The latest version is version 2.1.1 and has a number of improvements:

1. Support for email based login (in addition to facebook)
2. Support for all the latest Android devices
3. Better UI and layout with better support for different screen sizes
4. Fast – We are now using a more optimized communication protocol between app and server
5. Upgrade ready

So what are you waiting for? Upgrade today!!!!

And let us know what you think. (BTW, thanks everyone who waited while we got this major update released).

Check out some of the screen shots of the new app below:

Following is how it works:

1. This is your old familiar campaign list. Create a new campaign here to get things going.

2. Enter the info about the campaign and click on the notifications controls option

3. You get a nice default message but you can modify the message to meet your need.  The text in all caps “CAMPAIGN_NAME” or “FIRST_NAME” are called dynamic fields. They can be used to add personal information about the users like their name etc. – personal touch is always good.

4. Below is the list of all the dynamic fields that are available to you (you can click on the dynamic fields link to expand the list):

5. Once the campaign is setup, you should test it out by sending a test notification. All you have to do is to put in your email.  Just make sure you use an email that has been used to punchh a card at your business.  This sends out the test notification via push notifications to iPhone and via email. It also shows you a preview of the message that is being sent. Make sure everything is delivered correctly and looks great.

6. You should see the following email message and push notification as a result of the test notification.

7. If all looks good, go ahead and send out the notification to all of your campaign by going back to the list, activating the campaign and clicking on “Send Notifications”. Just remember, “Send Notifications” button only shows up when you have setup the notifications for a campaign.

That’s it…You now have the power to talk with you customers but with awesome power comes awesome responsibility. So please use this channel judiciously as you don’t want to spam your loyal customers because they drive referrals and repeat visits (We will also be enforcing some limits soon).

Peter Pappas, a seven-unit franchisee of Baldinos Giant Jersey Subs in North Carolina, discontinued paper loyalty cards years ago “because employees could just give things away” by over-punching friends’ cards.

But with the mobile app Punchh, customers only get a “punch” on their virtual loyalty card by taking a picture of their receipt. The app reports the transaction to Baldinos’ point-of-sale system and Pappas’ analytics dashboard. After racking up five visits, Punchh users can bring the full “punch card” on their phone to redeem a $6-off discount that only can be spent on the premises of one Baldinos location one time — triggered and verified by the smartphone’s GPS capability.

“In four months, I have a 20-percent redemption rate, which is beating the pants off my e-mail club,” Pappas said. “It hasn’t increased the check average, but it has increased guest frequency. … It’s nice, because we’d been absent from a loyalty program for a long time because it wasn’t measurable.”

He also likes to see the Facebook posts that Punchh users can automatically send out each time they get their virtual cards punched, which increases his restaurants’ awareness online and drives social referrals.

Thanks!! Mark for a great piece. Read the full article here.

http://www.fastcasual.com/article/190502/Commentary-Five-key-secrets-of-social-loyalty

Today, we officially released our “Campaign” functionality – a tool to further increase customer visits and engagement. It shows up on your Punchh portal as a new tab called, appropriately, “Campaigns”.

What can you do with these campaigns? Well, have you ever had a down-period or slow time at your business that you’ve wished you could fill up? You can now set up a custom campaign to reward your customers with extra punchhs if they show up during that down period. Maybe you’d just like to promote a new menu item or happy hour; maybe you just simply want to award your loyal customers extra punchhs or maybe you want to entice those of your customers you haven’t seen in a while to come back – you can now set up custom campaigns to address each of these (and any other) situations by awarding your guests extra punchhs.

Punchh email

Push notification

Remember our post about the Gift Punchh and the free gift punchh to new users (click here to view)? Well, we’ve converted that into a campaign – in fact, it’s 1 of 4 pre-populated campaigns that every business gets. The other 3 campaigns that come pre-populated include a “Happy Hour Friday” campaign, a “Double Punchh Tuesdays” campaign and a “We Miss You” campaign. Click on “Activate” to activate any of these campaigns for your business.

