a pin code. The transaction will securely be sent to the bank and with approval, the purchase is complete.

Apple has said over 220,000 US stores will be using Apple Pay including Apple, Bloomingdales, Macy’s Duane Reade, McDonald’s, Sephora, Petco, Panera Bread, Staples, Nike, Walgreens, Subway and Whole Foods. Users will also be able to pay with Apple Pay with a number of apps including Target, Tickets.com and Uber.

What Marketers Need to Know
The largest impact Apple Pay is expected to have is on the adoption of mobile payments. According to Digital Trends, a new law will take place in the fall of 2015 requiring merchants to support credit cards with Chip and PIN security, and therefore, merchants are expected to updated their POS terminals which will likely be Apple Pay enabled. The easy and secure process Apple has created, as well as their track record in changing consumer behavior, are other reasons to believe mobile payments will become mainstream.

Apple said they are not collecting or storing transaction information in order to ensure consumer’s that Apple Pay is secure and private. While this will help with the adoption of mobile payments, businesses will not be able to collect this data to optimize marketing campaigns. Instead, ensure consumers their information is secure and test other mobile marketing tactics such as NFC stickers, beacons or geofencing.

Are you planning on using Apple Pay?

How to Use Mobile to Increase Retail Sales

October 15, 2014

The ability to use mobile in marketing campaigns brings heaps of opportunities to increase retail sales. At Tactify, we believe that independent stores should be able to have campaigns that are as innovative and impactful as multinational stores. No matter the size of your store or staff, there are a number of ways to increase sales and expand your brand.

First off, there are huge benefits to incorporating mobile into your marketing campaigns. Almost two-thirds of Americans own a smartphone – and 55 percent of consumers who use coupons on their smartphone end up spending more money in store or online than they originally anticipated. A new study showed that mobile plays an integral part in the shopping experience of millennial moms – with a third saying mobile played a part in the inspiration and research part of shopping, and half saying they turned to their phones in-store to communicate with friends and family about their purchasing decisions.

So how can you increase your retails sales with mobile? Here are a few options:

Send push notifications using geofencing or beacon technologies to communicate with your customers based on their location.
Use NFC stickers or QR codes around the store offering coupons and reward points.
Reward customers who check in on social media and/or share their purchases with friends. Use NFC, QR and push notifications to make this even easier.
For iPhone users, integrate coupons and rewards cards with Passbook. Customers can easily save and access these on their phones (without a separate app) and eventually this will link to ApplePay.
Integrate your social media with coupons and rewards to redeem in-store or online.
Stay on top of the latest technologies like ApplePay to give customers the easiest and fastest check-out experience.

With any marketing campaign, make sure to use analytics to constantly evaluate and optimize your campaigns. Test which tactics get the most engagement with your customers and result in the highest ROI.

Check out Tactify’s products and mobile marketing solutions here.

Why Marketers and Advertisers Need to Know About NFC

September 4, 2014

Marketers and advertisers have been using NFC quietly for the last few years. There have been some fun, innovative campaigns but the use of NFC has really been limited to certain Android phones as well as payments and keyless entry. But that’s all about to change.

Rumor has is that NFC is finally coming to the iPhone 6, set to be announced this month.

Apple has held out on enabling NFC in the iPhone due to lack of merchant interest and low-security, opting instead for Passbook. But due to the success of iBeacons and Apple’s access to 800 million credit cards from users’ iTunes accounts, reports have labelled NFC as inevitable for the iPhone.

Enabling NFC on the iPhone is more than just mass adoption of mobile payments. There are a ton of possibilities already being used that both consumers, marketers and technologists can make even more wide spread — quicker check-in at hotels using your mobile phone as a room key; controlling settings at home and work like lights, alarms and sounds; easily changing your phone settings based on location such as switching Wi-Fi, Bluetooth or music on and off; or even transferring files between two phones.

In order to fully take advantage of the possibilities with NFC, marketers and advertisers should fully understand their capabilities and how to use them. We’ll be at NFC Bootcamp in New York on September 18-19 presenting iBeacons and NFCs: Friends or Foes. Tactify co-founder Richard Dupe will discuss how to create campaigns using NFC and beacons as well as QR and geofences! Check out the NFC Bootcamp and register here. Use code “Tactify” for 20 percent off !

What Are The Next Mobile Trends?

August 13, 2014

Has 2014 been the ‘year of mobile’? There has definitely been significant growth in mobile usage, app growth and technologies like beacons and geofences — but don’t expect to see any of these slow down in the next few years. At the beginning of 2014, 9 in 10 Americans owned a mobile phone, 60 percent owned a smartphone and mobile usage surpassed the PC. According to Nielsen, the average U.S. consumer spends 34 hours every month on mobile devices and owns four “smart” devices (smartphone, tablet, HDTV, PC, gaming console). We are connected 24/7.

With the plethora of data being produced and gathered across all these connected devices, businesses are just beginning to process the endless possibilities for creating more relevant content, products and information for mobile users. Smartphones are used for everything from shopping, messaging, booking travel, checking-in and consuming news and content. And whatever is not done on a smartphone is likely done on another connected device. The phase of making things “mobile” is over. The next phase? Understanding the data to create more relevant and personalized experiences.

