December 13, 2017

Amazon and Shopkick team up to deliver a prime experience

Posted on December 13, 2017 by shopkick

Amazon addicts, rejoice! There’s one gift that’s come early this year: Amazon.com has arrived on Shopkick. Get kicks for shopping special categories on Amazon through Shopkick — and turn those kicks into more rewards and awesome gift cards! Check out Amazon fashion, devices, and more on the Shopkick app.

Get decked out with Amazon Fashion

This holiday season, look no further than Amazon Fashion, a one-stop destination for head-to-toe style. Amazon brings the fitting room to you: trying on clothes, accessories, and more on at home – and sending them back – is easy with free shipping and free returns on eligible items. Plus, their ratings and reviews come make it easy to decide it you should order.

“Alexa, make this the best holiday ever!”

Get kicks for this season’s hottest Amazon devices. Amazon has devices for everything from streaming video on the Fire Stick, to setting up your smart home with Alexa and Echo Dots. These devices make it easy to instantly play music, make calls, set timers, ask questions, and control your smart home, all by using your voice.

Amazon offers free 2-day shipping for millions of items to its Prime Members. Not a Prime member yet? Shopkickers are in luck! When you purchase a new 12-month subscription through the app you’ll earn a $20 Amazon Gift Card from Shopkick. In addition to the free 2-day shipping and everyday Lightning Deals — you’ll fall in love with instant access to tens of thousands of movies and TV shows.

This newest addition to Shopkick could not come at a better time with the holiday season fast approaching. Earn kicks when you buy gifts on Amazon.com for the family, then redeem your kicks for Amazon gift cards for the holidays!

How it works

Follow these steps to start earning your free gift cards while getting the best deals on Amazon.com:

1. Download the Shopkick app
2. Find Amazon.com under online stores
3. Shop to your heart’s content

Get started

What are you waiting for? Earn your kicks now to reward yourself! Download the app here.

Happy Shopkicking!

Best Buy rewards programs: How to sign up using a smartphone app

Posted on December 13, 2017 by shopkick

If you’re a techie like me, you know that the “it” devices and technology change fast. The tech we’re dying to get our hands on today—iPhone X, Nintendo Switches, and 4K TVs—is likely going to be obsolete tomorrow (ahem, VHS, cassettes, and even DVDs…) One thing, however, I predict will stay the same: Best Buy has always been the store to go to buy the latest tech.

I used to beg my parents to take me there as a kid, mostly so I could look at the latest N64 and PlayStation games. Then, when I got older, I was more interested in checking out CDs and DVDs, back when those were still things. Nowadays, I’m all about the home theater hookups and mobile devices. I’ll spend hours playing with tablets and new phones before spending even more hours having my eyes and ears blasted in what I like to call Best Buy’s “Home Theater Cave-o-Rama,” which they always have in the back of the store.

These are not just innocent browsing trips, though, I must confess. No, I also spend quite a bit of money at Best Buy. I even spent a summer working there in college just so I could take advantage of their sweet employee discount. This is the only job I’ve ever had that actually cost me money.

These days, however, I’ve become a bit savvier with my spending habits and fancy myself an expert on all the rewards programs at Best Buy that can save a techie guy like me some sweet, sweet cash. There are a couple of Best Buy rewards program apps that have become my sidekicks for earning free gift cards when I’m in the store. One of them is the My Best Buy Program and the other is a shopping rewards app. Together, they both help me get to a magical paradise where you can lock down all the sweetest new tech without completely draining your bank account.

Enough with the chit-chat, though. It’s time for me to let you in on my favorite rewards programs at Best Buy. WARNING: this could lead to you spending hours with me back in the home theater cave, sitting on the comfy leather couches there and sampling the incredible new surround sound tech! Oh, and did I mention you can sign up for these Best Buy rewards programs using a smartphone app? Uh huh, it’s that easy—and techie.

