Problem
Multiple disconnected marketing platforms and third-party loyalty program vendors inhibited the growth in sales from loyalty customers.
CASE STUDY
The Coffee Club Increases Sales from Its Loyalty Program by 35% With Braze
35%
Increase in loyalty member sales
Strategy
After switching to Braze, The Coffee Club was able to bring their loyalty program and app in-house and centralize communications to their customer database.
Solution
They saw a 35% increase in loyalty member sales over six months and achieved a 4.1 star app store rating (up from 2.4) with an app powered by Braze.
Founded in Brisbane in 1989, The Coffee Club has become Australia’s largest café franchise and has expanded globally across nine countries, with upwards of 40 million annual customers. Like many businesses with a traditional bricks-and-mortar business model, they faced the challenges of keeping pace with the rise of digital, a process that has only become accelerated during the global COVID-19 pandemic.
Channels Utilized
The Coffee Club realized that growing their loyalty program was essential to driving customers in-store and expanding their customer base with a younger demographic with their app. However, their digital team was hampered by multiple communications platforms and loyalty vendors that were disconnected from each other, impeding their ability to develop a true cross-channel experience. They needed an agile, marketer-friendly platform to manage various stages of the customer journey in order to drive app engagement and ramp up loyalty member sales.
In Braze, The Coffee Club found a solution that could give their digital efforts a boost and increase loyalty sales through the power of coordinated messaging.
The Coffee Club’s Cross-Channel Marketing Ups Their Digital Performance
In evaluating its effort to pivot to a more robust digital strategy, The Coffee Club identified two key areas on which it wanted to focus its messaging: Driving sales directly from communications via barcoded in-app and email-based coupons that are seamlessly integrated into their point-of-sale system, and increasing app reviews of its newly developed in-house app. The two objectives worked together to grow both the audience and sales from the loyalty program.
To fuel its in-app rewards program for loyal customers and drive sales, The Coffee Club turned to Content Cards. Designed to deliver highly targeted, dynamic, and rich content to customers from within a mobile app, Content Cards were the perfect vehicle to target customers with barcoded coupons that were fully integrated with their point-of-sale system. By using a combination of key-value pairs and Connected Content, the marketing team could personalize offers to specific segments based on their custom attributes and purchase events. The Coffee Club was able to target loyalty members with messaging specific to wherever they happened to be in their journey with the program.
In terms of app reviews, The Coffee Club's ratings of their new app were initially burdened by their previous third-party app's ratings and they knew they had to improve in order to acquire new downloads. Aware that they had a strong cohort of regular app users who were happy with the new app, The Coffee Club targeted high-frequency users who scanned the company’s app more than three times over a period of 28 days. In order to target this cohort, they set up a segment using “app scan” as a custom event. Then, they utilized a combination of in-app messages (IAMs) and email to encourage those customers to leave a rating on the app store listing for their particular mobile program. The “app scan” segment was then further refined, with a follow-up email sent to those who had seen, but not engaged with, the relevant IAM.
Results: 35% Increase in Loyalty Member Sales, and Increasing App Ratings from 2.4 to 4.1
By using Braze to develop rich customer journeys via our Canvas customer journey management tool, The Coffee Club was able to drive real results. Over a six-month period, loyalty driven sales increased by 35%, and renewal conversion rates for their paid VIP program also saw a 62% increase. What’s more, the conversion of their loyalty program to a digital format led to a demographic shift, with millennial parents and younger users increasing as a share of The Coffee Club audience.
The use of Braze IAMs to drive app ratings was also resoundingly successful. The brand’s original goal was to see its overall rating improve to 4.0 by the end of 2021. Thanks to their efforts to encourage loyal and satisfied customer behavior, The Coffee Club was able to achieve a rating of 4.1 in under two weeks.
35%
Improvement in loyalty member sales
4.1
App store rating achieved in two weeks
“Braze has been hugely transformational in the way we engage with our customers and has been integral in growing sales from our loyalty program. It has allowed us to build an app from the ground up with customer engagement at its core.”
Jimmy O'Brien
CRM & Digital Manager at The Coffee Club
Final Thoughts
While acquiring new customers is an important part of any brand’s growth strategy, retaining and serving the needs of those who are already engaged should not be treated as a secondary goal. The Coffee Club found that, through a cross-channel messaging approach fueled by Braze, they could increase sales within their existing base and turn that user enthusiasm into positive, outward-facing feedback for their mobile app that encourages new downloads.
For more on how to drive long-term engagement, be sure to check out the Braze guide on how to Reach Customers in the Moments That Matter.