Although winning and maintaining customer loyalty is a key goal for any retailer, it is especially important for businesses that specialize in niche products.
Pure Hockey is a multichannel retailer that sells every product a hockey player and enthusiast may need — apparel, sticks, gloves, helmets, pads and skates. To create a more cohesive view of customer buying preferences and loyalty in stores, Pure Hockey has partnered with Swipely, a payment processing and marketing company. Since implementing the credit card processing solution in July 2013, the retailer has garnered more detailed information on sales patterns, which has helped power acquisition, retention and cross-channel marketing initiatives.
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For example, Pure Hockey can identify the busiest days in brick-and-mortar stores by calculating average sales and transactions, and overall total per sales ticket. In conjunction with a heat map, this information “allows our store managers to schedule more strategically.”
In-store traffic data also helps Pure Hockey generate marketing campaigns that drive measurable results. For example, Copetas and his team can create a campaign, such as an in-store coupon or giveaway, to drive traffic on a slow day. A campaign insights tool then allows Copetas to set up the campaign and see the overall results, broken down by day.
Identifying And Connecting With Repeat Customers
Tracking and responding to online feedback also is becoming easier for Pure Hockey. A reputation monitoring feature “allows us to see what people are saying about us on the web,” Copetas noted. “It’s a unified platform so we can read comments from Yelp, Google+ and other sites, right in the Swipely interface, which helps us save a lot of time.”
However, the most effective feature is the ability to track new versus repeat customers, according to Copetas. “It allows us to have very quick, detailed glimpse into the percentage of store visits that are new customers versus repeat customers. Additionally, it allows us to drill down and see what percentage of sales was derived from new versus repeat customers. This feature has really filled a need for us.”
In the future, Pure Hockey plans to leverage a feature that empowers the retailer to see who its best customers are. “We intend to launch a loyalty program in the near future, but need another 30 or 60 days to capture the data,” Copetas said. Swipely will provide the retailer with this data, which will paint a clearer picture of loyal customers and their purchasing behaviors.
Specializing in small- and medium-sized businesses, Swipely helps bars, restaurants, retailers and even eTailers get more data out of their POS systems. The solution integrates with a variety of major POS systems, including MICROS, NCR POSitouch, and ShopKeep, to ensure seamless implementation.
