Johannesburg, 12 Jun 2018
Loyalty/rewards programmes are a fundamental component of interactive customer engagement, answering to the adage of: "Either you communicate with your customer or somebody else will."
As part of Arch Retail's suite of value-added services ("VAS"), Infinity was selected as loyalty/rewards assurance partner. This requires the parties undertake to continually develop on the solution, not only based on the market feedback, but also incorporating new technologies and concepts as they become available, thereby offering clients a regularly updated and modern solution.
The Arch Infinity solution offers a variety of campaign types on which consumers are rewarded in the form of CashBack. Research has proven that South African consumers prefer CashBack rather than points earned. The solution further features a gift card and "savings" feature, which is also fully integrated with Arch POS.
In addition to being a loyalty programme, Arch Infinity is an ideal marketing platform to enable Arch users to grow their operations applying, among others, the following functionalities:
* Automated competitions;
* Discount to cardholders only;
* Automated basket size rewards;
* Tiered structure;
* Integrated gift card solution;
* Bank your change;
* Integrated communication platform with automated messages;
* Automated reporting;
* Weekly cashier reports; and
* Out-of-norm reports.
Ninety percent of all SMSes are read within three minutes after delivery.
As indicated in the quotes and examples below, SMS communication with customers plays an important part in a marketing strategy.
* "I sent out an SMS to all cardholders this morning, advertising specials in the butchery. Today, I would have expected a 10% contribution from this department; we are currently running at 16%. I think that those who don't see this platform as an effective tool for getting feet into the store are missing out on an opportunity." (franchisee)
* "We ran a promotion last week Tuesday and Friday. The results speak for themselves." (store owner)
* "Great news at our store! Buy for R450 or more and be instantly rewarded with R50 CashBack on your loyalty card. We work harder, saving you money! Valid from 23/9 to 4/10." The graphics below depict the impact of this campaign, in terms of number of baskets greater than R450 and R-sum of baskets above R450:
In the third quarter of 2017, a project was undertaken in the same store as above to ascertain the extent by which turnover could be increased, while optimising efficiency. To achieve this, a multi-tier plan was implemented through launching of the Arch Infinity Loyalty functionality (as discussed), offering unique sales promotions, as well as aggressive pricing. To achieve efficiency, inventory and margin plans, coupled with changes to business processes, were implemented to complement these plans. The impact of this integrated approach was benchmarked against the trading results of the previous year's comparative period, rendering the following results:
* Loyalty transactions contributed 65% of total revenue:
* Drive cashier reports on a weekly basis;
* Do basket size promotions regularly;
* SMS every single week, no exceptions;
* Sales (R-value) increased by 23%;
* Stockholding (R-value) declined by 11%;
* Campaign sales (R-value) increased by 41%; and
* Margin remained steady at 23% (slight increase of 0.3%).
The above results are an indication of what can be achieved by applying Arch Infinity Loyalty functionalities, in conjunction with inventory and margin plans facilitated by Arch Retail.
This slams the view of loyalty being unaffordable due to the required monetary sacrifices, but on the proviso that Arch Retail and Arch Infinity Loyalty functionalities are applied and maintained to best practice.