textLIVING Ups the Ante in Digital Loyalty: Goodbye App, Hello Text

Drives Higher Adoption, Engagement & Revenues for Local Merchants

NASHVILLE, TN – Digital loyalty program provider textLIVING is dramatically boosting loyalty program participation and related revenues for local merchants with a text-based platform that eliminates the inconvenience of punch or swipe cards as well as app downloads that discourage enrollment. The service’s ability to text subscribers about rewards they have earned or special offers designed to drive traffic ensures a 98% open rate compared to 15% for email notifications used by app-based systems, providing no-miss reminders that multiply repeat business.

textLIVING adoption rates are also up to 10 times higher than average, thanks to a 20-second in-store iPad sign-up process as well as on-the-spot enrollment incentives such as “Free coffee today with sign-up!” Members simply enter their name and mobile phone number at the store’s iPad kiosk (no five-minute account setup or app download hassle), then check in by entering their phone number at the kiosk every time they visit. That’s a major advantage over programs requiring apps, given that 65% of smartphone users don’t download any apps in a given month and 42% of all app time occurs on a single favorite app.

Other textLIVING benefits include an automated retention program that sends a personalized “We Miss You” text with a dated offer that generates return rates as high as 20%, the option to send up to three text offers per month that yields redemption rates as high as 25%, a new bounce-back option issued at the point of sale to increase visit frequency by ultra-loyal customers, and the ability to track and quantify all results. Participating merchants include:

  • A Nashville juice bar that attracted more than 5,000 loyalty program signups in its first year of business, 4,500+ of whom use the program every month. A single happy-hour special sent by text at 1 pm drew 75 customers from 2-4 pm – the bar’s slowest day part.
  • Four Chick-fil-A partner restaurants that saw 17,255 customers opt into the program and make 87,196 individual restaurant visits in the first 12 months. That included 2,265 customers absent for 30 days who were brought back by an automated retention offer.
  • Three Once Upon a Child consignment stores that engaged more than 5,000 unique customers, drew 30% of them back, and saw 136 offers representing $3,380 in revenue redeemed – all in just 60 days.
  • Fourteen Shell convenience stores in rural Kentucky and Tennessee that captured 13,905 subscribers representing 15% of the population in 15 months and saw a staggering 46,734 offers redeemed – an average of more than 3,300 per store.

“Punch card- and swipe card-based loyalty programs are becoming as obsolete as VCRs, but the digital loyalty apps that are replacing them fall short when it comes to results. An app can be an out-of-sight-out-of-mind thing once it’s on your smartphone, and that doesn’t help merchants keep their name in front of their customers,” said textLIVING co-founder Joe Brannon. “We built textLIVING to communicate with a merchant’s customer base in a more immediate and natural way: by pop-up SMS message.”

As of September 2014, textLIVING had logged 500,000 subscribers, 2 million customer transactions and 650,000 redeemed offers in a geographically limited launch.

The service requires no installation or POS integration and no contract agreements. The fee is $159/month per location for up to 2,500 subscribers plus a small up-front deposit for each iPad kiosk. It also includes built-in fraud prevention.

About textLIVING

textLIVING is pioneering a text-based digital loyalty program that dramatically improves merchants’ ability to generate revenues from repeat customers. The privately held company is based in Nashville, funded by angel investors, and doubled both subscribers and customer transactions in just seven months in 2014. For more information, visit http://www.textliving.biz

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