CashStar Turns Incentives Into Social Engagement

Retailers who haven’t embraced social media yet on at least some level are behind the curve, and CashStar is looking to make it a little easier to incorporate social media into operations by connecting it to loyalty programs and incentives.

It’s all part of a new program called CashStar Social Engagement, and it takes things everyone wants anyway and connects these to social media.

CashStar Social Engagement, as described by its vice president of product Gerry Gilbert, represents a new way to use social media to not only drive revenue growth, but also improve return on investment (ROI) with a series of social tools.

CashStar Social Engagement users get access to flash promotions and a means to track and respond issues via social media.

Users can follow the impact of social promotions and even trace individual customer issues, along with the resolutions therein.

Since it’s an enhancement of the CashStar Marketing system and the CashStar Commerce prepaid platform, most of the current features will likely be on-board as well.

Social media has proven to be a major new stop for customers, particularly as a way to express dissatisfaction with a business. While it’s also used to express satisfaction, this is generally less common than the negative equivalent.

However, this is also an opportunity for the astute business; those who can step in fairly rapidly and address issues expressed can not only turn around one potentially lost customer, but also recover the potentially-lost customers the original started telling about the bad experience.

When a customer expresses dissatisfaction, and a business is seen publicly responding to make it right, that improves the business’ perception in the eyes of all but the most unreasonable customers, and something else would have likely lost them as it was.

CashStar offers a valuable new way to use mobile payment systems as part of a social engagement plan, and that’s a great thing to have on hand in this era of increasing social media involvement. “Go where the customers are” is one of marketing’s greatest principles, and when the customers are on social media, being able to offer promotional items and solutions for problems makes a business look that much better.