MARKET WATCH
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Think Products Exchanges Manual Spreadsheets for TMP Solution
A leading maker of natural weight-management bars is shedding the extra weight and frustration of manual spreadsheets and adopting a sophisticated Trade Promotion Management (TPM) solution. With national distribution in the natural channel and a growing presence in grocery stores, Think Products recognized the need for an integrated TPM platform that could help them achieve their growth goals.
With TradeInsight’s Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solution, Think Products will use one planning tool to manage sales, promotions, deductions and trade spend efficiencies all in one place. Among the many benefits, the company will have the ability to measure the true ROI and effectiveness of individual promotions, identify double dipping by retailers and reduce out-of-stocks due to increased visibility and planning precision.
TradeInsight, powered by MEI, is a web-based suite of tools designed to help companies manage trade promotion spending effectively than by using Excel spreadsheets (www.tradeinsight.com).
Weis Markets, BI-LO Score with Core Shopper Programs
The results of Core Shopper Programs from several retailers within the Spire network such as Weis Markets and BI-LO show in-store success in reaching the best customers. The program, started in 2010, is a strategic partnership with retailers that facilitates shopper-centric activation to drive profitable growth.
The program uses a sophisticated shopper segmentation process to identify the right shoppers, then deploys high-end analytics to identify the most relevant offers, and deliver them in the most effective way. The program spans multiple delivery vehicles designed to reach shoppers in-home, away from home, and in-store in the way that is relevant to each shopper. Spire is a provider of quantitative Shopper Intelligence (www.spirenow.com).
On average, retailers have seen a 20% increase in shopper engagement with lifts of $50 per household per program. The best programs have exceeded 30% engagement with lifts of greater than $80 per household.
“The results we are realizing from our Core Shopper Program are fantastic,” said Ed Purkerson, Senior Manager, Customer Data & Category Management at BI-LO. “We are not only seeing a high level of engagement, but we are realizing incrementality from both increased basket size and trips from our best customers. The insights from Spire let us give our best shoppers the most relevant communications in all of our channels, including direct mail, digital, circulars and in-store.”
Brian Holt, Vice President of Marketing for Weis Markets, said “We are monitoring our results continuously with Spire, and making improvements to our offers and our delivery vehicles based on our success. The more we learn from past behaviors, the more relevant we are moving forward.”
GNC Launches Apps for iPhone and Android
GNC Holdings, the nation’s largest specialty retailer of health and wellness products, has released a new free iPhone application and one for the Android model of smartpohone. The app will follow GNC’s entry into the smartphone marketplace with its March 2011 launch of the GNC iPhone application, which has received more than 100,000 downloads to date.
“We are excited to further extend the GNC store experience by launching a new version of our application and introducing it to new users,” said Jeff Hennion, Chief Marketing Officer & e-Commerce at GNC. “To make sure that we were meeting our customers’ needs, their feedback played heavily into the redesign. In addition to including even more mobile commerce features, we made sure to include health and wellness resources that can be accessed from wherever their active lives take them.”
CPG Gets Sales Boost from Social Marketing: Study
Social marketing, when used to build widespread consumer advocacy, generates an average sales lift of 6.7% for CPG brands, says a study by SymphonyIRI Group and BzzAgent, the social marketing arm of dunnhumby. Companies in the analysis used BzzAgent’s social marketing practices to build consumer advocacy and SymphonyIRI’s Matched Market Analysis to measure the sales attributed to these programs.
The study is based on 11 social marketing programs conducted between 2010 and 2012 for a variety of food, beverage and personal care products sold nationally at grocery, drug and mass retailers in the United States. Although results varied by product category, food and beverage products saw an average sales lift at 6.3%, while sales for personal care products jumped an average of 7.2%.
“Consumer advocacy in social media can make a significant business impact for all types of CPG products,” said Dave Balter, founder and CEO of BzzAgent. “Now with proven measurement practices like Matched Market Analysis, brand marketers can confidently invest in social marketing.”
Unlike most social marketing measurement practices using Facebook “likes” and qualitative “engagement” assessments to determine success, SymphonyIRI’s Matched Market Analysis evaluates store-level transactions to determine sales impact. When applied to social media marketing programs like BzzAgent, marketers can see the effect of these programs, which leverage the same proven measurement methods used with all other types of media.
“Accurate media measurement data is critical for marketing success,” Srishti Gupta, executive vice president, New Media Solutions, SymphonyIRI. “This type of sales analysis in social media isn’t possible without the use of proven and trusted measurement practices as well as extremely robust point-of-sale data.”
CouponFactory Celebrates One Million Coupon Prints
In the fast-growing business of couponing, CouponFactory is making a name for itself. Launched one year ago, the company has topped 300 clients, with nearly 500 coupons created. These clients have seen over 35 million impressions, 1.7 million clicks and over a million of their coupons printed. The platform also raked in its fair share of awards and accolades this year, including Best B2B Innovation for Markets in the Media Vanguard Awards, presented by Ad Age and a shout-out from Facebook in the “Couponing on Facebook” guide sent to advertisers interested in implementing coupons there.
“Our small team and solution has been incredibly nimble and a true market disrupter,” said CouponFactory President, Wade Allen. “Next year looks extremely bright as our current sales are strong and our new business pipeline continues to grow.”
As for the rest of 2012 and beyond, Wade said CouponFactory plans to focus on affordability and localization. The team has begun integrating offers with several save-to-loyalty card technology specialists and expansion into this market will continue to increase. Although CouponFactory has already locked in contracts with companies in the U.S. and Canada, international growth remains a top priority. It has also developed APIs to allow for the integration of analytics and coupon building outside of the standard delivery.
CouponFactory is a digital couponing/promotions platform that allows companies to quickly and easily create, manage, distribute, and measure digital coupons and promotions (www.couponfactory.com).
Brands Can Measure Social Media Advocacy Programs
Social Media Link, the corporate parent behind Smiley360.com a leading influencer platform, is now partnering with Incentive Targeting, a web-based retail promotion company, in their integration of sales data research and analytics to brand advocacy programs.
Under the new partnership, brands can now access anonymized retail sales insights from participating retailers in Incentive Targeting’s national retail network. They can for the first time measure social media advocacy programs, delivering the exact dollar impact of the “influencers” (those who test and review products) and impact on the “influenced” (those exposed to the reviews) in driving in-store action and purchase.
“When a brand engages ‘brand advocates’ to try their product and write reviews, the immediate question asked is ‘when consumers are exposed to a review, are they more likely to purchase?’ We are thrilled this partnership answers that question, with real sales data. Until now, brands have been missing the opportunity to measure the ROI of advocacy programs,” said Susan Frech, CEO of Social Media Link.
“Brands intuitively know how powerful a trusted recommendation can be to trial and purchase consideration. But when it comes to dollars and cents, no one has successfully measured that impact. Incorporating our technology and shopper-centric analytics, brands can finally answer to the question: how much is a recommendation really worth,” said Ben Sprecher, Co-Founder and Vice President of Marketing for Incentive Targeting (www.incentivetargeting.com).
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