Reflecting on 2015, Big Lots CEO David Campisi discussed membership progress related to the company’s loyalty program during its March 4 fiscal fourth-quarter conference call.
“I also want to highlight the success of our rewards and loyalty card signup program,” Campisi said, according to Seeking Alpha. “This highly cross-functional team with representation for marketing, stores, IT, customer care, human resources, and finance, made meaningful enhancements to our loyalty program in 2015 with new incentives, in-store signage, talking points for our cashiers, and an online registration feature available through our websites. Results have been remarkable with signups increasing over 20% last year.”
From a marketing perspective, Big Lots celebrated the holidays with the return of the same “Jennifers” in its television ad spots and allocated more resources to communicating with her digitally, through a number of channels including e-circulars, paid search, display, and social media.
“Our Facebook followers totaled three million, which is truly remarkable, considering where we were just two short years ago,” Campisi said. “We’ve broadened our presence in several social media committees including Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram.”
For Big Lots, “Jennifer” is a design persona, an archetype that is representative of a key customer segment at Big Lots created a few years ago. Campisi believes the design persona of Jennifer will develop a new mentality to focus on her and all facets of the business will pay off and begin to drive positive comps over time.
Campisi noted that the company plans to launch its ecommerce business toward the end of the first quarter.
“Jennifer is responding to edited and more focused assortments along with an overall better shopping experience,” he explained. “Our furniture sales training initiative, which rolled out to the stores in Q3, has provided a nice leg of growth to benefit the category. Rounding out the store, the de-emphasized categories in electronics, accessories, and hard home were down to last year, which was planned. But that doesn’t diminish their importance to our business. I am proud of our teams here, because it is often more difficult to manage a down trending category. The enthusiasm, passion, and commitment of these teams have been super, and I truly appreciate the teamwork.”