Measuring Shopper & Cashier Engagement in Your New Grocery Loyalty Program

After launching your loyalty program, the amount of data you’re now collecting may overwhelm you. You may be wondering, how is my rewards program doing? How can I make sure we are off to a great start? What metrics should I be monitoring on a regular basis? How do we begin to analyze shopper behavior and deliver marketing communications? In this article, I’ll list a few of the metrics that we use to determine the health of your new loyalty program during the initial phases of your program launch.

For the first 3 months, your focus should be on shopper enrollment. During this initial phase, the program will collect shopper purchase information and use that data to derive insight into shoppers’ individual buying patterns and shopping behavior. For that reason, the most important metrics to look at during this phase revolve around shopper and cashier engagement with your program. These 4 metrics will give you an idea of how engaged your shoppers are in your program.

1. Loyalty Reach / % Member Transactions: This is one of the most important metrics to keep an eye on. Loyalty reach refers to the percentage of your total transactions that are running through the rewards program. With most grocery stores, we typically see at least 50% of shoppers participating in a points based program, and upwards of 80% in a two-tiered pricing program. This will give you a good idea of whether your cashiers are asking shoppers to enroll or check in during each transaction. 
2. Average Transaction Value / Average Basket: This is a great statistic to help you understand how your loyalty members are spending in your store vs. non-loyalty members. A sign of a healthy program, with engaged shoppers, is when the average member basket is more than a non-member basket.
3. Transactions per Employee / Cashier Report: Cashiers are the face of your brand, so it’s very important that cashiers and store managers are on board when it comes to your loyalty program! Without the help of your staff, your loyalty program will not get the results you are looking for. We recommend keeping an eye on each employee’s percentage of transactions running through the loyalty program. It’s also a great idea to incentivize each cashier and store manager with a reward for enrolling and checking in loyalty shoppers. For example, each month, give a small reward to the cashier with the highest percentage of loyalty transactions.

Once your program starts to gain traction with customers, and cashiers get more comfortable with engaging shoppers, you’ll be be ready to dive deeper into the data to identify marketing opportunities. Contact your AppCard success manager for help with reporting or ideas for improving customer engagement!

• Grocery
• Loyalty & Rewards
• Marketing