Campaign View on the Punchh Portal

The Gift New Users Campaign

Let’s look at the Gift Punchh campaign as our first example: as an added incentive to increase participation, you decide to award new customers an extra Punchh when they join your program (why we recommend this). Click on “Gift New Users” and this is what you’ll see:

Gift New Users Campaign - Default View

If you click on “Edit Campaign”, you’ll be able to see the parameters that were set up for the campaign and how to set another similar campaign up yourself.

Gift New Users Campaign - Detailed View

• You can setup your campaign name – in this case: Gift New Users
• You can set your reward – in this case: 1 extra punchh
• You can set the time-frame – in this case: a start-date of Jan 17, 2012 and since the end-date is blank, a program that runs forever.
• You can choose your audience – in this case: for all your guests. We also allow you to choose your ‘stalled’ guests – stalled guests are guests who haven’t visited your restaurant/bar in a while – say in the past 30/60/90 days (you can customize that time-period.)
• You can also select exact days of the week & times in the day for the promotion – in this case: every day and during all hours.

The Happy Hours Friday campaign

Let’s look at the Happy Hours Friday campaign as our second example: as an added incentive for your customers to visit your restaurant during the Happy Hour period between 4 PM and 6 PM every Friday, you decide to award them an extra Punchh if they should visit and Punchh during that time. Click on “Happy Hours of Friday” and this is what you’ll see:

Happy Hours Campaign - Default View

If you click on “Edit Campaign”, you’ll be able to see the parameters that were set up for the campaign and how to set another similar campaign up yourself.

Happy Hour Campaign - Detailed View

• You can setup your campaign name – in this case: Happy Hours of Friday
• You can set your reward – in this case: 1 extra punchh
• You can set the time-frame – in this case: a start-date of Jan 17, 2012 and since the end-date is blank, a program that runs forever.
• You can choose your audience – in this case: for all your guests. We also allow you to choose your ‘stalled’ guests – stalled guests are guests who haven’t visited your restaurant/bar in a while – say in the past 30/60/90 days (you can customize that time-period.)
• You can also select exact days of the week & times in the day for the promotion – in this case: every Friday between the hours of 4 PM and 6 PM.

Double Punchh Tuesdays

Let’s look at the Double Punchh Tuesdays campaign as our third example: let’s suppose Tuesdays are a traditionally weak day for you – fewer visitors and slower business. As an added incentive for your customers to visit your restaurant on Tuesdays, you decide to award them an extra Punchh if they should visit your business then. Click on “Double Punchh Tuesdays” and this is what you’ll see:

Double Punchh Tuesdays Campaign - Default View

If you click on “Edit Campaign”, you’ll be able to see the parameters that were set up for the campaign and how to set another similar campaign up yourself.

Double Punchh Tuesdays Campaign - Detailed View

• You can setup your campaign name – in this case: Double Punchh Tuesdays
• You can set your reward – in this case: 1 extra punchh
• You can set the time-frame – in this case: a start-date of Jan 17, 2012 and since the end-date is blank, a program that runs forever.
• You can choose your audience – in this case: for all your guests. We also allow you to choose your ‘stalled’ guests – stalled guests are guests who haven’t visited your restaurant/bar in a while – say in the past 30/60/90 days (you can customize that time-period.)
• You can also select exact days of the week & times in the day for the promotion – in this case: every Tuesday – starting at midnight and going to 11 PM.

We Miss You!

Let’s look at the We Miss You campaign as our final example: It’s also important to try to entice those of your customers you haven’t seen in a while to come back to your business. Let’s say you want to run this promotion for a week – where you’d like to award an extra Punchh to those of your customers that haven’t frequented your business in the past 90 days. Click on “We Miss You” and this is what you’ll see:

We Miss You Campaign - Default View

If you click on “Edit Campaign”, you’ll be able to see the parameters that were set up for the campaign and how to set another similar campaign up yourself.

