Use Your Loyalty Program Wisely

I have a great example of a way to use your loyalty program to add benefit to your customer. And, it takes a negative event and spins it positively toward your store.

My son's formula was recently recalled by Similac, which made me upset and angry (it had bugs in it, which also grosses me out to no end). The recall made the news on the web Wednesday night (Sept. 23).

By Thursday (Sept. 24) we had a message on our answering machine from our local grocery store, Giant Eagle. It was the store manager, saying according to their records someone in our household had purchased a can of Similac in the last 18 months and what to do with it.

To me, this is proactive and very much appreciated. If I hadn't been on the web the night before, I wouldn't have known about it. Giant Eagle staff reacted quickly, using the data in the loyalty program to notify us before my poor little man had to ingest any more bugs.

This just strengthens my loyalty to the store, and gives me even more incentive to shop there. Now, you likely won't have too many instances of recalled products, but using your loyalty program proactively is still a great lesson.

You could use it to help buyers in a certain ZIP code that had weather damage, or to let buyers of certain products know it's time to fertilize their particular plant. Have another idea? Post it in the comments below!