An easy-to-use solution to all your ID card design and printing needs

At ‘My Time In Retail’ I help the independent retailer to find solutions that help their business run more smoothly. Today I take a look at a solution for the small business, organization or club to produce ID cards, membership cards or loyalty cards. The solution that you have been looking for to develop and produce high quality cards like these is http://www.idcardworkshop.com

This is a great piece of software that enables you to design and print cards for all of your needs-

• ID cards
• Membership cards
• Visitor cards
• Employee badges

And much more.

Imagine the ability to get these great-looking badges for all of the people who work for you so that you can all look like one team.

Think about how your customers will feel with a professional-looking membership or loyalty card to show that they are an important part of your company.

The software is easy to use and also has a feature to store and manage the content you have used, so you don’t have to start all over again every time you have a new card to print. The images and words that you use on one card can be easily transferred to another, saving you precious time.

Independent retail is about the friendly and personal service that you can offer to your loyal customers. www.idcardworkshop.com enable you to wow your customers with professional badges for use by your team or your customer is a great way to step up to the mark and enhance that feeling. But independent retailers can sometime struggle against the might of the big boys. To be able to meet them on their own terms with name badges and ID cards that look every bit as good (if not better) than what the competition offer then you can really stand out from the crowd.

The software includes the ability to make badges in different sizes so it fits all your badge-making needs. You can make membership or loyalty cards or your customers, name badges for your staff or any other badge you need all from the same piece of software.

You can upload and use the images you want so your cards and badges will look just the way you want them to.

All in all this is a great solution to a longstanding problem and www.idcardworkshop.com gives you all of the answers you need. Try it today!

This week is the MUST DO week when it comes to assessing how your Christmas sales are going

It's a hugely important time of the year for most retailers. I know of some retailers that trundle along through the rest of the year happy to break even or make a small profit on the basis that their Christmas trade will make up for it all. Many retailers I've worked with report that over 50% of their annual trade will happen during this quarter of the year. And there's the sales after Christmas to take into account as well!

With this time of year being so important, so busy, you can often forget to take a small step back and assess things. So ask yourself this question today-

How is it going?

Really. Find some time this week to answer that question. It's vital to the success of the rest of the year.

The big retailers have cottoned on to one truth that I'm going to share with you today-

Customers only have a finite amount of money to spend at Christmas.

It sounds pretty straightforward doesn't it? But it changes the way they operate. Their whole ethos is based around getting you (and your customers) to spend it with them and to spend it early. Look at the incentives-

• Extra loyalty card points
• Tesco Clubcard exchange
• Sainsburys Nectar point exchange
• Boots points events nights
• Boots Star Gifts and weekly offers
• Black Friday
• Cyber Monday

And the list continues. The idea is that you incentivise your customers to shop with you early. A typical Christmas list might read-

• Wife
• Eldest
• Youngest
• Mum
• Dad
• Mother-in-law
• Sister
• Brother
• Niece
• Nephew

And once there's a tick next to every name on the list, then Christmas gift shopping is pretty much done. So if it's done at a Boots points event, for instance, then the spend at Boots will minimise the likelihood that there will be any spend in other retailers nearer Christmas.

As for Black Friday and Cyber Monday, these are not American imports, as the press likes to label them. These events mean more to the British market than the American one. In the USA, it's our equivalent of the January sales - they are selling off post-Thanksgiving stock that didn't sell. They don't do Christmas in the same way we do. Over here it a great tool for retailers to get those sales in early.

So have a look at what you have done and what you have planned and see how you can secure those early sales. It will make a big difference to your performance for the rest of the year.

Read about different ways of creating brand advocacy

This is a follow up to my last blog entry (see http://mytimeinretail.blogspot.com/2015/10/see-how-converting-loyal-customers-into.html) where I looked at converting customers into loyal customers and then into brand advocates. Today's blog is concerned with different strategies for enacting this conversion. There are many different ways of doing this, and as a retailer you will have to find your own way but I'll look at some examples. It's all about creating that relationship with your customers that transform the way they feel about you and how they shop with you.

Loyalty schemes

These have become more abundant in all forms of retail after the success of the Tesco Clubcard. Every coffee shop, large and small, will give you a free coffee after you buy 6 or 8 or 10 with them. But for me, a loyalty scheme should be about more than just trying to twist someone's arm to come back. Loyalty is one thing, but were looking at brand advocacy as the target here. The next step is to offer your loyal customers something that other customers can get. This can be one-off products that the rest of your customers can't buy, invites to exclusive events, the first chance to see new products or another exclusive that only your very best customers can get hold of. These customers will talk positively about you and some will become advocates.

Events

As I've mentioned above, having an event that gives exclusive content to your best customers creates brand advocacy. A new product launch, products that you just can't get anywhere else or additional benefits to chosen customers promotes advocacy. If you have a guest list of certain customers that gain access to these feature then you're creating the next level of customer. If your best customers get a free cup of tea, a personal shopper, somewhere to store their shopping whilst they browse or extended guarantees as a set of examples then they are more likely to return and to tell their friends,

Exclusives

As unintelligent retailers compete more on price and race to the bottom, the intelligent ones are looking onwards and upwards. Exclusives is a huge area to build your advantage over the competition. If you can sell something that no one else sells then the customers of that product will come to you. Of course this means that your sourcing of the product needs to become a focus. Either it's products you make yourself or you need to have an exclusivity conversation with your supplier. Having an exclusive could mean

• a short-term exclusive (for the first month)
• a different design or packaging of an existing product
• a different size to what is available elsewhere

If you then add a high level of customer service, an event or a loyalty scheme to add to your exclusive then you're heading down the road towards brand advocacy.

E-Receipts are here!

And what a great way to collect email addresses and communicate with your customers. I've just shopped in Cotswold Outdoors, a first for me, and when I was asked if I wanted to sign up for their loyalty card, one of the benefits stated was that I would receive e-receipts. Now I've never seen it as a benefit before, but having access to an account that can provide proof of purchase for any items you buy from that store is a great selling point to a customer to take away the hassle of storing and accessing receipts.

From the point of view of the retailer, you immediately gather your customers email address, which I know some customers can be reluctant to give. It allows you to feed them more information than just the e-receipt, such as -

* Here's how much you've saved with us this month/year by using your loyalty card

* Thanks for shopping with us today, by way of thanks, here's a voucher for 10% off your next visit. To make it easier we've already pre-loaded this discount in to your card

* Thanks for stopping by today, we wanted to tell you that our sale starts next week with up to 50% off sale items

It's the last one that got me thinking. Boots used to have machines in store where customers put in their loyalty card and browsed for any relevant vouchers. What if you had something similar, where it triggered an email if you went into store but didn't buy. Something like-

We noticed you came into store tad but didn't buy anything. Just to remind you that if you can't find an item in store, you can order it online and have it delivered to store or your home the next day.

Have you downloaded our app? It makes shopping on the go easy, and the app stores all your e-receipts.

Did you buy something in store today? Forgot to produce your loyalty card? Don't worry, come back in within 7 days with your card and the receipt and we'll add the points in for you.

I think that little differences will make some retailers more successful than others. If you can use these little tools to drive customers to your door then you will win.



Not everything can be bought on the High Street