Loyalty Marketing

Mountain View, Calif. – Coupons.com Inc. has hired Mir Aamir, former president of loyalty and digital technologies at Safeway Inc., as the company’s COO and CFO. Aamir brings more than 18 years of finance, strategy and operating experience, primarily in the retail CPG industries.

Palo Alto, Calif. -- PunchTab, an omni-channel loyalty and engagement platform, announced that Arby’s Restaurant Group, Cosi and Bareburger have adopted PunchTab’s technology, and are benefitting by offering rewards to customers across multiple channels. In fact, research shows, customers are 2.5 times more likely to buy when engaged on multiple channels.

Toronto -- Shoppers Drug Mart is teaming up with Beyond the Rack, the online shopping club, to provide Shoppers Optimum members with exclusive deals on designer fashions and accessories.

Shoppers Optimum members are invited to join a new subscription-based retail website that offers exclusive savings and rewards on designer fashions and accessories. Those who register can receive special weekly product offers from Beyond the Rack while collecting 10 Optimum points on every dollar spent.

Austin, Texas - The current state of the economy will drive 41% of consumers to look for ways to save money on their holiday shopping this year, seeking out bargains and coupons. According to the new annual holiday shopping and coupon usage survey from Offers.com, about half of people (51%) make a holiday gift list, and 62% set a budget for their holiday gift shopping.

Other holiday-related findings from the survey include:

New York -- Amazon.com has raised its free shipping minimum from $25 to $35. The change, which applies to orders shipped to U.S. addresses, took effect Tuesday, just ahead of the holiday shopping season.

"This is the first time in more than a decade that Amazon has altered the minimum order for free shipping in the U.S.,” the online giant said in a brief post on its website. “During that time, we have expanded free shipping selection by millions of items across all 40 product categories."

Kohl’s is the latest department store to announce that it will open its doors at 8 p.m. on Thanksgiving Day, as it kicks off its Black Friday event earlier than ever.  

Stores will be open for 28 hours straight, from 8 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 28 through midnight Friday nationwide.

Hackettstown, N.J. – Custom couponing app Photopon is releasing version 2 of its iOS app, which lets consumers select nearby deals, attach a personal photo and write a message to create a personalized coupon that can be shared through the app, email, text messages or social networking sites.

Despite having more data and insights into consumer desires and preferences, companies in the U.S. have failed to meaningfully improve customer satisfaction or reverse rising switching rates among their customers. As a result, there is a potential $1.3 trillion of revenue at play in the U.S. market represented by the ‘switching economy,’ according to new research released by Accenture.