The FINANCIAL — Unicard is fulfilling its promise to issue one million cards and one million gifts by the end of 2011. For 2012 the company plans to increase the results of 2011 by 50 percent.
Unicard plans to have such an increase due to its expansion throughout the regions of Georgia.
“The number of cardholders is currently more than 850,000,” said Beso Abuladze, CEO of Unicard. “90 percent of them are active ones. We have more than 1 million transactions monthly. The number of gifts issued totals 870,000. The number of partner companies is increasing constantly as well. Their number currently reaches up to 200 with more than 1,000 available places to use the card.”
Unicard always chooses partner companies with care. Recently GMC Group joined the company with three brands of restaurants: Shemoikhede Genatsvale, Kalakuri and Dzveli Sakhli. Gasa – official representative of Pegasus in Georgia, has recently joined the Unicard group as well.
“Hundreds of companies contact us monthly wishing to join Unicard, but we have our requirements and criteria,” Abuladze said. “We prefer companies which have a chain where the quality of service is high, and which value the loyalty of their clients. It’s not easy to become our partner company. We have the right to cancel cooperation with companies if they don’t meet our requirements. But being our member company is in the company’s interest first of all, so they try to satisfy all our requirements.”
“Being a member of the Unicard group is important for companies. It’s a very good way of attracting clients for them. When you complement your own service with the Unicard loyalty program, it positively influences sales. It means that our partner companies make gifts to their customers in addition to their own service.”
Unicard has more or less covered all sectors. They have big partner companies in telecom, technology, fuel, pharmaceutical, perfume companies and more. Unicard offers special campaigns with their partner companies from time to time. Unicard currently has ongoing special offers together with Tegeta Motors and Termarsenali. According to Abuladze customers are very receptive to such actions and the volume of sales increases significantly during the special offers. They are planning many actions which will cause a great deal of customer activity over the New Year.
“We choose the theme of an action due to the season. For example, winter has recently started and therefore we have special offers related to home heating and cars to prepare people for winter,” he said.
Increasing demand for Unicard is followed by expansion. Nowadays the main interest of Unicard is to expand its service all over Georgia. It depends on the networks of its partner companies, as Unicard can only operate together with its partners. Currently Unicard is available in Tbilisi, Batumi, Kutaisi and Rustavi. At the moment together with the Food Retailer Chain Smart Unicard is entering Marneuli, Poti, Akhaltsikhe and some other cities.
Currently Unicard offers more than 2,000 items or services as gifts. The number is increasing all the time. Customers can choose a gift via the webpage as well as through the printed catalogues. A short while ago Unicard opened a showroom which attracted huge attention from customers. Interest in Unicard has increased as people like to choose the gifts directly from the shelves.
“In September we added a service of paying utility bills with the points accumulated on Unicard,” Abuladze said. “This service has become very popular and we are now working on making it possible to pay some other bills by Unicard points as well. At the same time, purchasing an air time to talk over a mobile phone is a very popular service amongst customers, which is available by converting the bonus points using a mobile phone.”
“As for the particular items, home appliances, cell phones, books and jewellery are very popular gifts. We have issued some high value gifts including travel and large appliances (laptops, TV sets, refrigerators, gas ovens, etc.),” he added.
Unicard customers have the biggest choice in terms of variety of gifts. Exactly this is what makes the card unique. However Unicard also represents more than 20 companies, such as Wissol, Aversi, GPC and Voulez Vous, that have their own loyalty programmes, but have joined Unicard because of the larger scale of the latter.
“Generally cards compete with each other, but due to our format Unicard has no direct competitor in the marketplace. We have two priorities: points are accumulated as well as spent in many places. Other companies can’t offer such loyalty scheme to their clients because their cards are only available in their network and they are solely oriented at their own core business. Unlike them, offering loyalty program to our customers is our core business.”
How many points will accumulate on 10 GEL is calculated based on the terms negotiated with each partner company. Each partner themselves decides what number of bonus points should be per 10 GEL, while the number of points accumulated in each case by the customers depends on the amount of purchase. The bonus points vary among the 200 partner companies.
“We have our lowest threshold of bonus points and companies can’t set a lower number of points,” the CEO said. “We always give them advice about the size of the bonus points and try to suggest to them the optimal value. But it usually depends on the financial situation of the partner companies. Of course, it will be good if we suggest more points to our clients, but in most cases it’s impossible. We try to compensate for it with the diversity of places available to accumulate the bonus points. I can say the same for the gifts. We try to make them cheaper and as affordable as possible.”
Unicard is only available for retail clients. Corporate clients generally don’t pay cash and that makes it impossible to use Unicard. The company doesn’t have any plans to include the corporate clients into the program. But the company has huge plans regarding expansion of their network, more and more marketing actions and services, and adding more gifts to the current catalogue.
“Our main challenge for the end of 2011 is to increase our customer satisfaction levels,” Abuladze said. “That means expanding the number of places where the bonus points are accumulated and the options to spend the bonus points, thus increasing the possibilities of accumulating and gifts becoming cheaper.”
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