You are a supplier brand or a wholesaler with ambition to enable world-class digital marketing for independent, multi-operating group convenience/coffee/food-to-go shops and maybe even retail chains. You want to enable them to compete in the loyalty space with the large national retailers.
YOUR AMBITIONS AND OBJECTIVES
Your ambitions are to drive transactions of your impulse products like hot and cold beverages and hot and cold food in this channel. You want to strengthen your relationship with your retail customers and you want to attract new. You want to capture shopper data for insights and you want to build a large and engaged digital distribution where you are in control. The shopper data will be used to improve the program you offer to the participating merchants. You may also want to use the data for re-targeting across paid media e.g. Facebook advertising.
You are taking lead on launching and operating a digital rewards program, which again you offer to convenience/coffee/food-to-go shops. The program will help the merchants recruit new customers, increase purchase frequency and build loyalty with their local customers. You take the role of a retail chain`s support office enabling digital marketing and loyalty capabilities to any merchant that sells your products.
WHAT IS THE NAME OF YOUR DIGITAL REWARDS PROGRAM?
If you are a strong consumer brand you may want to launch the program under your brand umbrella. If you are a wholesaler or a brand house with multiple brands or non-branded products like bakery products you may want to consider a more generic naming of the program. In the end you may want to invite non-competing complimentary brands to participate on your platform because it will benefit your retail customers – and become an even more attractive program for consumers. Also if you have a strong consumer brand you may consider this opportunity.
For illustration purposes, lets name your digital rewards program MyLocalStores.
MyLocalStores is capturing what the rewards program is for the consumer. It connects them with their favourite, local convenience/coffee/food-to-go stores, which they visit multiple times a day/week. A consumer may connect with as many stores she wants.
CORE MECHANICS OF THE DIGITAL REWARDS PROGRAM
Consumers download your MyLocalStores app on App Store or Google Play. The app contains global content from your marketing team and local content from participating stores. Global content can be ads, offers, games and surveys. Local content can be offers and stamp cards.
Consumers get access to unique content in the app once they have registered with their mobile number and birthdate (add gender if you like) – and given consent to your terms and conditions. The T&C is always available for the app user and from a my page the user can edit the profile and consents.
Consumers can choose to connect with as many local stores they want and will easily find the nearest stores. Once connected this consumer is part of the store´s local member base and all available local content (active campaigns) are populated into this consumer´s app. This would populate the consumer´s loyalty section in the app with any stamp cards available from this store and populate the deals section in the app with any active local coupon offers.
Coupons and stamp cards have unique barcodes per consumer. Redeeming unique codes in-store is done through scanning the customer´s mobile phone with a merchant app, which the merchant has installed on his mobile phone.
Stamp cards are the core of the program and local merchants can choose to have multiple stamp cards, e.g. on coffee, meal-deals, soft drinks etc. Local merchants can choose from different stamp card mechanics e.g. every 5th, 6th, or 7th free.
Local offers and stamp cards have unique barcodes that are redeemable only in one specific store. This means that you enable each merchant to drive loyalty on his own customer base. Also local shop offers are available for merchants to publish in the app. This allows them to reduce food waste by offering customers to pick up a goodie bag (S, M, L, XL) at the end of the day. Central shop offers can also be published in the app by your marketing team. Central shop offers are redeemable across all stores.
On any stamp a rating opportunity is triggered in the app. This allows the customer to rate the customer experience – that particular visit – within 2 hours. All ratings are fully transparent to consumers and merchants and at all times you can easily find number of ratings and average rating score in the app for all participating stores. After 5 ratings the customer gets a rating reward. The rating reward is central content and it is up to you to define what this content is, e.g. 50% off on the next coffee.
The app also contain a store finder where you can find the nearest store, which stores have the highest ratings and all relevant information on the stores like opening hours and contact info. Also the app contain contact information to customer support.
You can choose to have the following central content in addition to a rating reward: sign-up reward, recruiter/recruited reward and birthday reward. Central content should apply to all users and thus if they should be redeemable they should be redeemable across all stores. If this is the case you should ensure that your merchants are compensated (and have agreed to this part of the program before signing up). You can also have central content like fun and engaging games, e.g. scratch card or memory games. Prizes in games can be rewards redeemable in the participating stores or you can use our function to import 3rd party codes (e.g. Netflix, iTunes, UBER etc).
Recruiting to the app program is key to your success. The local content (stamp cards and local deals) are the main reasons for consumers to get onboard with the program, but you can also do more. You can use printed codes on paper – or even on products – that are redeemable in the app. This way you are driving offline to online activity and we refer to this as “Scan & Get Rewards” in the MyLocalStores app. Rewards can for example be games. Also a recruit a friend function is a powerful mechanic.
THE MERCHANT PERSPECTIVE
When the customer purchase and use her stamp card or a coupon this is scanned with the merchant app. The merchant app is downloaded from App Store or Google Play, but requires merchant specific login credentials which is provided only to the participating merchants. There are no integration requirements with the point of sale (ePOS) systems (which would be many different across merchants).
The merchant app is basically two things; a scanner and a validator. The scanner transfers the unique code from the customers´ stamp card to the validator. The validator is part of the technical back-end platform of Liquid Barcodes. The validation is done as a two-step validation where firstly the code is confirmed valid (or not) and a reservation is made. The merchant app will then communicate to the merchant which PLU/PromoID to input in the ePOS system. Secondly, when the merchant confirms in the merchant app that payment is received (customer pays as normal with cash, card or mobile) the validation step is executed in Liquid Barcodes back-end and the consumer app for this particular customer will be updated with a stamp on the stamp card.
In the merchant app the merchant can open up the store manager dashboard where he can view today´s and yesterdays transactions, as well as status on all campaigns and benchmarks with other stores. From the dashboard he sets up each of the local campaigns – either by using his mobile, a tablet or desktop pc.
CONSUMER DATA – YOUR RESPONSIBILITY
You become data controller under GDPR and Liquid Barcodes is your data processor. Read more here on your responsibility as data controller and here on how we support your compliance with GDPR (data protection, consent handling, platform security).
CONSUMER DATA – YOUR OPPORTUNITY
You own the customer data. You have insights on what customers purchase, their purchase frequency and when and where they make their purchases. You know their demographics and you´re able to do automation and personalise offers as well as 1:1 customer dialogue.