Bringing the in-store magic online for our loyalty members
Building and maintaining a loyalty programme that encourages customers to repeatedly engage with our brand, and creatively rewards their loyalty, is challenging. It’s equally challenging to ensure that customers across all channels feel equally considered. That’s the task we faced in the lead up to our most recent Members’ Week in April 2023.
Serving our loyal customers online
Members’ Week is a campaign the business runs to celebrate My John Lewis members. It happens several times throughout the year, and gives members access to exclusive offers, prize draws and special in-store events.
We found that some of our members weren’t able to experience the excitement of previous campaigns, as they don’t have easy access to our stores.
Although we’re a digital team, our aim is to create a truly omnichannel experience for our members. We want all My John Lewis customers to feel part of Members’ Week and experience the excitement, regardless of the channel they are shopping in.
The steps to finding a solution
Our aim was to find a creative way to reward My John Lewis customers for shopping online during Members’ Week. The solution didn’t need to mirror what we have in store, but we wanted to bring the same excitement online.
Workshop
To tackle this challenge, our team started with a workshop to decide on our approach. We wanted to offer a reward that would surprise and delight members who shop online, as that’s what we offer customers who shop in-store.
Journey Map
We then created a user flow for the online experience to help visualise the campaign journey. Our goal was to identify where this “surprise and delight” reward might live and work with the rest of the website.
I find visualising the journey gives me a holistic view of the user’s experience, and helps with stakeholder conversations and alignment.
Competitor benchmarking and creating wireframes
To find new inspiration and understand what our reward could be, we explored what other brands offer their customers.
We decided that a scratchcard would be a great way to engage with our shoppers. Working closely with our team’s UI designer, UX writer and developers, the designs went through a number of iterations. As well as considering the positive engagement we could have with users, we also needed to factor in the wider campaign offering, business requirements, technical constraints and, of course, budget.
Introducing a new reward experience online
This was the first time John Lewis had done a “scratch to reveal” reward online, and Members’ Week was a perfect opportunity to test it with our most loyal customers. As part of the campaign, we:
- Created a featured space on the ‘Rewards’ overview page within ‘My Account’. Here, My John Lewis members found a digital golden ticket to shop and unlock. If they made a purchase online during Members’ Week, they could scratch to find out if they won a prize.
- Used Monetate (a personalisation tool) to show messaging in basket and checkout, reminding members to take advantage of money-off promo codes.
- Included personalised messaging on the order confirmation page to guide members to their unlocked digital golden ticket so they could “scratch to reveal”.
What we found through our campaign
Our campaign resulted in a 292% uplift in My John Lewis sign ups during Members’ Week compared to the week before.
We did zoning analysis in Content Square to understand the engagement with the online golden ticket. The data shows that it was the reward members engaged with the most during the week.
We were also able to use Content Square’s impact quantification tool to find out the total revenue contribution of shoppers who interacted with the digital golden ticket. With this data, we showed other stakeholders the positive value generated through the campaign.
Just scratching the surface
After Members’ Week, our team had a meeting to discuss what worked, what didn’t and what we need to do for future Members’ Week campaigns. The golden ticket was a web-exclusive experience, and our ambition is to bring the concept to the John Lewis app so the journey is more seamless for our app shoppers.
We’ll continue to monitor the Content Square insights to understand opportunities to improve this reward experience in future.
We’re continuously looking at ways to engage with My John Lewis members, so do follow for more updates.
