Loyalty programs are a go-to marketing strategy for retailers looking to create lasting relationships with their customers. By marketing points, discounts or rewards to participants, the goal of loyalty programs is to encourage customers to come back – and often – and a wide range of industries have bought into the program, including grocery.
Consumers have felt the pain of inflation at the grocery store, facing price increases of 21 percent since 2021. Many of today’s grocers use loyalty programs to re-build trust with frustrated customers, while bringing new customers through the door. Grocery Dive recently compiled a list of grocers that have implemented or enhanced loyalty programs in 2024, with hopes to bolster business.
- Sprouts Farmers Market will launch their first loyalty program later this year.
- Albertsons loyalty program, a point-based system, now allows customers to earn points for two months instead of one, with the option to use the points as cash at checkout.
- Target announced a paid membership service, offering unlimited free same-day delivery for orders $35 and up and free two-day shipping – similar to offerings from Walmart and Amazon.
- Giant Eagle’s myPerks progam was revamped to offer customers the ability to earn rewards faster, offering discounts on gasoline as a reward option.
Loyalty Programs and Data Privacy
Loyalty programs undoubtedly provide benefits to consumers, but they also affect data privacy through their extensive data collection practices. When consumers sign up for loyalty programs, they offer up detailed personal information including purchase history and trends, browsing behaviors and preferences. This data is crucial to the success of the loyalty program and is used to enhance the customer experience. However, mishandling the usage, storage and sharing of data can have disastrous effects to a company’s brand while destroying customer trust.
Why does data privacy matter for loyalty programs? The significance of data privacy plays a huge factor in the success of a loyalty program, and the statistics prove it.
- Loyalty members care about data security – 79% of U.S. adults are concerned with the way their data is used
- Trust is vital for loyalty programs – 81% of consumers believe trust in a company’s data protection is imperative
- Data privacy leads to loyalty engagement – 73% of consumers are likely to engage with loyalty programs that prioritize data privacy and security
- Loyalty programs must safeguard data – 19% of consumers would stop shopping at a retailer who suffered a data breach
Increased Technology Spend for Grocers
Today’s retailers – knowing that they need to keep pace with the demands of tech-savvy consumers – are planning to include technology in their future investment plans.
According to Progressive Grocer’s 2nd annual study, 68% of retailers plan to increase their tech spend in the next 12 to 18 months, with two thirds implementing new technology solutions and one third updating existing solutions. Top priorities for tech spend – data analytics, loyalty apps, workforce – will allow loyalty programs to evolve, while other priorities such as anti-theft and data security will focus on securing sensitive data.
Grocery – Safeguarding All Data
Today’s retailers understand that it isn’t just the data privacy within loyalty programs that need safeguarding. From delivery apps to order-ahead apps to in-store purchases, securing sensitive information including personal details, payment data, and delivery addresses is paramount to keep the trust of their customers (and their data secure).
Strategies to secure data – both at rest and in transit – have many benefits for grocery stores. Keeping your store compliant, maintaining trust with customers and preventing fraudulent activities such as identity theft, unauthorized charges and data breaches can protect (and build) your brand while ensuring a safe shopping environment for consumers.
Bluefin devalues all data – whether payments, ACH or Personally Identifiable Information (PII) accepted both at the point-of-sale (POS) – using a combination of PCI-validated point-to-point encryption and tokenization. Our solutions ensure that your customer data is worthless to hackers in the event of a breach or compromise.
For those grocers that prefer to work with multiple payment transaction providers, Bluefin’s ShieldConex® Proxy delivers true payment processor independence while delivering significant PCI scope reduction for retail locations, card-not-present transactions, and corporate networks. It provides token and/or EMV/P2PE based processing services to any payment processor, as well as protecting Personally Identifiable Information and Protected Health Information (PII/PHI) endpoints.
Learn more to how we solve the complex payment and data security needs of Grocers and merchants.
