Shopkick Ban [Update]

This is an update for the Shopkick Ban post from 2 weeks ago. I wanted to test how long the app would take to detect that I was using cheats. Long story short I was banned after attempting to scan barcodes online using my girlfriend’s iPhone. I emailed Shopkick trying to get my account reactivated. However, after waiting impatiently for about 2 weeks, it’s safe to me to say that I will never get a response. Needless to say that I’m very disappointed in how they are treating their customers. Just the fact that I don’t even know if my request was received or not really frustrates me. Since I really did use cheats and it wasn’t on my own phone, I don’t bear a grudge against Shopkick. I wish others have more luck reaching them than me.

I will definitely continue using Shopkick on my phone. However, using cheats is obviously not the route to go since once you get banned, you will lose all the hard earned kicks and would have to start over from the beginning. I know that many have complained for getting banned for no reason at all, my suggestion for you guys is to post on their Facebook fan page and cross you fingers and hope that one of the administrators would get back to you.

Here a Kick, There a Kick, Everywhere a shopkick

Where’s your next good kick coming from?

There are numerous large retailers around the country that offer kicks at their many store locations and smaller businesses are starting to partner with shopkick as well, further increasing the joy of shopping.  Kicks can mostly be retrieved from big name retailers like Target and Best Buy, but recently shopkick has begun to venture into new purchasing environments such as Visa credit cards, ExxonMobil gas stations, and the CW television channel.  So where will shopkick venture to next…

I believe that shopkick holds a wonderful opportunity for grocery stores.  Although many grocery store chains offer their own loyalty programs, shopkick would provide an opportunity to move away from mailed advertisements, coupons, & points toward being able to reach consumers where through the device that never leaves their side: their smartphones.  We will later explore the opportunities, hurdles, and benefits of this potential future shopkick partner as well as a few others.

We would like to hear from your perspective as consumers, where would you want to be able to acquire kicks from?

Please leave a comment with your suggestions for future shopkick partner companies.

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.

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:

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.

Maximize Returns by Maximizing Shopkick

Three Tips to Help You Get the Most Bang for Your Buck!

 

Shopkick is a creative and interesting tool that many companies use as part of their marketing strategy.  However, partnered companies need to create a sound infrastructure to facilitate the effective use of shopkick by consumers in their stores.  If you are thinking of becoming or already are one of shopkick’s partners, here are a few tips to help you get the most bang for your buck:

My First ShopKick Experience: Why Shopkick can be frustrating but does work anyways!

Have you ever used shopkick? My first time was 2 days ago. I wanted to see with my own eyes if shopkick is the next big app and what all the hype is about. So I installed it on my Android phone. On the first screen it conveniently shows you which stores are near to you and how far away they are. Also, the screen shows you how many kicks you can earn at each store. The Best Buy, at 3.2 miles away, offered 300 potential kicks. That sounded like a lot, so I drove there.

When I arrived the shopkick app was telling me, that I would get 200 kicks for a “walk-in.” While I was entering the store and wondering how the app would figure out that I am walking into the store, a green button popped up welcoming me to the store and informing me that I had just received 200 kicks. My first 200 kicks! Now shopkick showed me that there were 4 items in the store worth 25 kicks each if I scan the items’ bar codes. So I started searching for the 4 items. And here comes the first frustration with shopkick: I couldn’t find 3 of the products. Even the shop employees couldn’t help me in finding it. The app tries to advertise certain products to you, but this store didn’t have them in stock. However, that’s less the apps fault and more Best Buy’s fault. The store should have the advertised products in stock.

Since I wanted to at least try to get some more kicks, I tried to scan the one product I was able to find. And here is the second frustration with shopkick: the app wouldn’t recognize the bar code. It was able to read it, but it showed me an error message. Here is the according screenshot and the proof that I tried to scan the correct product. a picture of the product in the store.

  

So I left Best Buy with my initial 200 kicks from the walk-in. But I couldn’t get enough. I wanted more kicks! Fortunately, shopkick informed me, that only 135 feet away there is a Target store which offer kicks. So I went over to the parking lot and into the store. This time there were no kicks for walking in. However, Target offered 7 products to scan each worth 10 or 25 kicks. Target actually had all the products in stock. Unfortunately, after scanning one product, the green button popped up informing me about my 25 kicks I just got, but those kicks were not charged to my kick account; and this is the third frustration with shopkick. While the first two problems are not necessarily shopkick’s mistakes, this one is for sure.

And now the one reason why despite all problems shopkick actually DOES work. The last product I was scanning was Orbit chewing gum. Normally, when I buy chewing gum, I buy a competitive brand. However, in order to scan the product, you have to pick it up from the shelf. And that is the most important reason why shopkick is better than any other advertisement for the company: I was holding the product in my hand and instead of putting it back and taking the product I normally buy, I just put the Orbit from my hand on the cashier band and bought it.

My first shopkick experience had some negative sides. However, these are outweighed by the excitement you get when you collect kicks. For companies, shopkick is a priceless marketing tool: it brings customers into the store, that normally might not visit the store, by giving them walk-in kicks. It enables companies, to point the customer’s attention to specific products although the customer gets more and more immune to classic advertisement. Moreover, it makes the customer take a product in the hand that she/he would normally not even look at. Shopkick gives customers rewards practically for “free” and gives companies a totally new and unconventional marketing instrument.

Although I had some problems in the beginning, my first experience showed me how powerful shopkick is for companies, and more important, how much fun it is to get the next kick.