Customer Love Goes Mobile: One of the most important decisions you will make for your brand is choosing the right mobile payment and loyalty platform. The myriad of options can be overwhelming. Read about some helpful considerations you can take when choosing the platform that best aligns with your business.
2. 1 // CUSTOMER LOVE GOES MOBILE
The fight for sustainable customer
relationships is moving to mobile
devices, which means choosing the
right mobile payment and loyalty
platform for your brand is one of the
most important decisions you will
make. The number of options can be
overwhelming. What follow are some
considerations that can help you
choose a mobile platform best aligned
to your business.
3. 2 // ANALYTICS
Look beyond the laundry list of data
capture and reporting capabilities –
consider which platform offers
reporting that helps build strong
relationships. Home Zip code data can
influence local media choices. A look at
time of purchase, tied to specific SKUs,
can help with inventory control and
product flow. Similarly, reports should
be easy to access and reflect what the
business needs to monitor, not what
the system is capable of monitoring.
4. 3 // COSTS
The fees a vendor charges, whether
for processing payments or any other
functions, shouldn’t destroy margins
5. 4 // CUSTOMIZATION
The system should be able to reflect
your brand. At a minimum, it should
acknowledge your customers as yours,
and not as (or as well as) participants
in a third-party program.
6. 5 // DATA
The data points captured by the
system should be granular and
relevant. Marketers should clearly
define who has access to information
captured by the system – especially if
the system is part of a multi-vendor
program and other merchants might
have access to your data, even on an
aggregated level.
7. 6 // FACILITY
The point-of-sale system should be
intuitive. A new employee should be
able to pick it up easily, and not get
flustered when dealing with a line of
impatient customers.
8. 7 // FLEXIBILITY
A vendor should be willing to provide
access to the system away from the
valuable space at the checkout counter,
if appropriate to the business model.
9. 8 // GEOGRAPHY
If appropriate to your business, the
system should support maps and
direction capabilities
10. 9 // GRAPHICS
For some industries, such as floral,
real estate, and travel, high-res
images are essential. Systems should
support these images as appropriate.
11. 10 // INTEGRATION
The system should seamlessly tie in
with inventory, marketing, advertising,
financial, and other functions as
desired.
12. 11 // INTERFACE
The mobile experience is a speed
experience, and the point-of-sale
experience is even faster. The user
interface should be easy to use for both
customers and merchants, and should
meet the marketer’s goals – purchase,
order placement, information, or
whatever else – with a minimum of
clicks or scrolling. Always remember
that the mobile experience is vastly
different from the web experience.
13. 12 // LOCATION
Even companies that don’t currently
run location-based campaigns
should have the option of quickly
ramping up these types of efforts.
The ability to awaken need in
potential customers when they are
near an establishment is one of the
unique features of mobile
marketing.
14. 13 // LOYALTY
Mobile systems should reflect every
aspect of preexisting loyalty
programs, from points accumulation
to redemption to account access.
Third-party aggregators should
effortlessly feed their information right
into loyalty program data repositories
– and any other systems deemed
appropriate.
15. 14 // MARKETING
The system should support the
types of channels appropriate to the
business, including email, SMS, and
telephone. All relevant information
(not just contact data) from it
should flow effortlessly into the
campaign management system, if
that system is not part of the
vendor’s offering.
16. 15 // SECURITY
Whether PIN-enabled, biometric, or
security coded, customer information
– especially if it is tied to their money
– must be secure. Few people can
identify the underlying software
vendor from the most publicized data
breaches.