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Intersport - February 2011
One of the largest areas of growth in consumer marketing is customer loyalty, whether through the traditional approach of offering great product and service, or with the increasingly popular use of ‘loyalty schemes’ with data capture and targeting for a more individual approach.
Many retailers have adopted a loyalty scheme approach, but too often are in danger of reducing profits by using them purely as a way of giving existing customers more discount rather than rewarding increased spending and loyalty.
Schemes need to be smart and integrated into the full marketing programme, to deliver real relevance and perceived benefit to customers.
Customer behaviour could be influenced positively, and ultimately deliver a far greater profit to the bottom line as well as enhanced brand and customer equity. It’s no secret that the new generation of consumers has become increasingly sophisticated and demanding in its expectations. It wants to take control of how it interacts with the services it consumes.
Loyalty cards are a proven way to successfully attract new customers, foster repeat business and grow the value of each customer. They enable a company to compile a database of information about cardholders’ purchasing trends, aiding advertising campaigns and future targeting.
However the real success is about how well you capture and leverage knowledge to drive attractive customer offers, whilst ensuring that the management and process of the scheme are cost-effective: driving rather than draining the business.
Fundamental to protecting your business is encouraging customers to use you as their supplier of preference, even going out of their way to choose you over your competitors.
While initially being seen as a tool used by large supermarket chains, more and more loyalty schemes have been taken up by independent retailers, and with the wide variety of different sports within our trade this has become a great resource to target consumers effectively.
Within the Intersport group, members have been running loyalty schemes independently, while Intersport offers its own Reward Club Card.
Designed to be compatible with different systems and giving complete independence on how they want to run the scheme, the scheme gives members the additional opportunity to opt into group campaigns, therefore benefitting from certain economies of scale.
Susan Herbert
Intersport UK marketing and communications manager
