New Michaels Loyalty Program Aimed At Elevating the Customer Experience

Michaels, North America’s largest arts and crafts specialty retailer, wants to elevate its customer experience and what better way to execute on that goal than with a new loyalty program.

This week Michaels unveiled a new, free loyalty program designed to deliver exciting and customized benefits for Michaels’ customers.  As part of the new, experience-focused program, Michaels Rewards, customers will receive member-only offers tailored to their interests, receipt-free returns, access to exclusive in-store and partner experiences as well as advanced notice and preview shopping hours for special events, all without a point or purchase level requirement.

The new loyalty program is focused on the Michaels experience, and members will enjoy member-only events to meet and mingle with other like-minded makers while also enjoying special shopping hours. Members will be the first to know about big sales with early alerts and will be able to utilize receipt-free returns. What’s more, loyalty program members will also receive member-only offers from other special partners.

Kiley Rawlins, VP – Investor Relations & Communications for Michaels Stores, told Loyalty360 that there were two key factors that led to the new loyalty program.

“Several customers provided feedback that they would like for Michaels to offer a loyalty program and CRM capabilities have continued to evolve and robust customer data is foundational to effectively leverage these capabilities,” Rawlins explained. “The objective of our program is to drive business performance by elevating the customer experience through tailored messaging/offers and experiences such as sneak peeks, exclusive events, and early access to key sales and receipt-free returns.”      

Rawlins said customer expectations, in terms of experience, has continued to soar.

“Michaels spent considerable time talking to the customer to understand what they value,” she explained. “This program was designed based on this feedback to provide our customers with a differentiated experience. This program will provide Michaels rich data to help fuel customer marketing, which should translate into more engaged customers and more trip frequency/retention (sales).”

Rawlins said the company reviewed several potential programs as well as specific types of benefits.

“The elements that scored high and we felt we could effectively deliver were built into the program,” she said. “Our customers have diverse interests, but common themes included expectations of the program to deliver value and offer personalized benefits. Primary measurement will be focused on change in engagement and revenue of members. Other measures include number of members enrolled, percent of transactions tied to loyalty, overall customer file performance (member versus non-member), and increase in customers we are able to contact.”    

Initial enrollment numbers have been very strong, Rawlins noted, about twice as much as initial estimates.
“Feedback from customers has been positive,” she added. “Also, cross functionally, the Michaels organization rallied around the development of the program and has been very focused on execution to deliver our customers a positive experience.”

Customers nationwide can sign up for the Michaels Rewards program in any Michaels store in North America or online. To celebrate the launch of the program, Michaels Rewards members will have the chance to win one of 1,000 $100 gift cards.

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