The UK loyalty programme market is thriving as most retailers, other than those pursuing a discount led strategy, offer some kind of loyalty programme to supplement their core proposition and to help them to understand their customers. In recent months we have seen the launch of new programmes from Waitrose, Morrisons, Pets at Home and M&S whilst mainstream programmes such as Tesco Clubcard, Boots & Nectar are used every week by tens of millions of consumers. These programmes are more or less the same today as they were when Tesco first launched Clubcard over twenty years ago - typically points based, requiring customers to remember to carry a plastic card and swipe it at the till and to carry paper based vouchers which they receive through the post or printed at till. There has been very little take up so far of digital enabling technologies from companies like Mobilize and Eagle Eye which offer significant cost savings to retailers and much greater convenience for customers.

Has the botched sale of dunnhumby cost Tesco shareholders $1 billion ? Normally if you choose not to sell an income producing asset at least you get the consolation of keeping the income stream. A potential cash windfall is offset by continued and hopefully growing earnings. But that won't be the case for Tesco who, according to observer estimates,  have given away income of about £50m per year to their former JV partner Kroger. They did this because Kroger had a change of ownership clause which was triggerable if dunnhumby came under new ownership. By negotiating an exit from the Jv and keeping all of the necessary people and technology they require, Kroger are able to continue to benefit from the services that dunnhumby were providing them but without having to pay fees to the UK organisation. As a quid pro quo,Kroger enabled dunnhumby to continue with a small US operation, search for another USA grocery partner and to be sold to a 3rd party. The agreement has cost T

The Power of Personalisation Most retailers would say that if they could deliver a more personalised service sales would grow. Unfortunately this is easier to say than to do. There are three key reasons for this :   Most retailers, other than at an aggregated level, don’t know who their customers are, their relative importance, the degree to which they are committed to the retailer’s products or services and the extent to which they are favourably or unfavourably disposed towards the brand Even if retailers do know this, changing something in order to improve things, is difficult because employees tend to be organised around stores, channels or products and services rather than customers Even if the retailer has the necessary insight and organisation skills, it typically lacks the required technology or fails to implement it optimally These three constraints can be overcome as follows : 1. Building the necessary customer insight. This requires harvesting

According to the Tribune-Review GNC, the USA retailer of vitamins and healthcare products, is growing LFL sales following their partnership with dunnhumby.  GNC has been sending individualized mailings to 1 million of its 7 million Gold Card members a month since September. The company's eight-page mySource catalogs are customized to each member, based on previous buying habits and any demographic data they've collected on the person, including age and gender. “My standard is that it drove incremental profitability, not just sales, but profitable sales,” CEO Michael Archbold said in a presentation to analysts last month with dunnhumby's Pete Miles-Prouten. “Because the goal here is profitable growth.” “It was like a snowflake. No one got the same communication,” said Peter Miles-Prouten, senior vice president of consumer markets at dunnhumby. The company declined to provide specific sales and profit numbers related to the campaign. But in February, GNC reported fou

If I had £1 for every time someone added the word "relevant" in front of the word "offer", I'd be very rich. The usage of the word seems to be in inverse proportion to any understanding of what it might mean. I often ask people what they mean by "relevant" when I hear them say it in conjunction with the word "offer". More often than not they can give no meaningful answer. We are being overrun with apps and offer programmes from banks, mobile phone companies and employee benefits providers. All say that their offers are relevant. None of them have defined what they mean by it and engagement in their programmes is very low. At dunnhumby when working with Tesco we defined a relevant offer as an offer on a product that a customer had previously bought. If you bought Ariel soap powder then an Ariel offer was relevant but one from Persil was not. So you would only receive the Ariel offer. This was consistent with Tesco's view that the the