About
Supabarn is a family-owned supermarket chain with stores across New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory. Known for its focus on community, fresh produce, and exceptional customer service, Supabarn has been a staple in its local communities. As its customer base grew, Supabarn identified an opportunity to significantly enhance its loyalty program.
Challenge
Loyalty Fundamentals
Retailers face numerous challenges, with loyalty programs often failing to meet their needs. For consumers, a fragmentation of loyalty programs and engagement friction has lead to loyalty fatigue. The average Australian consumer is signed up for 4.4 loyalty schemes, but across many programs, less than 20% of members are actively participating/identifying themselves in-store. The high cost of customer acquisition and risk of inactivity/churn, underscores the need for a more engaging loyalty solution.
On the flip side, there is a significant revenue opportunity when retailers are able to optimise their loyalty and first party data strategy.
Direct ROI from driving incremental spend from active loyalty customers is coupled with a new and growing retail media opportunity (expected to reach $1.2b in Australian grocery and liquor in 2024) for retailers.
For Supabarn, their existing loyalty program, Supabarn Rewards, faced several complex challenges. Despite having more than 40,000 members, many were either inactive or unidentifiable as they were not consistently tagging themselves at checkout – depriving Supabarn of meaningful customer insights.
Digital Channels & Member Engagement
Furthermore, the existing program lacked an engaging and mobile optimised customer interface, resulting in limited customer engagement, with less than 3% of members actively logging in to engage with the program. This presented a missed opportunity to engage customers and drive them back in-store.
Reporting and ROI
Limited program and customer analytics made it hard to measure program effectiveness and ROI. Further to this, a lack of campaign analytics meant that there was no opportunity to report back on SKU-level insights for greater commercial partnerships with suppliers.
Retail Media
In addition to the reporting limitations, Supabarn couldn't implement SKU-level and personalised offers at scale, missing out on supplier funded opportunities. This shortcoming combined with low levels of customer data meant that it was not possible for Supabarn to tap into AI-driven personalisation, now commonplace among industry leading retail loyalty programs.
Solution
Recognising the myriad challenges with their existing loyalty program, Supabarn turned to Go Rewards for a comprehensive solution that would revitalise their customer engagement and streamline operations. Go Rewards’ seamless integration with World Smart POS allowed for an easy transition and ensured existing customers were effortlessly migrated over to the new program.
Go Rewards stood out due to its innovative approach to loyalty aggregation, driving key business outcomes by consolidating various loyalty programs into one user-friendly app.
This aggregation not only increased member utility but also boosted acquisition and engagement rates, as customers could manage all their loyalty rewards in one place.
Unlike other loyalty solutions, Go Rewards provided the benefits of aggregation without disintermediation, maintaining the integrity of Supabarn’s direct customer relationships.
With next-gen loyalty features, Go Rewards met customers where they are – on their mobiles. This was critical as almost 40% of people now leave their wallets at home, relying instead on smartphones and smartwatches for payments. Wrapped up in an engaging and easy-to-use customer interface, the app’s key features, such as member-only bonuses, exclusive discounts, vouchers and automated digital receipts significantly enhanced the user experience. Moreover, enhanced visibility of real-time loyalty benefits, including notifications, points earned and voucher balances has driven increased customer engagement with the Supa Rewards program.
From a business perspective, Supabarn benefited from increased loyalty member sign-ups, enhanced engagement, and higher tag rates. The data captured provided valuable insights into customer behaviour, enabling more targeted marketing and merchandising strategies. This data-driven approach supported better supplier attribution and campaign funding, ultimately boosting top-line revenue and margins.
Results & Impact
Within six weeks of launch, Supabarn observed a remarkable transformation. The customer tag rate increased by more than 40%, while revenue from loyalty members grew at a faster rate, exhibiting the incremental spend of those customers joining the program. Meanwhile, the rate of new customer sign-ups also increased dramatically. Customer feedback was overwhelmingly positive, highlighting the enhanced user experience and the ease of managing loyalty rewards through the app.
The enhanced data insights from these customers enabled Supabarn to better understand customer behaviour at a granular level, right down to individual SKUs. This newfound visibility allowed for smarter marketing and merchandising decisions, driving further growth and efficiency.
Supabarn’s partnership with Go Rewards has not only revitalised their loyalty program but also positioned them competitively against larger players in the market. The combination of seamless technology integration, enhanced customer engagement, and valuable data insights has driven significant improvements in customer satisfaction and business performance.
Future Plans
Looking ahead, Supabarn plans to further enhance offer relevance and engagement through Go Rewards’ personalisation engine, increasing both basket size and shopping frequency. Additionally, Supabarn intends to explore new features within Go Rewards to further streamline the shopping experience and foster even greater customer loyalty.
“Throughout this journey, we’re uncovering ways to provide exciting, fun, and intuitive experiences through gamification. Go Rewards is a flexible platform for us to develop, test, and learn together with our customers.”