A deep understanding of your shoppers goes far beyond basic demographics and surface-level data. By combining the comprehensive data points you can achieve through progressive profiling with the rich purchase data from loyalty programs, brands can achieve a much more holistic view of their shoppers. This integration allows for a deeper understanding of shopper behaviors and preferences and also paves the way for more targeted and effective marketing strategies.
What Are Loyalty Programs and Their Data?
Many of us are familiar with loyalty programs and may even be a part of one (or many)! These programs reward customers for their repeat business. They offer some sort of incentive such as discounts, exclusive offers, and points that can be redeemed for future purchases.
Let’s look at an example. Kroger’s fuel points program helps drive loyalty by offering significant savings on gas, a major expense for consumers. The program ensures shoppers return to Kroger stores to maintain their fuel discounts, reinforcing loyalty and repeat business.
Besides just helping the brand establish loyal customers, the data generated by these programs is also extremely beneficial and extensive. This includes:
- Purchase Histories: Detailed records of what customers buy, how often they buy, and their spending patterns.
- Product Preferences: Insights into which products are favored by different segments of your customer base.
- Shopping Frequencies: Information on how often customers shop and the typical intervals between their visits.
- Engagement Levels: Data on how actively customers participate in the loyalty program, such as the frequency of point redemption and engagement with promotional offers.
This data provides direct insights into actual consumer behavior. Understanding these patterns helps brands tailor their offerings and strategies to meet shopper needs more effectively, enhancing customer satisfaction and loyalty.
Progressive Profiling for Shopper Profile Points
Progressive profiling is an approach that allows brands to gradually collect detailed information about their customers over time. Fuel Cycle’s P2 Engine leverages this method to gather insights from multiple data sources, creating a comprehensive and dynamic view of your audience. The P2 Engine sets brands up for a holistic audience view – by integrating data from various touchpoints, brands can build a complete profile of their shoppers that encompasses demographics, behaviors, and preferences.
From there, brands can conduct targeted research activities tailored to specific segments of their audience and analyze research based on detailed profiling points.
Why Integrate Loyalty Programs into P2?
Integrating loyalty program data with P2 Engine’s progressive profiling capabilities offers many benefits. Brands can map data points from P2 with purchasing data from loyalty programs, allowing for a comprehensive view of shopper insights and journeys across different store areas. This integration helps build a full customer knowledge base, providing a deeper understanding of product use, shopper behavior, in-store app usage, shopping frequency, brand or chain preferences, and follow-up shopping trips. These insights delve into the motivations behind purchases, revealing how and why customers make certain decisions. Additionally, integrating this data streamlines the evaluation of loyalty rewards, enabling brands to assess whether their rewards are motivating enough for all shoppers interacting with the brand and make necessary adjustments to enhance their appeal.
Examples of Use Cases
Promotional, Holiday, or Limited LTO Events: With access to both stated and actual behavior data, brands can align their product offerings more closely with targeted shopper groups. For instance, brands can strategize on how to attract Gen Z to physical stores or how to align Fourth of July products with modern consumer demands. This alignment can drive higher engagement and sales during key promotional periods.
Whitespacing or Co-Creation Ideation: Loyalty programs can provide valuable insights into shopper demand, enabling brands to innovate more effectively. Instead of relying solely on post-launch marketing efforts, brands can engage various shopper segments—such as produce shoppers, frozen aisle customers, or moms with kids—to generate ideas for new products that meet the needs of core customers. This proactive approach can lead to more successful product launches and higher customer satisfaction.
Ingredient Transparency and Trust: In today’s information-rich environment, consumers are increasingly concerned about the ingredients in their products. Brands can leverage loyalty program data to stay ahead of trends and potential issues by maintaining constant engagement with shopper groups. For example, if a concern about a particular ingredient arises, brands can quickly respond and address the issue, maintaining trust and authenticity. This proactive engagement can increase product adoption rates and align new products with consumer expectations, as well as mitigate potential crises.
Let’s look at a real-life example. When concerns about harmful herbicides in Banza chickpea pasta surfaced, the brand listened to their loyal shoppers and addressed the issue promptly by publishing detailed nutritional info and potential health risks, mitigating a potentially damaging narrative. This proactive approach helped Banza maintain customer trust and loyalty.
Achieving Shopper Loyalty
Integrating loyalty program data into Fuel Cycle’s P2 Engine provides a holistic view of your shoppers, enabling brands to work proactively, respond quickly to issues, and enhance customer satisfaction. By understanding the full shopper journey, brands can build stronger relationships with their customers, foster loyalty, and drive business success. Brands that achieve this customer understanding – like Walmart, known for known for effectively activating their value shoppers – see great success. Walmart understands store area segments and maps back value to demand areas, maintaining strong shopper loyalty.
This comprehensive understanding helps brands stay ahead in a competitive market and ensures long-term growth and profitability.
