QR Codes & SP-1 by SelbySoft
Do you know what a QR Code is? It’s that funky squarish bar code thing you see around. The advantage of a QR Code over a regular bar code is that it can store much more information. A good example of this is QR Codes that use website links to provide easy access for users.
QR Codes can be created fairly easily. I’ve included a couple links to QR Code generators that I’ve used in the past.
- Alt-PrintScreen (this will copy your screen to the Windows clipboard)
- Open PAINT in Windows.
- Ctrl-V (or right click your mouse and paste). This will past the screen into paint. You can then select just the qr code and copy to your documents.
- You can then save this QR Code as a picture and use it in your own literature.
Now what? Well, you can use them in your own marketing information, signs, posters etc. Or, if you want to take it to the next level, put a QR Code on the back of your gift and loyalty card. Now anytime someone scans that gift car, you can have them directed to:
- Your website. Or better yet, have a specials page on your website that is only accessed by scanning the QR Code – You can then update the specials daily / weekly / monthly.
- Facebook or Twitter. Let them like or follow you.
- Online retail. Do you sell retail goods, roasted coffee, gifts online? Take them to a cart pre-loaded with the item.
5 Ways to Increase ROI with SelbySoft
Want to increase your return on investment? Make sure you use the tools that SP-1 by SelbySoft has available for you.
- Reduce mistakes with accurate menu pricing. Add effective forced modifiers to increase the number of times employees up sell.
- Track your discounts and coupons to make sure that the ones you offer are the ones your customers are interested in.
- Check your employee and ticket audits to make sure nothing ‘funny’ is going on.
- Market to your customers with our built in email and mailing marketing options or sign up for Hands Free Marketing and let us do it for you.
- Increase cash flow with smart gift card promotions.
Posted in Marketing, POS Features Tagged with: gift card, marketing, roi
Enhanced Customer Service with SelbySoft
We all want to be that company that knows our customers by heart. Unfortunately, sometimes it can be difficult to remember everything about everyone! If you are using our built in gift and loyalty system, you can get SP-1 by SelbySoft to help you!
It starts with the gift card because that gives you a reasonable reason to ask for a customers name, address, phone, email or anything else you want to track. Not interested in the marketing features? Not a problem, simply collect only the customers name. Once you have this, you can assign their gift card to their name in SP-1.
In SP-1, you can now simply type the customers name or swipe their gift card and SP-1 will pull up their last order. Along with the order, you will have buttons to duplicate their last order and even custom notes about that customer! This makes it very easy for your employees to comment on the last order the customer had.
Posted in Employees, Gift Cards, Marketing Tagged with: customer, gift card, marketing
Hands-Free Marketing
If you are like most of our customers, you don’t have a lot of free time. Between running your store, working the counter, driving around pickup up supplies, managing employees and trying to balance a life at the same time you are probably buried.
On top of that, you get emails and posts that tell you how you are supposed to stay on top of the social media and market to your customers as well.
SelbySoft realizes where you are at. Heck, half the time, we are there ourselves. It’s tough to find all the time to do the marketing you need. When we looked into email marketing, the prices were $50 to $150 a month or more. Now granted, there was a lot of bang for the buck with some of these but they were simply too expensive to integrate with most of our customers.
We decided to write it ourselves. . .
Hands-Free Marketing is based on email marketing to your current customer base. You collect the emails and we do the email marketing!
Here is how it works:
Every day, SelbySoft grabs the emails from your store. We then eliminate duplicates and automatically email the following:
- All customers that have had a new email address in the last 30 days.
- All customers that have a birthday coming up in the next 30 days.
- All customers that have not used their profile in the last 30 days (lazy customers).
Here is something that makes this even easier! You simply create the email that you want to be presented and send it to us. We take that email and forward it to all of your customers!
The cost? Only $120 a year ($10 a month!) per location.
Interested? Call us today and find out more!
QR Codes – 5 Suggestions
Do you know what a QR code is? What about how to use them?
Let’s get the definition out of the way first. . . In plain English, a QR code is simply a type of barcode that can be read by a number of app enabled phones (Apple, Androids, Blackberry etc). A QR code can contain all sorts of information in it. Most people (and businesses) are going to only use this to direct people to a spot on the web however.
So you see the funny looking square barcode – scan it with your phone and are taken to a specific website. Pretty simple.
How can you create them?
- Visit one of the links here to create one on the screen (there are more but these both work fine):
- Alt-PrintScreen (this will copy your screen to the Windows clipboard)
- Open PAINT in Windows.
- Ctrl-V (or right click your mouse and paste). This will past the screen into paint. You can then select just the qr code and copy to your documents.
- You can then save this QR Code as a picture and use it in your own literature.
So how can you use these to your benefit? Here are asdf ideas:
Here is a list of five different QR Codes that all do different things:
1) Take them to your website. It’s a great way to promote yourself.
2) Take them to your Facebook page! Let them see your specials, like your page and catch up with the store.
