McDonalds, Arby’s, Qdoba, Dairy Queen and Dunkin’ Donuts testing Tetherball’s mobile loyalty system

“The results we’ve seen since launching our mobile rewards program in early July are greater than even our most optimistic projections,” says Brent Higgins of Aztec Partners, one of Qdoba Mexican Grill’s largest franchisees.

TETHERBALL: "Some of the biggest brands in the US have jumped on the mobile marketing bandwagon with us"
TETHERBALL: "Some of the biggest brands in the US have jumped on the mobile marketing bandwagon with us"

Fast food chains including McDonalds, Qdoba Mexican Grill, Arby’s, Dairy Queen and Dunkin’ Donuts are all now testing Tetherball’s contactless sticker-based mobile marketing system.

Qdoba Mexican Grill has been using Tetherball to offer the Qdoba Mobile Rewards program over several holiday festivals. “The results we’ve seen since launching our mobile rewards program in early July are greater than even our most optimistic projections,” says Brent Higgins, director of marketing for Aztec Partners, one of the largest Qdoba franchisees in the US.

“We’re realizing a huge bang for our investment buck and our customers love how simple it is to get offers and save money during this difficult economy,” he added. “The proof is in the numbers — redemption rates for our mobile loyalty program are averaging 16% and, incredibly, we’ve seen specific campaign redemption rates at our university locations as high as 40%! No matter how strong the offer, we’ve never seen these kinds of redemption rates with paper or online coupons. What’s more, we’re seeing explosive loyalty member growth and the cool thing is — once our customers join, they stay with us — our average opt out rate is less than 8%.”

“The results we’re achieving with Qdoba offer further validation of what we’ve been saying all along — mobile loyalty works — it’s the way our on-the-go society likes to communicate,” added Jay Highley, president and COO at Tetherball. “We’ve been at this for more than two years and have developed innovative solutions that consistently deliver outstanding results and eliminate fraud — and some of the biggest brands in the US have jumped on the mobile marketing bandwagon with us such as McDonalds, Arby’s, Dairy Queen and Dunkin’ Donuts.”

“At the end of the day,” says Highley, “it’s all about brands reaching their target audiences in a relevant way and developing a trusted relationship in which there is a real value transfer — mobile loyalty programs do all this and more.”

Consumers who sign up for Tetherball’s service are issued with an RFID tag that they affix to their mobile phone. The tag is activated by the customer by texting the ID number on the tag to a control centre. Then, each time they make a purchase at a participating retailer or food outlet, they are uniquely identified at either a contactless point-of-sale terminal or a dedicated kiosk so that they can gain or redeem loyalty points.

Tetherball’s back office system then also allows them to be sent targeted marketing and promotional offers based on their purchasing history, via either standard SMS text messages or via mobile coupons that are redeemable in-store.

Last month, Tetherball signed a collaboration agreement with Vivotech that will see the latter offering Tetherball technology to its entire installed base of contactless card accepting merchants. And, in September, the company announced an upgraded version of its Mobiquitous platform that includes a number of enhancements to the level of analytics data available and revealed that redemption rates of up to 50% were being experienced at some of its test sites.

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