As the Shop Your Way loyalty program evolves into a social shopping membership platform for all of Sears Holdings’ brands, enabling check-ins outside of Sears and Kmart locations gives the retailer a way to drive member engagement. The first 100 members who check-in at Sandra Lee’s World’s Largest Bake Sale at Grand Central on May 1 will also receive a free copy of the TV personality’s new book.

“Think about shop-in just like a check-in where they can actually check-in on their device, a lot of locations will pop up and one of them is Grand Central Station,” said Jennifer Dominiquini, chief marketing officer of seasonal and outdoor living for Sears Holdings Corp. “Once they check in, they can claim the offer that we serve up as well as the first 100 that check in will be able to receive the free book.

“We have also enabled users to shop-in at other locations,” she said. “This obviously is a very high profile location to be able to check in at the world’s largest bake sale  – we hope it will be a nice perk for members.

“We really want to connect with these members no matter where they are.”

Social shopping
To raise awareness and money for the Share Our Strength Bake Sale for No Kid Hungry campaign, Kmart and Shop Your Way are sponsoring Sandra Lee’s World’s Largest Bake Sale from 10 a.m. – 7 p.m. on May 1 in the Grand Central Terminal.

The Share Our Strength Bake Sale for No Kid Hungry campaign encourages people to host bake sales in their communities to help end childhood hunger in America.

Other sponsors will also be on hand including Hasbro, Philadelphia Cream Cheese, Duncan Hines, DominoSugar and C&H Sugar . The event will also feature participation from chefs such as Mario Batali and Bobby Flay and as well as over 30 restaurants from NYC.

This is not the first time the Shop Your Way app has promoted a check-in at a location other than a Sears or Kmart store, although this is one of the newer features in the app.

Members who check-in to the May 1 event via the Shop Your Way will be able to access special offers, content such as celebrity tips, recipes and pictures from  the Bake Sale page inside the app.

Users can also get shopping tips from friends using the app or check the number of points they have.

Sears Holdings also has partnerships that members can access through the Shop Your Way app for brands such as 1800Flowers, Burger King and Popeye’s.

Member-centric retail
To spread the word about Sandra Lee’s World’s Largest Bake Sale, Sandra Lee, Ty Pennington and @kmart and @shopyourway, will host a bake sale themed Twitter Party on April 25 using hashtag #WorldsLargestBakeSale.

“We are in the process of transforming Sears Holdings from a traditional retail business model into members-centric business model leveraging data and technology platforms and mobile is a really very important part of that,” Ms. Dominiquini said. “Every program we roll out really does have to have a mobile component.”

“What we’ve noticed is that more and more people are engaging with us and engaging with buying through their mobile devices and tablets,”  she said. “So it is definitely where a lot of our growth is.

“What we’ve been learning is that the more and more we add great, new, fresh content to Shop Your Way, the more people want to engage with us. Because while points and deals are important, content, exclusive brands and celebrities are also key differentiators for us.”

Final Take
Chantal Tode is associate editor on Mobile Commerce Daily, New York