School’s In Session: Loyalty Rewards and Customer Relationship Marketing Leader Affinity Solutions Leads Retail Back-To-School Promotional Programs for Kohl’s and Macy’s

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Affinity Solutions, the leader in card-linked offers and transaction-enabled marketing programs in the U.S., today announced it is implementing acquisition and market share strategies for some of the nation’s leading retailers, including Kohl’s Corporation (NYSE: KSS) and Macy’s, Inc. (NYSE: M) as part of their respective back-to-school promotional programs targeting parents and their children.

The initiatives, which utilize Affinity Solutions’ proprietary retail data compilation, monitoring, and analytics technologies, deliver targeted offers to consumers based on their purchasing preferences and histories, and drive incremental revenue for retailers during the critically-important back-to-school shopping season. By working in partnership with each retailer, Affinity Solutions makes it easier for parents and students alike to be aware of and receive the best possible promotions, including notifications about specific products on sale, in the store locations they frequent the most.

According to the National Retail Federation (NRF), back-to-school spending by families with children in kindergarten through twelfth grade is expected to be $30.3 billion this year, while expenditures for college students are forecasted to reach $53.5 billion in 2012. The combined $83.8 billion in revenue represents a 22 percent rise over last year, the largest such increase in the 10-year history of the NRF survey. The average American family will spend $688.62 per household preparing for the school year, a 14.1 percent increase from 2011. The back-to-school shopping season is a vital one for retailers, as it ranks second in importance and revenue only to the end-of-year holiday shopping period.

“As the back-to-school shopping season grows increasingly important to retailers in terms of generating greater in-store traffic and revenue generation, merchants are now being more strategic with the design and execution of their back-to-school marketing campaigns, and using sophisticated technologies to target the right consumer with the right offer at the right time through the right channel,” said Jonathan Silver, president and chief executive officer of Affinity Solutions. “Affinity Solutions is excited to help Kohl’s and Macy’s leverage retail and demographic spend data to create deeper relationships with their existing customers while incentivizing trial among consumers that haven’t shopped with the retailer. This year, these companies are relying on Affinity Solutions to fuel their back-to-school promotions, and are seeing significant sell-through traction as a result.”

About Affinity Solutions

Affinity Solutions is the industry leader in card-linked offers and transaction-enabled marketing. Affinity Solutions leverages proprietary analytics, applied to a range of customer data in a privacy-controlled environment, to deliver the right offer to the right consumer at the right time, and through the right channel, for its bank and retailer partners. Affinity Solutions has partnerships with over 4,000 national and regional banks, as well as over 25,000 brick-and-mortar retail partners. Its innovative programs incorporate experiential benefits that delight and entertain customers before, during and after they shop, to drive deeper customer relationships for their partners. For more information, please visit www.affinitysolutions.com.