7 Benefits of Receipt Recognition Technology in Customer Loyalty

It's no secret that consumer packaged goods (CPG) and other multichannel brands face many challenges.

Fickle customer bases, fragmented distribution channels, competition from private labels and start-up brands, cautious spending – it's increasingly difficult to stand out from the crowd and drive repeat sales.

To make matters worse, audiences continue to move away from traditional media in favor of digital channels. And brands are struggling to build profitable relationships with high value customers through mass advertising and other above-the-line (ATL) marketing spending alone.

In such an unstable environment, creating fast and accessible loyalty programs is essential. Customer loyalty programs, based on scalable receipt recognition technology, and below-the-line (BTL) shopper marketing efforts are proving highly effective at addressing these challenges.

Customer Loyalty and Receipt Recognition Tech: A Match Made in Heaven

Receipt-based customer loyalty programs allow customers to submit pictures of their receipts in exchange for discounts, points, or other rewards on qualifying purchases. These programs encourage repeat purchases, increasing basket size and giving you an invaluable window into your customers' shopping habits.

Traditionally, you'd have to manually process each receipt individually – a time-consuming and often error-prone process. Receipt recognition technology, also known as receipt validation or verification, makes the process smoother and more efficient – for you and your customers.

It leverages advanced optical character recognition (OCR) technology to automatically capture key information, such as purchase date and amount spent, from receipts. It also works with other forms of proof-of-purchase, such as invoices and purchase orders.

Some receipt recognition solutions have built-in fraud prevention technology. This helps you tackle illicit activity, like double-dipping, which can seriously impact your bottom line.

7 Reasons to Use Receipt Recognition Technology in your Customer Loyalty Program

Historically, CPG brands steered away from loyalty programs due to the difficulty and expense of implementing them. However, with the advent of new technologies – including receipt recognition and powerful data analytics tools – they're becoming ever more popular.

While many brands are still experimenting and figuring out what works best for them, we're seeing some clear benefits, themes, and trends emerge.

Industry Leaders in Receipt Recognition

Snipp process over 5 million receipts every year for thousands of top brands, all through one powerful platform.

1. Improved Customer Experience

Today, earning customer loyalty is harder than ever. Customers can see brands on various channels and quickly find the latest deals or products. In such a competitive landscape, it's often difficult to capture your customers' attention.

Receipt recognition technology smooth the path to entry, making them a great opportunity for brands and customers. If you make participation straightforward for customers, they're more likely to join your loyalty program. Here are a few ways you can improve the customer experience:

• Easy receipt submission: customers can submit one receipt for multiple purchases, with no codes needed. This makes participating in your program simple.
• Multi-channel options: provide multiple entry points for your loyalty program across different channels. For example, in-store, email, or social media. 

Enhancing Customer Experience to Improve Reckitt's Loyalty Program

Reckitt improved its loyalty program in the Philippines by adding more functional rewards and experiences, increasing engagement, lifetime value, and data acquisition.

2. Supporting Time & Geography Delimited Programs

For those reared on pin-on-pack, delimited programs (that run for a set amount of time or in a specific region) are especially powerful.

With receipts, you know when someone purchases a product, as well as the store address and zip code the purchase took place. Using this information, you can create targeted, time-based or geography-restricted promotions.

For example, one of our clients ran a month-long promotion as part of its launch strategy, offering double points on qualifying purchases. The limited-time promotion helped to increase visibility and engagement.

You can also run promotions to coincide with specific events, like back to school, or restrict promotions to specific zip codes, cities, states, or designated market areas (DMAs). You can even design promotions that reward participation from those geographies.

Rewarding Customer Engagement at Specific Locations for Keurig Dr Pepper

Keurig Dr Pepper uses receipt recognition technology to support its bilingual  gift-with-purchase program. The program rewards customers with a Sobeys gift card, helping to drive sales and volume of their McCafe products.

3. Retailer Support with Receipt Marketing

Receipt recognition technology are ideal for creating programs in partnership with specific retailers, especially if your objective is to provide better retailer support for sales and shelf placement.

