NEW YORK, NY – Thirdshelf, a leader in loyalty marketing for independent retailers, announced today that it partnered with Star Cloud Services (“SCS”), a subsidiary of Star Micronics, to enable relational retail for millions of independent retailers across North America.
Empowering Millions of Merchants to Harness the Cloud
The partnership will enable any merchant using a Star printer to effortlessly connect their transactional data to Thirdshelf’s loyalty marketing cloud, where raw data is transformed into powerful insights and automated customer re-marketing.
Merchants, regardless of their point-of-sale system – even those using legacy, on-premise software – can now tap into Thirdshelf’s AI-driven analytics to understand how to grow their business and see how they compare to their peers.
“Together with SCS, Thirdshelf is developing the first benchmarking framework for relational retail”, says Antoine Azar, CTO of Thirdshelf. “Independent merchants will, for the first time, be able to see how they stack up to other similar businesses and will receive automated guidance from Thirdshelf’s marketing bot on how to improve. In auto-pilot mode, the marketing bot automates customer reengagement on behalf of a business owner, effortlessly generating thousands of dollars in sales each month.”
“We’re very excited to be empowering our customers and our channel with solutions to grow their business. Thirdshelf’s best-in-class technology coupled with its focus on the independent merchant segment was the perfect fit for SCS,” says David Salisbury, VP of Sales and Marketing at SCS. “We’ll be showcasing the solution inside the Star Micronics booth at NRF Retail’s BIG Show 2017 and we aim to make it available to the market in the second half of 2017. The solution will be delivered on a subscription model, creating opportunities for our partners to develop a recurring revenue stream.
Relational Retail “ Rebuilding Retail as a Customer Centric Model
With growing competition for customer loyalty and share of wallet from online players, leading physical retailers are increasingly shifting focus and investing heavily in solutions to build profitable, long-lasting relationships with each customer. By applying AI-driven analytics to a data-set much larger than any independent retailer alone could muster, Thirdshelf makes it possible for small merchants to identify and act on opportunities that historically only large retailers could pursue “ and does so at a price point that anyone afford.
“Over the last 15 years we’ve seen huge segments of the economy shift to relational business models, like subscription services for movies and music to clothes and software. Technology leaders like Zuora have been evangelizing the concept of the subscription economy for years and leading online retailers have tapped into the trend and benefited greatly “ and they’re now bringing their A-game to physical stores says Rami Karam, CEO at Thirdshelf. “Relational business models are very powerful because they’re designed to maximize the lifetime value and profitability of every customer the business acquires, but they’re entirely dependent on capturing, analyzing and rapidly acting customer data “ an area where physical retailers have historically been very weak; and where independent retailers have been completely left behind. At Thirdshelf we aim to change that and we think the survival of independent retail depends on it.
About Star Cloud Services
Star Cloud Services brings next generation customer engagement solutions to retailers by turning their receipt printers into cloud-connected devices. Star Cloud Services has the unique ability to transform shopping receipts into valuable digital transaction data. With that data, retailers gain deeper insights that help them better engage, activate and retain shoppers. For more information, visit starcloudservices.com.
About Thirdshelf
Thirdshelf is the leading cloud-based loyalty marketing platform for independent retailers. Through machine learning, it allows merchants to easily deploy highly effective data-driven loyalty programs and marketing campaigns designed to automatically bring customers back in-store and increase transaction size. Merchants can signup for a free trial account at www.thirdshelf.com/signup
