Imagine if just a fraction of the 500 million Facebook users connected with just a few of their average of 130 friends immediately following a purchase, prompting an immediate promotion sent out to those friends? That is what Beanstalk Loyalty is counting on with its patent-pending technology touted as the first loyalty platform to integrate the point-of-sale terminal with a social media channel.
With the program, Beanstalk is hoping to improve the relevancy and acceptance of loyalty programs. Although 75% of U.S. consumers are members of at least one loyalty program, only 27% of those consumers have received a reward or promotion that made them feel valued as a customer, according to recent statistics from ACI Worldwide.
“Our unique integration with Facebook enables retail stores and restaurants – with their customers’ permission given during loyalty registration – to check them into Facebook Places, post on their wall and potentially influence their Facebook friends while at the same time leveraging the POS information to influence their behavior,” said Gilbert Bailey, vice president of marketing and business development for Beanstalk Loyalty.
Advertisement
Now retailers can not only know that a customer was in their store, but they can obtain specific information about items purchased and further, gain access to new customers immediately following the purchase. And the marketer can view redemptions as they happen and analyze campaign success because the information is tracked in real-time through Beanstalk Loyalty’s dashboard.
The Beanstalk Process
In order to participate in the Beanstalk loyalty/social media program, a shopper must swipe the loyalty card or provides a phone number at the register or a kiosk. The transaction is picked up in Facebook in real time.
|
|
The marketer then has the option to post a message on the customer’s wall, letting friends know the details of the transaction. Friends can then receive a coupon or other type of promotion by clicking on the marketer’s link.
Beanstalk also incents current customers to influence friends to become customers by rewarding the original shopper with additional offers. Customers who influence their friends to become customers themselves can be rewarded with additional offers.
The integration of Beanstalk Loyalty, the point-of-sale terminal or kiosk and social media creates an easy-to-configure web portal accessible through any web-enabled device such as a smart phone or home computer. The web portal allows the user to select his preferred method of receiving offers, to review account information and to view any outstanding offers from the marketer. It also can be integrated with a brand’s existing Facebook fan page to drive loyalty registrations using the Facebook universal login feature.
Since the transactional data is collected at the POS, the marketer also can use it to deliver personalized messaging using email, SMS and direct mail. With historical POS data in hand, marketers are able to provide more relevant future offers.
“Marketing is all about influencing the next sale,” Bailey said. “Integrating the social network and the POS with the loyalty engine provides the marketer with ability to have an intelligent conversation both before and after the transaction to deliver true closed-loop marketing.”
