Adam Unsworth, Sales Director at Plastic Card Services® spoke with Boutique Magazine about how loyalty schemes can work for small independents and not just big businesses, read the transcript below.
Loyalty schemes have been around for longer than you may think, and it’s not just large corporations that can benefit from them, but smaller independent companies too. In fact any business that relies on repeat custom from consumers can implement and use a scheme to their advantage.
Schemes can offer a multitude of benefits to businesses from retaining existing customers and attracting new ones, through to enhancing sales and revenue. They can simply be used to accumulate points per £ spent in return for discounts, or go as far as integrating into a CRM system allowing indispensable data to be gathered on the shopping habits of your customers allowing you to make informed and pre-emptive stock purchasing decisions to maximise profit.
With the success of loyalty schemes clear, the challenge is how to make your scheme stand out from the crowd. This is where utilising a plastic card can really bring you to the forefront of your competitors, with a carefully designed card and carrier encouraging uptake of your scheme.
Long gone are the days of the basic card design requiring you to have a white border around the edge of all cards. With advances in adhesives and technology manufacturers have the ability to print edge to edge allowing you to really use the space available to align your scheme with you branding and products.
Design is critical to a successful card, after all if you want someone to keep a card in their wallet/purse constantly reminding them of your brand/offering ready for when they want to make a purchasing decision, then it needs to be desirable. Developments in finishing such as spot UV, foil finishes, and metallic ink can make a real difference to both the look and feel of a cards, combined with the ability to move away from the conventional card shape or even a key fob really opens up the boundaries to design.
Why stop with just the design? Technology advancements mean that the way in which cards can be used and personalised has changed to include barcodes, magnetic strips as well as contact and contactless chips.
