One of the biggest hurdles to consumers joining and participating in retail loyalty programs is that their wallet is filled with cards and keychain is already jammed with tags. However, several new and emerging applications could help overcome that objection.

By digitizing store-branded membership cards, these platforms help consumers manage their cards and offers on their smartphones, and enable retailers to provide personalized offers in a channel preferred by a growing number of shoppers.

The most successful digital card program to date is CardStar, which allows iPhone users to store and retrieve their membership and loyalty cards from a list of more than 200 merchants, including Blockbuster, Best Buy, CVS, Petsmart and Staples.  The CardStar platform is designed to replace the cards in a consumer’s wallet. To digitize a card, consumers just enter a merchant name and the barcode number associated with their loyalty membership. At checkout, consumers pull up the onscreen barcode and use. CardStar's unique SyncScan technology to renders one-dimensional (1D) barcodes.

Shoppers looking to stretch their dollars can visit coupon galleries at A&P, Waldbaums, Super Fresh, Pathmark, Food Emporium and Food Basics. Each gallery features hundreds of dollars of savings on all departments throughout localized supermarkets. Users can logon, browse the coupon galleries and press “clip” to print desired coupons to use at their next grocery shopping trip.

By Nick Godfrey, Partner, Customer Portfolios

It looks like the Thanksgiving weekend passed rather successfully and uneventfully as Black Friday took in slightly more shoppers without incident and Cyber Monday continues to grow. Before the holiday came upon us though, I noticed with interest that the National Retail Federation (NRF) has advised its members to prepare for “crowd management” this holiday season. Issues such as loss prevention, in-store security and customer safety are the hot buttons there and it is certainly an important issue. After all, it’s the customer experience that’s important at retail, whether it’s a Black Friday midnight sale or a high-end boutique showing. It makes sense to consider that while you have all those people in your store, why not get them for the long-term relationship vs. the fleeting thrill of Black Friday bargains? This also got me thinking though that crowd management is just as important for multichannel retailers. The issues are different but the outcomes — stronger customer relationships — are the same.