Beyond a person’s location, the timing of when consumers receive mobile offers from companies matters, too.

That was a tip conveyed during a geo-local advertising panel session at Business Insider’s Mobile Advertising conference held in New York yesterday.

“Time of day matters to the relevant outcome,” said Amit Shah, online, mobile and social media director at 1800Flowers.com.

Though location-based services on smartphones empower businesses to provide more relevant offers to consumers, when those offers are sent to consumers influences how successful they’ll be. Why? Companies must ensure they don’t incentivize consumers to come into their physical stores when they are closed for the day, cautioned panelists. In other words, avoid sending an offer to a consumer to get $1 off a local coffee shop at 11:30 p.m., if store doors are closed at that hour.

As financial institutions, gatekeepers of transaction data, wade further into the waters of pushing merchant-funded rewards to consumers via mobile phones, they should take note of this retailer lesson. Many banks are using technology so that their customers’ location and transactions trigger rewards, but they had better also make sure the timing is right, too. Though a consumer’s transaction at POS might give rise to a discount at another merchant, it’s imperative that the coupon can be used then and there.

Beyond the time-of-day lesson, a promising point emerged during the panel: Businesses are observing that their customers make purchases through their phones, said Jason Fulmines, director of mobile at Travelocity. This portends future revenue coming from innovations within banking, i.e. digital wallets.

Banks nationwide are identifying commerce innovations as an area that will lift their revenue.

Still, consumers buying items through their phones might exhibit different shopping patterns than when they make purchases through other channels. Perhaps the desktop serves as a browsing tool whereas mobile users are trying to do more “here and now” transactions, Fulmines suggested. At Travelocity, bookings through the phone are generally for the same booking night, or the next day, he said. For banks, then, offering something like a credit line through the mobile channel seems like a smart area to push to consumers who are in need of capital — and at the time the very moment they need it.

Regardless of the nuances to mobile shopping, consumers aren’t staying exclusive to their mobile phones. People begin their discovery days on mobile devices, switch to their desktops while at work, move onto their tablets in the early evenings while they watch television and finish their days back on their phones, said 1800Flowers.com’s Shah. This demands that retailers — and bankers — provide a consistent consumer experience on all screens matters, something of an effort for bankers.

“If [you send an] offer on mobile, and it’s hard to access later on the desktop, the customer will drop you,” Shah said.