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CASE STUDY: With opening rates of between 80 and 90 percent and CTR of 55 percent, it's clear that VPGs new members club is engaging the customer. How they did it? By using Stready to encourage physical activity!
Leveling Up From Transactional Loyalty
Thursday, October 18th, Loyalty Day was held at Latter in Oslo by Anfo and Oculos. On the list of speakers were loyalty-guru and the woman behind the podcast “Let’s talk loyalty”, Paula Thomas. According to her, more people will discover the effects of moving away from transactional loyalty.
Transactional loyalty is rewarding people for behavior directly related to purchases. An example is earning points every time you buy something. Loyalty creates a long-term value, and loyalty leads to purchase. But it is not true that you need your customer to complete a purchase to create loyalty.
The other option is to reward and inspire actions and values which is close to the brand. By connecting the brand to a part of people’s lives that creates engagement, you can associate the brand with something positive, while giving people an incentive to buy. This is in line with VPG Aktiv’s exercise approach. This will also create more frequent and personal touchpoints, which again will generate more sales.
The best in class have been doing this for a while. Nike and Wallgreens are both leading stars in defending their market position through creating captivating and broad user experiences. These are experiences that go far beyond store visits and online shopping. They have both developed solutions that encourage physical activity as part of their loyalty program.
AWAY FROM TRANSACTIONAL LOYALTY: Paula Thomas believes that one must look at other ways to build loyalty than by rewarding purchases. Picture: Screenshot from Livestream: Loyalty Day 2021. ANFO.
Warm Reception
In October, Vertical Playground launched its new active member's club VPG Aktiv. The club encourages physical activity and rewards its members when they reach set goals. The users connect their workout tracker directly to the website and recieves rewards and positive feedback when they are active. Last October they challenged people to run 50 kilometers. In November, VPG donated 10 000 NOK to the The Norwegian Cancer Society when their members completed 10 000 hours of physical activity together.
A NATURAL NEXT STEP IN CONTENT MARKETING
VPG is already encouraging healthy and active habits. On their website, they are posting tips and advice from both employees and ambassadors about everything from mountain running, climbing, and hiking. Plus, they have partnered up with several mountain marathons. Encouraging workouts had been discussed before, but it was difficult to find a way to reward and engage the ones that participated.
We have thought about doing challenges earlier, but we have not found any flexible ways to do it that allow us to keep people in our online store and in our systems. We get that with Stready.
Bjarne Grøseth, VPG.no
The plan was originally to do a test-challenge in October, and a another one on running and path cycling in the spring. This changed after VPG saw the results and engagement from the launch and decided to start doing challenges back-to-back.
Our brand has a clear connection with an active lifestyle, so when we decided to launch VPG Aktiv it was just as much about doing something new and exciting for our customers associated with being active, as the direct effect on the bottom line. The fact that we have achieved really promising results already is a big bonus! says Bjarne Grøseth.
ON THE MOVE: Bjarne in VPG is finally getting the opportunity to motivate others to get out into the woods.
Picture: Susanne Lunde Petersen
Picture: Susanne Lunde Petersen
Multiplied Effect
It’s amazing to see how active the members are. Some people got out and ran 5-6 metric miles on the first day of October, which made them finish the «50 in October» challenge on the first day. The numbers on email and SMS speak for themselves, with an opening rate just below 90% and CTR at 60%. The results were much better than what I expected, also it's nice to see that almost nobody is signing off.
With email marketing it’s a challenge not to be perceived as noise by our members, and therefore extra fun to see the high engagement and exceptionally low churn from our VPG Aktiv members.
- Bjarne Grøseth, VPG.no.
The campaigns are powered by Stready.
We supply the technology that allows webshops to create value from the physical engagement of their members. Onboarding happens on the website, and communication is through the customer's existing channels. says Trym Nordgård.
FULL SPEED AHEAD: One of the people behind Stready is cross-country skier Didrik Tønseth. The team works to make it sustainable for brands and online stores to encourage physical activity.
