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Subject: RE: UKNM: Loyalty points
From: Elizabeth Van Couvering
Date: Thu, 9 Sep 1999 18:44:46 +0100

What I don't get is, I've been shopping at my local safeway for years, using
a loyalty card, and never once have they tried to sell me anything. To me,
this says: we collect the data, and we do ZIP with it. Otherwise I'd be
getting organic food adverts every day of the week.

E.

-----Original Message-----
From: owneratchinwag [dot] com [owneratchinwag [dot] com]On">mailto:owneratchinwag [dot] com]On Behalf Of Jeff
Marshall
Sent: 08 September 1999 16:19
To: 'uk-netmarketingatchinwag [dot] com'
Subject: RE: UKNM: Loyalty points


Sanjay Mazumder said:

<I think the general thing is that its only worth it if <you make many
<repeat purchases. That's why Tesco, Sainsburys etc <have been so
<successful with their loyalty cards, since we all have <to buy food all
<the time.

Please forgive these ramblings on this thread, particularly if I'm teaching
granny to suck eggs.

The real value of loyalty cards (to the merchants) is in being able to
identify the contents of shopping baskets (which stores have been able to
analyse for years through EPOS) with real shoppers and demographics (which
stores couldn't do until they introduced loyalty cards). Storing all this
info in a database (big one, when I was last involved in one of the big
three previously mentioned there were 8m card holders, purchase histories
kept for two years, providing terrabytes of data), allows sophisticated data
mining and campaigning, specifically up-sell and cross-sell campaigns aimed
at particular sub-sectors of the database, based on previous shoppers
behaviour.

In e-commerce, we can always link shoppers to purchase history, and we have
a direct lowcost line of communication from merchant to shopper. If we
aren't using these to provide similar targeted campaigns which result from
data-mining and analysis, then we aren't doing our job properly.

At the supermarket, the loyalty card is the mechanism to link shopper to
purchases, as well as providing the reward to the shopper for allowing this
information to be collected. On-line shopping doesn't need the link -
because we have to deliver the goods, therefore know who the shopper is.
Maybe we don't need the reward either, the (supposedly) faster, better,
cheaper service may be enough.

The holy grail of one-to-one marketing (which is what we are talking about,
and what loyalty cards are there to facilitate) is acquire more customers,
retain them for longer and increase their profitability whilst we are at it.
The beauty of new media should be that it directly supports these three
things without needing to resort to loyalty cards.

Jeff Marshall
WorldWide Web Services Limited
(a member of VIA Net Works Inc.)


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