Blue Bunny recently leveraged mobile to drive in-store engagement for several new ice cream flavors and saw a significant jump in purchase intent as a result.

Blue Bunny teamed up with mobile shopping rewards app CheckPoints from inMarket this summer to give in-store shoppers an incentive to go to the ice cream aisle, pick up a carton of the new Blue Bunny cake flavors line and scan the UPC code to receive extra points. Results from the effort include a seven-fold increase in purchase intent and over 53,000 in-store product engagements during the month-long campaign.

?InMarket takes the online pay-for-performance model and deploys it in real-world shopper marketing, which is a groundbreaking concept that provides true accountability where it previously didn?t exist,? said Lindsey Ingram, media supervisor at Barkley U.S.

?It?s a low-risk, high-reward platform that generated outstanding results for Blue Bunny,? she said.

Barkley is the agency that worked with Blue Bunny to develop the campaign.

Purchase path
Blue Bunny wanted to drive in-store awareness in the ice cream aisle to encourage consumers to try out its new line of cake flavored ice creams created by celebrity chef Duff Goldman.

During July, when consumers opened the CheckPoints app they saw Blue Bunny as one of the featured products.

With the CheckPoints app, brands are able to deliver a message in store while consumers have their product in their hands. Users earn points when they scan items that can be redeemed for rewards.

In addition to the CheckPoints app, inMarket also offers shopping apps ListBliss and Extra, Extra.

Together, these apps reach approximately 20 million consumers, according to the company.

As an incentive to encourage users to scan its products, Blue Bunny offered more points per scan than other products.

When users scanned the UPC code for a Blue Bunny cake flavor, they saw a post-scan connection page encouraging them to like Blue Bunny on Facebook.

Consumers were made aware of the promotion through opt-in push messages, mobile banner ads that appeared across inMarket?s shopping apps and social media.

Pay per engagement
A survey of in store CheckPoints users at the start of the campaign found that just 3 percent planned to make a Blue Bunny purchase. After the program, inMarket surveyed users again and purchase intent for Blue Bunny had risen to 26 percent.

There were also 53,000 in-store engagements with the Blue Bunny brand during the campaign.

Brands pay per engagement with the Checkpoints, which helps deliver ROI results. Blue Bunny achieved an ROI of 200 percent for the effort.

?This effort shows what the power of mobile is in stores, that it can had a direct impact on the intent to purchase and sales,? said Dave Heinzinger, director of communications for inMarket, Venice, CA.

?CheckPoints campaigns are holding consumer attention for an average of 1.5 minutes,? he said. ?That means they are clicking through.

?Mobile is a unique way to keep a shopper?s attention and have an impact on their purchase intent.?

Final Take
Chantal Tode is associate editor on Mobile Marketer, New York