Oxfam to leverage Nectar partnership to improve customer insight

The charity has revealed a new initiative offering Nectar points in return for donations to its charity stores that go on to sell. Sarah Farquhar head of retail brand at Oxfam says the partnership is more strategic adding there are “infinite” opportunities beyond this in coming months and years.

The charity hopes to learn from Nectar how to better use the data it has to generate insights and build stronger relationships with existing and new supporters.

It aims to sign up an additional 200,000 people to its Gift Aid tracking scheme through its partnership with the loyalty scheme and use Nectar’s experience of targeted communications to build its relationship with the existing 600,000 people signed up.

Farquhar says: “What is really great about this partnership is that all departments in Oxfam are really interested. It’s best to ground it in the retail business at first but we’re having lots of conversations with Nectar about what we could do around campaigning and fundraising and how they can help us understand our audience better and what insight we can glean from them from a data perspective.

“The way you recognise and acknowledge supporters is really important and [Nectar] has a lot of skills in that area. For an organisation like us that is completely based around the support of people the more we can understand those relationships the better and Nectar can really help us respond to our supporters’ needs more effectively.”

Part of the immediate partnership will be to develop a promotional calendar using Nectar rewards and bonus points to incentivise donations of items the charity stores are specifically in need of such as coats during winter months.

Another possible consideration for the retail business is offering Nectar points when people buy items in Oxfam’s 700 retail stores.