Dubai-based incentives brand, the Entertainer, partners with EMS to measure all voucher redemptions

The Entertainer, the regions number one provider of annual two-for-one incentive offers, is partnering with EMS, the largest smartphone & mobility solution provider in the region, to track its printed vouchers redeemed at their merchants.

Founded in 2001, The Entertainer provides two-for-one incentive vouchers from well-known dining, leisure, entertainment, and hotel brands across the Middle East. While he Entertainer has enjoyed phenomenal regional growth, their recent partnership with the extensive provider services of EMS promises a new future in quantifying the Entertainer’s voucher success.

Since the launch of their new 2013 products, the Entertainer has deployed Quick Response (QR) codes on all offers across its current portfolio of 21 printed books, as well as all web offers which can be downloaded and printed from their web site.  A QR code is a two dimensional matrix barcode which contains data that can be read quickly and easily using a device such as a smartphone.

There are now over 15,000 unique offer codes across the Entertainer portfolio and so far this year over 352,000,000 vouchers have been printed with QR codes included.  To track the redemption of these offers, the Entertainer has begun the process of rolling out special QR code scanning devices to each of its over 6,000 merchant partners.  The scanning devices were custom made for the Entertainer by EMS.

“Our redemption loop is a game changer for us and moves us into the ‘big data’ landscape globally,” said Donna Benton, Founder and CEO of the Entertainer.

Entertainer customers will continue to redeem their printed vouchers in the normal way, but in the future the merchant will scan the QR code and enter in basic point-of-sale data which is automatically sent back to the Entertainer’s central database. The Entertainer plans to then provide the information back to each merchant on a monthly basis so that they can see exactly how many offers are being redeemed across their multiple outlets.

The reports also include the total value of the savings achieved by the customers and how much revenue is being driven via the Entertainer vouchers.  This enables merchants to calculate a more accurate Return on Investment (ROI) across their marketing programmes.  While merchants are only given access to their own redemption data, the Entertainer can share how they compare to regional or category-specific benchmarks. Customer data however is strictly protected in accordance with the Entertainer’s privacy policy.

The rollout of the devices has already begun and is expected to be completed across all 14 Entertainer destination markets within the next three months.