Postcards from Perkistan

Sure. They are. Retailers without loyalty programs that is. The current talk about big retailers and consumers shopping overseas has really been grabbing my attention and I thought about it for a second and then wondered why I hadn’t bought anything (except for some playing cards) from overseas sites in the last year. The reason is simple.

Take a quick look at Amazon. Robert Jordan’s new book came out in November and is already down to just $16, tack on $5 shipping and I can have the book at the end of the month for $21. Now head on over to Borders. Same book, $32 with free shipping and I can have the book by the end of the week. That’s cool, I would probably be happy to wait until the end of the month to save 33%. But, that’s just it, Borders have the Borders VIP program, where each month email newsletters are sent out with coupons for members. Often this is around 20-30% off. Take 25% off the $32 and the book is $24. Comparable to Amazon, but I don’t have to wait a month.

So if Amazon isn’t the problem, then is it small electronics like point and shoot cameras?

There are really cool cameras by Olympus that are waterproof, shock proof, etc. $268 at Dick Smith, $299 at Harvey Norman, $186 AUD on ebay.com delivered. Damn! That’s almost $100, I’ll definitely shop on eBay for that. Or… Dick Smith could do a special offer for Everyday Rewards members where they receive a $70 voucher (roughly 25% off). That puts the price in the ball park, and it’s definitely worth considering buying the product from a local retailer opposed to an unknown source overseas where I would have to wait a while to receive it once again.

The thing is, loyalty programs aren’t always offering their members a 25% off coupon or other special whereas overseas websites are always going to be there ready for you to shop. Aussie retailers can combat this at least partially by actively engaging with us, like Borders and MYER one do so well. You can rely on Borders to send you an email each month, you can rely on MYER one to have a secret sale or Super Saturday event in the not too distant future.

That’s what we need. We need for this to turn in to retailers becoming more engaged with consumers, utilising their loyalty programs, and giving us a fair go at keeping our dollars at home.

-Graham

While we quietly work away on our iPhone app here in Perkler HQ (yes it’s coming and yes it will be relevant to making your loyalty shopping easier), we thought we would take a look at a couple of loyalty apps that are on the market already and take them for a spin.

To be frank, the tie in between retailers and loyalty on the phone is pretty lean. While there are plenty of loyalty services companies developing technology, Australian retailers still seem reluctant to link perks to purchasing in the mobile space.

Let’s hope loyalty gets its act together and starts getting out there with the Lasoo and Get Prices of the world!

And if you’ve come across a loyalty app let us know all about it, we’ll happily take a look.

For the moment, here are a couple we’ve been impressed with.

Flybuys - iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad

In all honesty we’ve been really impressed with the work the Flybuys team have been doing over recent months. The launch of Everyday Rewards has really kicked the market along and the result is a revitalisation of competing programs.

The app itself has everything you would expect from a coalition points program. The basic menu covers stores, rewards and points balances.

Set up can take a little while as you need to establish a password to keep authentication secure - but that seems a small price to pay for an updated points balance. And that’s one of the great pieces of information - not just current points but importantly when they expire - critical if you want to make sure you use them effectively.

The wishlist section is clear and allows you to set up goals so that you know what you are ‘earning’ towards, and the store locator is a neat feature with so many brands available under the one program.

All in all a nice little package.

Choice Hotels - iPhone and PDA / “standard” mobile phone platforms

Hotel Chains are perfectly placed to take advantage of the app market. With multiple brands, multiple locations and last minute booking all the ingredients are there for a great app. Choice Australia utilises its international connections to bring you a comprehensive app across multiple platforms.

You can search hotels from 10 brands - that’s an enormous range to choose from - and then make reservations. Importantly from a loyalty point of view you can access your account (it throws you to a secure but clunky webpage) so that you can see point balance and redeem straight from that balance.

With the range of hotels these guys have this is GPS heaven - and the loyalty account tie in ticks all the right boxes for us. A bit more design work on the web pages and it would be the total package!

So that’s two…

I guess the development required for an app and tying in loyalty is a reasonable investment, but surely linking earn and particularly burn  to the point of purchase is a critical part of the modern retailer’s armoury.

I can only assume Everyday Rewards, Qantas and lots of others are working on their mobile malls now…Would be interesting to know what their thoughts on this channel and how it links to loyalty are.

As far as we go, we are putting the final touches to our app - which in true Perkler style will seek to bring your whole wallet to life, more on ‘Perky Shopper’ soon.

