This is not another article on the environmental impact of the paper receipt and growing consumer awareness and interest in the sustainable e receipt. You are also not going to read about savings when you stop buying thermal paper and printing receipts.
Instead, this article is written for you, the brick and mortar retailer or hospitality business. We will examine five important steps to stay competitive in a rapidly changing business environment, including:
- finally collecting in-store customer data on the majority of customers
- making use of actionable customer insights
- and leveraging engagement and retention tools to improve your customer loyalty and grow profits.
What all these approaches have in common is that they become possible when you eliminate the paper receipt you give your customers and replace it with a smart e receipt.
#1 Capture Customer Data
The e receipt contains all the information that a normal paper receipt has and thus fulfills fiscal regulations. The smart receipt, however, goes well beyond that by offering multiple tools for customer data capture.
Connect purchase data to individual customers
For example, when customers open the refive smart receipt in their mobile browser, the refive software can already recognise if they represent a new or returning customer. The e receipt can then display an incentivised marketing opt-in, fully GDPR-compliant and, if you wish so, connected to your CRM software.
Regardless of whether the customer shares their contact data or chooses not to, irrespective of payment methods, the refive system has already created an anonymous customer profile which now contains an accurate purchase history. The next time this customer visits your store (or even your online store!) and opens their smart receipt, their profile will be updated with that purchase too.
Collect attitudinal customer data directly on the e receipt
Beyond email addresses and purchase data, the smart e receipt is able to prompt shoppers to share feedback on their shopping experience or on particular products they’ve bought. Thus, the customer profile is enriched with a layer of attitudinal data.
Last but not least, engagement with the receipt itself is also tracked. Whether customers accepted a prompt to write an online review or if they clicked on a special offer displayed on the receipt, this engagement data is also added to their customer profile.
#2 Gain customer insights for better decision-making and marketing
When you finally have real customer data on the majority of your in-store customers, you can analyse this data to gain actionable customer insights. For example, find out what products are most popular with specific customer segments to make better stocking and pricing decisions. Or use your improved understanding of each customer’s value potential to know what and when to offer them next.
This is not possible to achieve with paper receipts, where only aggregate customer and purchase data is available.
Leverage AI analytics
The refive smart receipt offers AI-powered analytics so that customer insights are readily available to you in a format any marketer can understand – no data analysts or additional software required.
#3 Create new opportunities for customer engagement in-store and post-purchase
Greater customer engagement results in improved customer retention and thus better profitability.
By eliminating the paper receipt and replacing it with the smart e receipt, you can effectively introduce a new digital customer touchpoint. They will now have the opportunity to engage with your brand, via the smart receipt in their mobile browser, either while they are still in the store or post-purchase. This method of engagement is customer-friendly, requiring no app downloads, no personal data to be shared and no long forms to be filled.
#4 Boost customer retention with personalised marketing and convenient loyalty
A successful customer retention strategy is based on your ability to identify new and repeat customers. It is also imperative to track customer lifetime value and churn rate so you can measure the effectiveness of your campaigns and efforts. refive’s upgrade of the e receipt empowers you to achieve this.
Personalised in-store offers
One of the most important trends in marketing has been personalisation. While ecommerce marketers are able to implement the necessary tools to make personalisation work, brick and mortar retailers often feel frustrated about how difficult it is to personalise the in-store experience, especially at scale.
The situation changes significantly when you replace paper receipts with smart digital ones. Because refive’s system identifies customers and connects them to their purchase history, retailers using refive have the ability to engage their customers with personalised product recommendations and special offers, leading to improved conversion rates.
Effortless loyalty enrollment
A common approach to improving customer retention is through loyalty programs. The challenge there lies not only in planning the rewards and functions, but also in enrolling customers to the loyalty program and making it easy for them to identify themselves as members.
Smart receipts can help resolve both of these issues. The loyalty program enrollment can transform from a long form to a single click on the smart receipt. The customer identification can happen automatically, so that customers do not need to carry a loyalty card, open an app or do anything other than simply open the smart receipt.
#5 Improve marketing ROI
When customers shop in your brick and mortar store after seeing an online ad, it can be difficult to track and record the conversion. As a result, you do not know which of your online campaigns are performing best. Unless you capture customer data, you cannot easily remarket to these customer.
With refive, opening the digital receipt automatically triggers a conversion event in your online ad platform – be it Meta, Google or something else, and you can even track the exact conversion value. You can also create remarketing audiences from your in-store customers and continue to engage and attract them with online ads.
Bonus #6 Improve the customer experience with a smart e receipt
The smart receipt presents a long list of additional opportunities. For example, you can make item care information easily accessible to the customer or use the receipt for easier return handling. It is also possible to offer one-click warranty extensions or leverage the insights for optimising an individual store’s performance. In all the various use cases, the customer achieves a benefit easier and quicker than when they’re holding a paper receipt at the checkout.
Can you afford to miss out on this growth opportunity? In the era of personalised marketing, what strategy are you going to employ to stay competitive? How will you keep your customers engaged, maintain loyalty and continue to improve the customer experience?
Making the switch to smart digital receipts can be easier than you think. The best software easily integrates with POS, CRM and marketing tools and offers ultrafast pilots. Join the ranks of leading retailers and start collecting in-store customer data, digitally engaging and retaining customers.
