Systems and methods for campaign offers and rewards with offer serving engine based on digitized receipt data

Abstract

A campaign offers and rewards system has an offer serving engine coupled to one or more network servers. A receipt intelligence engine includes a processor and receipt processing. The receipt processing extracts information from a receipt, including information about items purchased based on a receipt from at least one of a shopping trip and an electronic receipt from an online or offline transaction. An output outputs information. An analytics engine is coupled to the receipt intelligence engine. The analytics engine includes a predictive model function using information from the receipt processing. The analytics engine determines values representing statistical correlations from the receipt processing.

Description

CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS[0001]This application claims the benefit of U.S. 61 / 701,431, U.S. 61 / 701,437, U.S. 61 / 701,458, U.S. 61 / 701,477 and U.S. 61 / 701,479, all filed Sep. 14, 2012, which applications are fully incorporated herein by reference.BACKGROUND[0002]1. Field of the Invention[0003]The present invention is related to campaign offers and rewards systems and methods, and more particularly to campaign offers and rewards systems and methods that process and extract information about items purchased based on any receipt.[0004]2. Description of the Related Art[0005]One of the most common concerns for many businesses is the need to develop fresh ways to acquire new customers and to retain current customers. There are currently a number of campaign offers and reward programs in place across many different merchants and products that attempt to build customer loyalty and attract new consumers. These types of programs tend to reward consumers for shopping frequently for...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0038]Another object of the present invention is to provide campaign offers and rewards systems, and their methods of use, that provide an advertiser with a certainty about how much of a campaign offer budget will be spent.

[0039]Yet a

Problems solved by technology

Traditional incentive campaign rewards and offers system campaign offers and rewards systems suffer drawbacks in terms of campaign creation, budgeting, convenience of tracking data, changing promotions, return on investment, and the like.

For example, for a consumer who participates in multiple incentive programs it may take time and effort to track his or her participation in each program.

Therefore, when a consumer receives an offer to participate in an incentive program, the consumer may decide against participating in it, not because the incentive program is not attractive, but because the cost to the consumer, in terms of the time and effort to tracking another incentive program, exceeds the expected benefit of the incentive program.

A similar problem exists for sponsoring companies who wish to offer promotions.

The collective costs of generating incentive campaign rewards programs, administering the programs, tracking the participation of consumers in the incentive campaign reward programs and fulfilling the rewards or prizes won in such incentive programs may exceed the benefits of offering the incentive campaign rewards program.

These costs may be particularly high in instances where the activities associated with an incentive program must be carried out by different companies, or by different organizations within the same company.

Furthermore, the sponsor of a campaign may find itself rewarding its least economically attractive customers who are deal-driven and not likely to be brand advocates or loyalists in the future.

Existing incentive campaign reward programs do not meet the entire consumer and sponsor needs associated with incentive programs.

The processing of promotions, i.e., providing the appropriate check or discount coupon to the customer as a reward for the initial purchase, involves high volume and labor intensive activity, including collection, verification and organization of initial proofs of purchase and related information, preparation of the checks, coupons or other items using preprinted stock provided by the sponsor in connection with the particular promotion, and finally the sorting of individual items based on their mailing destinations.

This increases handling expense, not only in added labor, but also in the mailing cost, as it is difficult with a single promotion to accumulate a volume of items sufficient to qualify for certain reduced postage rates, e.g. the reduced rate available for mail presorted by zip code of the destination.

Manual recombination and sorting of items for multiple promotions would be prohibitively expensive.

Many problems exist with the traditional coupon distribution and redemption system.

For example, few consumers will go through all the steps necessary to redeem their coupons, and the consumers who do go to the trouble of redeeming coupons are disproportionately extremely price-sensitive and adept at extracting maximum value from incentive programs, often combining multiple coupons and store coupons to receive products at little to no out of pocket cost, making their redemptions a money-losing proposition for the product's manufacturer and limiting the effectiveness of the overall campaign.

Thus, reluctance by a “typical” consumer to take all necessary steps partially defeats the manufacturer's purpose for offering the purchase incentive.

However, when the coupon is forgotten or disregarded, the consumer is usually not aware of the incentive when he is selecting a pr

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