Heya!
Graham here. It’s tough to find a great sale in the 6 weeks leading up to Christmas, but we’ve found some great loyalty deals that will help you save on some great gift ideas. We’re going to be updating the blog when new cool deals come out.

My mum always loves a good read, if yours does too keep your eye on the Borders Shortlist and Angus & Robertson A&R Rewards. A&R Rewards you need to make a purchase before you can become a member. If you aren’t already then you’re probably better off signing up for the Borders Shortlist. Free, online registration and they send an email once a month (usually in the third/fourth week). Discounts are consistently 20-30% off. This week’s offer is 25% off one non-fiction book.

Candles are also a great idea, and we’ve got another free email signup for you. This one’s with Dusk, pretty much the only decent candle store if you ask me. Go to their website and signup for the dusk candle club. Immediately after joining you’ll receive a 10% off voucher for your first ONLINE order. So get your shopping done early and snag a great bargain: Sign up now

It’s tough to find dad a present that isn’t socks or jocks, or just the same old thing that you get him every year. Give him some excitement this year by getting him a RedBalloon adventure. They’re normally pretty costly, so you’ll have no problems saving on this one. Use your Presidential Card to make the purchase and you’ll receive a $30 discount on any purchase of $129 or more. Nice! Don’t forget to enter your voucher code at the checkout. All the details. The same discount is applied for MBF’s In2Life program.

For all your christmas shopping you can save 5% with your Presidential Card or QRI Lifestyle card by pre-purchasing gift cards. What’s also kinda cool (I asked FlyBuys but they didn’t get back to me) is that you can still earn QANTAS Frequent Flyer points when you make your purchase with a WISH gift card at Woolworths. Sweet, huh?

If you’re in to the hamper market, let’s face it… we all are, you can usually save 10% by ordering through your motor club or by using your credit card. At the bare minimum you’re gonna get some bonus points for it. Confirmed discounts are available through RACQ (usually the other big motor clubs are reciprocal so be sure to check out RACV, NRMA, RACT, RAC, and AANT), ANZ Frequent Flyer Credit Card, Westpac Instant Offers, ANZ Rewards Credit Card, St. George Instant Benefits, Bank of Queensland Q-Rewards.

You can also save up to 20% on Hampers with a National Pharmacies Membership. Simply view the Christmas Catalogue.

Shopping for kid’s toys is always a bit of a hard one to find discounts on. Save 20% by buying online with your Presidential Card at GR8 Toys. Save 10% at Entropy using your QRI Lifestyle card. Sign up to the Australian Geographic Newsletter and receive an in-store coupon. We’ll try to nut this one out and bring you some more great bargains from the free programs out there

Decorations: Keep an eye out for great offers from Myer and David Jones in their monthly instant offers. Failing that you’ve got National Pharmacies with some great low-cost and discounted decoration options that are up to 20% off.

Christmas Entertainment: Reading Reel Club, Hoyts Movie Club, Cine Buzz weekly emails include an exclusive member offer for a discounted movie.
Christmas Entertainment: AMF Bowling AMF Roller club - 10% off everything. They usually include discounted school holiday offers, it’s free to join. Thursday night is cheap bowling night, too

We’ll be sure to add the latest benefits here as they come… Also, you can do your own search from our home page: Search Now!
-Me

Just a short one today.

Dan and I have been doing a number of pitches lately - The Incentive Show and a range of investor meetings.

In each pitch we give the example of how at Perkler we are working hard to connect loyalty information (the kind of stuff marketing managers invest a LOT of time and money in) to the point of purchase.

A classic ‘fail’ we highlight is the program that sends out the traditional Sale PostCard. Look, this kind of collateral looks great, has simple messaging but we always wonder what the take up is.

Our mantra is “Isn’t this material better off on people’s phones rather than their fridge?”. It’s what we are building our mobile platform for and it seems to make perfect sense to us.

Perkler ranting aside, yesterday when I got home I remembered that I had an outstanding Snowgum voucher. I love this program and they are really active. My Dad is in town and it’s his birthday next week so I thought I’d use my Snowgum points to get him a tshirt. So I went looking for the voucher.

I found it eventually - check out how that beautifully designed marketing collateral ends up! It’s there, on my fridge, somewhere

Snowgum nearly lost a sale because my fridge is messy - crazy!

I hope this makes our point about linking this material much close to the purchasing point so it doesn’t get lost in amongst a consumers ‘real’ life!

Jus

Here at Perkler we’ve just embarked on an eye opening campaign. Until now we have focussed our efforts on letting people manage their entire wallet in one virtual place.

