The month-long series of daily promotions that has been running in Woodlands Local in the approach to Christmas has helped boost Rewards Club membership and drive footfall.
by Antony Begley
Never ones to do things by half, Woodlands Local took a fresh approach to the traditional ‘12 days of Christmas’ last month by doubling up to create a ‘24 days of Christmas’ series of unique offers for our Woodlands Local Rewards Club Members.
The campaign, managed by our Darius shopper engagement software, effectively saw us offer a different deep-cut promotion or giveaway for every day in December before Christmas – but only for our Members.
These deals were communicated by email and social media on a daily basis to Members and non-Members alike to help us achieve a number of key aims, as highlighted in the panel on this page.
The great news is that the activity helped boost the number of Woodlands Local Facebook page followers by 18% and the number of Woodlands Local Rewards Club Members by over 12%.
There were also 195 views of the Darius-powered Woodlands Local landing page as SLR went to press on December 19th, indicating the level of interest in the campaign.
Why members only?
Rather than making the deals available to all, the logic behind the Members-only campaign was clearly to drive recruitment into the Rewards Club, as well as rewarding existing Members.
We know from running the Rewards Club that Members are more valuable to us than non-Members: the average basket spend for Members remains approximately twice the size of the basket spend of non-Members.
As well as driving basket spend, by growing membership numbers we also grow the audience available to us for our shopper engagement programme. Using personalised communications for each shopper, based on their behavioural and transactional profiles, we are confident of being able to encourage these Members to visit the store more often, spend more while they’re here – as well as feel rewarded for being a Woodlands Local customer.
Don’t forget that Rewards Club Members have already saved themselves £50 in the shop on average over the last 12 months just by being a Member.
Good deal better
The deals and giveaways on offer covered a wide range of product categories to appeal to as wide an audience as possible, from free newspapers, coffee and milk to fantastic deals on soft drinks, confectionery, crisps and vape juices. There was even some free beer thrown in and some mazing meal deals on steaks and chicken as well as the Christmas ‘Sleigh Yourself’ killer deal. This deal offered customers who had already participated in at least 10 of the December deals an 8-pack of Tennents for just £2.50. Not even Lidl is that cheap!
The Rewards Club is set to play a key role at the heart of our business in 2017 so all of this activity should help ensure we hit the ground running for January and lay the foundations for a great year of shopper engagement.
Our goals in running a 24-day Christmas campaign were wide and varied but essentially came down to five clear targets:
- Boost recruitment of Members to the Rewards Club
- Grow sales in the vital run up to Christmas
- Thank our Members for their support throughout the year with some extra special Rewards
- Drive trial of important new lines like fresh meat and the own label Independent range
- Sell through promotional overstock we’ve gathered over the last couple of months
