Wellness Warehouse has partnered with Innervation to gain new insights from loyalty programme data.
This information assists with merchandising and promotions decisions, says Wellness Warehouse group systems manager, Elaine van der Westhuizen, with one major insight in particular: that typical customers and loyal customers make significantly different purchasing decisions.
"Our top products by sales are one thing, [but] the products our loyal customers are buying are different," says Van der Westhuizen. "They are buying a lot more beauty and food products, especially gluten-free. So we're expanding our ranges in that area, and targeting promotions much more specifically at those customers."
Since it opened its doors six years ago, Wellness Warehouse has gone through multiple loyalty programme providers. Its relationship with Innervation is its third attempt at a successful programme.
"We had two bad experiences, one of which did real damage to our brand because the loyalty points system was so unreliable," says Van der Westhuizen. "We were ready to dump the whole concept of a loyalty programme, but couldn't disappoint the customers who had stuck with us through all the problems."
The company hit third-time lucky with the new programme, she enthuses. "Our expectations were fairly low - we just wanted a loyalty system that we and our customers could trust, and that would be easy to administer." The results exceeded the company's expectations, she says, and have provided for new ideas.
Van der Westhuizen adds that the insight gleaned from the loyalty system has had a noticeable impact on turnover, with the core customer group turnover having doubled since the introduction of the system. "[Now] we can start to look at how we truly nurture and reward those customers. For example, we had one product that was such a slow seller that we wanted to stop stocking it. But the loyalty data showed there is one customer who buys 20 units a month, so we make sure their favourite store always has it in stock. The store managers are starting to take that kind of initiative."
As much as Wellness Warehouse may have wanted to take this kind of initiative before, it was not possible, given the lack of information, she explains. "Now we're confident that it works; we have lots of ideas for how to use the information to deliver a better experience for our customers, and we're seeing positive results."
A coupon and voucher programme, as well as an online interface, are the next steps in the pipeline for the loyalty programme. "We're excited to see what more we can do with it."
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