Here at Sparkfly, we’ve worked on so many different technology projects and we’ve learned which providers can truly make a difference. Our platform was built to integrate with a variety of platforms, tools, and systems, and we carefully select technology partners that can make a positive impact on our customers. Vibes is one of our chosen Industry Innovators, and as you learn more about them below, you’ll understand why.
THE COMPANY
Vibes specializes in timely, relevant, high-volume mobile messaging at global scale. They’re a true pioneer in the space, as the company’s creation in 1998 came only six years after the first-ever text was sent in 1992. More recently, their impact has been recognized throughout the industry, including being named a Leader in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for mobile marketing platforms in 2019 and 2020.
Vibes’ mission is simple—give brands the power to build and nurture relationships with their customers through intelligent mobile engagement. In a channel where so many brands miss the mark, Vibes places a strong emphasis on innovation, creativity, and excellence. You’ll even see them promoting #GoodVibesOnly across social media.
THEIR INNOVATION
Speaking of innovation, Vibes walks the walk. The personalized messaging campaigns you can build on their platform stretch across the entire customer journey. In addition to sending special offers, the Vibes platform can send order confirmations, appointment reminders, shipment notifications, and more—and they’re always investing in new products and services including Wallet, push notifications, and App Inbox. All of this gives brands the ability to communicate with their customers quickly and conveniently on their smartphones, the same way customers communicate with friends and family.
By helping brands develop cohesive customer experiences across the digital lifecycle and physical locations, Vibes empowers them to learn more about their customers and maximize all of the data they collect.
PARTNERSHIP POWER
Because SMS is such a powerful way to reach customers, it makes perfect sense for us to team up with Vibes. Both platforms can talk to each other through the entire loop of the mobile marketing process. Together, we use offers as the basis for mobile acquisition (including paid social offer campaigns and mobile app downloads), commerce, validation, and loyalty profiles. Sparkfly’s platform generates 1:1 single-use offer codes and Vibes delivers them to every mobile destination you can think of, including directly into customers’ digital wallets.
One of the biggest problems our partnership solves is mobile marketing attribution. So many brands have trouble connecting the delivery of a mobile offer to its actual redemption. Sparkfly and Vibes close the loop on that reporting by talking to each other from the moment the offer deploys to the moment it’s redeemed in the POS system. As a result, we can provide real-time campaign and channel ROI and generate other data-driven insights to help brands accelerate their customer engagement and loyalty capabilities.
There’s a good chance you’ve seen Sparkfly and Vibes’ partnership in action and weren’t even aware of it. Back in 2019, Chipotle decided to give away $1M worth of free burritos during the NBA Finals. Their Freeting campaign combined the words “free” and “Tweeting” and wound up going viral. Here’s how it worked:
- Every time one of the game announcers used the word “free”, Chipotle tweeted a keyword for fans to text.
- If a fan was one of the first 500 people to respond, they received a unique link to a landing page where he could save the offer to his mobile wallet.
- With the tap of a finger, the lucky fan could order their own free feast, all without leaving the comfort of their couch.
Thanks to popular basketball terms like “free throw” and “free agent”, Chipotle tweeted out a whopping 425 keywords during the NBA Finals, and they were trending on Twitter throughout all six games. When all was said and done, 1.8 million fans had taken part in the campaign (the average fan tried more than 8 times to win!) and Chipotle’s delivery orders spiked 100% YoY during the series.
Thanks to our technology, Chipotle could rest easy knowing that the single-use offer codes these lucky fans received eliminated any chance of fraud—and also gave Chipotle’s marketing team the power to see each redemption in real-time.
LOOKING AHEAD
The mobile landscape is only going to get bigger. For the past several years, consumers spent ever-increasing time on their smartphones, and during the pandemic, Americans spent over a trillion hours on their mobile devices. Successful marketing has always been about reaching the right audience, with the right message, at the right time. Thanks to Sparkfly and Vibes’ partnership, brands can send special offers and other gifts to customers right on the device they use most.
Be sure to revisit our blog as we highlight more creative partners in our Industry Innovator series.