Is Snapchat the Future? | socialexcerpts.com

Have you heard of Spanchat? You probably did, if you are a marketer and are targeting teens, who have access to smart phones. The mobile app is unique in its functionality. But before that, let’s discuss why you should read the article and consider integrating the app into your online marketing strategy.

77% of college students use Snapchat to send 400 million messages on a daily basis.

Almost half of these students said that they would open a snap from a brand they would never heard of, while 73% said they would open one from a brand they do know.

70% would even add a brand as a friend if they followed them on a different social platform.

With 16.5 million daily active users, that’s a lot of exposure! – brafton.com

Now let’s come to the app and how it works.

Snapchat is a unique mobile app to send messages. It’s a good replacement of simple text messages. Users can send an image or even a short video to their friends. The uniqueness of these messages is, they have a very short shelf-life. Your friends are able to see the message only for 10 seconds, as the message disappears from the screen after the period, forever!

However, Snapchat recently launched another service, Snapchat Stories, which allows the messages to last on your smart phone for up to 24 hours. These stories let the users to send a collection of images and 5-second videos to tell a story.

Why Snapchat is a must for your business?

First of all, the age demographics of Snapchat users is 13 to 25. If your target customers belong to this user demographics, Snapchat is probably the must-have tool for you.

As discussed above, Snapchat messages lasts for only 10 seconds. This short lifespan of the messages creates a sense of urgency. It builds a natural call-to-action and the user willingly takes the required action, because he knows it will no longer be available after 10 seconds.

Wondering how it can help you in your marketing?

Here is an example of one brand that has used Snapchat to its highest potential.

16 Handles (Snapchat username – Love16Handles)

This New York-based frozen yogurt brand is one of the early adopters of Snapchat. They tried the messaging app for announcing discount coupons. In a 2013 campaign, they asked their fans to take a snap of themselves while they were at one of the outlets of 16 Handles.

They were asked to send the snap to them and in return they would get a snap of a New Year coupon that would save them 16% to 100%. The winners of the coupons would need to redeem it at the location to avail the discount.

So, the drill was, they asked their fans to take their snaps at one of their locations and send them back to get discounts on what they had at the store. The discount ranged from 16%, 50% to 100%. Their fans then needed to go to the cashier and show him the snap of the discount, so that he could know how much discount they had won. However, all these activities needed to be done within 10 seconds.

Within a few days of the beginning of the campaign, 16 Handles had exchanged over 1,400 snaps. And the bonus they got was, a whole new list of fans that they could use for future campaigns.