The Goodwill Rewards Program launched in November 2011, and the results have been impressive according to Cindy Graham, Vice President of Marketing for Goodwill Industries of Central Indiana.
“Since the launch on 11/11/11, we have 396,509 members and of those we have 119,100 emails,” Graham told Loyalty 360. “Goodwill's most engaged customers are those with emails that receive all the information and communication. Our email open rate is significantly above average. We have noticed a dramatic adoption rate of this program with nearly 60% of all transactions coming from our loyalty program customers.”
Goodwill Rewards also provides the company the ability to email and reach out directly to its customers.
“We provide our subscribers with information on the Rewards program, event-based announcements, and mission-related stories,” Graham explained. “Those subscribers are more actively engaged in the Rewards program and we are seeing it in their overall ticket dollar value as they are spending nearly 20% more than those that are not receiving our emails.”
Graham listed the objectives of the loyalty program:
Grow the overall average sales ticket per Rewards member
Increase overall retail revenue
Establish a two-way communication tool with members
Engage customers with information, promotion, and incentives
To enroll a targeted number of members in the first two years and continue to increase the Rewards member transactions compared to the non-Rewards members.
Establish an integrated system that would eventually track all relationships with Goodwill in a single source.
Graham said this is the company’s first rewards program.
“We have been exploring our options and working toward this launch for the past 10 years,” she explained. “We wanted the data and the rewards to tie to our cash registrar system, to measure two separate kinds of behavior -- shopper and donor and to be simple for the customer to use. We also needed a communication tool (email system) to directly communicate with our customers.”
Graham said the goals for the program revolve around establishing a robust database of customers and their behavior, increased sales, transactions, and customer engagement.
“We are looking at some of these specific elements around behavior,” Graham explained. “Where and when are they shopping and donating? How far are they traveling to do so? What do their baskets contain? What incentives can we provide to drive desired shopping and donating activity?”
Customer feedback played a role in the loyalty program’s launch.
“We conducted three separate focus groups,” Graham said. “We also used a small user group to launch and test the program.”