Five Secrets for Effective Loyalty Marketing – one way retailers are hoping to get customers back into their stores, is by offering all sorts of rewards programs and in-store bonuses to their most loyal customers

Compared to the expense required to attract new customers with advertisements or sales, loyalty programs like these are an inexpensive way to keep existing customers coming back and the money flowing in.

Although the average household has a dozen loyalty memberships, almost half of all consumers carry just one or two store membership cards with them, according to Consumer Reports. Knowing how hard it is to become the one card that shoppers carry religiously, retailers are offering bigger and bigger incentives – sometimes too big for a loyalty program to remain profitable.

Margento answers the above and many other challenges with fundamentally simple approach: forget cards – use mobile phones.

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Gartner predicts the number of mobile payment users worldwide will hit 73.4 million by 2009 and 190 million by 2012. This represents a tremendous percentage of total cell phone users (Gartner estimates upwards of 3% of the total user base) and companies must consider this technology as a potential payment channel comparable with checks, cash and electronic funds transfers.

Retailers First Adopters of Mobile Payments

The benefits of mobile payment solutions for retailers are obvious. The ability to accept credit card payments or mobile payments on a wireless device such as a smartphone enables retailers to create a host of new, innovative and engaging retail platforms. “Pop-Up Retail,” a term coined by Trendwatching.com, is a temporary retail space designed to quickly draw in crowds in high traffic areas then disappear once buzz wanes. Think fairs, concerts and other outdoor venues with massive crowd attendance. Because these events have limited time durations the expense of creating a permanent retail space (and the infrastructure to support it like phone and internet lines) is prohibitive.

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Margento Mobile Coupons is is flexible mobile couponing solution, enabling both pull and push coupons distribution methods, various easy and fast coupon program enrolment scenarios and convenient coupon redemption.

Mobile coupons are coupons in a digital format, not paper, and created, distributed, redeemed and tracked via Margento System and people using their mobile phones.

Because of mobile phones ubiquity and the fact that they are almost always by a person’s side, by default, mobile coupons are available at pretty much anyplace and anytime.

Margento is well aligned with short- and long-term trends in the coupons industry:

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Nokia has introduced Nokia Money – a new mobile service operated in conjunction with Obopay – calling it “a new mobile financial service offering consumers with mobile device access to basic financial services. For many consumers, this will be the first time they have had any access to such financial services.”

According to the company, “Nokia Money has been designed to be as simple and convenient as making a voice call or sending an SMS. It will enable consumers to send money to another person just by using the person’s mobile phone number, as well as to pay merchants for goods and services, pay their utility bills, or recharge their prepaid SIM cards (SIM top-up). The services can be accessed 24 hours a day from anywhere, meaning savings in travel costs and time. Nokia is building a wide network of Nokia Money agents, where consumers can deposit money in or withdraw cash from their accounts.”

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