E-Commerce, Loyalty and Similar Add-Ons for RMS and RMH

I've been contacted by multiple businesses recently inquiring about the various shopping cart, e-commerce, customer loyalty, and email marketing add-ons for the Microsoft RMS and Retail Management Hero (RMH) point of sale software programs.  A few folks have also asked what the mobile options will be for using RMH on mobile devices like smartphones and tablets.  Lets try and hit the highlights and you can always contact me for more detailed information.

Microsoft RMS:

• Shopping Cart/E-Commerce: NitroSell has proven to be one of the more popular shopping cart/e-commerce add-ons for the Microsoft RMS point of sale software
• Customer Loyalty: Hero Points and bLoyal are two that I have worked with in the past
• Email Marketing: RITE Retail Emailer can do some basic email list compiling and then you can export to your own template or a third party email marketing program
• Mobile Version: There are add-ons for RMS that can work on mobile devices but these are normally special mobile devices like what you would see at a garden center or warehouse and not consumer mobile devices like iPads. 

Retail Management Hero (RMH):

• Shopping Cart/E-Commerce: NitroSell has committed to offering a solution for RMH - more information will be released in 2017
• Customer Loyalty: RMH will have some basic loyalty tracking and Hero Points will offer more enhanced customer loyalty functionality
• Email Marketing: Nothing announced yet but RMH can capture email addresses so exporting to third party email marketing program may be possible
• Mobile version: Nothing official but a mobile friendly version of RMH will likely be available sometime in 2017

How to obtain a 30 day trial version of Retail Management Hero: http://www.pospondering.com/2017/01/how-to-obtain-30-day-trial-license-of.html

Do contact me if you have any questions on the above or are in need of no-cost retail point of sale advice for your US located retail business. I can be reached on my cell at 208-340-5632 (mountain time) or via email at kevinantosh@gmail.com

New Features in NCR Customer Connect

New Features Added to NCR Customer Connect

I promised to pass along some of the new features added to NCR Customer Connect which the 'behind the scenes' pro-active email marketing part of the NCR CounterPoint point of sale software.  Customer Connect is unique in that it tracks the full marketing cycle down to showing how much revenue was generated off of each email marketing campaign  - something that you can not easily do in Constant Contact.  Here are the new features in Customer Connect:

• Create unique item groups to help target the customers that you want to reach
• Progress on allowing for two way communications within Customer Connect (should be ready by the next Customer Connect release)
• New support phone number and email address include within Customer Connect
• Continued improvements in the speed and efficiency within Customer Connect
• Web tutorials to help you fully utilize Customer Connect

Are you in the US and in need of no cost retail point of sale advice? I'm happy to help and can be reached on my cell at 208-340-5632 (mountain time) or via email at kevinantosh@gmail.com.

Point of Sale email marketing

$10,007 in sales generated from one email marketing campaign.  That is what one retailer just shared with me.  Not only is the sales total very impressive but so it the fact that the retailer was able to track the full email marketing campaign from total emails sent to number of emails read to total sales generated by the campaign.  And this was all done from their point of sale system - not a third party email marketing program like Constant Contact.

This retailer uses the CounterPoint point of sale solution from DirectPOS. CounterPoint is unique in that the software has an available email marketing tool called Customer Connect (this website has a video overview: http://www.directpos.com/retail-counterpoint).  Rather than using third party email marketing programs, Customer Connect actively collects data using customer purchase history, customer segmentation (specific products that the customer has expressed interest in) and customer activity to send targeted emails automatically.

Besides normal newsletters, Customer Connect can automatically send out standard emails like "We Miss You" (for customers who have not shopped in the store within a set time frame), "Thank-You" emails (send after certain purchasing criteria are met), and more.  Because the Customer Connect is part of the CounterPoint point of sale system, the emails can be more targeted and automatic than what third party email marketing software can offer.

Even better, Customer Connect can track the full marketing campaign.  All the details are provided including number of emails sent, number of emails opened, number of emails clicked through, number of emails flagged as spam, and - most importantly - total sales generated by the email campaign.