Do you have a rewards card?

Posted by Jeremy L. Knauff | June 5th, 2009

Do you have a rewards card? Something has been bothering me lately. Every time I go into a store, whether it’s Borders, Office Depot or even the grocery store, when it comes time to check out, the cashier asks me is I have a rewards card. I always say no. It’s not that I’m wearing a tinfoil hat and I’m worried about big brother monitoring my purchases, it’s just that I haven’t signed up for any of them.

The problem (for the companies, not for me) is that the cashiers simply leave it at that. They never say “Would you like you sign up for one? It’s free and you get 10% off your purchase today.” or anything along those lines, instead, they just begin ringing up my purchase. The problem for the companies is that they’ve spent a lot of time, money and man-hours putting a rewards program in place because it helps them increase revenue, but more importantly, it helps them analyze their customers buying habits. When you can start to break down the type of data that these programs produce, you can begin to really tailor your marketing to increase your return on investment to unimaginable levels. Unfortunately, because of a few lazy employees, the companies aren’t benefiting from the programs that they’ve worked so hard to develop.

These cashiers should be asking each and every customer who doesn’t have a rewards card if they would like to sign up for one, because it means more revenue for the company, which means greater job security for them. Management should be enforcing this, and those that don’t should be fired.

Do you have marketing programs that you’ve put in place that aren’t being utilized? What is it costing you not only in lost revenue, but also in additional expenditures since you’re not marketing as effectively as you could be? This doesn’t even take into account the value of the time that you invested developing your programs. If you find yourself in this boat, take the steps today to change it today. Give your employees an incentive to actively promote any programs you’ve developed, and, as painful as it may be, get rid of the ones that don’t follow through.

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