PRINTING,POWER&GREENIT 27
VAN HAGE CARD PRINTER CULTIVATES LOYALTY
V
an Hage, one of the UK’s largest garden and leisure retailers, is enhancing its customer loyalty
offering with new in-house loyalty card printing capabilities. To satisfy its rapidly expanding customer base in the Peterborough store, which opened in 2010 to complement its two existing Hertfordshire outlets and online operations, Van Hage offers its ‘Enjoy the Privilege’ loyalty scheme to retain regular customers, develop new business and enable analysis of customer shopping habits as part of its database marketing activity. Previously relying on an outsourced card
bureau to develop and issue around 10,000 loyalty cards every year, Van Hage now uses a state-of-the-art Zebra ZXP Series 8 card
contain an instantly allocated customer number that links back to the electronic point-of-sale (EPoS) system to enable more immediate marketing database analysis. The ZXP Series 8 card printer has
printer to harness signifi cant cost and time savings, while also improving the overall customer loyalty experience. The company was able to use Zebra CardStudio software to link directly to its customer marketing system, allowing checkout staff to produce cards on demand with the printer within 20 to 30 seconds of the customer request. The cards printed
generated signifi cant cost savings for Van Hage, according to Chris Luther, Van Hage information communication technology (ICT) manager. “We performed a cost analysis of over 1,000 cards and, once the printer and consumables costs are taken into account, we’re saving around £2.50 each time we print a card. “We’re also saving many man hours each
week by not having to issue large batches of temporary cards at peak times, and customers love seeing them printed out in front of them,” he added.
RETAIL RINGS UP £32M HIDDEN BILL
Research has found UK retailers are failing to follow the digital lead set by their US rivals by wasting £32 million every year by dispensing paper receipts. By contrast, increasing numbers US
retailers including Apple, Sears, Kmart, Gap, Banana Republic, Best Buy and Old Navy routinely issue digital receipts to their customers – an approach that is designed to save money while simultaneously opening up new marketing opportunities. Research by receipt processing and management service ExpenseMagic discovered that approximately 11.2 billion paper receipts are generated every year in the UK at a cost of £32m.
“The use of e-receipts here in the UK is still in its infancy – compared to the US our retailers look Luddite,” said Adam
O’Kane, co-founder of ExpenseMagic. “There, the paper receipt is rapidly coming to the end of the roll, yet British companies are wasting millions of pounds and missing out on valuable marketing opportunities by using them. “Strategically, consumers are changing
the way they’re shopping and are using technology like their mobile phone to pay for purchases. Increasing numbers of retailers are looking into mobile payments, and inevitably this will practice will drive the convergence to digital receipts.” Beyond the cost savings and
environmental benefi ts – an estimated 9.6m trees annually are cut for receipts in the US – the vendor pointed out that digital receipts stored on hard drives can signifi cantly improve accounting standards and the management of expense claims.
“Paper receipts can be annoying,
burrowing into the bottoms of wallets and purses or getting lost in cardboard boxes and fi ling cabinets, only to be pulled out and puzzled over long after their usefulness has expired,” said O’Kane. “Last year, British SMEs [small to midsized enterprises] missed out on claiming £2 billion of legitimate expenses simply because of the sloppy and haphazard way they manage and process them.” He added that digital receipts also present additional digital marketing opportunities retailers: “Many stores in the US add the customer’s email address to a mailing list for follow-up offers. All of this data can really help retailers generate and retain a sense of loyalty with their customers – something no retailer can take for granted in the current economic environment.”
MAY/JUNE 2012 RETAIL TECHNOLOGY
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