Our good friends at Starbucks ran a pretty cool MMS (Multimedia Messaging Service) marketing campaign for their Pumpkin Spice Latte (PSL) drink. Here’s how it worked: On September 3rd 2015, Pumpkin Spice Latte on Twitter @TheRealPSL tweeted “If you want to get a PSL early, you need to create #PSLFanPass! Just enter the super-secret password to get yours.” The tweet included a link to where fans were to go to enter the “super-secret” password.
As you can see in the image below that was included with the tweet, the “super-secret” password wasn’t that secret, as it was right in the image. The password was “PUMPKIN”.
When fans visited the website, they were prompted to enter the password into the password field as you can see below.
After entering the password “PUMPKIN”, fans were re-directed to the following page, telling fans they’ve “been chosen to try Pumpkin Spice Latte before anyone else.”, and to “Enter your number and we’ll text you a pass to show your barista”. Pretty fun huh?
After fans entered their mobile phone number into the field, they were sent the following MMS message from Starbucks, which included their “PSL FAN PASS”. As you can see in the MMS message below, Starbucks used a special number for each pass, unique to the phone number. Our pass number was 32025. By doing this, Starbucks was able to avoid coupon fraud, as baristas used the unique pass number at checkout to confirm the pass number hadn’t been used yet.
Great use of MMS messaging from Starbucks on their PSL campaign, but really, Starbucks has been doing a great job with their mobile marketing efforts for years, as you can tell from the many other times we’ve written about them below.
- Starbucks Advertises SMS Loyalty Program In-Store
- Starbucks Launches SMS Marketing Campaign To Promote Frappuccino
- Learn How Starbucks Increases App Downloads with Text Messaging
- Starbucks Tests SMS Trivia Game on Mobile Subscribers
- Starbucks Launches Limited Time Only Mobile Campaign
- Starbucks 12 Days of Gifting
Have you seen a cool use of MMS messaging from a brand that we should feature here on our blog? Let us know in the comments below.
