Winning At Loyalty

Ad Tech Insights

The story: Albertsons ' recent push to elevate their loyalty program has delivered impressive results, with membership soaring by nearly 63% since the end of 2020. This significant growth is largely driven by strategic efforts to enhance their loyalty rewards, including the introduction of a revamped loyalty program in mid-2021. This update featured a new mobile app and the FreshPass subscription offering. By Q1 2024, Albertsons’ loyalty program had reached 41.4M members, maintaining a steady 15% to 17% growth in new members each quarter since 2022.?

CEO Vivek Sankaran highlighted Albertsons’ shift towards a loyalty-focused business model, aiming to engage customers beyond “just transactions.” “We want our customers to interact with us daily,” Sankaran shared with GroceryDive, “Not only to shop but sometimes to simply consume relevant content about food or plan meals or find information to inspire their wellbeing.” Albertsons also experimented with gamification last summer through its Flavor Adventure game, which allowed loyalty members to unlock recipes, coupons, sweepstakes entries, and prizes by playing on desktop and mobile. The grocery giant is continuing to innovate, having announced a new points-based system in April.?

The takeaway: Albertsons’ impressive loyalty program growth is a testament to the effectiveness of putting customers first and delivering value-driven experiences. Enhanced rewards, a user-friendly mobile app, omnichannel customer engagement, and the rollout of loyalty points all signal efforts to enhance the user experience -- efforts which have clearly paid off.?

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Extra Industry Insights

• Ahold Delhaize USA announced Tuesday that four of its brands have selected Havas Media Network North America as their media agency of record to scale media buying and planning. The agency will support the retailer’s strategy, and planning and activation across both traditional and digital channels for Giant Food , The GIANT Company , Hannaford Supermarkets , and Stop & Shop .?
• Retail media platforms are rewriting the walled garden playbook by demonstrating that there are navigable options that combine both programmatic tech and a walled garden mentality around protecting user-level information.?
• 阳狮广告 has outperformed its agency holding company peers, including WPPk, Omnicom, Dentsu, and IPG, largely due to its strong retail and ecommerce acquisitions. However, many agencies plan to curtail spending with Publicis-owned businesses. “It’s particularly frustrating,” one marketer said, “because Publicis identified promising tech companies only to practically remove them from the market.”?

Kevel Catch-Up

PUBLISHED: Kevel Blog “What Is An Open Source Ad Server? The Definitive Guide”?

In 2021, the ad server market was valued at $231M, highlighting their critical role in digital advertising operations. To effectively monetize your site or app, it’s essential to understand the different types of ad servers and how they function. This guide defines open-source ad servers -- what they are, examples of open source ad servers, and when it makes sense to use one.

Check out the full blog here.?

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