My Best Buy: A Techie’s Dream of a Rewards Program

I generally go to Best Buy with my crew, which is not an actual crew of people, mind you, but a couple of free mobile apps that help me get the best possible rewards for my purchases. The requirements to join my Best Buy shopping crew are pretty minimal:

Be a cool friend by saving me money and earning me points for the stuff I buy: This one is super simple. The rewards program just has to provide value for me by saving me money or helping me earn rewards worth cash. Easy.
Be an even cooler friend by always being there for me: The ideal rewards program for Best Buy is one I can always access through a mobile app when I’m in the store.

The My Best Buy rewards program app does both of these things. The value it provides is pretty diverse, but here are some examples:

My Best Buy Reward Certificates: I get a $25 certificate that is as good as cash at Best Buy whenever I purchase and activate an additional smartphone, add a new line to an account, or purchase and activate a new line on a new account.
My Best Buy Gamers Club: Membership to this club gets me 20% off new video games, including pre-orders, plus an additional 10% off used video games.
My Best Buy Offers: By participating in My Best Buy, I also get emails with personalized offers on all the latest tech. It’s an invaluable set up for the rare times when I get too busy with life to keep up with new tech offers on my own.

And, of course, I can access the My Best Buy rewards program through their simple mobile app. Very cool—and uber convenient!

Shopkick: A Must-Know Rewards Program Shopping App for Best Buy Lovers

The My Best Buy rewards program really is a solid pal, but my shopping best mate is an easy-to-use app called Shopkick. How Shopkick works is that you walk into a Best Buy and Shopkick gives you points, called kicks. You look for scannable products that are updated to the app each weekend and Shopkick gives you some more points. You share a QR code from the Shopkick app with the cashier when you buy something, and—that’s right!—Shopkick gives you points, points, points. You can then trade these points in for gift cards to Best Buy, or tons of other stores.

With Shopkick, I basically get a free gift card on every trip to Best Buy.

With Shopkick, I basically get a free gift card on every trip to Best Buy. It’s cool, too, because in my crew, the Shopkick app is the friend who wants to keep hanging out even after we leave Best Buy. I can use it to get paid to grocery shop, when I buy things online, or even when I go to Target. And my wife likes it, too, because she says it has let her ditch multiple rewards program cards for a user-friendly and fun app. It also works in tandem with all the great benefits from the My Best Buy program! I honestly can’t imagine shopping at Best Buy these days without it.

I think you now have all the info you need to start your own Best Buy shopping crew, which, let’s be real, is basically just you and these excellent Best Buy mobile rewards programs. But that’s all you need to start collecting on savings and sweet gift card rewards when you buy the latest tech. I hope I see you out there at Best Buy, testing the photo quality on new phones and hunting down that weekend’s Shopkick items to scan. I probably won’t say hi (there’s too much else to do at Best Buy), but we can definitely do the what’s up, man respectful head nod.

Get to know one of the best apps to get rewarded for shopping at Best Buy—and tons of other stores, too. Download Shopkick’s free app today and join a community of loyal Shopkickers who’ve already discovered how much you can earn with the help of a free shopping sidekick.

And, if you’re on social media catching up with friends, be sure to also join Shopkick on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram for a little daily fun and inspiration.

Image courtesy Heatray

Retail consumer apps: How to engage in-store shoppers on mobile devices

Posted on December 13, 2017 by shopkick

Many retailers view mobile apps only as an expansion of their online shopping space, and not as a route to in-store sales. This is a mistake. By their very nature, consumers use apps while on the go and, more often than many retailers believe, they’re using them for in-store shopping. When you’re evaluating which features to offer consumers within a retail app, you must think beyond online shopping. You must connect current consumer retail app technology to a physical, brick and mortar shopping experience.

