Play.com plots social loyalty scheme
Play.com is preparing to launch a loyalty programme that uses social media data to reward customers that promote the brand most on social channels.
The online retailer will begin to introduce bespoke deals that are targeted towards those advocates and promoters that it says have a “powerful” reach through their network of friends.
Play recently revealed that its Facebook fans are worth 24 per cent more than non Facebook fans in terms of direct sales and is now looking at how it can use this information to bolster its marketing and loyalty activity.
It is hoping that by rewarding fans it will encourage their friends to become fans themselves allowing Play to take advantage of the viral element of social media.
The move follows a finding that customers who make their first purchase on Play.com via a Facebook referral go on to spend 30% more over the course of the year than other customers.
Play.com’s marketing director Adam Stewart, told Marketing Week: “The interaction that those [social media] fans give to our campaigns and the power of our fans’ friends is where the power is.
“We’re looking to create some form of loyalty scheme which allows us to reward the biggest advocates and promoters of our brand which will hopefully target highly engaged fans and those with sizeable friend bases.”
Stewart adds: “Within our environment we’re trying to create a community of conversation and reward those fans on the back of sharing and commenting and then turn those people into fans if they get engaged with personal offers. We’ve tried really hard on this and it’s where a lot of brands have, from my understanding have got [social] wrong, by trying to push product down fans’ throats.”
The retailer, which is owned by Japanese digital firm Rakuten, claimed last week that it can attribute £2m worth of sales to Facebook in 2011 and says that direct sales through the social network have increased 80% in the past year.
