Two weeks ago I was privileged to meet with David Handlos, Founder & CEO of Stocard. Radinck van Vollenhoven, Stocard’s Country Manager for Aust & NZ, also joined us. We enjoyed tea and fruit salad at The Grounds Of Alexandria after viewing the sheep, pig and chickens.
I was interested to learn everything I could about Stocard App, a digital wallet for loyalty cards, after David informed me over 1m Australians use the App despite no marketing campaigns being run in the country. Worldwide over 10m users have lightened their wallets thanks to Stocard. By ‘lightened’ I mean ditched their plastic loyalty cards after storing them on the Stocard App.
David’s idea for Stocard came from a short stint in Australia 4 years ago. Retailer after retailer tried to upsell him to their loyalty program, all of which came with a plastic card. He was intrigued enough to join many of the programs, but was lost as to where he would put all the cards. Lightbulb.
After the meeting I was eager to road-test Stocard. As a loyalty-obsessive, I have 15 member cards in my wallet, plus another 33 in a draw at home. I was instantly impressed by the ease of loading a card into the App. Stocard have pre-loaded well over one hundred local loyalty program brands, so loading is as simple as selecting the brand, scanning the barcode on the card and . . . actually that’s it. It took me 16 minutes to load all my cards, an average of 3 per minute, and that was with the kids pestering me to play Ninja Turtles with them. Afterwards we used my plastic member cards as ninja throwing stars, because they no longer have value. Everything is now in Stocard.
Stocard App stores all my card data in the cloud, so if I lose my phone, it doesn’t matter. Transacting is easy; I simply open the relevant card on the App and scan the barcode.
This is just the start. For loyalty marketers out there, Stocard has a whole suite of neat tools in the toolbox.
For a start, the App can be set to remind a user via push notification when they’re near an outlet so they don’t forget to use their loyalty card. I walked past Guzman Y Gomez the day after loading my cards, and sure enough, a notification popped-up. I took it as a sign from the universe, and bought a burrito. Also the App automatically listed the Guzman Y Gomez card at the top of my card collection for ease of access, a clever design feature which adds significantly to the user experience.
Secondly, there’s what Stocard knows about your members. As users load their cards onto the App, Stocard can tell loyalty managers a whole heap about their members, such as what other loyalty programs they belong to.
Thirdly, Stocard has achieved enough market penetration to make it a new and very effective marketing channel. Members of a specific program can be targeted with special offers via push notification based on a whole raft of attributes, plus geo-location information. I’m hoping Guzman and Gomez gets cosy with Stocard so next time I’m walking by they serve up a half-price nachos as a surprise and delight.
Stocard can also run pay-per-click campaigns, special offer campaigns to the entire Stocard base, or even acquisition campaigns. They can also connect via API to a program’s platform to serve up points balances within the App. This is true ‘the future is now’ marketing.
Due to the large penetration in Australia, Stocard has recently launched their local office, headed by Radinck van Vollenhoven, who’s impressive resume includes helping launch Spotify in The Netherlands & Australia. Based on their current growth trajectory, Stocard will have 2m Australian users by year end (and 15m worldwide). It is a new marketing channel worth exploring, and many of the ASX 50 companies are already taking a serious look.
For more information visit www.stocardapp.com
Philip Shelper is a loyalty management consultant based in Sydney, Australia who obsesses about everything to do with loyalty and rewards. His company Loyalty & Reward Co are a leading loyalty consulting firm.
Let’s connect! https://au.linkedin.com/in/philipshelper