We Miss You Campaign - Detailed View

• You can setup your campaign name – in this case: We Miss You
• You can set your reward – in this case: 1 extra punchh
• You can set the time-frame – in this case: a start-date of Jan 17, 2012 and an end date of Jan 24, 2012.
• You can choose your audience – in this case: for your stalled guests. You can customize to customers who haven’t visited your business in the past 90 days (or any other number you like.)
• You can also select exact days of the week & times in the day for the promotion – in this case: every day of the week at all hours.

Notification

So how do your customers get notified? We’re adding different announcement mechanisms including e-mail but here’s an example of our new ‘Push Notification’ announcement (stay tuned for more information on this!)…

Now your customers can get a pop-up message from Punchh even when they are outside the app notifying them of a campaign update – like a free punchh! What a great way to engage them and remind them of your business!

Bottom line, our customers have been asking us for this campaign capability and we’re glad to announce that Punchh now supports campaigns! So set up your campaign today and increase customer engagement and participation!

AJ Bombers, the award-winning restaurant and bar in Milwaukee and Madison, WI, is using the Punchh program to tap into the power of loyal customers through social media and mobile technologies. In addition, Punchh will be used at all sister concepts including Water Buffalo, Swig and Smoke Shack in Milwaukee, WI.

With Punchh, AJ Bombers is not only engaging customers by putting punch cards on their mobile phones but also empowering them to provide feedback to the restaurant and recommendations to their friends. With Punchh’s patented referral algorithms, AJ Bombers’ customers are automatically awarded additional referral punchhs when their friends visit and dine at AJ Bombers.

“Most loyalty programs start and end with tracking repeat visits.”, said Jitendra Gupta, Founder and CEO of Punchh. “Since customers are engaging over mobile phones and social media, traditional loyalty programs are not enough. The Punchh program re-thinks loyalty for the mobile and social era, to drive not only repeat visits but also referrals and social media reviews. As a result, our customers are seeing 3x the ROI of a traditional loyalty program.”

AJ Bombers, Water Buffalo, Swig and Smoke Shack Punchh cards

“We looked at a lot of programs but Punchh is the only program that allows us to tap into the power of mobile phones and social media to engage our customers and make them our advocates.”, said Joe Sorge, the driving force behind AJ Bombers. “By driving repeat visits, referrals, and social media reviews, we can now build 1-1 relationships with each of our customers, and expect to get significantly better ROI. Another reason we like Punchh is that punchhs are validated by customers themselves using their receipts. We didn’t need any hardware, software or training for the staff and we got started within days.”

In addition to punching their cards, customers can also write a review from right within the Punchh app. Restaurants can use these reviews to respond to their customers’ concerns, gift them extra punchhs for a great review or a bad experience or even republish the reviews on their own Facebook pages or Twitter streams.

“Restaurants are always looking for ways to build a social media community and to keep their customers engaged. Punchh typically generates more reviews in one month than Yelp! ever at a location, so restaurants can pick and choose the reviews they want to republish. There is no better way to build and engage your social media presence than to use real testimonials from real customers using Punchh”, said Jitendra Gupta.

Because Punchh uses mobile phones and Facebook to register the customers, restaurants can run highly targeted campaigns to re-engage their customers. “Punchh’s ability to invite our customers back to our location with push notifications and email campaigns by offering extra punchhs allows us to keep in touch with all our customers – not just the most engaged ones”, said Joe Sorge.

–
AJ Bombers (http://ajbombers.com/) is based in Milwaukee and Madison, WI. Pnuts, Burgers and Beer! That sums up this award-winning Burger Joint. Water Buffalo, Swig and Smoke Shack are also concepts from this innovative restaurant group.

