Dive Brief:
- Meijer is the first retail partner to implement Flashfood’s newly launched loyalty integration feature that allows shoppers to link their grocery loyalty accounts directly to the Flashfood app and earn points, Flashfood CEO Jordan Schenck told Grocery Dive.
- More than 20,000 Flashfood shoppers connected their mPerks rewards accounts in the first two weeks of the launch.
- The debut of the loyalty integration feature builds on Flashfood’s ongoing work to provide its retail partners with more customer insights, as the company is also preparing to launch a partner portal later this year, which will provide its grocery partners with a dashboard showing insights and analytics on their customers’ shopping behaviors, Schenck said.
Dive Insight:
Flashfood is looking to create greater continuity between its own program and grocers’ loyalty rewards at a time when shoppers seek more ways to earn loyalty program rewards.
“We create foot traffic. We create loyalty just by the nature of what we do in terms of folks shopping and being able to go in-store and pick up,” Schenck said, noting this feature has been a long-time request from Flashfood’s grocery partners.
Schneck posted on LinkedIn in late April about the launch of the loyalty integration at Meijer. Now, over the next several months, Flashfood will roll out loyalty integrations with additional retailers, though Schenck could not provide specifics on the upcoming partnerships.
Grocers, like Meijer, who choose to implement Flashfood’s loyalty integration will maintain full ownership of their programs, Schenck said, and the new feature gives customers a new way to earn points. However, Schenck said points do not go toward items sold through Flashfood.
The rollout and integration of the capability is done on a partner-by-partner basis to meet the individual needs of each grocer’s loyalty program.
To connect their grocery loyalty accounts, shoppers add their phone number to the Flashfood app to link multiple loyalty programs at once, according to Flashfood.
While Flashfood’s loyalty integrations will provide grocers with additional insight on engagement, the tech firm is gearing up to further enhance the feedback it can provide its retail partners and become more than just a marketplace for steeply discounted items, Schenck said.
The partner portal Flashfood is establishing will provide retailers with a dashboard of insights and analytics, including specifics such as how people are shopping, floor-level data and how the Flashfood program is performing, she said.
“As we start to become a platform and data insights partner beyond the realm of what we've been really good at, which is a marketplace… making that marketplace a heck of a lot sharper, more effective, [and] meaningful for the retailers is where we’re heading,” Schenck said. “And a lot of that is on the data front and the work that we’re doing there.”
