RewardExpert - Blog - рage 6 of 126

By some estimates, gift giving drives between 20 to 25 percent of today’s retail sales. That means that one out of every four retail purchases a consumer makes is likely to fall under the gift category. With U.S. gift card sales reaching $160 billion last year, smart retailers are establishing engaging and efficient gift card programs to capitalize on this lucrative market.
CashStar, a leading provider of merchant solutions and services for gift card commerce, is at the forefront of the industry. RewardExpert spoke with Alex Barseghian, Group Vice President for North American Retail at Blackhawk Network, CashStar’s parent company, to learn more.

Air Canada has finalized its purchase of the Aeroplan program as part of a larger plan to roll out a new frequent-flyer program in 2020.
For Aeroplan members with Aeroplan miles in their account, the obvious question is: What changes to Aeroplan and to my Aeroplan rewards can I expect from Canada’s purchase?
Here’s how the deal could likely work out for the Aeroplan program.

In an age when credit cards offer all sorts of benefits – from free cash back to airline miles that can lead to free trips to exotic destinations – accumulating as many miles and points on a credit card has become something for a sport. And the easiest, quickest way to build a big base of miles or points is paying for big-ticket items with your piece of plastic.

If you’ve found yourself increasingly anxious about your financial situation, you’re not alone. A recent study by Northwestern Mutual, an American financial services organization, found that 54 percent of Americans have experienced financial anxiety, 52 percent have dealt with financial insecurity, and 48 percent have felt financial fear. In fact, money was identified as the survey respondents’ dominant source of stress—with finances even more stressful than relationships and work.

Whether you run multiple restaurant or retail locations or have a single bank branch, your customers’ experiences need to be top-notch and consistent. If they aren’t, you risk damage to your brand and –over time– a negative impact on your organization’s bottom line.
Market Force Information (also known simply as Market Force) is a customer experience management company that has been recognized as one of the top 50 market research organizations by the American Marketing Association.

There’s no doubt that it’s sweet to save money, anytime, anywhere. And shopping online is no different. After all, how many times have you added an item to your cart, and then hunted around for discount codes, only to come up empty handed? Now, a company called Honey is making it easier to save money online.
Honey’s technology scans the internet to help shoppers find the top discounts at thousands of stores, automatically adding discounts and promo codes. Janine Kamwene, the director of communications at Honey, spoke to RewardExpert about the sweet shopping experience Honey provides.

We all end up with too many credit cards at some point.
You go to the department store or a specialty retailer and you’re making a big purchase, and if you sign up for their branded credit card at check out, the clerk lets you know, “you can save an additional 20% off your purchases today.” So, you sign up. Or you decide you want to start collecting airline miles or travel points and, so, you sign up for a new card. And sooner or later you find one day you have more credit cards than you know what to do with.

It was September 1958 when Bank of America launched the first credit-card network with its BankAmericard. A month later, American Express launched the first worldwide credit-card network. Since then, consumers have seen a veritable arms race as credit card companies raced to build the biggest, most-reliable networks.
Today, so many credit card networks exist it begs a big question:
What credit card is the best?

Since the release of Bitcoin in 2009, cryptocurrency mining has frequently made headlines in the media. But the industry has seen significant changes over the last decade. While in the early days it was possible for anyone with a computer and enough CPU or high-speed video processor cards to make a tidy profit mining cryptocurrency, specialized hardware and machines, mining groups and cloud-mining services have since risen to the forefront.

A variety of reasons exist for wanting to know how to increase your credit limit.
The most obvious is that your credit card balance is running up against your existing credit limit, and without a credit limit increase you will max out your credit card and not be able to use it until you pay down the balance.
But you might also want to increase your credit limit (even just temporarily) to afford a very expensive item. Many people do this just so they can collect a large batch of travel miles or points with a single purchase … but they know they will immediately repay the card with cash they’ve already set aside for the purchase.

Or, maybe you want to improve your credit score. An increased credit limit will immediately reduce your credit utilization (how much of your total available credit you have already used), and credit utilization is one of the factors that determines credit score, since lower credit utilization typically improves a credit score.

