Shopkick Cheats

Shopkick enables customers to get great rewards practically for free. The only thing customers have to do is to walk into a store, scan a product, or make a credit card purchase. The rewards you can redeem are very desirable, ranging from gift cards to a luxury cruise. Unfortunately, whenever something is desirable, people tend to try to get it whatever it takes. Therefore, some users of shopkick came up with ways to cheat the app. They get kicks for walk-ins without actually walking into stores and they get kicks for scanning products without scanning the actual products. There are even websites supporting such fraudulent activities.

Users post here pictures of bar codes so that other users don’t have to go into a store in order to scan products. They even post recordings of the inaudible sound that is played at store entrances for recognizing walk-ins. Those websites are a real threat to the business model of shopkick. The idea behind shopkick is to draw customers into the stores and to point their attention to specific products. Scanning barcodes from a website and faking walk-ins from home does not encourage the behavior that shopkick and the partnering stores desire.

Shopkick seems to have noticed those activities. The large amount of users commenting on the app about their ban from the app are an indicator for this. However, banning users is not the best possible solution. It reduces the number of users and might even hurt users by mistake that do not try to cheat the app.

Therefore, shopkick has to find better ways to prevent that type of fraud. One way to handle the recording and replay of the walk in sound, might be to install sound emitting devices that dynamically play the sound signal, i.e. changing the played sound after a certain time. In order to counteract  the fraudulent barcode scanning from websites, shopkick could only allow scans after a customer has checked in to the store buy getting walk in kicks.

Whatever solution shopkick will find, it has to do something about the current situation. Otherwise, the value of the app for the stores will be diminished. That might lead to less desirable rewards, or more kicks required to redeem the rewards. This in turn might decrease the attractiveness of the app to users, leading to a break of the current popularity.

Shopkick Welcomed Andy Mooney to its Board of Directors

Shopkick has welcomed Andy Mooney, former Chairman of Disney Consumer Products and CMO of Nike, to its Board of Directors the 29th of March, joining Reid Hoffman (founder of LinkedIn and Greylock partner), and Matt Murphy (partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and manager of its iFund).

                                               

Andy Mooney      Cyriac Roeding (Co-founder and CEO)      Reid Hoffman         Matt Murphy

Mooney was Chairman of Disney Consumer Products: he tripled the company’s retail from $12 billion to $36 billion, created a larger retail presence for Disney, and developed two of Disney’s largest franchises: Disney Princess and Fairies.

The following are some quotes from Andy Mooney talking about shopkick. Mooney developed famous advertising campaigns such as Just Do It,’ ‘Bo Knows’ with Bo Jackson, and many more.

• “Shopkick is out to revolutionize retailing. How many companies can claim that? The premise that drives Shopkick is that mobile technology can be the winning ingredient for offline retail, instead of a threat as it’s often painted,”
• “Shopkick’s success to-date with shoppers, retailers, and brands shows that they are doing it right. Combine that with their top investors Kleiner Perkins and Reid Hoffman, and you have an extremely potent mix.”

Therefore, Mooney will bring decades of experience in exactly the area where shopkick plays: the recreation and revolution of retail and brands. The match – in terms of innovation, vision, experience and passion – is exceptional. Shopkick predicts “more change in retail in the next 5 years than we’ve seen in the past 100, and adding a Board member of Andy’s experience to the team of experts we’ve built in-house will be invaluable in securing shopkick’s position right in the middle of the change.” Mooney’s guidance and advice will be invaluable to ShopKick as they try to expand and keep a already impressive consumer and advertiser base.

We will see with the time how Andy Mooney will contribute to increase shopkick presence and how consumers will earn more and more kicks.

For the moment, shopkick figures are :

–        3 million current active users,

–        5 million walk-ins,

–        12 million product scans,

–        1 billion in-app offer views,

–        more than $110 million in-store revenue for partner retailers and brands in 2011

–        over 40 global brands and 11 national retailers

Sources: http://www.pehub.com/143299/shopkick-adds-andy-mooney/

http://www.bizjournals.com/prnewswire/press_releases/2012/03/29/SF78678

Redeem Kicks for Rewards: Facebook Credits & Instant Gift Card

This past weekend I decided to visit some stores and scan some products in order to collect kicks on my iPhone. I visited the shopping center near my house which has a lot of the shopkick’s participating stores clustered together. I was able to pay a visit to Sport Authority, Best Buy, Toy’R’Us, Staples, Old Navy, Walmart and Target. And after my little shopping spree, I earned enough kicks (1372 kicks to be exact seen in left photo) to redeem some great rewards for myself.

Most partnered stores offer instant gift card with $5 as the smallest redeemable amount by using 1250 kicks. With my 1372 kicks, I had enough to pick a $5 instant gift card from the store I desired. But since this was my first time redeeming a reward and I had absolutely no idea how to do this, I decided to test it by first getting 1 Facebook Credit using 25 kicks. This was fairly simple as I was able to navigate to the redeeming page (seen in middle photo) easily by tabbing on ‘Facebook Credits’ on the list of redeemable rewards. With a simple click on ‘Redeem,’ the 1 Facebook Credit was instantly deposited into my already linked Facebook account (seen in right photo).

