As grocers look to evolve from their legacy loyalty systems, Giant Eagle is one that recently transformed its longstanding program — and is starting to see results.
At the start of 2024, Giant Eagle relaunched its myPerks loyalty program just months after the grocery company announced plans to eliminate its fuel rewards platform.
Giant Eagle’s merchandising and marketing teams outgrew the in-house platform it had used for two decades and sought out loyalty vendor Eagle Eye to help provide more flexibility and creativity, Eagle Eye Chief Revenue Officer Jeff Baskin said in an interview.
The replatforming took nine months, and afterwards, Giant Eagle saw a lift of over 53,000 new loyalty households, according to Eagle Eye. The grocer now provides more than 25 million personalized offers to customers each month.
“We’re offering hundreds of different types of schemes and formats and points and discounts and cash back and things like that. Whatever their marketing brains can imagine, we pretty much already have built into the Air platform, which is Eagle Eye’s core loyalty platform,” Baskin said.
While some grocers’ loyalty programs personalize recommendations through segmentation — grouping hundreds of customers into a category to determine which kind of deals to offer — Giant Eagle’s new system offers one-to-one personalization, Baskin said. To tap into omnichannel customers, Eagle Eye can send personalized mailers that feature items the customer likes and that encourage both in-store and online shopping, Baskin said.
For instance, Eagle Eye’s Air platform is providing the flexibility for Giant Eagle to offer a free turkey to customers who spend $250 between Oct. 16 and Nov. 6 by tracking a loyalty member’s physical and digital purchases, Baskin said.
Eagle Eye also looks at a consumer’s “twin” — someone with a similar purchase history — to help its AI technology predict which products that customer might like, Baskin said.
Giant Eagle is “leaning into personalization” by partnering with CPGs and tech partners as a way to drive its value proposition to customers, Justin Weinstein, the grocer’s chief merchandising and marketing officer, said during a session at Groceryshop, noting that a “significant portion” of its customer base receives monthly personalized offers.
The grocer’s work on personalization comes as consumers across the board seek more value. Eighty-five percent of respondents said they want better loyalty discounts, according to a recent Kobie survey of 5,000 global participants.
By working with Eagle Eye, Giant Eagle now has a two-tiered loyalty program, with “Pro” members earning 1.5 times more perks than basic members. Like an airline loyalty program, customers ascend to the higher tier based on their spending, Baskin said. They can also reach the Pro tier by making a certain number of qualifying trips, such as picking up a prescription at a Giant Eagle pharmacy or spending $50 or more at Giant Eagle or Market District, according to the grocer’s website.
Giant Eagle and Eagle Eye have a “collaborative” partnership, Baskin said, noting that the grocer owns all of the customer data while Eagle Eye brings a consultative approach that leverages its experience from working with other retailers like Tesco, Asda and Carrefour. Because AI handles the offer creation, the technology is addressing what would otherwise be a labor-intensive process to do manually, Baskin said.
“We're allowing retailers that have small marketing teams and even large marketing teams to scale their loyalty programs without having to add teams and teams of people,” Baskin said.