3) If you really want to take it to the next level, create a page on your website that cannot be accessed without going to the direct link. Then the QR points to that link. Print that QR code on your gift card and you now have a special of the month page that customers access by scanning their phone. This example shows how a QR can take a user directly to a specific blog post of mine.
4) Gift card registration. Lori at Crane Coffee does a great job by having her customers register their gift card. A QR code on the card itself can take them there.
5) Sell them stuff. If you sell bagged coffee online then this is a great way to increase sales! By scanning the last QR code above, you will be taken to one of our customers web ordering system with a bag of coffee already placed! Print this QR code on the bottom of a receipt and a customer can scan and order beans. Tie it in with a promotional code on that receipt!
Posted in Marketing, Uncategorized Tagged with: marketing, QR Codes
Interested in Gift Cards?
Interested in ordering gift cards? Don’t forget to think about custom gift cards. Too many people go with a generic card that does not remind the customer of your unique business. Having your logo on the card increases the likely hood that they will remember you.
What if you don’t have artwork for the logo etc? There are other ways to target your customers with the gift card design without having to spend a ton of money on graphic design.
One common method is to put a high quality picture of your primary coffee or food on the front. Nothing reminds us better than an image of the product we love. There are even plenty of websites that offer royalty free pictures for anything from $2.00 to $50.00 for the pictures. These are usually really high quality digital photos.
Other customers have simply taken a high quality picture of the location itself and used that for the front of the card. This is a great way to promote your cards as your customers recognize the building and the signage.
The back of the card is a great opportunity to market and promote as well. Don’t be afraid to wrap the color that you use on the card around to the back of the card as well. When a customer looks in their wallet, we want them to associate the color on the back of that card with your location.
Don’t hesitate to look at www.facebook.com/selbysoftinc for some examples of custom gift cards!
Contact us at:
SelbySoft
Mike Spence
800-454-4434
Sales@SelbySoft.com
WWW.SelbySoft.com
8326 Woodland Ave. E
Puyallup Wa 98371
Posted in Gift Cards, Marketing, Uncategorized Tagged with: gift cards, marketing
Pre-Load Gift Cards
Most stores receive at least a couple fund raising requests a year. You may offer a discount, cash, free food etc on occasion to help out your local charity or non-profit organization. Using a gift card may be a better way to go however.
Because you can pre-load gift cards with a dollar amount, you can easily setup a fund raising card system when asked. The scenario would play out like this. . . You offer to sell the organization gift cards at a discounted amount. So, maybe $20 cards for $15. They then sell the cards for the face value of $20. They make $5 on each card and you make a potential new customer and goodwill in the community.
Another great example of using gift cards as a marketing tool is to keep some pre-loaded cards on you as a business card. A $1.00 pre-loaded gift card works great for friends and associates. It’s an easy way to introduce people to what you have to offer.
Posted in Gift Cards, Marketing, Uncategorized Tagged with: gift cards, marketing
Automatic Discounts
Here is a neat feature that we have in SP-1. A lot of our customers offer a discount for seniors, fire, church, police, teachers etc. One of the benefits of having a POS is to make life easier for your staff and for a more convenient order process for your customers.
If you offer any of these customer specific discounts, you can assign them to the customer profile. In the example below, David gets the “Fire Dept” discount of 10% whenever he orders.
Contact us at:
SelbySoft
Mike Spence
800-454-4434
Sales@SelbySoft.com
WWW.SelbySoft.com
8326 Woodland Ave. E
Puyallup Wa 98371
Posted in Marketing, Uncategorized Tagged with: customers, discounts, marketing
Coupon and Discount Ideas
- 50 Points gets a free drink or 50% off food
- 100 points gets a free lunch (small size items only)
- 250 lunch for two
Contact us at:
SelbySoft
Mike Spence
800-454-4434
Sales@SelbySoft.com
WWW.SelbySoft.com
8326 Woodland Ave. E
Puyallup Wa 98371
Posted in Marketing, Order Entry, Uncategorized Tagged with: coupons, discounts, marketing
New Birthday Notification!
Do you keep track of your customers birthdays? One of our latest features is to notify you that a customer has had a birthday!
We start by setting up the notification in System Setup | Operations: 2
The Days Prior and Days After fields are setup to allow you to provide notification before and after the actual birth date that you have on file for the customer.
Once you have the switch setup, we need to make sure we have a birth date for the customer. This is entered into the customer file.
When you use the customer at Order Entry and start a ticket you will see the following on their birthday!
Below is an example of the message if the birthday has passed but is still within the notification!
Don’t forget that we can also provide you with the list of customers and their birth dates if you would like to do traditional mailings as well!
Contact us at:
SelbySoft
Mike Spence
800-454-4434
Sales@SelbySoft.com
WWW.SelbySoft.com
8326 Woodland Ave. E
Puyallup Wa 98371
Posted in Marketing, Order Entry, POS Features, Uncategorized Tagged with: marketing, reporting