The Castro brothers have always known that cultivating loyalty among
their patrons is a top priority, and industry studies confirm the critical
nature of the task. Research by the Center for Retail Management at
Northwestern University found that 55 to 70 percent of total sales
for a business come from up to 15 percent of the company’s most
loyal customers, and retailers are keen on cultivating the same profitgenerating
sentiment in all their customers.
Davidus Cigars had been growing their business with Retail Pro since 1998,
using the wealth of data to determine who their best customers are, and now
they wanted an easy way to implement that data for smarter engagement.
Consistent with Davidus Cigars’ focus on delivering a great customer
experience, they were on the lookout for a loyalty partner that could help
them automate all of their customer rewards and would provide modern
tools to engage and connect them with their customers before, after, and
during visits at their 11 stores.
Operationally, Davidus also needed to upgrade to a real-time loyalty
program since many of their customers shop at multiple locations, even
in a single day. They turned to their trusted Retail Pro Business Partner,
J.D. Associates, for their expertise and consultation to help them pick the
right solution.
Based on J.D. Associates’ recommendation and Davidus’ own internal
review, they selected the Retail Pro Strategic Partner, AppCard, for their
turnkey, cloud-based loyalty system, which is fully integrated with the
comprehensive Retail Pro retail management software.
The Retail Pro platform gives AppCard the data backbone for
their innovative three-pronged approach of loyalty, analytics, and
personalization. In essence, AppCard turns data captured by the
Retail Pro software into insights, and insights into personalized
communications, offers, and rewards.
J.D. Associates teamed up with AppCard during the installation process to help ensure a smooth implementation
and transition from their existing loyalty program. AppCard successfully migrated thousands of existing Davidus
customers and their corresponding Retail Pro loyalty points with ease. Davidus Cigars Marketing and Events
Manager, Tom Canon, comments that he has been "more than pleased with the responsiveness, the installation and
training during our migration from the old loyalty program to AppCard and the on-going support we receive from
the AppCard Team. It has been a great working relationship which has really helped us to make this a win for the
Davidus Cigar team and our customers."
Once migrated, the out-of-the-box simplicity allowed Davidus Cigars to train their employees in a few short
weeks, so they felt comfortable engaging customers. "It was great to see customers engaged at the Point of
Sale, looking at their rewards on their smartphones and enjoying the visibility they had into the program. The
employees were also happy knowing there now was a way to directly communicate with their customers via
the Davidus Digital Storefront in the AppCard App," says Heather Sullivan, who was part of the AppCard team
for on-site training.
The Davidus Cigars leadership team appreciates that they have complete permissions control over points
management, thereby eliminating employee error and the possibility of fraud at the Point of Sale.
With AppCard, their customers now earn rewards and all redemptions are updated in real-time across all
11 stores, thereby eliminating the previous administrative and customer service issues that resulted from
customers visiting multiple stores on the same day.
In only two months, Davidus Cigars has signed up thousands of members to their new loyalty program and
the data already shows impressive statistics around the impact of their loyalty initiatives.
Across all stores, the Davidus team has an average of 70% of all transactions tied to a loyalty member. This is
a testament to the Davidus Cigars leadership team and employees’ commitment to the program. The average
ticket is 16.62% higher with a 19.71% increase in products sold per transaction for AppCard vs non-AppCard,
helping Davidus increase top-line revenue.