Over the years, the word ‘brand’ has meant many things. Where it was once only a piece of burning or smoldering wood, or an identifying mark burned on livestock, it’s now a common term for products manufactured by a particular company under a particular name. From Google and Facebook to AT&T and Nike, most of us interact with dozens of brands every day.
When you’re running a business, your brand is a valuable part of it. But how do you define that value and use it strategically to increase your company’s success? RewardExpert recently spoke with Laurence Newell, Director Americas at Brand Finance, the world’s leading independent branded business valuation and strategy consultancy, about how the company can help you answer those questions and more.

As a consumer, you’ve probably heard of J.D. Power  and J.D. Power ratings. Millions of Americans have considered the company’s ratings, reviews and awards when shopping for a new car or truck. But did you know that J.D. Power is also in the business of helping brands improve their customer satisfaction and company profitability?

Cash back credit cards have become standard in the credit card world. With each purchase, you’re earning money that you can ultimately use to reduce your credit card balance, or which you can direct into your bank account to use for other spending desires.
So, here’s everything you need to know about how these cards work.

Imagine an all-in-one payment platform that provides everything you need to accept and process payments –whether you sell on your website, through a mobile app, on a marketplace, by subscription, over the phone or in a brick and mortar store. Sounds too good to be true, right? It actually isn’t—it’s BlueSnap.
RewardExpert recently chatted with BlueSnap’s Vice President of Marketing, Estelle Mense, about the company’s easy-to-use product and how it’s helping small- to mid-sized businesses boost sales and cut costs.

As the old adage goes, numbers don’t lie. In the case of Gusto, an all-in-one platform for payroll, benefits and HR, the key number is 60,000. That’s 60,000 satisfied customers nationwide who say that Gusto has simplified complicated yet essential business tasks and saved them time and money as a result. RewardExpert recently spoke with Gusto spokesperson Rick Chen to learn more.

Anyone who owns a travel-rewards or cash-back credit card wants to pay for everything in life with their piece of plastic. Sixty-two cents for candy? “I’ll put that on my credit card, please.”
But it’s the big, ongoing expenses that mean the most, since, obviously, they help you rack up miles and points quicker, more conveniently and with more consistency. It is, in short, a very easy way to accumulate thousands of miles or points over the course of a year, spending on things you would have paid for anyway.

Did you know that nearly 300 billion emails are sent each day? Are you aware that Google is used nearly five billion times daily or that there are approximately 1.94 billion websites in the world? If you’re a marketer, the answer is probably yes. But that doesn’t make the internet any less overwhelming for the prospects and clients you need to attract and nurture.
Fortunately, Act-On can help. A software platform that offers adaptive marketing solutions, Act-On helps marketers in the financial industry (and others) cut through that overwhelming digital noise to reach the right consumers and convert more leads.

In the old days, the only way to collect customer or prospect data was on paper, usually through the completion of forms. Before anything could be done with it, the collected data would need to be entered into a physical database—a process that was very manual and took a lot of time. While computers and digital technology have made data collection and databases simpler, some companies are still wasting valuable hours manually completing tasks that could be automated.

Tuesday, even Wednesday, has long been hailed as the best day to buy airline tickets. Finding cheap flights or figuring out when to buy airline tickets matters less these days if you have a travel credit card.
The miles and points earned when spending on your travel credit card can pay for all, or a large portion of your airline-ticket cost. But before we go there, let’s look at what days of the week really are the cheapest days to fly, and how far out you should be booking your tickets to land those cheap airline flights.

It’s now February, and if you’re like most people, you’ve probably given up on your New Year’s resolutions, whether you had planned to spend less and save more, exercise regularly, lose weight or take steps to earn a promotion. In fact, these goals probably fell by the wayside weeks ago, or around January 17 according to a recent examination of data by one social network for athletes.
But here’s some good news: you don’t have to wait until December 31 to try again. stickK, a community-driven online commitment-setting platform, can help you achieve your goals –New Year’s and otherwise– by empowering behavioral change.