Qdoba shows 52% redemption rate from JAGTAG mobile coupons

Qdoba, a Mexican fast-food chain in the US, recently ran a mobile coupon campaign using the JAGTAG MMS mobile barcode system. JAGTAG has released the results from the campaign, showing an average coupon redemption rate of 52%

JAGTAG ran the Qdoba program to promote a new restaurant near the University of Michigan campus. JAGTAG 2d barcodes were placed in ads in college newspapers ads and on wildings on campus for six days. People who took a picture of the barcode and texted it to the shortcode provided received a Buy One Burrito, Get One Free coupon via MMS.

400 consumers requested the coupon in six days,  representing 1% of all students on campus. Of those who received a coupon, more than half redeemed their coupon in-store over the same six day period.

From the release:

Dudley Fitzpatrick, Chief Executive Officer of JAGTAG, said “The impressive number of consumer engagements resulted from consumers being able to request and receive the coupon instantly, without needing to download an application into their phone. By utilizing MMS instead of the mobile web, consumers also understood that engaging a JAGTAG to request the coupon was “free” as part of their messaging plan. High redemption was driven by the fact that once the coupon arrived in their message box, it became a strong call-to-action every time the coupon holder checked their text and/or picture messages.”

What we think?

This is a nice preliminary result, but there will need to be a much more extensive test before we can draw any real conclusions. 52% is an impressive figure, but that represents 400 people, which is a very small test sample. Especially considering those people are students, and are far more likely to go for free food offers than usual!

I like that the system doesn’t require a downloadable app to work properly. I can only imagine that this will slow down the reaction time for redeeming that actual barcode - but it does mean that you don’t need a smartphone to use JAGTAG, just a phone with a camera. On the other hand, this is yet another propietary barcode system, at a time when most of the barcoding industry is crying out for standardisation.