10 min read
Feb 1, 2024
Are you feeling boxed in by your marketing strategy? It’s time to rethink the power of the receipt with receipt marketing!
As marketers strive to be more efficient in running their promotions management campaigns they need to find innovative ways to not just engage but simplify consumer experiences while keeping their costs in check. Most promotions operate only up to the check-out counter, as the point of sale is an exceedingly difficult space to conquer. Historically, brand marketers looking to make one-off, purchase-based promotions or run loyalty programs, have had to either integrate into retailer POS systems or rely on printed codes on pack. Both methods are expensive for the brand and cumbersome for the user.
An elegant solution to this problem is the use of the humble purchase receipt. The combination of a customer’s receipt and their mobile phone can provide brands with a highly scalable way to create effective purchase-based promotions, allow a high level of customization within the programs, while also accessing a great deal of data directly from shoppers.
Receipt-based purchase programs are an effective marketing tool allowing you to run local or national programs quickly and to scale, based on any Purchase (dollar value spend, number of products purchased or even a sum of purchases over time) or Non-Purchase (images, surveys, social interactions etc.) transactions, ensuring a positive return on investment (ROI).
Receipt promotions are:
- Easy to set up
- Cost-effective
- Customizable
- Flexible and Scalable
- Data-rich
What is Receipt Marketing?
The POS receipt, usually stuffed into a shoppers’ pocket or bag to be tossed out and forgotten, is a marketer’s holy grail. It carries an abundance of information about the shopper’s behavior. It includes information that shoppers would rarely provide directly, including where, when and in what mix they make their purchases. This makes the receipt a very sophisticated marketing tool.
The images of shopper receipts are usually processed and analyzed through Optical Character Recognition (OCR) tools (receipt OCR tools) in order to extract individual shopper data, right down to product SKU level, without the need to coordinate with retailers or integrate with their POS systems. Analyzing the data collected from shopper receipts allows brands to customize their promotions and rewards programs, and bring a high level of personalization to their offerings for shoppers.
10 Successful Receipt Marketing Programs
Here are some innovative receipt processing examples you can use as part of your receipt marketing that have driven specific and quantifiable outcomes.
1. Driving Sales and Basket Size
Ferrara wanted to drive basket size by incentivizing consumers to buy at least three products across their brands: SweetTART, Nerds, Laffy Taffy, Spree. Snipp developed and managed a ‘Summer Concert Cash’ gift-with-purchase and sweepstakes program where consumers could buy three participating products and submit their purchase receipt to earn a $5 Live Nation promo code and a sweeps entry.
2. First-Party Data Acquisition
Danone leveraged Snipp’s solutions to drive sales and basket spend while collecting first-party shopper data and full basket analysis data - to get deep insights into consumers entire basket, category makeup, and competitor products. Snipp created and managed a GWP promotion where consumers who purchase $30 worth of Danone products could submit their receipt to get a $10 Sam's Club e-Gift Card.
3. Simplifying Customer Experiences
The Paw Points Loyalty Rewards Program phased out their code-on-pack strategy in favor of Snipp’s receipt processing platform for an improved, seamless customer experience. Members could earn points by uploading their qualifying purchase receipts or engage in non-purchase behavior like referrals. Receipt processing makes it easier to automatically collect points for purchase and other activities, minimizing a challenge in many loyalty and rewards programs.
4. Driving an Omnichannel Customer Experience
Reckitt partnered with Snipp to help them launch Schiff Rewards, a loyalty platform where customers earn points for purchases and non-purchase actions across any channel - in-store, online, and DTC. Snipp's receipt processing platform validated submissions across channels and the segmentation and promotional tools also developed and managed highly relevant offers and promotions based on the data collected.
5. Driving Retail Specific Sales & Engagement
Snipp created a retail specific gift-card promotion to help Duracell drive sales at Lowe’s to strengthen their relationship by driving footfall while securing and creating differentiation at shelf. Consumers who spent $15 or more in a single transaction at Lowe’s could submit their to receive $5 Lowe’s eGift Card.
6. Driving Cross-Brand Sales
Canada Dry and Conagra wanted to run a program that could help them cross-sell products leveraging both of their brand consumer bases. Snipp implemented our receipt validation technology to power a GWP program where consumers who purchased a qualifying Canada Dry and Conagra product in the same transaction were rewarded with a gift card from the retailer they purchased from.7. Boost Successful Partnerships to Drive Sales and Engagement
7. Encouraging New Product Trials
Snipp helped Nestle DiGiorno drive new product trials for DiGiorno Classic Crust at Walmart via a a gift-with-purchase program with a sweepstakes management overlay. Consumers received a $5 Walmart eGC for any purchase of $10 or more on DiGiorno products. Their valid receipt submission also automatically entered them into a sweepstakes just for participating, allowing them to win additional prizes.
