Easy Steps to Accelerate Your Credit Card Processing System

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26th November 2010, 05:14pm - Views: 2561

Once upon a time managing a loyalty system would have been a nightmare, but with modern technology and the latest in point of sale software, this is no longer the case. A good rewards system, with the right POS software behind it allows the retailer to increase customer loyalty and repeat purchases, communicate with the customer in a number of ways and gather customer intelligence for marketing purposes.



Scanning a customer's loyalty card into a retail point of sale system gives the retailer the opportunity to collect information on the customer's brand preferences, purchasing habits and demographic information as well as calculating accumulated spends. This information can then be used for a number of marketing purposes.



The parameters are set within the POS software to suit your business and reward scheme. This could be "dollars spent to points accrued" ratio, or automatic customer discount thresholds, or redemption of points as tender at the point of sale. Higher or lower points can be allocated against certain product purchases, during promotional campaigns. Very successful reward/loyalty schemes have been running in Australia and in countries around the world for many years, and are a great favorite with the consumer.



Data stored within the software allows for direct communication from retailer to customer. Drawing on specific data, the software will enable you to email customers with newsletters, or information about specific products. Extracted information from the data base can be imported into various other software's that allow for mail merging and traditional mail outs via snail mail. Or using other data collected by the software, direct marketing via SMS message is possible.



Using the point of sale software, retail marketing departments will be able to access information from customer loyalty card transactions and create advertising and marketing campaigns to be directly targeted to the audience considered the most receptive. The type of valuable information that may be collected is:




  • Purchases between certain dates

  • No purchases between certain dates

  • spent more or less than a particular dollar value

  • accrued more or less than a certain number of points

  • have purchased particular products

  • Have marketing profiles such as: have a birthday during a particular month, live in a certain geographical area, is a member of a particular group.



This enables specific targeting of your marketing campaigns.



Gathering and collecting all this information, its management and secure storage is no longer the nightmare it used to be. Retail point of sale software available today, is designed to take the process further than just recording the sale, and taking the money at the checkout.



Many of the systems available are point of sale software, stock inventory management software, and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software rolled into one and if you are thinking of starting a loyalty system now may well be the time to update your retail POS system.



About The Author: Retail Express provides a point of sale software to bring your operations into the 21st Century. Outstrip your competition with the best technology can bring in a point of sales system that will enhance everyday operations and your customer image. Kindly Visit Retail Express.
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