Family Shopper is trialling a loyalty card scheme, which provides stores with detailed information on shopper purchasing habits and enables them to market directly to customers’ phones.

“We’re launching the scheme in two weeks,” said Sunita Kanji, whose Little Hulton store in Salford, Greater Manchester, has been chosen for the trial.

Data on shoppers’ purchasing habits will be fed back to the store on a weekly basis by epos specialist The Retail Data Partnership to give Sunita a clearer picture of what individual customers are buying.

In order to register for a loyalty card, customers will be required to provide Sunita with their name and phone number, which she then plans to use for marketing purposes. “The reason we’ve asked for phone numbers is because we’ll then text customers and tell them what’s on offer each week,” she said.

For every pound loyalty card holders spend, they will be rewarded with a point, which is worth a penny, but in addition to this, they will be rewarded with exclusive promotions.

“I read in a magazine that a bar of chocolate costs £240 by the time you’ve collected the points – it’s not offering the customer much more,” said Sunita. “We’ll also pick selected products each week to offer a discount on. So, for example, if you have a card, you can pick up an item for 20p instead of 40p.”

She plans to incentivise customers to sign up for the scheme by putting all those who have registered for a card in the first fortnight into a prize draw.

She added: “The card is registered with us so that if the customer loses it, they can let us know and we can transfer the points.”

In order to reduce the chance of this happening in the first instance, Sunita said she would encourage customers to photograph their cards using their phones and then she would simply scan their phones instead.

For further information on loyalty schemes available through The Retail Data Partnership, visit: www.retaildata.co.uk/loyalty.