(Part Three of a Series)

There’s no denying that loyalty programs have caught on with consumers–the average household has a dozen loyalty memberships, according to Consumer Reports. However, half of all consumers carry just one or two loyalty club membership cards with them at any one time, meaning retailers and restaurant operators must become increasingly creative with the structure of their loyalty programs. Recent developments in this arena include the launch of:

• Instant rewards, such as discounts off the first purchase at a given store or meal at a given restaurant after signing up to participate in a loyalty program.
• Targeted deals. Loyalty clubs members often invitations to exclusive promotions, such as “friends and family” sales events. Now retailers are kicking it up a notch further by targeting regular shoppers with customized incentives based on such information as their personal shopping habits. Customer loyalty solutions built into pcAmerica’s Cash Register Express and Restaurant Express POS platforms enable merchants and food-service operators to easily track the data needed to structure both instant rewards and targeted deals, as well as to communicate these offers to program members.
• Partnership programs between retailers and online shopping portals, where consumers earn points from one retailer that they then can use to shop at another.
• Integration with social networking sites. For example, the Tasti-D-Lite frozen dessert chain has launched the TastiRewards program, which allows customers to earn extra points when they connect their loyalty accounts to social networks Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare. Customers register their Tasti TreatCard online and opt-in to enable a secure connection to their social network(s) of choice. When their loyalty card is swiped at the POS terminal, messages–for example, “I just earned 5 TastiRewards points at Tasti D-Lite Scottsdale, AZ. http://myTasti.com”–are automatically posted to friends and followers. Customers earn one point for each pre-tax dollar spent and an additional point for each social network connection they have enabled. Application programming interfaces (API’s) provided by each social network enable the myTasti.com loyalty site to pass message information when customer transactions are completed. POS systems within all Tasti D-Lite stores are fully integrated with the chain’s loyalty processor (Mercury Payment Systems) and web-based loyalty site powered pcAmerica.