P&G Haircare
Driving loyalty with deep value discount
Winner of Best Coupon/Voucher Based Loyalty Programme – Virtual or Paper
Why we won: It is great to see an international FMCG brand addressing loyalty, and this is the best evidence of achievement in this category.
Baby and Beauty is a strong performer for UK supermarket Sainsbury’s. Overall customer spending in the category rose by 1.6% last year, driven by customers shopping more frequently.
The only sector within the category to buck the trend was Haircare which saw a 4.3% fall in expenditure. Haircare accounts for 12% of total category spending so reversing the decline would drive considerable growth.
P&G Haircare is a major player in the category with four brands – Head & Shoulders, Aussie, Pantene and Herbal Essence – and it introduced a loyalty campaign at Sainsbury’s to combat the category decline, return customers to former buying habits, and change their long term behaviour. In partnership with marketing agency i2c, the programme drove growth by championing P&G brands and increasing customer spend by making them feel rewarded through a personalised customer journey.
The programme focused on driving long term customer loyalty by providing real value to customers, utilising Nectar point rewards rather than relying on heavy, mostly multi-buy (3 for 2 type) promotions.
An enjoyable customer experience was vital to maintain engagement, so an innovative way to communicate the offer was needed. This was achieved via the technology from Catalina that manages the coupon printing in Sainsbury’s. It provided the ability to count the number of products a shopper bought of the target SKUs (stock keeping units) after they receive an initial offer notification coupon. It then issued a reward coupon when the required number of products has been achieved.
Reminder coupons were printed at key points on the customer journey to keep them updated about how many products they had bought so far, enabling an extremely personalised and relevant experience for each customer.
The campaign reversed the category decline for Sainsbury’s. Total Haircare aisle sales grew by 6.8%, demonstrating that most of the P&G sales were incremental and not switched from other brands
Overall sales in Baby and Beauty went up by 2.9% with more customers being attracted to the aisle, driving wider shopping activity in the category.
More than a quarter of customers completed their reward journey, meaning that their purchase of Haircare products had reverted to (at least) their pre-decline spend.
P&G Haircare worked with marketing agency i2c on this initiative.
