A newsletter about barbecues sent to everyone
Your privilege club has grown for years at the till. Members get points or a free coffee, and in return you have their name, email and every purchase they make. Each month the marketing assistant writes one newsletter: a spring plant offer, a barbecue promotion, the café's new menu, the Christmas grotto. It goes to the whole list.
The member who only ever comes for lunch gets the rose offer. The keen gardener who spends heavily on perennials each spring gets the kids' Easter trail. The houseplant buyers from the town, who never go near the outdoor plant area, get a compost deal. Open rates slide, unsubscribes creep up, and the data you collected sits unused in the EPOS.
Why the data never reaches the email
The loyalty scheme usually lives in the EPOS or a provider linked to it. The email tool, whether Mailchimp, Klaviyo or something else, only has the list of addresses. Joining the two needs an export, a lot of cleaning and someone who knows which departments mean what. Nobody has that time in spring, which is when it would matter most.
- Purchase data is held in the EPOS, not in the email tool.
- Department codes do not map neatly to interests like roses or houseplants.
- Restaurant spend may sit in a separate till system altogether.
- Consent and preferences are recorded differently in each system.
- Exports are done once and never refreshed.
What sending one email to everyone costs
Each irrelevant email teaches members to ignore you, and some to unsubscribe. The offers that would work, like a perennial event for people who buy perennials, get lost in general messages. You are paying for a loyalty scheme, in points and discounts, without getting the benefit of what it tells you.
Lapsed members are the other loss. A customer who used to visit every month and stopped in the summer shows up clearly in the data, but nobody notices until they have gone for good.
Turning purchase history into useful segments
- We connect to your EPOS and loyalty data, and to your restaurant till if members use their card there too.
- Departments and products are mapped into interests your team recognises, such as roses, fruit and veg growing, houseplants, pet, restaurant, Christmas shop and outdoor living.
- Each member is scored on recency, frequency and the interests they buy into, refreshed daily or weekly.
- Segments are synced to your email tool with the consent status each member gave, so only people who opted in are contacted.
- Your marketing team picks segments for each campaign, and can set simple automatic messages, such as a welcome, a lapsed member nudge or a rose event invitation.
- A dashboard shows how each segment responds, measured by later visits and purchases, not only opens.
| Segment | Built from | Example use |
|---|---|---|
| Keen plant buyers | Spring plant spend | Early invite to plant events |
| Restaurant regulars | Cafe till visits | New menu or afternoon tea offers |
| Houseplant fans | Houseplant and pot purchases | Houseplant workshop news |
| Christmas visitors | Grotto and festive shop spend | Grotto launch notice |
| Lapsed members | No visit in months | A welcome back message |
Consent comes first. We respect the choices members made when they joined, and your own privacy policy and advisers decide how data can be used.
Marketing with the loyalty data working
The marketing assistant plans the month by segment instead of by one newsletter. Rose buyers get the rose weekend. Restaurant regulars get the new menu. The Christmas visitors get the grotto launch date a day before everyone else. Each email is shorter and more relevant.
The owner can finally see what the loyalty scheme is doing for the business: how many members are active, which groups are growing, and which are drifting away.
Is your loyalty data gathering dust?
- Every member gets the same newsletter.
- Purchase data sits in the EPOS and never reaches your email tool.
- You cannot say how many members visited in the last three months.
- Lapsed members are only noticed when someone asks.
- Restaurant visits are not linked to the loyalty card.