LONDON, 26 NOVEMBER 2018: The UK’s top small businesses, including an innovative Digital Start Up from Marple, Stockport received special recognition today at an exclusive House of Lords reception.

We are delighted to have been named as one of the UK’s top ‘Small Biz 100’ by Small Business Saturday.

We now have almost 8000 membership cards on our Shop Local Club Card platform, that in itself is an amazing achievement considering that we only launched 12 months ago!

£3,534.00 could be lost!

Lost Forever

When I was designing the platform I had it in mind that the Membership Cards just work whether you register them or not. This makes adding points and stamps to cards easy when you first receive your card it has the points / stamps on it already before you even register it.

Brilliant idea – simple text message!

With this in mind, we got to thinking, how can we make registering Membership Cards even easier. It was at one meeting that one of our team members came up with a brilliant idea – “why don’t we enable people to register their cards with a simple text message?”

This was a brilliant idea I thought and with a little bit of investigation and some development work, we came up with a service that would do just that. Now you can register your membership number by texting the following:

the word Shop,  and Your Name, and Membership Number 

Your membership number is on the front of the card and starts with 0044, you can enter your membership number with or without spaces and its quick and easy and costs your standard network rate sms message, which more often these days is free.

This will now enable us to link your Membership Card to your mobile phone number, so if you lose your card – just tell us what your mobile number is and we will be able to get your card re-printed for you.

So if you have not registered your membership card with us do it NOW! Just text:

the word Shop,  and Your Name, and Membership Number 

These last 12 months have been brilliant, challenging and educational all in one! I have loved the experience of serving the businesses that have joined and have been delighted by the positive responses you the customers have sent to us. Here is to another successful 12 months and beyond!

Thank you for reading and remember if you have any ideas for this blog then please don’t hesitate to email me directly.

Have a great week ahead!

Marcus K. Naidoo

Since we launched almost 12 months ago, we have always been asked the question – what about if I don’t have a shop, can I still use the Shop Local Club Card platform for my business?

And the answer is a resounding YES! You don’t need a bricks and mortar shop or indeed have a premises on the high street – in fact I would go so far as to say that all businesses can benefit from supporting the Shop Local message and using our loyalty platform.

”all businesses can benefit from supporting the Shop Local message”

This might be a somewhat bold claim but bear with me as we use our imagination to see how / where a loyalty platform that has been built primarily to support high street shops can be used in other types of businesses.

OK, so apart from the obvious businesses like coffee shops, restaurants, green grocers and butchers that will be able to use either stamp cards or points collection and vouchers. You have businesses like  day care for dogs, used car dealerships, lawyers, accountants and estate agents – these types of businesses would not identify themselves as SHOPS, so here our chosen name is a bit unfortunate and I think a bit misleading to boot.

“these types of businesses would not identify themselves SHOPS”

I am certain however that if you asked any of these business owners if they support the Shop Local message they would say that they do, because #ShopLocal goes beyond just the shops, it’s about the community and about loving the areas where we live work and play.

So back to answer, the question – how can these businesses benefit from joining in the Shop Local Revolution by joining the Shop Local Loyalty platform. The doggy day care business is an easy one to answer – it’s a B2C business model so even though they don’t have a high street ‘shop’ presence they can still offer customers a Stamp Card type offer like ‘Get 50% off your 6th visit’ – this type of offer allows customers to earn a 50% discount on every 6th visit. They could even use a points based system, like earn 1 point for every £1 you spend with Doggy Day Care, (now remember this could be attributed to any services or products that the company offers), then for every 100 points get a £2 voucher to spend on any products or services. This is a fantastic 2% cash back offer for customers.

Now for the used car dealership, again this is a B2C type business that could benefit from using a similar points based system as discussed above, but in this case the vouchers generated might last 3 to 5 years and thus ensuring that the customers benefit from purchasing their next vehicle with the business.

The lawyers, accountants and the estate agents are a little bit more difficult to see how they could benefit from a loyalty program, but with a little bit of imaginative thought I have come up with these ideas.

•listing on the app with a flat discount like ‘£50 off’ or ’10% Off’ for Shop Local Members

•they could sponsor the backs of the Shop Local Membership card, these cards will be handed out by all participating businesses in their local area, and the cards are ‘meant for life’ so that will be like having your business card in customers’ wallets consistently.

•they could also be a local sponsor on the app, this creates an advertising opportunity again to local, national or international customers.

So as you can see from the above, with some imagination, we can see that all types of businesses can benefit from being part of the Shop Local Club Card platform.  If you have any other ideas on how more businesses, charities, government, council or other organisations can benefit from being part of the Shop Local message, then I would love to hear from you.

Thank you for reading and remember if you have any ideas for this blog then please don’t hesitate to email me directly.

Have a great week ahead!