In this new campaign we are responding to the current economic climate, and the need for people to get value from their loyalty programs immediately, by isolating the best possible loyalty perks on a product by product or brand by brand basis.

Our first port of call has been cosmetics. We figure make-up is the kind of thing people can still think about making small purchases on and get a ‘luxury’ item despite not being so flush right now. Having said that, Graham our database and community guy has been seen to weep as he has entered the RRP for some of these products!!!

You can see what we’ve found for cosmetics here - an interesting list that shows the big programs as well as the small have a lot to offer if you know where to find it. We’ve had LOTS of people looking for Napoleon Perdis and The Body Shop - very different brands in lots of ways.

Next cab off the ranks is likely to be cameras - always a really interesting product segment. But it could just as easily be a brand like Apple or an activity like travel.

So what would you choose - what product or brand or activity do you think rewards would make you purchase in the current climate? Be interesting to see the responses.

Justin

@JustinBarrie  on twitter

Just did a bit of an overhaul of all our credit card programs due to some big changes happening with the Qantas Frequent Flyer (QFF) program. A lot of banks have had to re-organise their rewards programs to create QFF specific cards and non-QFF cards. A lot of cards have been axed and there is a whole breed of new QFF specific rewards programs. One of the more interesting outcomes is with the NAB. NAB Gold Rewards card holders previously had one card, but with the new QFF program NAB Gold Rewards members will have two cards: Either a Visa or MasterCard and an American Express card. The Visa/MasterCard is so card holders can still use their credit card and earn QFF points where AmEx is not accepted. The AmEx card is provided so that card holders can gain maximum QFF points-earning potential wherever AmEx is accepted. Don’t we all have enough cards in our wallets already? And who wants to deal with another decision to be made at the checkout?

Also having a bit of a look at all the programs I’ve noticed some really sweet deals. Top programs include the ANZ eDine Add On and the David Jones Store/AmEx Cards.

eDine has thousands of participating restaurants, hotels, cafes, and entertainment locations across Australia and NZ where the discounts are often 20% or greater. The annual fee weighs in at a low $35 per year, so using the card just twice will often result in a discount that is more than what the program costs you each year. They are updating and finding new partners all the time, with their last update having in excess of 100 additions to the program. Pretty sweet!

DJ Cards are awesome! Every month they release a catalog that includes 25-30 exclusive offers, the smallest of which is a neat 20% discount and the largest is normally 30% (sometimes greater). The discounts come off a wide range of products including men’s, women’s and children’s fashion, manchester, and crockery. The discounts are always off leading brands, some of which are only available at DJs.

Big debate going in Australia at the moment (excellently described by ARA Chief Richard Evans). The Federal Government is about to send a range of stimulus bonus payments to a large number of people.

Debate - stimulus implies the money will be spent (in fact Treasury forecasts about whether or not Australia enters recession relies on this notion). Tension lies in the fact that people are talking about just saving the bonus and not spending.

So people in Australia who have spent a decade being told to SAVE (and haven’t), are now being told to SPEND (and maybe are going to save instead)!

I’ll leave the arguments up to the fans of Keynes and Smith - I’m taking a laissez-faire approach to the economic debate (oh my god, I just made an joke based on economics…). What I am keen to concentrate on though, is the way consumers can take advantage of spending and saving at the same time.

You guessed it - perks…

Imagine using that bonus payment in conjunction with an airline or credit card program to get an even bigger TV than the one you planned on. Or ensuring your family still got some good old fashioned entertainment by paying for movie tickets but at a greatly reduced price. With perks an individual could stretch the value of their $950 bonus to well over $1200 or even more.

Since the late 80’s and for most retailers the late 90’s loyalty programs have been introduced and financed. We’ve written enough on this blog about the quality of programs or reasons why consumers haven’t connected with them fully in the past.

Surely the time has come to promote and improve people’s access to programs so that they use them as a legitimate part of the purchasing decision. In the US Dan and I were blown away that brands advertised their programs on national TV. Seems logical. If you are a retailer and you want to get some ROI on that program you’ve invested in - advertise it…

So, at Perkler we’ve created the platform for consumers to understand their perks better - now it’s time for retailers to step up and engage with consumers who need the perks to make decisions about where they are going to spend that money. And they can do that as part of their overall marketing efforts, but they can also take advantage of sites like ours to engage with consumers and be seen as a differentiator - a retailer who actually places loyalty and perks at the top of the tree!