Archive for the ‘Loyalty Program’ Category

Meaningful Marketing Start-ups: SaveWave

Tuesday, September 21st, 2010

It’s been a little more than two years since our launch of the Marketing with Meaning platform on this blog, and nearly a year since the publication of my book on the topic. One of the interesting things that has happened since I’ve been trying to drive this new paradigm of marketing is that I have come into contact with a wide range of individuals around the world who also believe in our cause. It’s a delight to log in to my email, Twitter, or blog accounts each day and find a random message of thanks from someone who has just discovered what we’re aiming to do.

As a spokesperson for this next evolution of marketing and a strategy leader at a digital agency, I also have a chance to connect with entrepreneurs who are building businesses based on the shift toward Marketing with Meaning. While there are some people trying to create businesses based on shoving interruptive ads in front of our faces, a handful of start-ups are working to build platforms for marketers to add value through their advertising. So in the next few weeks I plan to feature a few of these businesses here. Unless specifically called out, I have no financial ties to these companies; rather, I believe that their success will serve as a catalyst for the movement that we desperately want to see supplant the old approach–so I want to give them whatever helping hand I can. And in a few weeks I will even be able to share a meaningful marketing platform that we have been working on for more than a year here at Bridge Worldwide!

First Up: SaveWave

SaveWave is a rare example of a start-up that was spawned from a large company–that itself is part of a much larger organization.  The company was recently formed as an offshoot of Upromise, the multi-brand loyalty program that helps people save money for college. Upromise itself is a great meaningful marketing platform that I had a chance to work with when I worked in marketing at P&G.  It has helped people save billions and generates huge results for its brand partners (see my previous post here). Because of its success, Upromise, in turn, was purchased by Sallie Mae a few years ago. In June, some of the key founders of Upromise saw a huge opportunity to take a piece of Upromise’s success model and create something new.  Such “intrapreneurship” is praiseworthy on its own, because it can be so difficult to build something on top of your day job and get the parent company to embrace a concept that is outside its usual business model.

SaveWave was created to channel a very powerful tool: access to product-level purchase data at more than 27,000 retailers in the U.S. Getting access to this UPC and shopper card data and building the trust of retailers comes from years of work by Upromise. Now this access will allow SaveWave to help marketers create other offers and promotions that are based on understanding whether a specific transaction occurred.  This unlocks an incredible amount of potential for meaningful marketing. The first and most obvious use of this system is for mobile/digital couponing, which Upromise has actually been offering since 2008; but this also allows for much more, for example:

  • Brands can partner with retailers to make personalized offers to customers. Instead of one-size-fits-all coupons, you can test various alternatives and vary your offer according to customer type.
  • Marketers can go beyond just offering cents back, and instead could allow customers to earn other “rewards,” such as frequent-flier miles, iTunes songs, or Starbucks cards.  These latter alternatives can be much more meaningful in that they are “real” benefits that you can feel and spend, whereas $.50 savings on a $100 bill at the checkout lane is not registered as a real savings by shoppers. Meanwhile, marketers can purchase these kinds of rewards for less than the actual cost of redeeming a coupon.
  • SaveWave plans to “white label” its tool with one or more APIs. In other words, they want to provide the back-end engine that a thousand other big companies, entrepreneurs, and app-builders can use to create their own meaningful marketing tools.  We’re already assessing the tool for our clients and our own app ideas.

Nothing is easy in the start-up world, of course, even if you have competitive advantages such as SaveWave’s data access and a nice first round of venture capital funding. I think the company’s main challenge will lie in figuring out how to stand out among a very wide swath of competitors. Digital and mobile couponing is a no-brainer and will eventually happen; the result is that everybody is going after the prize.  I think the key to success will be to actually get relationships up and running quickly, using big deals to lead to drive positive momentum.

So if you’re on a big brand or working on a way to make digital coupons and rewards do more for your business or clients, check out SaveWave and contact my friend Brendaen Makechnie over there.  Tell him that Bob sent you.

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Posted in Coupons, Loyalty Program, Movement | 1 Comment »

Kroger Shows Loyalty to Customers (from #DHI09)

Wednesday, September 30th, 2009

Kroger mymagazine

One of most exciting things about the DHI Non-conference last week here in Cincinnati was a session by The Kroger Company, one of our clients at Bridge Worldwide. Through its various banner stores, Kroger is a major player in the retail food business, capturing 10 cents of every dollar spent on food in the United States. The company is not secretive, but it doesn’t go around regularly beating its chest about how it is winning in a very competitive market. In a session titled “Innovation and How to Meet New Expectations for Media Delivery,” RW (Kirk) Douthit and Angie Rose from Kroger shared several nuggets about how they are working to evolve to digital marketing by putting their customers in the center.

The main focus of the discussion revolved around Kroger’s work with its database marketing partner, dunnhumby, to provide personalized messages and offers to its loyalty cardholders. The company has the second-largest database in the U.S., after the Census Bureau. Kirk kicked off the discussion by reframing how Kroger thinks about the loyalty program:

“It’s not about customers’ loyalty to us; it’s about Kroger’s loyalty to its customers.”

