JCPenney at the moment (April 17) launched a brand new loyalty program that would ship half a billion {dollars} to its customers, per particulars shared with Advertising Dive, representing one other main funding by the retailer following the $1 billion turnaround plan it introduced final yr.
With the launch of a revamped JCPenney Rewards and Credit score Program, the retailer is delving into one of many 4 core areas it established with final yr’s launch of its “Make It Rely” model positioning, alongside accessible trend, neighborhood assist and a dedication to constructive change.
The rewards program, which already counts 20 million members that store at JCPenney a mean of 5 instances per yr, seems to make each greenback and each journey to the retailer rely, with sooner level accrual and different methods to earn CashPass factors — a brand new reward construction harking back to the one popularized by rival Kohl’s.
The free-to-join program ensures $20 in CashPass rewards, with a $10 reward earned after every $200 of spending and a sooner price of accrual for JCPenney credit score cardholders. To advertise the launch, the retailer is internet hosting a Extra, Extra Extra Occasion on Might 4 that challenges consumers to make a three-point shot — a feat achieved by model ambassador Shaquille O’Neal solely as soon as throughout an NBA sport — right into a procuring cart for an opportunity to win extra rewards. A associated social media hashtag problem provides customers an opportunity to fulfill the popular culture phenom.
Katie Mullen, who was promoted from JCPenney’s chief digital and transformation officer to chief buyer officer final April, detailed the rewards program and related advertising plans throughout a press briefing and interview with Advertising Dive.
This interview has been edited for readability and brevity.
MARKETING DIVE: It has been just a few months since JCPenney introduced its billion greenback plan. What has the advertising technique been since then?
KATIE MULLEN: What we did in September, from a advertising perspective, was use the reinvestment second to re-establish our model worth proposition, speaking extra explicitly in regards to the 4 pillars of our model, that are making trend really accessible, being genuinely rewarding, standing with our communities and doing for others what we wish for ourselves, given our historical past as “the Golden Rule retailer.”
September by December was actually about ensuring that the shopper was seeing and listening to from us about accessible trend. We spent plenty of our inside time by way of content material creation and {dollars} by way of amplification actually ensuring we have been getting credit score for the quantity of trend, newness and innovation, each from an inclusion standpoint and from a worth standpoint. We have been speaking about making each physique rely, and actually making an announcement about inclusion and the vary and breadth of our buyer wants.
What you will see from us beginning now’s far more of a balanced message about rewarding and standing with our communities. We felt like we needed to play by that trend message, reestablishing some expectations for the patron, earlier than we may begin to add extra messaging complexity. So now you will hear our trend plus rewarding plus standing with our communities in a way more express approach. This was the launching level for us to start out speaking about rewarding [customers].
How do you market a loyalty program and use all of the bodily and digital levers at your disposal?
MULLEN: Anytime you do something associated to rewards or loyalty, it is extremely complicated. We needed to go construct greater than 250 distinctive and distinct units of belongings — these are those that our workforce constructed, versus influencer belongings or creator content material. The messaging is exclusive to the precise audiences that you’ve got, and it’s important to do credit-specific messaging to credit score audiences and basic market messaging to different audiences.
The final three months has actually been about ensuring that we have been getting the related message in entrance of the best buyer by the best channels. We’re doing a broader-based amplification of this message to guarantee that prospects who could not have thought of us in a while truly hear and see a few of the advantages of the extra simplicity that we’re including into our [rewards] construction. We all know that our mannequin, and the truth that we now have a lot of totally different promotional affords and offers, can at instances be tougher for the shopper to grasp what worth they’re getting.
We use this as a chance not solely to talk particularly to discrete audiences … but additionally to exit and do a broader-based nationwide advertising push to guarantee that we’re serving to prospects perceive the revived and recommitted JCPenney. You may see us present up in nationwide media and in paid social, in addition to natural and influencer, after which all of our owned channels as properly.
Transferring ahead, how will loyalty feed into your efforts, particularly at a time when entrepreneurs are coping with elevated sign loss?
MULLEN: We have had a loyalty and credit score program for therefore lengthy that it truly predates plenty of the trendy learnings round [personal identifiable information] and what you are attempting to do there. As we’re relaunching, you will see issues just like the birthday reward, which is a chance for us to present a CashPass reward to each member on their birthday. It is also an try to return and rectify a few of the knowledge challenges that we had from individuals who enrolled in our program 10, 15, 20 years in the past that we’ve not essentially labored with to maintain all of their account data updated.
There are some moments the place we now have each a “buyer engagement” goal and an “enhancing the standard of knowledge” goal. However if in case you have someone’s electronic mail tackle that is from the AOL days, we most likely must guarantee that we’re nonetheless speaking with you by way of the best mechanism. Cleanup of first get together knowledge isn’t the explanation that we did this, however definitely, as a marketer, I am delighted for that group knowledge high quality.
We all know after we are speaking with our buyer, with the newest and best data, we see a couple of two-times effectiveness improve in our focused messages to these prospects as a result of we’re speaking to them about what’s most related to them. It at all times begins with the shopper profit: If we will cease speaking to you about stuff you do not care about, and begin speaking to you about stuff you do, you are inevitably going to have a greater expertise with us.
You’ve got spoken beforehand a couple of non-public firm like JCPenney having the ability to focus extra on long-term engagement than the short-term outcomes required by public corporations. How do you obtain the best stability of short- and long-term efforts?
MULLEN: I spent the previous couple of days touring with our chief service provider. I am accountable for telling the story of all of the merchandise that her workforce selects, designs and builds. We have been speaking so much about hitting the best stability between model messaging and both product-lead messaging or offer-lead messaging. For us, that is mostly a common dialog.
I sit with my groups each week, we have a look at efficiency knowledge — advertising response, click-through charges, all these kinds of issues — on our messages which are extra model oriented, versus those which are extra acquisition oriented or efficiency oriented. We’re optimizing or re-optimizing weekly on whether or not we now have that proper stability.
All entrepreneurs prefer to have their fingers on the steering wheel; making minute changes each week might be not the best reply. However it’s a query that we take actually critically, as a result of we now have to guarantee that we’re persevering with to do the issues that add engagement and relevance within the broader units of conversations, but additionally ensuring we’re pulling prospects down the funnel and never simply stopping with relevance or cultural advertising solely.
