Loyalty Program and Social Media together at last
Posted by Patrick Sweeney on Tue, Aug 09, 2011
I bet you never thought RFID would be the perfect match-maker, did you? Thanks to the capabilities of UHF RFID and the simple integration between RFID and Facebook the biggest emerging trend in loyalty programs seems to be retailers using passive RFID (UHF) to go beyond a simple loyalty card and let their customers Check-in and Like things at their locations - finally engaging a social network in an easy and effective manner. EasyConnect enables this out of the box.
This Social Media and Loyalty combination is a trend that we will see a lot more of in 2012. Not only do industry leaders like Vail Resorts, or Mercedes Benz understand the power of using RFID for social media - retailers are starting to get it, too.
RFID if done correctly takes away all the friction of social media for retailers and users. There is no need to design an app for four different phone operating systems, users don't need to pull out their phone, log in, punch out a message, and try to get connectivity - simply wave an RFID tag in front of a real world Like station or Check-in spot (video link) and in a second it's done. 
Every major retailer already has a Facebook page - most of them are doing very little with it. According to ComScore less than 20% of corporate content ever makes it to a company's friends' news feed. RFID can optimize Facebook's News Feed and Edge Rank like nothing else.
With users engaging their social network, and RFID making it easy, it's no wonder all the major retailers will adopt RFID based loyalty / social media programs in 2012.