Greeting card mobile application PhotoCard is appealing to Android smartphone and tablet users, offering Walgreens customers 30 percent off when they make a greeting card for Valentine’s Day and pick it up in-store.

The app, created by Printicular, a smartphone printing service, allows users to create greeting cards for multiple holidays and occasions throughout the year, including birthdays, invitations, baby announcements and Mother’s and Father’s Days. By allowing users to create a card and pick it up in a Walgreens’ store in the same day, the pharmacy chain drives in consumers to the point of sale, making it more likely they will make an additional purchase.

“Turn your favorite photo into a unique and personal greeting card that will capture the heart of the one you love,” said Bruce Seymour, managing director of MEA Mobile, New York. “PhotoCard: Greeting Card Maker is an app for any occasion, birthdays, weddings, Easter and Christmas, as well as Valentine’s Day, and it comes with dozens of great card designs.

“Just choose your photo, create the card, click print, and have it ready for same day collection all from your phone,” he said.

MEA Mobile is a product lab with photo and video technologies, including iSupr8, iLapse, and Printicular.

Spreading the love
PhotoCard: Greeting Card Maker is the first Android app for greeting card printing via Walgreens’ QuickPrints API program. A comparable iOS app already exists.

Printicular’s PhotoCard app lets users choose any photo on their phones to create a greeting card, which can be printed at any of the more than 4,000 Walgreens stores across the U.S. and will be ready for same-day collection.

On the app, users can make cards for Valentine’s Day, birthdays, baby announcements, Easter, Father’s Day, invitations, Christmas, Mother’s Day and thank you’s. There is also a blank canvas option for any occasion.

Walgreens is currently running a promotion to encourage customers to try it, offering 30 percent off their order using promo code “MEAM.”

Although the app allows for photo printing at multiple locations, Printicular has teamed with the pharmacy chain to offer the aforementioned promotion to encourage consumers to save money by choosing to print at Walgreens.

Printicular claims that more than 20,000 photos are printed every day from its range of single purpose apps, which includes prints, posters, canvas and now greeting cards.

The PhotoCard app is available to download today from the Google Play Store or Apple’s App Store.  Print your favorite photos as greeting cards with PhotoCard: Greeting Card Maker.

Trucking along
As of late, Walgreens has also been working fiercely to translate into the mobile health industry.

Given the emergence of the mhealth space, an important new frontier for retailers could be mobile loyalty integrations, a strategy Walgreens has been most recently pioneering.

Walgreens and WebMD are poised to lead the mhealth sector in 2015 as they strengthen the connection between mobile health platforms and loyalty programs with their collaboration on a digital wellness program that incorporates Walgreens Balance Rewards. The two health companies have joined forces to roll out Your Digital Health Advisor, a virtual wellness-coaching platform that creates personalized goals and action plans for users seeking to make lifestyle changes (see story).

Walgreens also recently extended its mobile pharmacy leadership via a new partnership with WebMD that will drive smartphone use for prescription refills and wellness-driven rewards.

WebMD consumers will be able to access prescription refill and scheduling appointment options for Walgreens via the WebMD Web site or their mobile devices. The partnership is set to come into full effect in the coming months, with both brands hoping that making trusted information easily available will improve wellness in America and promote positive decision-making.

The brands have plans to integrate Healthy Target with the Walgreens Activity Tracker to offer customers new ways to capture and understand their health information.

Walgreens has long been a proponent of strong mobile strategy, prompting the retail chain to see in-store NFC payments double after its partnership with mobile payment solution Apple Pay (see story).

Final Take
Caitlyn Bohannon is an editorial assistant on Mobile Commerce Daily, New York