Bringing a national loyalty program to a local level with Air Miles’ first iPhone and Blackberry apps.
Air Miles is a Canadian loyalty program and also a long standing client of Teehan+Lax. In 2010 we were tasked with bringing their program into the mobile space, which included creating 2 unique experiences for both iPhone and Blackberry devices.
On the go
For a company like Air Miles, a mobile application is a natural extension of their program as their members interact with them primarily at local merchants, far away from their home computers. With this in mind, we set out to design an experience that would influence purchase decisions by highlighting nearby sponsors and relevant bonus offers based on their specific location.
Our answer to this was to create an app that allows members to check-in at any given Air Miles sponsor location and when they do so, they’re provided with an Air Miles offers. For example, if one would walk into a Metro grocery store and check-in at that location, they would be presented with the current offers available at that particular store.
Allowing users the ability to check-in and receive highly customized offers allows Air Miles to have a deeper connection to their user-base. Moving forward, there are some really exciting things Air Miles could do with this app:
• Providing bonus miles for repeated check-ins, thus encouraging the user to keep shopping at that sponsor’s location.
• Making the user aware of other categories of Air Miles sponsors around them that they otherwise wouldn’t have know about.
• Promoting group social check-ins for example, “50 people have checked in at this location today, if another 20 people check-in everyone gets 10 miles.”