Punchh (http://punchh.com) is based in Cupertino, CA. The Punchh program re-thinks loyalty to drive repeat visits, referrals, and social media reviews so that restaurants can build 1-1 relationships with their customers and drive 3x the Return on Investment compared to traditional loyalty programs. Punchh has over 200 customers like Boudin Bakery, Buckhorn Grill, Arby’s, Baldino’s and many more. For more information, email contact@punchh.com.

While we are still working on improving the experience of web-based punchhing, we started getting requests from users for ability to redeem the fully punchhed out cards. To address this need we are introducing web based redemptions. With this feature a user who has been punchhing a card on the web or from their phone, can redeem a fully punchhed out card from their browser. Here is how it works:

When a user has a punchhed out card it shows up in the “My Cards” view (if the user want to see their cards from the phone, on the web, they need to login with facebook or email/password on the phone and use the same method to login on the web-site):

My cards on the web

(other partially punchhed cards are also shown below the fully punchhed cards.)

Now to redeem a card, all a user has to do it to hit redeem. After a warning:

The user should make sure that she is in a position to claim their free offer with-in 24 hours

If the user clicks ok they are (optionally) asked to select which location they like to redeem at (this is important as your redemption will be valid only at the chosen location).

User should select the location where they want to get free food (no need if the business only has one location)

If everything checks out, the user is shown their coupon code. Following is how the screen looks:

Successful redemtion

All the user has to do do now is to print this page out and take it to the business. They will also receive an email with the redemption code which can be used to claim their redemption as well.

That’s it … Happy punchhing and let us know any comments or feedback … as this feature proves our users are the ones setting the product direction for us so please keep the emails and comments coming.

Note to business owners: Although this feature opens  up a new way your customers can redeem their punchh cards, it does not change the way you validate these redemptions. So from your end, just accept the codes as you would accept them from the user’s phones and validate them with the same method you are using. Just remember with web-based redemption, their might a little bit more of a time lag between the redemption notification and the customer sharing the code with you.

Q1: How should I configure my restaurant loyalty program? Do I want a $ based program or a visits based program?
A: We believe that loyalty programs are about driving repeat visits. So if a restaurant has a $-based program that provides $5 off $50 spent, and a customer spent $50 in all in one visit to get $5 off, the program is working as a discount program and is not likely to drive any loyalty. On the other hand, if a restaurant has a visits based program that awards $5 off after 5 visits and a customer comes in and buys a soda for $1 for 5 days to get $5 off in the 6th visit, the restaurant is losing a lot of money as it gave $5 off to a person who only spent $5 (5 visits $1 each).

While we can handle both $$ and visits based programs at Punchh, we believe the best approach is to base your loyalty program on both the $ amount spent and the number of visits. As such, with Punchh, its possible to setup a program that awards Punchhs for visits only when the customer spends a minimum of $X (amount set by the business). E.g. in the card below, the customer gets a Lunch Buffet for visiting 5 times and spending $6.99 on each visit.

Q2: How many punchhs should my card have?
A: As few as possible…

5 Punchhs are better than 7

Now suppose you are thinking of an offer of $10 off after 10 visits ($10 minimum each visit) recast it as $5 off 5 visits ($10 minimum). The reason you want to keep the number of Punchhs low is that your customers are likely to engage more if they think that they are close to getting rewarded. Also, once your customer fill out a card, the chances of them getting to the same offer again are a lot higher than a user who has never gotten rewarded.

Now, if you’ve run the numbers and have identified the offer, but the offer is going to require 8 punchhs, you can still increase your engagement by awarding free punchhs to the users when they start on a card for the first time (See here).

Q3: What should the offer be? Is it better to offer a food/drink item or a $ amount off?
A: The offer should be as attractive as possible. Keep in mind you are engaging loyal customers with Punchh and these customers are likely to generate a lot of reviews and referrals for you so be as aggressive as possible.