Our receipt processing technology helped Pedigree reward dog adopters. Customers who adopted a dog on a specific date could upload a photo of their adoption receipt online and receive a $200 physical check to spend on their canine companion.
8. Driving Engagement & Sales Leveraging Partnerships / Sponsorships
Nestle KitKat leveraged Snipp’s platform to promote their association with the NHL to drive consumer engagement and sales. Snipp created a bi-lingual instant-win program with a sweepstakes management overlay where customers who purchased qualifying products could upload receipts for a chance to instantly win one of over 200 NHL related prizes, as well as entry into a sweepstakes to win a trip for two to the Stanley Cup Finals!
9. Improving Program Efficiencies
IKO wanted to streamline their B2B loyalty program to improve the accuracy of invoice processing and gather customer data. They leveraged our Snipp C.A.R.E. platform to manage the program - with digital transaction processing of invoices and purchase orders uploaded by contractors, and processing functionality of bulk sales files uploaded by distributors. They were able to gather more actionable data to increase contractor and distributor satisfaction.
10. Scaling Activations – Geography and Language
Microsoft Xbox and OPI leveraged Snipp’s promotions and receipt processing software to manage 15 programs across 12 countries in multiple languages. Consumers could purchase qualifying OPI products and upload their receipt to get an exclusive in-game rewards. Each countries program was localized to the market including language, market specific rules, customer service support, and microsites. Xbox & OPI also get an incredible amount of unprecedented purchase data from each campaign and can track programs individually as well as holistically.
What's the ROI of Receipt Marketing?
How can you make the most out of your receipt processing strategy? Our helpful ROI planning checklist explores strategy and questions you should ask at each stage of the process.
4 Considerations for Powerful Receipt Marketing
1. Marketing Reach and Relevance
What do you need to consider when it comes to market reach and the relevance of your marketing? We recommend you:
- Amplify your audience. Leverage owned, earned and paid media tools to power up your activations (Eg: by using solutions like Financial Media Networks to gain access to new audiences)
- Rely on data. Use customer data to provide hyper-relevant offers based on location, context, demographic, purchase history, habits, and preferences.
- Keep in Simple and Omnichannel. Enable shoppers to participate in promotions on any device while in-store or online, encouraging spontaneous participation.
2. Rewards
Today’s shoppers are sensitive to exactly how brands acknowledge and reward them, with sincerity, timeliness and consistency making all the difference. Attractiveness and relevance of rewards is critical in order to entice shoppers to follow through on the requirement of sending in their receipts. We recommend:
- Add value. Shoppers are attracted to rewards with high perceived value to their everyday life. All while maintaining low costs for your brand.
- Improve relevance. Rewards must be relevant to the consumer and their purchasing habits (e.g. a promotion targeted to shopper moms offering cash-back as a reward).
- Top 3 rewards categories include cash-back, gift-cards and experiences
3. Minimize Friction
How can you encourage customers to respond to your receipt marketing strategies? We suggest that:
- Omnichannel entry. Allow for activation across multiple channels (Text, Email, Web, Social, QR, App, TV and more)
- Seamless UX. Shoppers should get their reward as quickly and effortlessly as possible. Complicated entry and redemption methods can both pose barriers to entry which can limit participation.
4. Leverage Data
A key benefit of receipt processing is the volume and quality of data that is generated – and not all brands leverage this in any meaningful manner. The data collected can be used to identify key customer segments, possible products to be bundled, coupons and offers that can be designed, and used to understand shopper behavior at a granular level and improve targeting.
Make Use of The Entire Path to Purchase with Receipt Marketing
A great receipt processing strategy enables you to capture the attention of your customers, even after they've made a purchase. Not only are they happy with the item they've bought from your business, they're offered an additional opportunity to engage with your brand.
A big benefit of receipt processing as an incentive marketing solution is that it can support everything from a one-off promotion to an evergreen loyalty program. The most forward-looking programs will be designed with an eye to migrating customers along that journey, and will move them from redeeming a single offer to becoming an ongoing participant in a loyalty program.
Whether it's the promise of a reward or a hyper-relevant offer, receipts are a great stage of the customer journey to engage your shoppers. Don't miss out on this prime opportunity, learn more about everything you can do with receipt marketing and the data goldmine it generates.
Dec 18, 2024
41 min read
