Loyalty Marketing

Staples has enhanced its omnichannel offerings, enabling small business owners to buy products online and pick them up in stores within hours, pay online via Visa Checkout, use in-store kiosks and download and use a dedicated iPad app.

RetailMeNot, a provider of digital offers, has unveiled an upgraded, redesigned app for iPhone and Android phones.

Plug and Play helps bring together retailers and startups who offer specific technology and expertise that can relieve their pain points. In each issue of our Customer Disruption e-newsletter, we will provide you a brief Q&A with the CEO of a Plug and Play startup, explaining how their company assists retailers in succeeding in today’s disruptive customer environment.

This week’s CEO Corner features three questions with Saurin Shah, CEO of Sift.

What does your company do?

New York – Macy’s Inc. has begun offering customers a digital wallet application called My Wallet. Available via mobile Web browser or the Macy’s mobile app, My Wallet automatically gives customers access to any credit cards already stored on their Macys.com account, according to the retailer’s MyWallet Web page. It also lets them add up to 10 new credit cards, including third-party cards, although it does not allow gift cards to be stored.

At a time of year when consumers are still caught up in end-of-summer barbecues and back-to-school shopping, retailers are getting caught up in the rush of holiday planning. Holiday sales can account for 20% to 40% of a retailer’s total annual sales, according to the National Retail Federation, and a successful holiday can turn around a bad year or make a good year even better.

With some 3,200 franchised, independently owned and corporate stores, the fast-growing Danish jewelry retailer Pandora needs to ensure customer relationship management (CRM) consistency throughout its operation — especially during the heavily promotional holiday season. It does so by using the Microsoft Dynamics CRM system and a retail portal based on the Microsoft Azure cloud platform.

Austin, Texas - Approximately two in three credit cardholders typically use cash for purchases of less than five dollars. According to a new CreditCards.com report, a clear generational divide in the way Americans pay for small purchases means that might not be the case for much longer.

A friend of mine is a devoted customer of a bath and body products shop in her local suburban town. There is nothing exclusive about the merchandise — most of the products can be bought online or at a number of other stores, often for a slightly lower price. My friend doesn’t care about any of that.

“They know me there by name, and they know what I like,” she told me. “They even email when new products come in that they think I would like. So what if it’s a little more expensive?