Credit: Nielsen

1. Location and proximity targeting

With the growing popularity and usage of beacons, location is becoming a huge part of mobile strategies. Companies have been using geofencing for quite a few years to trigger certain actions on mobile. Beacons allow businesses to produce even more targeted content based on indoor locations. Getting ready to check into your flight? You might receive a notification telling you when to get your boarding pass and ID out.

2. Context and personalization

With accounts connected across a number of devices, businesses will be able to use data and technology to produce more personalized and context-aware content. Imagine walking into a retailer and receiving a message that the shirt you were saw online the night before is on sale and available in store. Smart devices and apps will be able to understand individual habits based on your device usage and data. Matched with location capabilities, consumers will be served not just relevant content but information relevant to that exact time.

3. Higher app engagement and more conversions

According to Flurry, smartphone owners are using app 86 percent of the time compared to mobile browsers. Most major retailers, airlines and brands have already released their own apps. Matching those with location-aware and personalized content will produce higher engagement and conversion rates. Providing coupons based on shopping lists, or events in an area based on travel plans will make apps more useful to consumers. For iPhone users, iOS 8 will suggest apps on the lock screen based on location. This will not only help consumers more easily open apps they need but will also increase awareness of apps and potentially increase downloads.

4. NFC takes hold

Near field communication (NFC) continues to grow in the market mostly due to payments. If Apple releases an NFC-compatible iPhone 6 this fall, there will likely be an increase in mobile payments and innovative uses for NFC in marketing campaigns, advertising, business cards, connected products and travel experiences.
What other trends do you expect to take off in the next year?

Smart Cards

August 7, 2014

Tactify’s Smart Cards are great for direct marketing and include NFC and QR technology that can be linked directly to digital content.

5 Things to Know About NFC

July 25, 2014

NFC is not a new technology but it has been gaining traction in the market over the last few years due to NFC-enabled credit cards and mobile phones. There is speculation that Apple will finally adopt NFC in the iPhone 6 — at which point, NFC might reach widespread adoption among consumers. However, the NFC rumor mill hits every time a new iPhone is about to be released. Nonetheless, the number of NFC-enabled Android and Windows phones is growing, and with that, we have seen an increase in the ways brands and consumers are experimenting with the technology.

How does NFC work?

Getting down to basics, NFC, or near field communication, transmits data wirelessly between two objects equipped with NFC chips. The two objects have to be brought within close range, usually within four inches, in order to communicate and can transmit any information.

How can I use NFC?

As we mentioned, iPhones aren’t NFC compatible. However, the number of other smartphones with NFC capabilities is growing. (You can see a full list of compatible devices here.) Payments, through services like Google Wallet, have made it possible to simply tap or wave your phone over a payments system (or laptop) to make a purchase.

Is NFC just for payments?

No! Technically, you can use NFC as long as you have two NFC compatible objects. Brands have used NFC for ticketing at events or while traveling, opening car doors with NFC-enabled security badges and car keys, tracking healthcare information, and in marketing and advertising campaigns. It can be as simple as placed an NFC-enabled sticker within a retail area that links to coupons, rewards, ads or movie trailers, social media pages, mobile apps and more. NFC extends to personal use, too. Place an NFC sticker near your front door, wave or tap with it your phone and turn the air conditioning on. Trend Blog put together a great list of 18 creative ways to use NFC.

Will NFC keep growing?

Yes. The number of NFC compatible devices increased 128% from 2012 to 2013. IHS Technology predicts that two in three devices will be NFC compatible by 2018. Plus, VISA Europe saw their contactless payments increase four fold in 2013. While brands are starting to experiment with beacons, NFC still has its own specific use and purpose. It’s cheaper and works within a much more specific location than beacons.

What’s the security like?

NFC only works within a close range — usually four inches or less — and the signals are very specific. In order for a hacker to get a hold of your information, they would have to be extremely close to your phone or credit card. In addition, any data stored on your phone like credit card information is encrypted and usually has a number of added security features like pins and passwords. Get a full explanation of NFC security here.

Bottom line, NFC is here to stay but there are a multitude of other technologies disrupting the space. When it comes to designing a marketing or advertising campaign, make sure to consider your goals, budget and customers when deciding which one to use.

Photo Credit: Kārlis Dambrāns

Helping Build the Next Generation of the Legacy Project Chicago

July 11, 2014

We are happy to announce that Tactify is partnering with The Legacy Project in Chicago to create a new digitally interactive experience for visitors. The Legacy Walk is an outdoor museum showcasing LGBT contributions to history and runs along North Halsted Street. Visitors will now be able to supplement their experience on the Legacy Walk by accessing their entire database on their mobile devices by tapping over an NFC chip or scanning a QR code.

Legacy Project Co-Founder and Executive Director Victor Salvo (center) takes a photo-op break with Tactify Co-Founder Richard Dupé (right) and Tactify National Account Manager, Daniel Beatty.

Once implemented, the existing plaques will be supplemented with video, images and audio content, providing an even richer experience for visitors. Eventually, each plaque will be enabled with beacons, making it even easier to learn about the inspiring people who are celebrated throughout the Legacy Walk.

Full NFC and QR code implementation is expected in June 2015 – LGBT Pride Month – in advance of the dedication of Phase IV of the Legacy Walk next fall. Make sure to follow Tactify and The Legacy Project on Twitter for continuous updates. You can learn more about visiting The Legacy Project here.