Catalina Marketing’s My Favorite Deals program, already an established tool for customer engagement, is expanding to include additional channels of interaction. By bringing the program to email, mobile, and online channels, the company hopes to enable engagement with all of a retailer’s customer base as opposed to the portion they’re currently able to reach exclusively in-store.
Loyalty360 spoke to Beth Johnson, Catalina’s Executive Director of Special Products, about the newest additions to My Favorite Deals.
How much does it mean for My Favorite Deals to become an omnichannel program?
Johnson: It’s huge for our ability to reach customers. Where before we were only able to reach shoppers within the stores, now we can bring that experience outside the walls of the retailer and engage with participants on platforms like email and mobile.
My Favorite Deals allows for the personalization of offers for each customer. How much of that data analysis is done by the retailer, and how much is done by Catalina?
Johnson: The retailer will share with us all the items that will be in the circular as well as its customer data, and from there we’re able to look at purchase history as far as customer preference and frequency. So the retailer provides us with the data, and Catalina then uses that information to personalize the data and prioritize customer deals accordingly.
You’re running a few pilot stores right now as a precursor to the national launch. How has the program been received in these locations?
Johnson: What we’ve seen throughout the pilot process is that shoppers are readily embracing the program. Because My Favorite Deals is designed to streamline and simplify the shopping experience, they’ve been welcoming the shift to omnichannel with open arms.
The program offers shoppers five personalized offers per week. How did you land at this number? How would the program be affected by offering more offers that were perhaps less tailored to customer data?
Johnson: The design of the program was the result of a lot of due diligence on our part. When we opened up the discount circular to customers, we found that only about 3% of shoppers bought more than five items on the list. From there, we made the decision to really focus on those five items and ensure that they were properly customized for each shopper’s preferences.