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- Punchh's Cinco de Mayo campaigns for its restaurant partners resulted in over 5 million redeemed offers in a single day
- 21C Museum Hotels unveils Penguin Passport, a loyalty program with limited membership
- Comarch unveils new fraud prevention software to monitor loyalty program enrollment fraud
- Authentic Brands Group and SPARC add Eddie Bauer to its collection of retail brands
- Value Retail, owner of The Bicester Village Shopping Collection, took a chance with the addition of virtual shopping
- JCPenny cuts 650 jobs under the direction of its new owners, Simon Property Group and Brookfield Asset Management
- Heart of London Business Alliance selects Coniq's IQ connect app to power an engagement solution for London's West End
- Amazon brings palm-reading payment technology to New York City Amazon Go store
- Trust in the Airbnb payments experience is vital to the platforms success
- The State of Alabama's lawsuit aims to force the Census Bureau to adopt a differential privacy method
- Qatar Airways Privilege Club members can now redeem Qmiles for hotel and car rewards
LOYALTY PROGRAM NEWS:
Punchh Spices Up Cinco de Mayo with Personalized Loyalty and Offers Results
Highlight: On Cinco de Mayo this year, Punchh connected its restaurant partners with millions of consumers via targeted marketing campaigns, resulting in over five million redeemed offers in a single day, driving an increase in revenues and profitability for the brands. Punchh’s data shows that online ordering redemptions were also up despite eased dining restrictions in some states, with Punchh customers experiencing a 43% lift in online ordering on Cinco de Mayo YOY. Its customers also sold 67% more tacos and 76% more burritos this Cinco de Mayo than last year.
21C Museum Hotels Launches Limited-Membership Loyalty Program With Unique Perks
Highlight: 21c Museum Hotels is joining the bandwagon by launching Penguin Passport, a program only open to the first 250 people to join. The goal of Penguin Passport is to create a curated group of 21c Museum Hotel fans. These boutique properties are known for their individual design, public-area art galleries and a focus on integrating the local area into their design. To join, members will have had to stay at two 21c Museum Hotels before becoming a part of the program. Once confirmed as a member, the company will send them a physical passport so they can collect stamps with each stay.
Comarch Announces New AI-Powered Enrollment Security Service for Loyalty Programs
Highlight: The AI-powered Enrollment Security Service is trained on historical data to detect fraudulent new registrations or personal data changes. It analyzes each new registration or personal data change using an ensemble of statistical and Machine Learning natural language processing models... “Enrollment fraud is not only dangerous in the case of data protection and privacy but also when it comes to reputation. You want customers to trust your brand … and not see loyalty program accounts being sold on the dark web,” said Maciej Tyczynski, Comarch’s Head of Data Science.
RETAIL NEWS:
Authentic Brands Group and SPARC to Acquire Eddie Bauer, the Iconic American Outdoor Brand
Highlight: After the acquisition is complete, Eddie Bauer will become part of the SPARC organization. Eddie Bauer will remain headquartered in the Seattle area under the leadership of current President Damien Huang. The Eddie Bauer team, in partnership with SPARC, will manage the brand’s sourcing, product design and development, wholesale, planning and allocation, and e-commerce as well as its 300 stores, which are principally located in the U.S. and Canada. Eddie Bauer has a robust and growing e-commerce business, which drove nearly half of the brand’s annual retail sales last year.
Value Retail Switches On Virtual Shopping, and Sees Village Sales Soar
Highlight: Over the past year Value Retail, which owns The Bicester Village Shopping Collection, a group of 11 luxury discount outlets in the U.K., continental Europe and China, has overturned some old beliefs, and introduced virtual shopping — with success. It was a radical move, considering that Value Retail has always prided itself on in-store, and village-wide, experiences, high-end hospitality and real-life, personal shopping appointments at swanky spaces inside the villages. The decision was also unusual because, unlike other large multibrand retailers, Value Retail has no e-commerce channel — and doesn’t want one.
Heart of London Business Alliance partners with Coniq to revitalise London’s West End
Highlight: “Heart of London Business Alliance is excited to embrace new technologies that will empower us to effectively support and serve our members who need all the help they can get to bounce back quickly from the effects of the pandemic,” said Emily Ferrary, Director of Company Communications, Heart of London. “Coniq’s digital platform will give us the insight we need to better understand and engage visitors, so they are incentivised and recognised for spending their time and money in the West End.”
Report: JCPenney Cuts 650 Jobs Across Operations as it Seeks New Texas HQ
Highlight: “After months of operational review by our new owners, Simon Property Group and Brookfield Asset Management, JCPenney has adjusted our structure to better meet our strategic priorities,” said JCPenney in an email sent to Dallas Morning News. “We have streamlined our organization, resulting in the elimination of positions across our corporate, field and stores teams.” The department store is aiming to revitalize its prospects by tapping the retail properties of its new owners. In March, Simon entered a deal with Authentic Brands Group (ABG) to add products from some of the company’s recent acquisitions, including Forever 21 and Juicy Couture, to JCPenney’s portfolio.
PAYMENTS NEWS:
Amazon's palm-reading payment tech is now available in New York City
Highlight: You no longer have to shop in Washington state to use Amazon's palm-reading technology. MarketWatch reports that Amazon has introduced One to New York City, making the biometric authentication available in the Amazon Go store at 11 West 42nd Street. It functions just like it did before. Once you've signed up, you just need to hover your palm above a reader to enter the store and approve your purchases. You don't have to touch a thing besides the goods you're buying.
Airbnb: Trusted Payments Are The Connected Economy’s Backbone
Highlight: Powering this shift is payments, something that may not be the “flashy” part of the Airbnb experience, but they are, no doubt, a very critical one. Enabling “pay in” for consumers who are booking properties in more than 200 countries and territories and who use one of more than 40 currencies to do it, expect that payments will work smoothly. Enabling the “pay out” to hosts is much more complex. Ninety percent of Airbnb hosts are people; more than half are everyday people who want to rent out a spare room or a part of their home to add to their household cash flow... “We have created the system that provides both sides of that transaction, the ability to experience payments the way that [each side] wants to,” Shrauger said.
DATA & PRIVACY NEWS:
Data Privacy and Cryptography Experts File Brief in Support of Census Bureau
Highlight: The risk of re-identifying census respondents from the release of basic statistical tables, like those the Census Bureau releases, is real and growing and can impact tens of millions of Americans. The Census Bureau's research—as well as extensive academic research—shows that data reconstruction and re-identification attacks in which an attacker first reconstructs person-level data records from products based on aggregated personal data, and then, re-identifies the reconstructed records are increasingly easy. Data releases protected by traditional statistical disclosure limitation techniques, like those the state of Alabama wants the Census Bureau to use, are vulnerable to these attacks.
TRAVEL & HOSPITALITY NEWS:
Qatar Airways Privilege Club Expands Partnership With Points to Introduce Hotel & Car Rewards
Highlight: The implementation of Hotel & Car Rewards, a first for the Qatar Airways Privilege Club, offers even more flexibility. Fully customizable, the holistic travel solution powered by Points, provides members with access to up to 350,000 hotels and over 20,000 car rental locations worldwide. With Hotel & Car Rewards, members earn Qmiles at a competitive rate on every cash travel booking they make. They also have the option to spend their Qmiles at no additional cost or make split payments with cash and Qmiles for their hotel or car rental bookings.
Read last week's newswire: Loyalty Newswire – May 3rd, 2021
The Loyalty Newswire is compiled and edited by the staff at The Wise Marketer.
