SMS Loyalty Program Increase Engagement

SmartJoin Innovative Customer Engagement Tool from CodeBroker

Loyalty360 talked to Dan Slavin about SmartJoin and its potential impact.

Can you talk about SmartJoin and what makes it a unique customer engagement tool for brands?

Slavin: SmartJoin is CodeBroker’s innovative sign-up application that leverages SMS to sign up consumers to your text message marketing list, loyalty program, or email list. Used by leading retailers and brands, SmartJoin is part of CodeBroker’s Omnichannel Mobile Marketing Platform, and can be added to your existing text marketing solution to enhance your existing sign-up capabilities.

One of the biggest obstacles to list sign-up is the cumbersome, multi-step process that consumers must endure with many of today’s text marketing solutions. SmartJoin changes that with an intuitive, streamlined experience that makes it easy for consumers to sign up from their phones–no matter their location. Our emphasis on user experience is the key to SmartJoin’s industry-leading 90 percent sign-up completion rate.

What makes it unique is that it provides a convenient way for consumers to sign up for loyalty and marketing programs. Brands can take advantage of physical store locations to do sign up.
It begins with a sales associate saying, “Hey, do you want to sign up? Here’s what to do.” They don’t have to type anything in. The customer can do it themselves on their phone.

Simplification is a worthy goal for brands. How does SmartJoin simplify the process?

Slavin: The flexibility of the form used to sign up members allows brands to collect whatever demographic data they want on the first pass. They don’t have to go back to the customer to collect information later. When SmartJoin is used to collect full demographic records, it achieves an 85 to 90 percent completion rate. Great digital marketing begins with getting consumers to sign up–in large numbers and with accurate information.

Data captured on the SmartJoin form is completely customizable to meet precise list capture requirements. You can tailor the sign-up form to collect any information–from just a mobile phone number, to a complete CRM record–with minimal IT involvement.

Another important factor to consider is security. SmartJoin features a tight security model–it pre-populates the form with the customer’s phone number so that we know who the consumer is every time they initiate the process. As a result, it will never issue two reward numbers to the same individual, which avoids duplicate records. Similarly, it will never issue two welcome offers to the same phone.

What kinds of things will SmartJoin help brands with?

Slavin: SmartJoin is specifically designed to help brands sign up lots of people for your marketing programs. This can be done at the store location or anywhere else. Loyalty leaders can sign up customers for loyalty programs, text message lists, email lists, etc. You can assign a loyalty number. You can deliver a digital loyalty card. You can deliver a welcome offer and it can be single use. Offers can be set to have rolling expiration dates so that each new sign up delivers an offer good for a specific time period (e.g., two weeks).

The program is intelligent and prevents duplicate records as well as preventing individuals from receiving multiple welcome offers and multiple loyalty numbers. If you unsubscribe and re-subscribe, you’ll get the same offer again until it expires. SmartJoin recognizes the phone number and the corresponding CRM or loyalty record. This ensures that consumers receive and redeem a welcome offer only once, and receive only one loyalty number to ensure that marketers do not end up having multiple records for the same individual or duplicate sign-ups.

In your opinion, what role does mobile play now and in the future for loyalty marketers?

Slavin: There’s been a surge in demand for loyalty programs that are mobile-based. The problem is that not all loyalty programs are convenient to use. According to the CodeBroker Mobile Loyalty Survey, 43 percent of 1,200 U.S. consumers said the biggest hassle about loyalty programs was having to carry a plastic card. About 70 percent of consumers said they would use a mobile-based card if they didn’t have to download an app or log into a website. Going forward, mobile will become increasingly important in the future. If you don’t engage with mobile you’re doing a disservice to your customers.