T-Mobile today announces that it is trialling Bluetooth as part of a campaign to encourage more people into its stores. Piloting the scheme at six stores across the country, passers by will be prompted to enable Bluetooth on their mobile phones to receive T-Mobile offers and deals.

The activity, known as ‘Proximity Marketing’, will be run in conjunction with Hypertag, a provider of proximity solutions. Hypertag has installed Bluetooth tags in the six T-Mobile stores, which send out invites to pick up a free gift and promotional offers to customers’ Bluetooth-enabled phones as they pass the store. Graphics in the shop windows also prompt customers to turn on their Bluetooth to receive the offers, which cost nothing to receive.

Once in-store, customers will receive additional information on what their gift actually is or further details on the promotions via Bluetooth.

“Proximity marketing is a really great way for T-Mobile to engage with their customers, providing offers suited to their interests”, says Elaine Haines, Commercial Director at Hypertag. “It allows brands to stand out and catch the consumer’s eye at the right place and time, and measure the results.”

During the trial – which lasts for one month – T-Mobile will continually monitor customers’ responses to the individual promotions trialling different messages.  Based on the results from the pilot, the scheme could be extended to other T-Mobile stores nationwide.

In the last two weeks, customer response has been promising, according to T-Mobile. “We can see an increase in footfall and sales data is positive too. And customers are positively surprised when they have interacted with the Bluetooth device,” says Eugenia Rode, Multimedia Manager responsible for the trial.

“We’re very excited to be trialling this new way to connect with our customers,” says Andrew Coull, Director of Retail at T-Mobile. “We see ‘Proximity Marketing’ as an innovative and more targeted way of interacting with our customers, and we hope that they will also see the benefits, as we share with them the information and unique offers which they will be interested in.”

About T-Mobile UK

T-Mobile is one of the world’s largest mobile operators with more than 128 million customers worldwide and is the service provider of choice for 16.8 million customers in the UK, making it one of the largest networks.

T-Mobile has a range of innovative products and services, such as Solo, the SIM only option offering market-leading minutes and texts (at £30 per month) on a 30-day rolling contract; Combi, our best package deal; Flext, a unique tariff with a flexible allowance; U-Fix, a tariff that combines pay-as-you-go and a minimum term contract, and web’n'walk, which enables customers to surf the internet on the move. Competitive high-speed Mobile Broadband tariffs include access to the largest worldwide Wi-Fi network, with more than 1,000 HotSpots in convenient locations in the UK and 27,000 worldwide. Network coverage is among the best in the UK at over 99 per cent of the UK population. T-Mobile operates an advanced 3G HSDPA-enabled network capable of supporting effective mobile broadband speeds of up 4.5Mbps and is the first UK operator to provide a nationwide HSUPA capability for faster uploads.

For more information about T-Mobile UK, please visit www.t-mobile.co.uk

About Hypertag

Hypertag is an award winning global proximity marketing technology and service provider enabling brands to connect to consumers’ mobile phones based on their proximity to a fixed physical location. Using short-range mobile wireless technologies such as Bluetooth and infra-red, Hypertags send content such as wallpapers, video clips, games, music clips, vouchers or links direct to mobile phones quickly and for free.

Hypertag sells its proximity marketing software and services on a retail basis to major brand owners and through a comprehensive network of resellers around the world. Hypertag also integrates its proximity marketing systems with 3rd party infrastructure providers such as in-store advertising display screen providers.