Driving customer behaviour – the ultimate challenge for retailers

The rise of mobile payment is opening up a whole new world around influencing customer behaviour, according to Yoyo’s head of EPOS business development, Les Jeal.

With mobile payment becoming more and more popular, customers are leaving behind a huge amount of information at the point of transaction.

Known as basket data, retailers can segment individual customers based on their behaviour and preferences, which means they can produce targeted and personalised campaigns to change customer behaviour.

Using this basket data insight, there are five key focus points where retailers have the opportunity to influence customer behaviour:

1. Frequency
How often a customer visits a retail outlet.

2. Time shift
Incentivising customers to visit a retail outlet at a time they usually wouldn’t.

3. Product push
Using individual customer preference data to push tailored product offers through mobile.

4. Basket spend
Incentivising customers to increase their average basket spend per visit.

5. Rewarding high activity
Providing a surprise and delight offer to customers who spend a lot at a retail outlet.

Creating a customer experience that gives a retailer the ability to change customer behaviour in these areas is a big challenge. 

To meet this challenge, retailers need to introduce a robust and personalised loyalty platform that will not only reward customers, but also encourage them to make buying decisions that retailers want them to make.

There are three elements to a genuinely personalised experience, which allows retailers to build customer loyalty, as well as incentivise and change customer behaviour:

1. Digital points store
For every pound spent through a mobile-based loyalty scheme, customers can earn points from a retail outlet, which accumulates into a personalised points store. Customers can build up these points and spend them on loyalty offers, which are personalised by the retailer based on their basket data.

2. Digital stamp cards
Similar to a points store – when a customer pays through mobile, the point of payment automates the stamping of a loyalty card, which allows retailers to run multiple stamp card campaigns without the hassle of various paper cards.

3. In-app purchase store
This gives retailers the ability sell bulk items in advance – for example: buy 10 coffees upfront and receive 12. This leads to more sales for the retailer and more points / stamps for the customer, as well as guaranteed coffee loyalty.

These options provide a way to build personalised retail campaigns that really can change customer behaviour in a positive way for both parties.

Proof is always in the pudding, so I’ll leave you with some recent campaigns, which some well-known brands undertook using Yoyo’s unique insight dashboard and campaign manager, Yoyo Engage.

Double stamps at Caffè Nero

To increase footfall during the period of hot weather this year, Caffè Nero decided to push its iced drinks range by offering double stamps for every purchase through its app.

One week after the campaign launched:

• Baskets that contained an iced drink increased by 148%
• Customers who purchased an iced drink increased by 215%
• Spend on baskets containing an iced drink went up by 212%
• The average transaction value increased by 26%

Through Caffè Nero’s Yoyo-powered app, this campaign promotion created a much needed increase in loyalty and footfall during a seasonal period that normally dips.

Double Points at Hop

Vietnamese fast food chain Hop wanted to increase the frequency of purchases on a Tuesday. Through the Yoyo app they decided to offer double loyalty points to all customers who came in on that day.

Activity on a Tuesday for the month after the campaign launched looked very different to the previous month:

• Unique customers increased by 85%
• Transactions went up 51%
• Revenue increased by 61%

All retailers have down time. Hop utilised the technology platform of Yoyo to great use here and drove footfall into store during a day that usually dips.

Free Chips Friday

A well known student union ran a bar outlet, which they had hoped would peak on Friday afternoons and evenings. However it was soon found that, owing to their location in the town centre, students were drifting outside the campus by mid afternoon to other food and drink outlets on the high street.

The student bar wanted a campaign that would not only incentivise students to visit the bar, but encourage them to go on buying drinks throughout the afternoon and into the evening.

The answer – Free Chip Friday

Every Friday, Yoyo app users would receive a free portion of chips with every purchase between 3pm and 9pm.

Just one week after the campaign launched:

• The bar saw a 254% increase in app customers across the whole of Friday.
• Purchases between 3pm and 9pm rose by 420%
• There was a 52% increase in average transaction value.

Being able to drive thousands of student customers into an outlet on campus that usually loses footfall at a certain time of week was rewarding for the retailer.

Les joined Yoyo when it first launched in 2013 and was responsible for scaling the company from one university to over 60. His role has since expanded to build and maintain strong partnerships between Yoyo and EPOS companies. Before joining Yoyo, Les worked in mobile commerce and payments.

You can reach Les at les@yoyowallet.com