A news flash from this year's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Nevada: loyalty programs work in m-commerce. Case in point: Samsung Rewards, which according to a Samsung reveal at CES, has doubled the daily use of Samsung Pay, Samsung's mobile wallet application. If anyone still doubted that loyalty marketing would be the killer app that drove mobile payment adoption, rather than just CX, then those naysayers now have a little less ammunition.
By Mike Capizzi
In a big CES reveal, Samsung Vice President and General Manager of Services and New Business Nana Murugesan told an attentive audience that since the introduction of Samsung Rewards, the daily use of Samsung Pay has almost doubled. Murugesan further revealed that December 2016 was a record month for transaction volume.
Samsung Pay - currently available on higher-end Samsung smartphone models - will be open for business on all or most models by the end of 2017. Samsung Rewards, meanwhile, is a points-based loyalty marketing program for Samsung Pay customers that gives users points for transactions in amounts that double and even triple depending on how often they use the service. Much like a credit card rewards system, those points can then be redeemed for Samsung products, other merchandise, or cashed out. The rewards, Samsung pointed out at CES, accrue on top of whatever card-based rewards consumers are already receiving, meaning a smart user will double dip by linking their Samsung Pay account to their favorite rewards credit card.
Those of us who track and analyze the loyalty marketing space have been advocating rewards tied to mobile payments behavior for some time. Others have and will continue to follow Samsung's lead. Although the value proposition today is a little weak, the double/triple bonus points offers clearly align with best practices and the overall points accrual velocity rate resembles the user experience of credit card reward programs. Users understand how to play this game; That's why adoption rates will accelerate as long as the loyalty marketing program for Samsung Pay remains intact.
Mike Capizzi is Dean of the Loyalty Academy, operated by the Wise Marketer Group. For more on the mobile loyalty landscape, join Capizzi and UK mobile expert Nick Chambers for an upcoming session at The Loyalty Academy on January 18th. For a course description and registration details, click here.