The Tribune

By YOURI KEMP

Tribune Business Reporter

ykemp@tribunemedia.net

A Bahamian retailer increased sales by 400 percent through its alliance with an electronic provider who distributed digital coupons to customers via its App.

Mobile Assist, in a statement, said the partnership had enabled Janaees Uniform Centre to demonstrate that it was more than a supplier of school uniforms and branded polos by showcasing its new household, toy and Christmas decoration product lines.

"By the end of the campaigns, a 400 percent increase in new product sales was recorded," Mobile Assist said. "Currently the active user base of customers who have favorited their AppPage in MobileAssist exceeds 1,700."

James Wallace, co-owner of Janaees Uniform Centre, told Tribune Business: “We've done a tremendous a bit of volume because we use Mobile Assist in terms of distributing coupons.”

Explaining how it works, he added: “If you're a Janaees customer, we try to get you to sign on with Mobile Assist. Then we push coupons and discounts out to you that way. So when you come into the store, the coupon is already pre-loaded on your phone. You bring it up to the cash register, they scan it and you get a discount.”

Disclosing that the retailer's partnership with Mobile Assist dates back almost four years, having teamed with the provider when it first launched, he said the sales increase had been seen especially in the “category of school uniforms".

Martha Wallace, who co-founded the business with James, her husband, said that since the first couponing campaign they have expanded their digital commerce footprint to scan and pay, bill paying and a mobile store.

Janaees Uniform Centre was recently approved as a premium scan and pay merchant by the Central Bank of The Bahamas, enabling it to offer cash-back to customers as well as load customer digital wallets at their Chesapeake Road location.

Mrs Wallace said: “The additional benefit to us is the availability of customer data. We can analyse trends on a daily basis with the back-end analytics Mobile Assist provides. This information is key when determining product popularity, purchasing and forecasting. Equally important is our ability to settle payments, which we can have transferred straight to our business bank accounts.”

Selina Archer, Mobile Assist's marketing consultant, said: “There is nothing more frustrating for a marketer than playing the guessing game when it comes to analysing the success of a campaign.

The algorithm functionality Mobile Assist provides is on par with the likes of Google ads, Facebook and Instagram. From it we can deep dive into consumer behaviour going as far as to predict trends and build interactive, engaging content.”

Mobile Assist is regulated by the Central Bank of The Bahamas, and its software platform is hosted in the Amazon Cloud. There have been more than 98,000 downloads of its App to-date, and more than 8,000 registered users, and consumers can use it to conduct transactions with over 120 businesses via the phone.