Learn How Your Mobile App Can Breathe New Life into Your Brick & Mortar Leveraging the power of technology to capture consumer information on mobile usage, shopping location, requests for coupons and purchase patterns drive increased consumer intelligence and revenue for Michaels stores. It’s truly a mobile planet. Think about how many times a day you personally are on your mobile device. Now look around you the next time you are out and about. How many people are talking, texting, on the web, watching videos and checking their emails? Face it, consumers today have a mobile device in hand at all times and they are demanding to receive information when, where and how they want it. As a major brand, you must meet and many times exceed this demand

to provide your customers with options they may not even know they want or need. Imagine if you could determine where your customers are, send direct communications while they are in proximity to your brick and mortar, track where they visit and what they buy and serve relevant content and offers based upon that intelligence. BestFit Mobile and Michaels worked to do just that. 1

THE CHALLENGE Michaels Stores, Inc. is North America’s largest specialty retailer of arts, crafts, framing, floral, wall décor and seasonal merchandise for the hobbyist and do-it-yourself home decorator. Michaels does not have an online commerce option and needed a way to increase revenue by driving interest and traffic into their brick and mortar locations. Their goal was to diversify and optimize their media mix. Part of the mix was to build a stronger social, email marketing and mobile marketing strategy. It was important that the mobile solution created would help to ensure their marketing efforts were as customer centric as possible and would reach their customers where they were.

“We know that our customers are busy. They are active moms, women and very creative people that have their phones on them all the time. We knew that establishing mobile as a real viable touch point for our customers would be very important.” —Paula Puleo, CMO, Michaels

DISCOVERY & GOAL SETTING It was important for Michaels to first understand more about their customers. They had a good representation of who their customers were, but set out to understand the following: • Understand what customers are going in the store to purchase • Establish practices that drive in-store visits and sales • Determine how to build customer engagement and loyalty • Decrease customer dependency on print media • Create a customer preference center and solid CRM • Attract a younger demographic • Increase top line revenue • Create the ability to track mobile to in-store purchases

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BestFit mobile helped gather key answers not only to get the mobile app creation and development heading in the right direction, but to ensure data and data systems were collecting and communicating in a seamless way. A survey was conducted to determine more about customer wants, needs and wishes. Michaels found that: • 86% of customers surveyed were interested in finding and redeeming coupons. • 85% were interested in being a “preferred or premier customer” and receiving offers or discounts before other customers. • 82% wanted to find out if particular products were available in store. • 80% wanted to learn about weekly deals at their local stores. • 71% wanted to browse products on their phone. • 77% were interested in signing up for a Michaels loyalty program and have a chance to earn loyalty rewards.

THE SOLUTION & RESULTS BestFit Mobile worked with a variety of key partners to develop a best-in-class mobile application for Michaels. The app is a free download offered through the app store. It includes a helpful tutorial so users know exactly what features are available and how they can access them. Users of the app will find a weekly ad that serves a relevant offer based on their specific location, or store located nearest to their mobile device. The app lists the store location’s address, phone number, any special store features and a helpful map for easy navigation. Users can select a weekly ad that serves up a variety of specials, like “Back to School,” clearance, art supplies, floral and much more. The app also provides instructions on projects organized by category, such as wedding, holiday, framing, home décor and more,

where users can select materials lists and instructions on how to make the specific project. There are also video tutorials, shopping list creation options, events calendars and other features to provide helpful guides, both before going to the store and once the buyer is in the store. BestFit Mobile also added the ability for consumers to scan a QR code they see on product displays in the store without having to leave the application. One of the most important features of the app is the ability for Michaels to track coupon usage down to the customer level by serving coupons through the application that users can then present while in the store. They first launched an offer to encourage app downloads that customers could redeem in store. It provided a way for customers to try the new app and get a great deal and provided Michaels with the customer information they needed to communicate on a one-to-one level. BestFit Mobile created and built a “middle layer” to integrate key data from once very siloed sources. This middle layer allowed the systems to talk to each other, and provided a central point for merchandising data,

“We’ve had 3-4 million downloads of the mobile app, have recognized a significant increase in foot traffic to stores, can track mobile to store coupon use and have powerful analytics through our new CRM.” —Paula Puleo, CMO, Michaels

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Shoplocal weekly ad data, IBM point-of-sale data, Bazaarvoice ratings and review data, Demandware ecommerce data, Acxiom consumer data, etc. On top of it all, BestFit Mobile created a content management system so Michaels could better manage and edit content to deliver the rest of the experience including the mobile app, QR codes, mobile web, SMS and a coupon delivery and tracking.

Michaels has seen increased consumer engagement and increased sales from their mobile app development project. They have also captured increased website traffic and email subscriptions directly from the app, recognized 3-4 million app downloads, can access powerful consumer data from the new CRM system and captured the attention and purchasing power from a younger demographic.

CONTACT BESTFIT MOBILE If you are interested in learning how to prepare your brand for the mobile planet, contact the BestFit Mobile team today. Call us at 888.248.0660 or email us at [email protected].

WHAT’S NEXT? The goal for Michaels is to continue to create more of a seamless consumer experience across their website, mobile app, mobile web, email and social platforms. It’s important for Michaels to continue to understand their customers and provide content and offers that are relevant, continuing to create a solid balance between content demand and offer demand. 4

ABOUT BESTFIT MOBILE Austin, Texas based BestFit Mobile is leading a mobile revolution by pioneering innovations for the enterprise within the rapidly expanding mobile market. Their creative, forward thinking mobile solutions afford their clients greater opportunities to engage closely with their customers, employees and partners. A mobile first strategy focused on application and mobile web development has become a key initiative for the majority of enterprise clients. BestFit Mobile helps enterprises combine the latest in mobile technologies and institutional knowledge with the most elegant user experiences built on powerful cross-platform mobile frameworks. BestFit Mobile works differently than similar firms in this space by evaluating business requirements, existing processes and operational pain points before considering a specific mobile feature set. This enables

BestFit to help their clients to satisfy and refine their strategic goals. BestFit provides support to maximize ROI, including promoting app downloads, keeping apps fresh with a regular upgrade path, ensuring data and APIs operate at peak performance, launching and helping to manage loyalty programs, procuring mobile devices for employees, MDM, setting security, supporting mobile end users and making sure a company’s cloud infrastructure can support it all. “It’s A Mobile Planet.” Visit them at http://www. bestfitmobile.com.

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