Both $ amount off and a food item work well

Feel free to go either way on  food/drink item or a $ amount offer. If you have a flagship product that people value a lot (like a lunch buffet or a famous drink/entree) and you have a high margin on, It might make sense to go with that (Freudian sip card above). Otherwise, $ amount off (as in the case of Arby’s above) also works well.

Q4: Should I require a minimum $ purchase for awarding the punchh? What should this amount be?
A: This is again up to you. While your consumers are going to like not having a minimum purchase amount, most restaurants have items on the menu that are really low cost (like sodas etc.) and don’t want users to be awarded a Punchh for just spending a dollar or two to purchase those items. These restaurants are concerned that customers might be able to buy 5 sodas and get a great deal in terms of the discount. So to prevent gaming and to ensure a great ROI, its ok to have a minimum amount for Punchhs.

When setting up a minimum amount for Punchh, a simple rule of thumb to follow is that you want to setup the minimum amount for a Punchh to be the cost of the cheapest meal at your restaurant. So in order to come up with the minimum amount for a Punchh, look at your menu and choose the cheapest entree or lunch special etc. and set that amount as the minimum Punchh amount. This ensure that your customers will always get a Punchh for a valid visit.

Q5: What if I want to change my program?
A: Sometimes, restaurants want to experiment with their offers. This means you will be changing the offer that you have established for your customers. This requires some thinking as your customers are already engaged with your program and changing a program – either changing the number of punchhs or changing the offer – is going to effect your customers. We can help you if you want to change your program. Following are the steps when you are changing your program:

1. Design a new program
2. Notify all the existing customers of the change. Typically, when changing a program you want to provide your customers a time window where they can still benefit from the older offer. At the end of the time period you can transition all your customers to the new program.
3. Setup a transition plan with time windows etc.

Thankfully, we are working on a way to automate all these steps for you and will be announcing a structured way to change your program soon. In the interim, just drop us a line and we will help you out with your changes.

Q6: How should I calculate the ROI of my program?
A: This is a great question. Its important to have a sense of ROI of the program. When calculating the cost of the program you want to consider the following: Costs:

1. Cost of the offer – If you have $5 off after 5 visits, the best way to calculate its impact is to typically just look at the cost of food associated with $5 off. Typically its about 20-30% or $1.50 for a $5 off offer. The reason you only count the cost of food in this calculation is because with Punchh you are guaranteed repeat visits (customers already proved this it to you by achieving redemptions). In fact, what we see is that once a customer gets a redemption, the frequency of visits doubles in typical cases.
2. Cost of the program – This is the cost of the Punchh service. You will see that the cost of this service is minuscule compared to its benefits.
3. Since Punchh empowers your customers to engage with your restaurants from their own mobile devices and computers, it does not slow down your line, doesn’t need any hardware, doesn’t need service visits and requires minimal training for your staff. This cost should typically be 0.

Benefits

1. Repeat customers: You can count all the repeat visits from Punchh from the Punchh dashboard. Typically customers using Punchh will come twice as often as your other customers.
2. New customers: Punchh allows you to measure referrals. You can go to the dashboard and see the pictures and details of all your referred customers. The way to value a referred customer is to calculate a customer life-time value (LTV). A quick rule of thumb is to multiply your average check size by 10 to arrive at your LTV. E.g. if the average check size at your restaurant is $15, then the LTV of your customer is $150 (assuming an average of 10 visits from a referred customer – adjust to your specific estimation). Multiplying the # of referrals with LTV will give you a sense of the benefit from Punchh.
3. Social media: Punchh allows you to empower your customers to write reviews for your business. You can use these reviews and republish them to your Facebook wall and Twitter pages. This is really the best way for you to drive your community engagement as customer testimonials are proven to work the best in driving other customer visits. So, with Punchh you no longer have to hire somebody to create content for your FB page and Twitter. To calculate the benefit here, you can calculate the cost of the social media hire.
4. Re-engagement via emails and push notifications: Punchh builds up your customer list and provides you with a way to re-engage your customers by doing email campaigns and push notifications. These campaigns can drive a great deal of repeat visits. To put a $ value to re-engagement, assign a value to repeat visits by a customer because of re-engagement. Typically a value of $5/customer (adjust based on your estimates) is a reasonable number to account for the additional repeat visits driven by re-engagement. E.g if you added 200 users to the Punchh program in a given month, you got 200*$5 = $1,000 in additional value to your restaurant.