As I had remaining kicks and happened to be in need for a new pair of workout gloves, I decided to redeem a $5 Instant Gift Card from Sport Authority where a wide variety of workout gloves are being offered.  By going through the same steps as redeeming the Facebook credit, I successfully received my $5 shopkick loyalty certificate. Since the instant gift cards are only redeemable on in-store purchases by giving the loyalty code (last 10 digits of the shopkick loyalty certificate) to the cashier, I headed out to the nearby Sport Authority and picked out the gloves. The transaction went smoothly and I was able to receive a $5 discount on my gloves. Overall, I’m very happy with the redeeming process and I will definitely continue using shopkick to get more kicks to redeem other rewards in the near future.

How to Become a Shopkick Partnered Company

Thinking of adding shopkick to your marketing campaign?  The good news is that any local business could be selected as a partnered company by shopkick and Citi after completing the application process.  However, there are a few key factors that are considered in the selection of a new partner.

First, where are you located?  Shopkick mostly operates in the areas surrounding large American cities including New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Seattle, Washington D.C., Detroit, and New Orleans.  Second, what’s your business?  Shopkick prefers to work with certain types of businesses that work well with their business model.  They are currently looking for coffee shops, yogurt shops, bakeries, family restaurants, and fashion stores.  Many other factors are taken into consideration in the shopkick partner company selection process, such as your Yelp rating and number of store locations, to make sure that your company and shopkick are a good fit.

What’s the math for the number of kickbucks it would take to earn a cruise?

What are kickbucks? Well, they are points. You can collect them and earn rewards from some of your favorite vendors like Best Buy, Sports Authority, Macy’s or American Eagle. At the time of this review, they had begun partnering with Target and Wet Seal but they had not brought the advantage nationwide yet. You can even choose to donate your kickbucks to good causes or splurge them on a cruise.

Shopkick offers the current gift cards for Kickbucks:

Shopkick Partners with the CW Network

A New Way to Enhance Consumer Involvement

According to a survey of US smartphone users by the White Horse digital marketing firm done in May 2011 , only 8% of those aware of a location-based application believed that they could use them for saving in discounts and getting rewards. The shopkick platform has found the key to overcoming users’ reluctance to check in at a physical location: Simply get them to earn rewards for watching TV at home.

In a deal recently struck with the CW Network, shopkick will become the exclusive provider to the network of rewards delivery for some of the advertisers on its programs. Shopkick’s platform in stores works on audio recognition: the retailer sets up an audio signal that automatically unlocks a reward offer when he passes through the front door.

The same system can be used to recognize a signal delivered over a TV’s audio content. Users watching selected CW programs will get a reminder to open the shopkick app on their mobile phone before a commercial block airs. When the advertiser’s commercial plays, the app will “read” the audio signal and unlock an accompanying reward that the user can redeem on the next store visit.

What is the goal of this partnership? Often when you watch a commercial, you simply forget about it. With the apps, you have unlocked a deal that’s sitting in your shopkick app, and that could lead to higher conversion rates from TV spots than you had seen previously for a limited time period. The offers will be exclusively linked to the TV ads and not available to shopkick users who simply open the app in-store.

Moreover, the deal is a close demographic fit for the two partners. With shows like Gossip Girl the target audience for the CW Network is 18-34, while 49% of shopkick’s user base is 25-39. Fifity-five percent of shopkick users are female in distinct contrast to most location-based services, whose users are 80% male on average.

In addition to helping marketers bridge the gap between buying commercial time and ringing up in-store purchases, the CW/shopkick partnership may also offer marketers one more data point for measuring the true impact of their television advertising.

Link: http://chiefmarketer.com/mobile-targeting/shopkick-partners-cw-offer-mobile-deals-tv-ads

Why Pick Shopkick Over Others?

Shopkick VS. Foursquare & Daily Deals

After trying out shopkick on my iphone for the past couple of weeks, I can truly say that I am a fan!! Shopkick has dramatically improved my shopping experience as it gives me the chance to enjoy shopping guilt-free. I downloaded both shopkick and Foursquare at the same time and have been trying them for quiet sometimes. I found the following advantages for shopkick which outshine Foursquare:

• Shopkickers do not actually need to “check-in” to the store as kicks are received automatically when entering the store while the application is fired up. This is very convenient for Shopkickers to earn kicks as it’s fast and simple.
• Shopkick has partnered with big retailers such as Best Buy and Target, and if these big retailers are pushing this new marketing platform, it’s very likely to become the next big thing not just for shoppers but also other retailers.
• Unlike Foursquare, shopkick does not focus on game features (e.g. badges) that would confuse the users about the purpose of the app.
• Lastly, I was able to earn more points within one store as I scan the UPC of different items**. This allows shopkickers to gather kicks faster in order to redeem the reward they most desire.

Next, I would like give you some reasons to pick shopkick over daily deals sites. I personally visit a variety of daily deals sites quiet often such as Slickdeals and Dealnews.

• One huge advantage for shopkick is that it allows users to see just the in-store deals around them. This is crucial as many of the deals on the daily deals sites are from stores that are not even remotely close. Great deals are meaningless when they are so far out of reach where more than often the high shipping cost kills the deal. Shopkickers do not have this problem as the app would only display deals from nearby stores.
• Earning rewards for just walking into a participating store is another reason for choosing shopkick over daily deals sites as the guilt of shopping often sets in when one shops online. Shopkick gives user rewards no matter if they make a purchase or not. This allows Shopkickers to redeem rewards without spending a dime which lead to a guilt-free shopping experience.

**This actually creates a loophole as shopkick does not seem to care if you are in the store when you are scanning the items or not. They kind of have this somewhat under control by limiting how many times you can scan in any rolling 30 day period.