The efforts of these and other brands such as Henkel and Oakley follow Walmart’s construction of a mobile-driven digital platform built around e-receipts. Taken together, these efforts point to how mobile is updating the image of the old-fashioned print receipt for a new generation of digitally savvy consumers.

“Mobile receipt based promotions are a win-win for both brands and end customers,” said Atul Sabharwal, founder of Snipp.

“For the end customers its easier and more convenient to take advantage of offers,” he said. “The participation process is familiar as it’s based on existing behavior that is native to actions taken by users today on mobile devices – taking pictures, texting etc.

“For brands its the ability to reward only paying customers in a cost effective and timely fashion, tie in retailer customizations to keep their retail partners happy – very important as the actual customer for a brand is the retailer – and most importantly build a data set on their paying end customers – that retailers do not share with them – that they can retarget.”

Receipts go digital
The Minute Maid promotion is currently in market at Walmart stores, with shoppers who purchase any four 59-oz. Minute
Maid qualifying products at Walmart receiving a free $5 Walmart eCard.

Shoppers text a photo of their receipt along with the words “Minute Maid” to a short code, Snipp qualifies it and sends them a text with a reward code they can redeem for the Walmart eCard.

The promotion runs through Sept. 7.

Snipp reports that it has already processed three times as many redemptions as Minute Maid had originally planned for and that the campaign has gone viral on the Internet as well with many deals sites, Facebook pages and Twitter handles broadcasting the deal out to their followers.

“Snipp has done multiple programs at Walmart over the last 12 months and consequently Walmart shoppers are getting increasingly accustomed to Snipp’s mechanic of participating in consumer promotions at Walmart by sending in a picture of their receipt,” Mr. Sabharwal said.

Walmart is focusing heavily on digital receipts to enhance the shopper experience via mobile (see story).

Mini-loyalty program
The Smart Ones promotion is a mini-loyalty program, with shoppers required to purchase 30 Smart Ones products to receive a free $10
Visa Reward card. It runs through Nov. 14.

Customers can make purchases across multiple trips and any retailers. Shoppers need to take a photo of the receipts with their phone and upload them to a Web site, text them to a short code or email them.

Once shoppers cross the 30-product threshold, they receive a link from which they can enter their details and receive their Visa card.

Henkel is offering a promotion in partnership with Coupons.com. Shoppers need to purchase $20 of any Henkel products; eligible brands include Purex, Dial, RightGuard, SoftScrub and Renuzit. Once again, shoppers need to simply snap a photo of their receipt and either text it to a short code or email it in to receive a link to a $10 coupon provided by Coupons.com. The response is co-branded from them the retailer shoppers purchased their products from.

Ease of use
Oakley is using receipts in slightly different way, using Snipp’s SnippCheck for a trade promotion to incentivize sales representatives at all retailers where Oakley products are sold.

The promotion includes tiered rewards and instant wins while creating a database of sales representatives in the process. Oakley reps can register and send in photos of their receipts to qualify for the different prizes.

The reason why marketers are embracing mobile for receipt-based promotions is that can help solve some of the issues with traditional receipt mail-in promotions, which require cumbersome steps for users, can be costly to implement, require a long lead time and provide limited data about customers.

“The ability for a consumer to take part in a promotion in its entirety from participation to redemption via a single device is what makes mobile the perfect tool for brands to execute a promotion,” Mr. Sabharwal said.

“Historically there has always been a conflict for a brand looking to reward only  ‘paying’ customers based on their purchase vs. creating a consumer experience that enables ease of participation for paying customers,” he said.
“Mobile solves all of these programs by simply asking users to snap a picture of their purchase receipt and submit it that through one of many standard mechanisms of messaging from their mobile device or simply visiting a campaign Web site on their device of choice.”

Final Take?
Chantal Tode is senior editor on Mobile Commerce Daily, New York