JCPenney right this moment (April 17) launched a brand new loyalty program that might ship half a billion {dollars} to its shoppers, per particulars shared with Advertising and marketing 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 Depend” model positioning, alongside accessible trend, neighborhood help and a dedication to constructive change.
The rewards program, which already counts 20 million members that store at JCPenney a mean of 5 occasions per yr, appears to be like to make each greenback and each journey to the retailer depend, with sooner level accrual and different methods to earn CashPass factors — a brand new reward construction paying homage 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 charge 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 purchasing cart for an opportunity to win extra rewards. A associated social media hashtag problem offers shoppers 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 and marketing plans throughout a press briefing and interview with Advertising and marketing Dive.
This interview has been edited for readability and brevity.
MARKETING DIVE: It has been a couple of months since JCPenney introduced its billion greenback plan. What has the advertising and marketing technique been since then?
KATIE MULLEN: What we did in September, from a advertising and marketing perspective, was use the reinvestment second to re-establish our model worth proposition, speaking extra explicitly concerning 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 via December was actually about ensuring that the client was seeing and listening to from us about accessible trend. We spent a whole lot of our inner time by way of content material creation and {dollars} by way of amplification actually ensuring we had been getting credit score for the quantity of trend, newness and innovation, each from an inclusion standpoint and from a worth standpoint. We had been speaking about making each physique depend, and actually making a press release 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 via that trend message, reestablishing some expectations for the patron, earlier than we might begin to add extra messaging complexity. So now you will hear our trend plus rewarding plus standing with our communities in a way more specific approach. This was the launching level for us to begin 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 advanced. 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 particular audiences that you’ve got, and you need 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 had been getting the related message in entrance of the precise buyer via the precise channels. We’re doing a broader-based amplification of this message to be sure that clients who could not have thought of us in a while really hear and see among 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 have now numerous totally different promotional affords and offers, can at occasions be tougher for the client to grasp what worth they’re getting.
We use this as a chance not solely to talk particularly to discrete audiences … but in addition to exit and do a broader-based nationwide advertising and marketing push to be sure that we’re serving to clients perceive the revived and recommitted JCPenney. You will 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 effectively.
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 really predates a whole lot of the trendy learnings round [personal identifiable information] and what you are making an attempt to do there. As we’re relaunching, you will see issues just like the birthday reward, which is a chance for us to offer a CashPass reward to each member on their birthday. It is also an try to return and rectify among 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 have now each a “buyer engagement” goal and an “enhancing the standard of knowledge” goal. However in case you have any individual’s e mail tackle that is from the AOL days, we in all probability have to be sure that we’re nonetheless speaking with you through the precise mechanism. Cleanup of first celebration knowledge just 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 once we are speaking with our buyer, with the newest and biggest data, we see a few two-times effectiveness enhance in our focused messages to these clients as a result of we’re speaking to them about what’s most related to them. It at all times begins with the client 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 few non-public firm like JCPenney with the ability to focus extra on long-term engagement than the short-term outcomes required by public corporations. How do you obtain the precise stability of short- and long-term efforts?
MULLEN: I spent the previous couple of days touring with our chief service provider. I am answerable for telling the story of all of the merchandise that her workforce selects, designs and builds. We had been speaking loads about hitting the precise 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 take a look at efficiency knowledge — advertising and marketing response, click-through charges, all these sorts of issues — on our messages which can be extra model oriented, versus those which can be extra acquisition oriented or efficiency oriented. We’re optimizing or re-optimizing weekly on whether or not we have now that proper stability.
All entrepreneurs wish to have their fingers on the steering wheel; making minute changes each week might be not the precise reply. However it’s a query that we take actually critically, as a result of we have now to be sure that we’re persevering with to do the issues that add engagement and relevance within the broader units of conversations, but in addition ensuring we’re pulling clients down the funnel and never simply stopping with relevance or cultural advertising and marketing solely.
