After Capillary Technologies recently announced its joint marketing agreement with American Express whereby American Express will introduce Capillary’s industry-leading Intelligent Customer Engagement solutions to select medium-sized retail merchants in the U.S., Krishna Mehra, co-founder and Chief Technology Officer for Capillary Technologies, told Loyalty360 that it validates his company’s platform.
“American Express has validated all of the facets of the platform and its ability to show significant impact,” Mehra said. “The partnership gives us the ability to rise above other solutions and work on the value proposition.”
Capillary’s solutions enable merchants to engage with their customers across in-store, social media, e-mail, local and mobile channels, with a view to increasing shopper loyalty and fueling online and physical store sales.
Over the past year, American Express and Capillary conducted a pilot program in Singapore in which American Express introduced Capillary’s SaaS-based platform to select mid-sized retail merchants. The success of the pilot program led to the joint marketing arrangement in the U.S. where American Express will connect interested retailers with Capillary.
Janet A. Jaiswal, VP of Marketing, Capillary Technologies, told Loyalty360 that the partnership with American Express is indeed a major validation.
“American Express is offering a validation of our solutions and our cloud-based approach,” she said. “American Express is very protective of its merchants and only offers things that add value.”
Jaiswal said one of the main takeaways from the Singapore pilot was many retailers want to do a better job of engaging with their customers.
“But they don’t often have time to step back and take a look at the shopping behavior and rewards customers will value,” she said.
Today, shoppers interact with retailers through multiple channels at different times, perhaps browsing merchandise online and later completing the purchase in a retailer’s store. A consumer who opts in to receive communications from a retailer may receive an offer for “free shipping on winter apparel” via Facebook, browse outerwear on the retailer’s web site, and then visit the retailer’s store to purchase a coat a day later. Mehra believes these separate interactions need to be tied into one customer communication stream building a single view of the customer—so the retailer can recognize that it’s the same person interacting with it through all three of those channels.
Molly Faust, Vice President, Public Affairs, Global Merchant Services, American Express told Loyalty360 many retailers are looking for ways to strengthen engagement and loyalty with their customers, but don’t have the capabilities to build these solutions on their own or have the IT staff to support in-house solutions.
“In 2013, we conducted a pilot program with Capillary in Singapore and found the reception among merchants for Capillary’s solutions to be very positive,” Faust said. “Based on this positive response, we are now working with Capillary to offer its solution to targeted mid-sized retailers in the U.S. Capillary’s solution can help retailers strengthen engagement and loyalty with their customers. It is an easy-to-use solution that enables merchants to engage with their customers across in-store, social media, email, local and mobile channels.”
Capillary’s suite of Intelligent Customer Engagement solutions enables retailers to capture and analyze data on customer behavior and shopping preferences through social media, email, in store, local and mobile channels and arms marketers and in-store sales associates with a host of intuitive tools for cross-selling, up-selling and strengthening customer engagement, and increasing loyalty and return on marketing investment. Capillary’s intelligent CRM solutions enable merchants to provide real-time personalized recommendations to shoppers and offer relevant promotions across any channel they choose.
“American Express liked our solutions and turnkey capability and value add it brings,” Mehra said. “Before they made merchant recommendations, we had a pilot in Singapore with AMEX merchants. We went to a whole bunch of merchants who implemented our solutions and measured the success of those customers, and made sure there was enough value add. Then they brought it to the U.S.”
Mehra is very proud American Express chose American Express as a partner.
“At the end of the day, it’s a very, very strong validation of our solutions and the impact they can have for merchants,” Mehra said. “We feel very good about the fact AMEX took the time to test through a pilot so selected merchants can see the actual impact. We believe this partnership can have a big impact in our world. AMEX was most interested in the fact we can link social, mobile, store, and ecommerce together in real time. That’s what AMEX found very exciting. Lots of other solutions do these things at a very superficial level.”
Mehra believes that customer engagement and loyalty analytics connected in an integrated fashion is central to any successful marketing strategy.
Last year one of Capillary’s biggest success stories was Pizza Hut’s use of its solutions in India, Singapore, Hong Kong, Thailand, and Bahrain. Last year Mehra told Loyalty360 that Capillary helped Pizza Hut do segmentation and wound up with 25-30 different segments. What’s more, Pizza Hut analyzed behaviors and came up with an engagement plan called the Lifecycle Marketing Plan and created 6,000-plus customer behavioral groups, empowering the brand to predict future purchases and execute campaigns at preferred times via customers’ preferred engagement channels (direct mail, email, text message and more), yielding incremental sales growth across its restaurants and delivery business empowering.
The solutions yielded:
A 200% jump in average campaign hit rates across customer segments
A 38% improvement in Pizza Hut’s customer retention rate
A 9% increase in customer visit/purchase frequency in just seven months
And up to 6% extra sales generated every month since the program was started.