It's taken a while for the mobile phone to to produce exciting innovations in the world of customer loyalty. Finally though there are two key developments that have achieved sufficient consumer adoption that programme operators are including them in their offerings. Both are products of the mobile app stores delivering cool tools to smart phones.
Cardstar
- a smart phone app downloaded over 1.5 million times globally (Apple, Android and Blackberry). Once on the customer's phone - the app stores the bar codes of all the customer's loyalty cards (which can then be tipped out of overloaded wallets). The customer then presents the selected card's bar code on the phone's screen for scanning at checkout.
Foursquare
Foursquare is much more exciting. Its not the first of it's type of service but it's not generally accepted to be the leader with the largest installed user base. Also an app downloaded to a smart phone (and also usable over the mobile web but not as good) - it's a geo-location app that allows customer's to "check in" at retail or other locations by tapping a button their phone screen. Once in you can see which of your friends is there or nearby and what they recommend you try there (it cleverly gets your friends from Facebook). Foursquare awards you badges (on the screen) for various achievements (earn the Newbie for your first check in). You can also become Mayor if you've checked in to a specific location more than anyone else.
It gets interesting when the local coffee shop elects to run campaigns against the customers checking in. Starbucks (USA) awards Mayors $1 off a frappuccino. All they need do is show their Mayor status on the phone to the barista. In fact - Starbucks have their own barista badge to be earned on Foursqare.
Domino's Pizza in the UK cited their use of these
types of Foursquare promotions as a leading driver of a 29% increase in pre-tax profits on July 12th this year.
Pepsi in the USA is also using Foursquare while developing its own proprietary platform called Pepsi Loot based on a form of Foursquare from Zumobi (where Eric Hertz - CEO of Two Degrees Mobile - was before he hit New Zealand). While it's Foursquare play seems solid - Pepsi Loot has been panned for being "Foursquare, minus the cool and built in incentives".
And in New Zealand ?
Foursquare is just over a year old and in March
had half a million users (globally) and 1 million venues registered. It's small. But it's growing fast - it hit 2 million users on 10th July this year (that's 100,000 new users per week) and pulled funding from Marc Andreessen (who invented Netscape all those years ago). Numbers are hard to come by but in New Zealand we estimate everyone has a phone and 2% have an iPhone while 9% have Blackberrys (Android's not really here yet). Also small.
Air New Zealand has been the first (again) to deploy a Foursquare offering. Mayors at our airports get Koru Lounge access or Airpoints Dollars - an excellent programme tie in. Air New Zealand beat the Intercontinental Hotels Group to market with IHG announcing last week that customers in its loyalty programme can also earn points for checking in at the hotel venues globally.
Foursquare is now integrated through Facebook Connect and last week announced tie up with Cardstar. After flashing their loyalty card bar code at the till customers can also check in to the retail venue.
Loyalty programmes have long aspired to be able to reward interactions as well as transactions. Transactions are generally discovered through the payments cycle. This is an example of interactions being rewarded inside the framework of the larger loyalty programme.