By estimating all the costs and benefits, you will be able to get a sense of the incredible ROI from Punchh.

Any more questions? Leave them in comments and we will be happy to add them here with answers.

Jai Rawat, Founder & CEO, ShopSocially Moderator

Rakesh "Rocky" Agrawal, Principal Analyst, reDesign

Rohit Dhawan, Lead Product Manager - Facebook, Facebook

Arik Keller, Senior Director, Where Inc., an eBay/PayPal company

When the conversation turned to the most interesting companies in the location based services space that are likely to succeed, Punchh got a strong recommendation from Facebook Pages, Lead product manager, Rohit Dhawan. Check out the video of the full 1 minute description of Punchh by Rohit below:

Thanks Rohit we are also pretty excited about your recommendation and our service!

Watch the full video here:

Why is this important? Allow me to illustrate with a real story (source: Switch by Chip and Dan Heath):

A local car wash ran a promotion featuring loyalty cards. Every time customers bought a car wash, they got a stamp on their cards, and when they filled up their cards with 8 stamps, they got a free wash.

"Switch" by Chip & Dan Heath

Another set of customers at the same car wash got a slightly different loyalty card. They needed to collect 10 stamps rather than 8 to get a free car wash – but they were given a “head start.” When they received their cards, 2 stamps had already been added.

The “goal” was the same for both sets of customers: buy 8 additional car washes, get a reward. But the psychology was different: in one case you’re 20% of the way toward a goal, and in the other case, you’re starting from scratch. A few months later, only 19% of the 8-stamp customers had earned a free car wash, versus 34% of the head-start group. (And the head-start group earned their free car wash faster.)

What this data demonstrates is that the psychology of a loyalty program is just as important as the program itself. We’ve always advocated several ‘best practices’ in the design of a loyalty program (in fact, we have a whole article coming up about this very topic – stay tuned for that) – but this new feature – the gift punchh – is a tactical and quick way to increase customer engagement and excitement.

Here are some examples of how you can use the new Gift Punchh:

1. Automatic Gift to Start the Program

A Gift Punchh at the start of the program (click on pic to expand)

You can design your Punchh program to automatically start off with 1 pre-filled gift Punchh hole to give your customers a head-start. The results will follow – as seen from the car wash example above.

2. Gift because you love your most loyal customers

Visitors View (Click on pic to expand)

You can identify your most loyal customers through the “Visitors” view of your Punchh dashboard. You can then reward your top 1, 5, 10 or 20 most loyal customers with extra punchhs just because you love them and are appreciative of their business – these extra, free punchh’s are accompanied with personal notes of thanks from you so they know why they are being rewarded.

3. Gift for positive comments or for referrals

Gift for a positive comment (click on pic to expand)

You can also use the Gift Punchh as a tool for giving thanks – if a customer refers many friends (which we track through Punchh) or if he/she leaves a very positive review (customers can leave reviews at the end of the punchh process – these reviews can then be shared, with your customers permission, with others if you like. Have a look here: http://punchh.com/b/98.), then you can reward them with a personalized email and a gift punchh (or punchhs – you can award as many as you like)…

4. Gift to compensate for a negative experience

Gift a punchh to fix a negative experience (click on pic to expand)

Similarly, you can gift a punchh to those customers who’ve had a negative experience at your restaurant – to help fix their experience and coax them to give you another chance.

This new mechanism is just another tool we provide to you with the Punchh platform to increase customer engagement and to keep them happy and excited about your restaurant.

Excited to eat at your restaurant!

Contact us to learn more.

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