Your
Online Merchant Portal and Reporting
Managing
your gift and loyalty program is an important key to the success
of your program. To that end we have developed the tools that
you need to properly manage your program.
To
begin with you will be able to run a daily report directly from
your credit card processing equipment or POS system. This report
will produce a chronological list of all transactions plus a
total count and total dollar amount of all of the cards issued
and redeemed since the terminal was last settled. You can use
this in order to reconcile your daily deposits in your cash
register system.
Then
included at no additional cost with all of our programs is your
own online Merchant Portal which is where you will be able to
view all of your program activity in real-time from any Internet
enabled PC or MAC. By simply entering your Location ID, Employee
Number and Password you will instantly have access to the most
powerful and user friendly reporting tool in the gift and loyalty
card industry.
Reports
can be filtered by a wide range of demographic information that
you can either isolate to a single parameter or in combination
with any or all other key data such as expiration (if any),
activation, status, balances, name, city, state, zip code, phone,
email, birthday, and anniversary as well as your optional choice
of 5 additional custom fields. So for example, if you want to
run a report of all of your customers’ birthdays in July
along with their email address it is only a matter of a few
clicks with your mouse. Maybe you want to run a report of all
of your customers who live in New York or within a specific
zip code – just a few clicks and you’ve got it.
Transaction
Reports can also be run from your computer in real-time whenever
you need them. We make it easy for you because we already preset
buttons that you can click on to run your reports for Today,
Yesterday, This Week, Last Week, the Last 7 days, This Month,
Last Month, This Year, and Last Year. If your accountant wants
to know the details of how many cards are out in the field with
balances you simply go to the Liability Reports button, put
in the cutoff date, push submit and instantly your Liability
Report will populate so that you can print it out.
Finding
data about a single card is quick and easy. You can key in the
card number or if not available you can do an instant search
using any of the demographic information you previously entered
for that card member.
For
our merchants taking part in the loyalty rewards program the
task of entering your Customer Data is a piece of cake. Just
go to the Customer form within your Merchant Portal and all
of the fields are already setup for you to key in the information
and then push submit to add new loyalty members.
Your
customers will also have the convenience of going online to
check their up-to-the-minute balance on their card. That way
they will be comfortable in presenting a card at your business
knowing exactly what balance remains on the card. This neutrally-branded
site can be accessed by cardholders simply by going to www.getyourbalance.com.
They also have the option here to register their card and opt-in
to receive marketing messages directly from you as all of their
personal info such as their mobile phone and Email address goes
into your merchant database (not any other merchant’s
database). We are able to provide your webmaster the balance
checker code so that they can place a link directly from your
website.
Email
and SMS Text Messaging
Built
right into your Merchant Portal is a button called Marketing
where you now have access to two of the most powerful tools
in advertising today. There is no form of advertising that is
more immediate or affordable than Text Messaging and there is
no better way to create a buzz than reaching customers instantly
through their mobile phone. At any time of the day you can drive
incremental business to your business by sending your customers
targeted messages right through your portal. For example, if
it is a rainy Wednesday and you are concerned that your restaurant
might be half empty then send a special offer to all your reward
members that if they come in that evening for dinner then soup
or dessert is free. All you need to do is type a short message
in the marketing portal, push submit, and within a few seconds
all of your rewards members will see that message right on their
mobile phone’s screen. You can judge the results of your
marketing effort that same day unlike newspaper ads and coupon
mailings which are very expensive and can take weeks or months
to absorb the results. Text messages are only 12 cents each
so for just $30 you can instantly reach 250 of your best customers
without wasting money on marketing to strangers who may never
visit your business.
Similar
to text messaging but for zero cost is Email marketing. Also
built into the Marketing section of your Merchant Portal is
an Email button. Here you just type up an email message once,
push submit, and for free your email will instantly be sent
to every customer which has provided their Email address. Used
for less urgent communication, here you can inform your customers
about the new Cadillac that your dealership is scheduled to
receive next week, the new line of dresses that your clothing
store has just received, the special menu you are preparing
for Valentine’s Day, or just to say hello and to wish
your best customer’s a Happy New Year.
Free
Web Terminal
As an
option, we can also set your business up to be able to utilize
the free Web Terminal. Taking the place of or used in addition
to processing with your credit card terminal or POS system the
Web Terminal is a virtual terminal that you can use from any
PC or MAC online and accessed with a User Name and Password.
Here you can do all of the functions normally performed on a
physical terminal such as issuing and redeeming gift cards or
adding or subtracting points and dollars on a loyalty card as
well as printing up daily reports. If yours is the kind of business
where face to face sales is not the norm then maybe this is
the best option for you.
