Article

Beanstalk Loyalty offers Facebook check-in via POS terminal

Retailers can use social media on kiosks and POS terminals to better market to their customers.

March 24, 2011

Retailers are constantly trying to engage customers by creating interactive shopping experiences, and it doesn't get any more "hands on" than converging shopping and Facebook, according to Gilbert Bailey, vice president of marketing and business development for Beanstalk Loyalty. The company's patent-pending technology would be the first loyalty platform to integrate the point-of-sale (POS) terminal and social media.

Screenshot of the Beanstalk application

"Our unique integration with Facebook enables retail stores and restaurants – with their customers' permission given during loyalty registration – to check them into Facebook Places, post on their wall and potentially influence their Facebook friends while at the same time leveraging the POS information to influence their behavior," he said.

Although the company doesn't yet have any deals with kiosk companies, Gilbert said it would be an easy integration.

"We would be happy to work with a retailer and their kiosk manufacturer to integrate and deploy," he said. "We have expertise with integration via APIs and web services and can modify our own to work with disparate vendors."

Why integrate social media and shopping?

Bailey said conventional location-based social media services have failed because there is no connection with loyalty programs and POS terminals. Yes, retailers can learn from the location-based service that a person was in their store but have no idea what they bought.

As a result, a marketer has very little information on its customers' behavior and preferences and is usually limited to very simple one-size-fits-all offers, such as "buy four get one free."

Bailey said this helps explain why, according to First Data Corp., only 23 percent of retail customers and 17 percent of quick-serve restaurant customers are satisfied with their loyalty memberships.

Beanstalk Loyalty allows marketers to improve campaign performance by using the transactional data created at the time of the POS order to trigger timely, relevant and personalized offers through social media, email, texting and direct mail, Bailey said. The check-in to the location service now is accomplished through the POS, so the marketer knows exactly what was purchased by the customer and can use this information to tailor an offer that will have much greater appeal than was possible in the past.

For example, using the check-in system, a marketer will know if a customer has never ordered beef and would likely respond better to a chicken or fish coupon. He can also avoid giving offers that cannibalize revenue. For example, a retailer could give someone who usually frequents the shop during lunch a free child's dinner to motivate him to try the evening day part.

The marketer can also see redemptions as they happen and analyze campaign success because the information is tracked in real-time through Beanstalk Loyalty's dashboard.

How it works

When the user swipes his or her loyalty card or provides his or her phone number at the register or a kiosk, the transaction checks in

After a customer pays, he is checked in via Facebook.

to Facebook. The brand is able to optionally post on the customer's wall that they just ate at the restaurant or purchased an item at the store. The customer's Facebook friends see the transaction and can click on it to receive a coupon. Customers who influence their friends to become customers themselves can be rewarded with additional offers. The revenue created by social media is now measurable to the marketer.

The integration of Beanstalk Loyalty, the point-of-sale terminal or kiosk and social media creates an easy-to-configure web portal accessible through any web-enabled device such as a smart phone or home computer. The web portal allows the user to select his preferred method of receiving offers, to review account information and to view any outstanding offers from the marketer. It can also be integrated with a brand's existing Facebook fan page to drive loyalty registrations using the Facebook universal login feature.

"Marketing is all about influencing the next sale," Bailey said. "Integrating the social network and the POS with the loyalty engine provides the marketer with ability to have an intelligent conversation both before and after the transaction to deliver true closed-loop marketing."