Loyalty Card Program
Bringing Customers Back VIP – Rewards – Loyalty
Getting a customer to your store the first time might be easy – Having them return on a regular basis may be difficult and expensive. Unless you are the only game in town there are a multitude of options for consumers to choose from everyday whether you own a restaurant, clothing store, or dry cleaners. Always keeping you in their mind is important. Having to rely on newspaper ads or coupon packs is extremely expensive and short lived. Trying to always find new patrons while at the same time ignoring your existing ones is a huge mistake. Research shows that it costs up to eight times more to acquire a new customer than to keep an existing one coming back. Yet many merchants continue to overspend on campaigns to attract new business and underspend on building value with the customers they already have. There is that saying in the dirty world of politics – work the base, work the base, and work the base. The same concept really holds true for the good world of retailing and restaurants.
This is where our Gift Card USA Loyalty Card Program comes in. It can be run as either an add on to our Gift Card Program or be a totally independent standalone program. The choice is entirely yours. If you choose to add Loyalty to Gift this is simple because every time we set up a gift card merchant the program also includes the capability to add Loyalty. All that is required to begin is to print the new loyalty cards and you are ready to begin. However, it is good to know that our program can work on a single card for both gift and loyalty.
Custom Cards:
If you want to make your loyalty rewards cards uniquely your own, then we recommend you opt for completely custom cards. You will provide us with the custom design you want for the front of the cards with your color scheme and logo, as well as your custom text for the back of the card and our card printer will create a card that you will be thrilled to give to your customers. You will be provided a proof to approve prior to going into production so that you are completely satisfied. Custom cards are shipped within 15 business days after proof approval.
Here are some samples of what other businesses have designed for their custom loyalty rewards cards:
Custom Loyalty Card Pricing
250 Custom Loyalty Cards $300.00
1000 Custom Loyalty Cards $500.00
2500 Custom Loyalty Cards $1000.00
* Above price includes pre-press costs and card printing. Ground Shipping is just $29.00
Monthly Pricing
Only $19.00 per Month
No Transaction Fees
Includes Unlimited Transactions
Includes Real-Time Reporting
Includes Customer Service and Tech Support
Includes Free Web Terminal
Includes Phone Apps (Apple and Android)
How It Works
Deciding Point Value
The first step towards creating a Loyalty Program is deciding what point value to assign to customer purchases. The most popular options are $1 = 1 point or $1 = 10 points.
Deciding Awards Levels & Redemptions
The next step is to decide what reward(s) to give your customers when a specific point level is reached. Rewards can be products, services, discounts, or dollar value added to the card.
Take for example the popular loyalty rewards program that one of the major restaurant chains uses whereby it offers 10 points for each dollar spent plus 500 points at initial signup. As loyal customers accumulate points they are rewarded for reaching specific levels such as a free appetizer or dessert, free entre, or dollar valued certificates for higher levels.
In a program such as this the merchant will print their own brochure, flyer, or store poster which spells out what is offered at different levels. Think about your individual situation. Let’s say you are a video store. How about each rental equals 1 point and after 5 rentals the customer can redeem their points for a free rental or if they want to accumulate points then at 12 points they can redeem for a free rental plus a free microwave popcorn.
This program is popular because we don’t determine the reward levels as it is totally up to you. Points are simply added to the card or redeemed in any amount you choose. This allows rewards and reward levels to be continuously flexible without making any award level or point value changes in the system. An example of the flexibility is that let’s say you have a restaurant and Tuesdays and Wednesdays are usually slow. Then how about everyone gets double points on Tuesdays and on Wednesdays it only takes 50 points to get a free dessert with dinner. This is a great way to fill more seats and create loyalty.
Auto Rewards Program
The easiest loyalty program is also one of the most effective. Your business will choose one point level that will trigger an automatic dollar-value reward added to the customer’s card. For example, the program may be set up so that:
$1 = 1 point, 50 points = $5 reward. When 50 points are accrued, the system automatically redeems the points and adds $5 spendable value to the card.
With Auto Rewards, your customers are continuously motivated to return because they have dollars or points (or both) on their cards at all times. With the “add value” function disabled for this program, clerks are prevented from accidentally adding dollars to the card instead of points.
The Loyalty Receipt
The terminal prints a receipt which shows the amount of the customer’s purchase (for which points are being awarded), the reward value available to use for future purchases, and the current point balance. To eliminate confusion, no previous redemptions are shown on the printed receipt. Our loyalty program is the most flexible in the industry and enables you to customize your printer receipt to suit your program.
Online Point Tracking
By simply entering their card number into our online tracking tool your customers can instantly view their point value and history. There is no cost for you or your customer to check their balance online. If you have a website, then we would be happy to provide the API code to your webmaster to add this lookup ability right on your website.
Customer Data Mining
Customer demographic information (name, address, phone, email and date of birth) as well as an additional 10 custom fields of your choice may be tied to a specific card number and stored in the host database. This will allow you to generate custom reports used to target certain customers with marketing offers based on card usage.
Gift Card USA has a simple popup web form that may easily be added to your website allowing customers to “register” their cards themselves by entering their personal identification information. This form will also allow you to quickly register your customers who complete a registration form that you provide that they complete when signing up for your VIP loyalty rewards program.
Merchant Reports
Included in your program is access to a variety of valuable reports to assist you in managing your program. You will receive a user name and password to access the 24/7 web-based reporting system.
This way you will have up to the minute control of your program as full transaction history is available in real-time via the web. Different levels of access can be set for different levels of management.
The Gift Card USA merchant portal provides you with instant access to your reports. You can display transactions by day, week, month, last 30 days, last 7 days or any custom date range. View transactions by store location, employee number, terminal, and specific card. A graphing function is built into the portal for quick viewing of year-over-year transaction volume comparison.
The reports are exportable to other programs you might already be using so comma-separated exports are available at any time allowing you to export data to other systems for accounting, marketing and statistical use. Liability reports allow controllers and accountants to easily maintain the books. You can view cards that have been dormant for a given period of time within a specified date range. You can use this to your advantage by sending an email or SMS text to them with a very special offer to entice them back to your business.
Data Mining for Loyalty Card Program
Operating a successful loyalty or VIP rewards program means understanding and using your customers’ demographic data. Your online Web Terminal gives you the ability to quickly and easily add customers to your own private secure database. In addition to the standard data that most merchants collect such as Name, Address, Phone Number, Email, and Birthday there are 10 additional totally customizable fields of your choice.
Email and SMS Text Marketing
Our exclusive feature available in your Web Merchant Portal is the ability to send messages to your customers in specific card sets and/or campaigns via either Email or instant SMS text messages. These are very powerful tools. For example, send a Birthday or Anniversary Email a week or 30 days before their celebration. Better yet instantly send an SMS text message at 3 PM on a rainy Wednesday to all of your VIP customers telling them to come in that night and receive a free dessert or if you are a clothing store that a certain line of dresses just arrived in stock.
Email Marketing Free
SMS Text Messages 12 Cents Each
Now that you are familiar with our Loyalty Card Program please feel free to Contact Us by either completing the Request Info Form or sending an email directly to Kevin at kevin@giftcardusa.com.