Our Clients...

Everyone wants loyal customer or members

It doesn’t matter if they are a retailer, a church, an association or a service….you want people to be loyal to you.

They say it is 10 times harder to get a new customer than to keep him/her. The cost of acquisition is very high so you had better make sure you keep them happy once you have them. Whether it cost you money to acquire a customer (member) or it’s the cost of time invested, anyway you look at it it’s expensive. BSP Rewards has come up with a way to keep the cost down.

Incentives and rewards that are awarded to members the client’s name, but they don’t pay for. We arranged for the rewards to be given be the participating merchants making it totally “merchant funded”.

All the rebates, coupons and discounts are funded by the over 700 merchants in our mall so that it doesn’t cost our clients one red cent, The only exception to that rule is if our client is a merchant them self and then we have it set up that it only costs him/her on a completed sale – and they choose the amount.

A typical client has customers (members). He presses a button and places all of them in the program. Remember, the program is private branded for him and is actually his program…we only administer it for him. The member is then given the option to opt out - but very few do as it is free to them and they can amount of money they can save by shopping in the mall.

It works like this.
They auto-enroll their members or customers.
We send them a welcome e-mail explaining this new, wonderful, benefit (branded for the client) telling them of this new service that they have been given. They begin to shop the mall and see how much money the can save. They receive an email with each purchase (branded for the client) telling them how many points they have earned (every points = $1.00).
The email directs them to click a link to see how many points they have. It can link to a landing page (branded for the client) to promote whatever that client wants. Once a month we send out an email newsletter (branded for the client) promoting him and a group of special offers.

The bottom line is their branded BSP Rewards mall is a great communication tool and the client’s members love it because every time they receive an email it means they are making money.

So, as I said, the program is a great incentive to visit the client’s site, creates a high volume of traffic and builds a high affinity towards them. It creates more loyalty to the client and that results in a great cost savings in both acquisition cost and retention cost. By offerings the Mall as a value added incentive to become a customer, or member, and then a continuous loyalty program to remain one; our clients establish an excellent tool that costs them very little. Add that to the value of being able to have a consistent communication vehicle and it is a winning situation all around.

And if you are a merchant, you have additional benefits…but that’s a story for next week.

Discount Coupons

Discount coupons are both new and old for BSP Rewards.

We have had one form of discount coupons for some time now. Members can click on the restaurant tab, click on restaurants.com and voila you are there. They can then see over 7000 neighborhood restaurants to choose from.

There are 3 neat things about it. Firstly, they are printable coupons; that means that they can be used the minute they came off your printer. 2nd, the coupons average a 60% discount… which is pretty darn neat. And to top it off, an additional 5% in rebates are earned with each coupon. It makes me hungry just to think about it. I have enjoyed many a good meal and they taste even better with a 60% discount.

The other coupon program has not launched yet…so you are the first to know. It will feature discount coupons from thousands of local, and some national, merchants. BSP has built a rewards mall for Clipper Magazine, known as My Clipper Rewards and can be seen at www.bsprewards.com/myclipper .

In turn Clipper coupons will be offered on all of BSP rewards sites as a value added feature. There will be no rewards given with these coupons BUT they will be instantly printable and offer great discounts at all sorts of local merchants from shoes to yogurt.

A special tab will be added to the sites that link directly to the coupon site. The Members will the be able to search for local merchants by zip code, print the coupon ad take it into the local merchant and receive their special price.

This new feature is scheduled to launch in December so be sure to visit one of the many private branded BSP malls to see it in action.

…more next week.

Additional Features

So far I have only talked about the 700+ stores in the mall and the 100+ gift card selections. There is a lot more to the BSP Rewards Mall to puff our chest about that I would like you to know about.

When we looked around at all the rewards sites we found them to be lacking in many aspects (lucky for us). Sure they all had a way to earn rewards and a way to redeem them…but only in a limited manner. They had some merchants (far fewer than BSP), and some items you could redeem for (like a limited catalog or limited stores). At many of the sites they made it almost impossible to know what you reward value was (think airline miles). These limitations showed us an opening in the market and we took advantage of it.

First of all we made it simple. At BSP Rewards every point is worth a dollar. For instance if you buy a gift card for us for Macy’s you receive 7%. Say you were going to Cousin Gene’s daughter’s wedding and purchased a Macy’s gift card for $200. You would earn $14. Easy, huh?

Next we wanted to allow for an abundant amount of choices…. over and above our over 700 merchants and gift card selection. So we researched the market and found suppliers of items that would add even more value to our mall. We already had the largest mall on the web, but that wasn’t enough for us. Sure we wanted the biggest, but we also wanted to best…for our members.

So in addition to the wide variety of national chain restaurants, we added over 7000 local restaurants. All you have to do was search by zip code and find your favorite local eatery. You can then immediately print out a coupon for a much as a 60% discount and then take it to that restaurant and use it. By the way, you get an extra 10% in points on top of the discount.

But that still wasn’t enough. We wanted more! So we sought out a supplier with a catalog of over 200,000 discounted items and added that to our mall. We found one that not only offered to vast selection, but also offered the most savings. Then we decided to give reward points on top of the discounts. Wow…we wanted to be sure that savings would be stupendous.

Oh, did I forget to mention the printable discount coupons for all sorts of great local merchants around the country...thousands in fact.
I guess I’ll tell you about that next week.

Common Currency

BSP Rewards is unique in that it is designed as program that allows the member to collect rewards from over seven hundred merchants as if they were a single entity.

Before I explain that lets put aside the rewards earned when you use your credit card as that is a given. Sure you earn those rewards as a start, but BSP rewards are on top of and in addition to those rewards.

Individual merchants offer rewards when you purchase form them. They then allow you to use their rewards only on their store. The bottom line is you earn slowly (only for that store) and have limited use of those rewards (only from that store).

We felt there ought to be a better way; a way to earn and redeem rewards. Our “common cash value rewards” does just that. Members earn from over 700 stores and spend them back for anything and everything at any store(s), no matter who they earned then from. In other words – earn rewards from Macy’s, Target, or Chili’s, etc., and redeem at Sear’s, Overstock.com, BP gas stations or any sore in the network.

Hence, BSP Rewards was born where Members (Membership is FREE) can shop at over 700 merchants (the web largest one stop shopping mall), accumulate common currency rewards, have an abundant number of places to spend them, including a catalog of 200,000 discounted items they can choose from - if they wish.

And if that is not enough we give them even greater choice – they can load all the points they earn as in cash onto a stored value MasterCard or Discover Card. They can then take the card, and spend their reward points, at any location in the world that honors those MasterCard and Discover (which is just about everywhere).

If they happen to spend them back in within the BSP network they can even earn points on points (Pretty neat).

So every time they earn additional point by shopping or redeeming at a participating merchant they receive points, then with a click of their mouse those points are automatically loaded to their card. (Double neat)….and they are ready to earn and spend again.

I have lots more “stuff” to tell you about. I can hardly wait to see what I have got to say.