Today’s customer is crazy for loyalty and, while many businesses invest the majority of their resources in attracting new customers, a more economical and more valuable business opportunity sits with retention. In fact, research from Flowtown estimates that it is six or seven times more costly to acquire a new customer compared to retaining an existing one.

And, new solutions, like that offered by Belly are delivering merchants with a mobile-based loyalty and engagement solution that is simple and easy. Belly, which is now available in more than 10 major U.S. cities including Boston, Chicago, New York, Miami and Chicago and boasts more than 650,000 active users and over four million check-ins.

Positioning itself as ‘the ultimate loyalty program’ Belly offers merchants a myriad of loyalty focused mobile solutions including the ability to customize rewards to meet their specific goals and objectives or business model, integrated social share so customers can share their experience immediately with friends and connections, and the capability of sending emails directly to their Belly customers. The application also features Belly Bites, which allows merchants to provide special offers to Belly users, and integration with Apple® Passbook®.

Leveraging the broad consumer value proposition of ‘getting rewards you want at all your favorite places’, Belly is poised to continue to draw in active users by the droves as they launch in new markets and educate merchants on their application and advantages of deploying Belly campaigns and initiatives to increase revenues.

While loyalty is a fast-growing trend and is somewhat becoming an expected consumer benefit, especially with Tier 1 and Tier 2 retailers, working with smaller merchants to provide the initial explanation and help them not only activate programs, but understand the incremental business opportunity they have through the tools provided by a loyalty solution like Belly will be an ongoing challenge.

For application developers like Belly, those who integrate their offerings with new payment technologies will benefit in terms of merchant reach and adoption as well as training and education for merchants on the value and the return on their investment.