Case Study – Arch Infinity Loyalty

Loyalty/Rewards programs 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 Spinnaker’s suite of value-added services (“VAS”), Spinnaker selected Infinity as partner in their software assurance program.  As part of the assurance program, the two parties undertake to continually develop the solution, not only based on the feedback from the market, but also incorporating new technologies and concepts as they become available, thereby offering its clients a regularly updated and modern solution, at a nominal subscription fee.

The Arch Infinity solution offers a variety campaign types on which consumers are rewarded in the form of CashBack. Research has proven that South African consumers prefer dealing with CashBack rather than points earned. The solution further features a gift card and “savings” feature, which is also fully integrated with the Arch POS.

In addition to being a loyalty program Arch Infinity offers a marketing platform to enable Arch Users to grow their operations applying amongst 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
  • out of norm reports

90% of all sms’ are read within 3 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 a sms to all card holders 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 itself” (Store Owner). 

• “Great news at XYZ 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 the campaign, in terms of number of baskets greater than R450 and R-sum of baskets above R450:

In 3^rd quarter 2017a project was undertaken in the same store as above to see how much turnover could be increased, while optimising efficiency. To achieve this, a multi-tier plan was decided on by launching of the Arch Infinity Loyalty functionality (as discussed in the article), offering unique sales promotions, as well as aggressive pricing. While, to achieve efficiency, implementing inventory and margin plans coupled with changes to business processes to complement these plans.  To measure the impact of this integrated approach, trading results were compared to the comparative period of the previous year, 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 23%;
• Stockholding (R-value) declined 11%;
• Campaign sales (R-value) increased 41%;
• 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 the 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.    

For more information or to request a demo, please contact Wynand Small (084 259 4436 or 021 556 2724). Alternatively send a request on webinfo@archsoftware.co.za