Case Study: 5 Key Retail Insights from Mobile Loyalty Solution Experts – Coupontools

Coupontools is a mobile coupon software company servicing some of the biggest brands and companies in the world. Based in Belgium, they manage the creation, distribution and validation of digital coupons, vouchers and loyalty cards in 85 countries. With a heavy focus on user engagement and interaction, Coupontools delivers data capture and actionable statistics to help their clients increase sales and grow their business.

SnowShoe is proud to be a trusted partner with Coupontools. The global loyalty leader uses Spark™ solutions with many of their clients to great success. We recently chatted with Bert Croimans, Head of Sales, Success and Marketing at Coupontools, on an episode of the Spark Plug Podcast. Click here to listen to the full episode, and read on to learn about our 5 Key Retail Insights from our conversation with Bert.

1. Ease of Use and Security are Extremely Important

In today’s world when both businesses and consumers are running a mile a minute, a complex loyalty solution just won’t cut it. Company management doesn’t have time to integrate complicated technology and hardware and to train staff, and consumers are highly averse to any sort of friction along the transaction path. With the help of Spark technology, Coupontools’ validation methods are easy to integrate and to use, without sacrificing security. Bert explains that this is especially important for retailers and grocery stores who have their own point of sales systems. “The SnowShoe Stamps are very helpful because they [are a] stand alone, secure, and touchless validation method.”

2. Collecting Customer Data is Essential

By collecting customer data, Bert explains that “the entire sales process can start with remarketing.” This kind of targeted, customized outreach can make all the difference for consumers who are bombarded with sales messages on every platform. Customer data can help to reduce the “spray and pray” approach to marketing by delivering highly personalized promotional messages to individual customers. When a Stamp comes into contact with a customer’s mobile device, SnowShoe collects contact and transactional data for future communications with that customer. Coupontools’ mass integration system is then able to deliver these strategic messages via text, email and social media.

3. Consumers Love Gamification

Gamification continues to increase in popularity. To understand how this term applies to the world of retail loyalty, it’s important to understand that gamification is merely the use of game mechanics and game-like user experience design to engage and motivate people to achieve goals. Consumers love gamification because this way of looking at user experience turns an otherwise mundane task into an interactive adventure.

Coupontools turned to the Spark Stamp technology because SnowShoe provides one of the only ways to actually physically gamify a retail experience. Most companies add gamification through just digital interface enhancements like sounds, achievement levels or points. In fact, SnowShoe’s unique capability is why so many partners, from Red Bull to Merkle to Coupontools use the proprietary SnowShoe technology to create digital scratch cards, spinwheels, slot machines, and memory games for their clients. SnowShoe powers the future of the gamified mobile application experience. 

4. Covid Increased Demand for Touchless Solutions

For years, companies had been looking for a digital loyalty solution as a replacement to the outdated paper stamp card. But when Covid hit, Bert says that companies were specifically looking for a touchless solution using the customer’s phone in order to minimize human contact. Coupontools was able to offer this method of loyalty validation because they use touchless solutions such as the Spark Tap™. While other loyalty companies were scrambling to create new products, Coupontools didn’t have to change their model during Covid. In fact, their biggest growth last year was in the United States where Covid hit the hardest and where more than 50% of Coupontools’ customers are based.

5. Social Media Integration is Key

If you want to get in front of your customers, you have to go where your customers are already gathering. Today, this often means reaching them on popular social media platforms. Coupontools worked with their client Coca-Cola Belgium to create a successful loyalty campaign that integrated with WhatsApp using Spark Stamps. Consumers were able to send a WhatsApp message or text message to Coca-Cola and receive a unique loyalty URL in return. The consumer would then pull up the URL on their phone when visiting a merchant, who would then validate the loyal customer using a Stamp. The campaign created a personal connection to the brand, drove sales and returned valuable data to Coca-Cola.

We’re grateful to Bert for chatting with us all the way from Germany on the Spark Plug Podcast and describing the 5 key retail insights that make the joint CouponTools and SnowShoe solution work to create customer loyalty success for retail partners around the world!  

Click here to learn more about the Spark solutions used by Coupontools.