One brand created an entire loyalty program around one retailer, allowing customers to earn points on every purchase. Other brands have run retailer-specific promotions where consumers get double or triple points for purchases made at those retailers.

Programs like this benefit retailers, too. For example, by increasing foot traffic and driving in-store sales.

Receipt Validation Program Supporting Gift with Purchase for LEGO

We developed a gift with purchase program for LEGO, leveraging Snipp's receipt recognition technology to reward customers who spent $50 or more on qualifying LEGO build sets at Walmart.

4. Easier Points Tiering and Laddering

With receipt recognition technology, you can drive specific consumer behaviors in your program through judicious tiering and laddering points.

Historically, this was difficult to execute with pin-on-pack programs. However, it's much easier to do with receipts, where all purchases are visible simultaneously. For example, you can offer point boosts to drive sampling when customers purchase two specific products together or buy a product from a specific store or retail chain.

Similarly, o increase basket size, you can design your loyalty programs so that customers earn more points for each additional unit purchased. I.e., one purchase is worth one point, two purchases are worth three points, three purchases are worth six points, and so on.

Loyalty Rewards Program for Paw Points

Receipt uploads allow members to earn points as part of a loyalty rewards program. Using Snipp technology as the backbone to validate purchase and non-purchase activities, Paw Points customers can now earn points on many everyday purchases.

5. Receipts to Add Additional Channels

A significant use case for receipt recognition technology in loyalty programs is to supplement existing point-of-sale (POS) programs. This is particularly valuable if you sell:

• Direct to customer (DTC)
• Through third-party distribution channels
• In international markets

And are looking to expand your reach. We worked with a brand who did just that. 

They ran a loyalty program across their retail stores. However, they also sold products through several online and offline retailers. Customers regularly complained they couldn't earn rewards for purchases made outside of the brand’s stores. So, they implemented receipt recognition technology. This allowed loyalty program members to submit purchase receipts via the app, earning them points for all their purchases – wherever they buy.

Punch Card Loyalty Program App for Hagen

We created a punch-card loyalty mobile app for Canadian Pet Food brand Hagen. The app allows customers to take photos of receipts on any qualifying purchase from any retailer, earning them digital punches they can exchange for free products. 

6. Loyalty as a Platform

Receipt recognition technology helps you turn your customer loyalty program into a holistic platform for all your promotional activities. This includes:

• Instant wins
• Gift with purchase (GWP)
• Sweepstakes
• Rebates
• Coupons

Additionally, the technology's innate flexibility makes it quicker and easier to add brands and sub-brands as your platform matures. This is becoming increasingly important, as more and more brands  centralize everything on their customer loyalty platforms – rather than running disparate, stand-alone programs.

It stands to reason. Running everything from one location creates smoother user experiences, helping you to attract new members and satisfy existing ones.

7. Data Collection

Receipt-based customer loyalty programs increase program participation and engagement. But more than that, they provide a reliable source of transactional data that helps you refine your program even further.

The big opportunity lies in the treasure trove of first-party customer data receipts offer. The right tools reveal valuable insights into purchase behavior, basket size, and more. You can also use receipt data to determine:

• Which retailers’ consumers are more receptive to promotions
• What products consumers purchase together
• Basket share (how many of your products consumers buy compared to your competitors)
• How frequently loyalty program members shop
• Which data touchpoints let them target and provide more value to consumers

In some loyalty programs, brands ask customers to provide feedback or complete surveys. Qualitative data like this is useful for determining engagement and pinpointing areas of improvement.

First-party Data Acquisition at Scale for Kellogg's

Multinational food brand Kellogg's uses Snipp's receipt processing platform to validate purchases across multiple markets and languages. This includes North America, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. Integrated via Snipp's flexible API, Kellogg's now has access to unprecedented shopper behavior data, driving engagement in its biggest promotions – like Puzzles for Prizes.

Receipt Recognition Technology isn't the Future, it's the Present

CPG and multichannel brands continue to embrace receipt recognition technology as a key component of their customer loyalty programs.

Brands across the globe rely on these solutions to make their programs more accessible, exciting, and efficient. And, as they become more comfortable with these programs, we expect to see more interesting examples and best practices emerge.