Mobile loyalty and rewards specialist Tetherball has officially launched its contactless sticker-based loyalty and marketing solution with a trial at the Rochester, Indiana branch of the 5,700 strong International Dairy Queen fast food and desserts chain.

Consumers who sign up for the service are issued with a Tetherball Tag. They affix the tag to their mobile phone and then activate it by texting the ID number on the tag to a control centre. Then, each time they make a purchase at a participating retailer or food outlet, they are uniquely identified at either a contactless point-of-sale terminal supplied by Vivotech or a dedicated kiosk so that they can gain or redeem loyalty points.

Tetherball’s back office system then also allows them to be sent targeted marketing and promotional offers based on their purchasing history, via either standard SMS text messages or via mobile coupons redeemable in-store.

Tetherball also provides customers with a real time web-based reporting system called Mobiquitous that delivers instant, detailed analysis of coupon redemption rates and the overall performance of the programme. As well as more standard coupons and discounts, this also allows short term offers to be created — such as a discount on purchases made between 4pm and 6pm that day — based on current trading conditions.

“Mobile marketers have been struggling to develop a solution that not only provides an easy method to deliver targeted offers to mobile users, but allows them to truly measure the return on their investment,” says Jay Highley, president and COO of Tetherball. “Our new technology solution does just that in a radically simple way.”

“Mass adoption of mobile marketing using barcoded coupons just hasn’t happened because it’s far too complicated with a plethora of technical and user issues at the point of redemption,” Highley added. “Our solution doesn’t use mobile coupons with barcodes, or for that matter, require any type of mobile screen visuals to redeem offers. Most important, our RFID‐based solution, which works on any mobile phone, eliminates fraud and allows our clients to measure the performance of their campaigns with pinpoint accuracy via real time validation and reporting.”

“We are a big believer in the future of mobile marketing and are very excited to be partnering with Tetherball,” says International Dairy Queen’s Jamie Guse. “Through their innovative RFID‐based Mobile Loyalty Program we are able to provide great offers to our customers in a fun and easy way while precisely measuring the effectiveness of our Dairy Queen Mobile Rewards Program.”

International Dairy Queen franchisee Dave Reasner has been working with Tetherball over the last two years to refine the concept. “Due to the success of our program, we now average over 900 members per store and continue to see solid growth in membership and redemption rates which is making a measurable difference in our year over year traffic and revenue,” he explained. “Tetherball’s hands‐on approach made getting started and optimising my programs really simple and affordable. Most important their programs work.”

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