In order to evolve along with the modern shopper, retailers must be ready to acknowledge and capitalize on the fact that mobile shopping is only one component of the consumer retail app experience. Any brand can build an mCommerce space. However, innovative retail mobile apps have additional success when they’re designed to work in-store, traveling with the consumers as they visit brick and mortar locations.

Retail companies, then, need a thorough understanding of exactly what these users are looking for—and must be prepared to deliver it, either via a branded, proprietary option or by partnering with an established third-party shopping app.

What Retail Consumer Apps Must Offer In-Store Shoppers

Retailers need to take a consumer first approach to retail app development as adoption is key in order to achieve a return on investment for your marketing dollars. Consumers generally prefer retail shopping apps that:

Provide convenience: Convenience is the main reason that consumers use apps. In fact, the majority of consumers, 60%, will choose an app over a store’s website. This is because they’re using the app as they’re out and about and smartphone apps, unlike many websites, are designed to cater specifically to mobile device users.
Create a connection: 48% of smartphone users say apps strengthen the brand connection when they feel like the app caters to their specific and individual needs. Consumers want shopping apps to feel like their personal concierge service; i.e. that the app guides them and tells them what they need to know about the retail store and its brands as applies to them, thus creating a connection.
Offer in-store options: About 77% of smartphone users have used their devices to help them shop while they’re in the seemingly endless retail aisles. Creating an in-store experience via a mobile app is a key factor in encouraging consumer use.
A memorable customer experience: If the consumer using the retail app runs into an issue with the technology more than once, about 54% will delete it. Meanwhile, 21% will seek out an app with similar functionality to replace it with. That means you have a very small window of opportunity when it comes to keeping consumers loyal to your app.

One thing that should be noted about all these attributes and features is that most consumers are not loyal to a specific retailer’s app. A retailer can use a third-party option and get the same results, provided that third-party app offers a positive, engaging, and somewhat personalized experience. In fact, a third-party app may even provide more opportunities than a branded app.

Why Retail Stores Are Partnering With Third-Party Shopping Apps

Creating a retail consumer app that combines all of the functionality and features that consumers demand is often an arduous and expensive process. However, partnering with a third-party shopping app can allow you to leverage all of the advantages of offering a retail app while minimizing your expenses. In addition, these shopping apps offer a few benefits that branded retail in-store apps can’t, including:

A wider audience: If your current target audience is already using your branded store app, they’re included in your current market share as well. However, by partnering with a third-party shopping app, you can expand that target audience—and, therefore, your market share—by gaining access to consumers who may not yet be regular or loyal shoppers.
Fast innovation: While retailers develop apps as a single component of their marketing campaign, app development companies have a singular focus. They are, therefore, in a position to take advantage of technological innovations, like smarter beacons and cross-platform functionality, much faster than companies who aren’t at the forefront of new technology.
Incentivizing without discounting: Third-party shopping apps often gain consumer interest by offering rewards. This allows their partner brands to gain in-store attention without having to discount their products. Retail apps, on the other hand, are often designed around promotions and discounts as a means of gaining buyer engagement. That’s a costly strategy that hurts ROI and the company’s bottom line.

Third-party shopping apps leverage the opportunities that mobile advertising provides without forcing individual retailers to develop and attract an audience for a branded, niche app. If you choose to partner with an existing shopping app that offers high engagement rates, you can reach out to a new group of consumers while seamlessly offering them exactly what they’re looking for—convenience and personalization.

When you’re using a retail consumer app to grow your market share, increase brand awareness, or build your company’s reputation, you need to maintain a focus on user experience, something that is automatic when you partner with a popular third-party option already established on the market. If consumers are actively engaged with the app to assist them as they shop, you are guaranteed an opportunity to travel with them into stores—and reach them when it matters most.

Shopkick offers their partners a shopping app platform for reaching customers with proven ROI—their active user base is proof of the effectiveness of their strategy. If you want to learn more about partnering with a third-party shopping app, and what it can do for your brand, contact the Shopkick team today.

Image courtesy gstockstudio