1. How are merchants charged for this? (e.g. flat fee or per points awarded or not at all)
2. How exactly do merchants benefit from this? I am assuming it's not going to influence more customers to walk through the door, and therefore the value for merchants is in the data/insights. And, if so, what are the best examples of how that helps merchants increase revenues?
3. Does Thanx collect and sell the data to third parties? (I'm just interested)
2) Merchants benefit in three ways: more frequent customer visits, higher average check size, and increased customer satisfaction. You're right that the data/insights are valuable, but only in as much as they can create monetary benefits for our merchants.
We accomplish revenue increases for our merchants in a number of ways; here are two examples:
A) Provide transparency to consumers throughout the reward process: whereas many loyalty programs make it difficult for consumers to know/find out now much progress they have earned toward their next reward, Thanx provides consumers with real-time insight. We think of loyalty like a race, where if you put too many hurdles, your customers drop out. You can read more in this article we wrote for QSR Mag: http://www.qsrmagazine.com/outside-insights/race-long-term-c...
B) Automated marketing tools: we just launched a product we call "Winback." Basically, Thanx analyzes customer activity and identifies previously loyal customers who seem to be churning out of the business. These previous loyalists then automatically receive an incentive (relevant to what made them loyal in the first place) to return in store. This reignites the relationship and increases revenue for the merchant that they would not have otherwise received.
3) No.
