In many countries, laws have recently been introduced to make the issuing of receipts or cash register slips mandatory – even for the smallest of sales. This often proves impractical, however, and is anything but environmentally friendly.
We’ve all been there. You’re waiting in the checkout line when a commotion ahead signals that the reel of register paper has come to an end. Of course, the cashier doesn’t have a new spool of paper on hand and needs to summon the manager to bring one. Or the receipt printer at the self-checkout chews up and swallows the slip rather than neatly churning it out into the customer’s waiting hand. Then it’s up to the shopper to track down a member of the meager staff to reprint the cash slip so they won’t be left looking like a shoplifter. Or you find that your carefully filed cash receipt from the electronics store has faded to the point of becoming illegible, just when you need it to enforce the warranty.
Boost customer retention with digital receipts
Wouldn’t it be more customer-friendly, not to mention more sustainable and less costly, if one could simply receive a digital receipt quickly and effortlessly – rather than having to wait around for a paper cash slip? A growing number of retailers are coming to this conclusion and offering their customers the alternative of receiving the receipt in an electronic form, either in the retailer’s own app or by way of email.
Apps, however, pose their own challenges: It’s easy to get the documents into the app, but it might not be as convenient for the customer to get them out of the app when they need them later on. And anyway, one wouldn’t really want to install an app for every store where one happens to buy something. Email is the better choice, not only for occasional customers, because it allows the recipient to easily print or archive the documents as they see fit.
Retailers planning to send electronic receipts need a messaging service which is exceptionally reliable, capable of high throughput and freely scalable – and it has to connect seamlessly with their software systems via an API. Customers authenticate themselves at the POS (Point of Sale) by way of an app or customer card, after which the cash register and enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems typically compile the transaction details in a PDF file (rather than a print job for the POS receipt printer) and then automatically trigger transmission to the email address provided in the customer’s profile.
Retarus Transactional Email impresses in all respects
For sending receipts, Retarus Transactional Email, our API for high-performance transmission from applications, ticks all the boxes. Users benefit from lightning speeds of less than 5 seconds from the moment of purchase until the message arrives in the inbox, as well as SLAs regarding availability and support. And above-average delivery success rates, thanks to our sophisticated Reputation Management. The service offers transfer by way of REST/JSON or directly via SMTP. Plus detailed monitoring, reporting and traffic data analysis directly through the API – in real time and right down to the individual message level. All without placing any load on your own infrastructure.
In addition, as we know that customer data is sensitive and every retailer’s crown jewels, so to speak, our emails sent from applications always comply with local data protection laws, including the GDPR. All processing takes place in our own data centers – contractually stipulated in the US, Germany, Switzerland, or Asia. So you can rest at ease, knowing that your digital receipts and other transactional emails are reliable and legally compliant. On top of this, you and your customers are working together to benefit the environment.
Why wait any longer? Find out more about Retarus Transactional Email from our website or directly from your local Retarus representative.