This message permeated everything in the company’s session. Kirk and Angie spoke about the company’s use of quarterly coupon magazines (such as the one pictured above) that are personalized for its top shoppers based on their purchase habits. This helps the company drive sales of new products and larger baskets sizes from the 20% of customers who drive up to 60% of total sales.

The Kroger team spoke about how it is gradually embracing digital tools where it makes sense for its customers. They admitted that progress is slower than some customers want, but that it takes time to get things right. And while some shoppers are ready for innovations such as mobile coupons and online circulars, the company still has to provide mailed offers for the many who are not living in the digital future yet.

One of the really interesting digital services that Kroger is planning to release soon is the chance to pull up your Kroger shopping history. It’s a way of giving people a digital receipt and something unheard of in the industry to date. This could help people, say, track their spending on pharmaceuticals over the course of the year so that they can be properly charged back against flexible healthcare spending accounts. It’s a great example of how customers can see additional benefit from using their Kroger loyalty cards.

Finally, I also appreciated the Kroger team’s willingness to share how the decline of traditional media is happening faster than digital is ramping up. For example, a staple marketing tool for decades has been the daily newspaper. When sales needed a boost, Kroger has frequently used newspaper ads to drive traffic to stores on specials. But the decline of newspaper subscriptions is seriously weakening the impact of these ads, and there is no digital solution with the same scale impact. It’s another example Bob Garfield’s The Chaos Scenario come to life.

The entire audience really enjoyed Kirk and Angie’s open and honest communication about the opportunities and challenges in digital marketing. By better understanding their world, those of us who serve them can do much more to help Kroger crack the code.

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Posted in Loyalty Program, Personalization, Presentations, Retailers | 3 Comments »

Delta Makes Me Smile

Friday, August 1st, 2008

I have spent a lot of time with Delta Airlines lately. Most people would consider that a bad thing. I’ve been on the road quite a bit this year, and already hit the Gold Medallion level of 50,000 miles with just barely half of the year gone by. Flying has become more expensive and more troublesome over the years. But the more I travel lately, the more I’ve been surprised and delighted by Delta and the meaningful services it is bringing to me along the way.

My most recent positive experiences came this week after a trip to NYC. First, I was supposed to fly up Sunday night for a Monday meeting. On the way to the airport, I got a cell phone call from Delta notifying me that my flight had been canceled. The automated voice went on to say I was automatically booked on a flight the following morning, and I received a follow-up email with the information. This is a great service, and a real difference from how the airline world worked just a few months ago. At Delta.com, you can specify how you want to be alerted to changes in flights. It’s great, meaningful marketing – but also something we have come to expect. After all, when a service like Facebook can alert me by SMS when a friend uploads a new photo, I expect Delta to alert me on something as important as a flight change.

My flight the next morning was fine, but somewhat uncomfortable since I was stuck in a middle seat because of the flight cancellation. The next day, however, I received the message above in my email inbox.  As you can see, it is a very personalized note titled “A Cure for a Case of the Mondays,” which goes on to apologize that a Gold Medallion member like me had to be wedged into the middle seat. The note goes on to credit me with 500 Skymiles for my discomfort.

I really can’t remember the last time a loyalty program was so aware of my situation and eager to keep me happy. I am so used to expecting so little – especially from airlines that have a monopoly-like lock on my travel – that this automated effort made my day.

Delta seems to be making some impressive strides toward meaningful marketing in recent months. Aside from my experiences, Joseph Jaffe has a great post about how Delta is connecting with people through a very active Twitter account. Delta has a fairly active blog up that takes readers “under the wing” to “share stories on ideas, changes and our people.” The blog even links to competitors like Southwest in its blogroll. Heck, even Delta’s flight safety videos are drawing attention.

I’m not sure why it took so long for Delta to better utilize its Skymiles loyalty program, or to put a personal face on its brand through social media. Maybe it’s the rising cost of oil and the fact that Delta increasingly has to fight for flyers. It could also be improved software, and even better management.

Whatever the reason, Delta is working some magic on this frequent flyer. I feel like Delta values my business and is on my side as I fly around the world trying to make a living. When I have a choice, it will be Delta all the way, as I feel like the more I fly with the brand, the more it will repay me with great service and other rewards. Meanwhile, I tend to give Delta more benefit of the doubt when it cancels my flight or moves to merge with Northwest. And in this specific flight above, Delta’s great service leads to this positive blog post on a site that is getting as many as 100 visitors per day (thanks, dear readers!). That drives further positive word-of-mouth and stronger search rankings.

And in this specific case of the “middle seat,” all it really took was for someone to write a new rule into the existing loyalty marketing database that Delta has had for decades. All it took was someone to notice and care – which is all we really want as human beings.

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Posted in Loyalty Program | 2 Comments »