RewardsNOW, Dover, N.H., has teamed up with Zavee, Boca Raton, Fla., to offer a locally-focused rewards program through community financial institutions and affinity groups.
“This gave us an opportunity to get exposed to a registered card program,” said Zavee COO Ron Stack. “This put us in front of not only cardholders, but also local merchants.”
RewardsNOW CEO Steve VanFleet said the Zavee technology makes it much easier to get local merchants started with the loyalty program. “We were looking for ways to expand and improve our program. This gives us the ability to offer merchants a user-friendly [technology] to onboard and manage the program.”
Zavee also helps local merchants leverage social media through the program, Stack added.
Local merchants are the key because the program focuses on the truly local merchants that typically ado business only in the local community and not on a regional or national scale, according to VanFleet and Stark. Community institutions and affinity groups benefit from the additional community focus, something unavailable to larger financial institutions. Community financial institutions simultaneously expand their commercial relationships with the business community. Leveraging these relationships is important as community banks attempt to keep these merchants from taking their business to larger financial institutions, VanFleet added.
Shopping transactions are automatically tracked through debit or credit card usage and provide a new revenue stream for financial institutions and affinity groups.
Loyalty card members benefit from getting additional points when purchasing form local merchants, who benefit from rewards being redeemed at their businesses. Unlike daily deals with their “one and done” paradigm that is often a money-loser for merchants, this program rewards consumers each and every time they shop and dine at participating merchants, creating a significantly stronger loyalty model, Stack said.
Merchants also receive data on customer purchases and loyalty program usage, from which merchants can better tailor their loyalty and other marketing programs, Stack added.
The proprietary Zavee technology gives merchants marketing tools to create coupon-free deals designed to attract new customers and reward continued loyalty. The program offers a self-serve platform and lets merchants choose from over 20 different offer types that they can modify as their needs require, giving them control of the deals.
By integrating its loyalty tools with social media, Zavee gives merchants new ways to interact with customers and create long-term relationships that result in sustainable business gains.
The Zavee software will be integrated with RewardsNOW's loyalty platform, which has an installed base of more than 200 community-based financial institutions throughout North America. The integration is expected to be completed by the end of the third quarter.
“RewardsNOW has always been the loyalty leader for community financial institutions, so we are very pleased to be partnering with a forward-thinking company like Zavee,” VanFleet said. “Their robust software platform, proven ability to develop local merchant networks and pioneering use of social media provide the new thinking and new capabilities we were looking for to be able to deliver a custom, community-centric program in an efficient manner.”