We have just finished developing a loyalty program system for a Belgian coffee shop, so we thought we could summarize what we’ve learned to help Drupalists working on similar projects.
Loyalty programs are structured marketing efforts that reward and encourage loyal buying behavior. The owner of a loyalty card is identified as a member in the loyalty program who is entitled either a discount on the current purchase, or an allotment of points that can be used for future purchases.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loyalty_program
Our guidelines for the coffee shop project were the following:
- Manage customer loyalty points online
- Support paper- and virtual loyalty cards
- Provide an easy way to switch from paper to virtual loyalty card
Paper loyalty cards are printed cards given to customers at the counter. Virtual loyalty cards are managed by an iOS application especially made for customers. In this application they can also see the menu in the coffee shop, mark their favourite coffees, but most importantly, they can use it to take part in the loyalty program. The customer accounts are managed in Drupal. Since they are URL addressable, knowing the link to them allows instant access to the loyalty points. URLs can be easily converted to QR codes and with the Drupal Kiosk app (which accesses pages on a Drupal site using QR codes) exchanging and accessing user information becomes very straightforward. Because after registration the user account URLs never change, the QR code they represent can be printed. For customers who want a paper loyalty card their account is registered earlier and they begin owning their account after they start using it. We created an OSX application for the management that registers a given number of customers and creates the QR codes that correspond to the accounts. After a purchase, customers show their QR code on their loyalty card or their iOS device at the kiosk, and the coffee shop team can add to their loyalty points instantly. Customers can switch from paper to virtual account anytime, they only have to take a picture of the QR code on their loyalty card. It shares encrypted information with the customer application making the switching process automatic. After the switch is successful, the paper based loyalty card will no longer work. As a result using Drupal with iOS devices provides a great toolkit for managing loyalty program systems. You can download the customer app and the Drupal Kiosk application from the iTunes App Store.
It's not general enough to make it an open source stand alone project, but if you're working on something similar and would like to discuss your project with us, get in touch.
