Developed by Groove Street, the SmartClub loyalty programme is a retail loyalty and database marketing tool. It uses the Shanghai Public Transportation Card - a rechargeable smart card -and enables marketers to combine demographic profile information with purchasing behaviour.
McDonald's adapted the loyalty programme to create a tracking frequency function across six of its outlets.
Joy Lee, marketing director of McDonald's Shanghai, said the data mining tool allows McDonald's to choose a store location and slice customer information for targeted campaigns. For example, the brand can see the profile of customers who visited a certain store during a specific time of day, such as 10am to 11am. Store managers can also send personalised messages to select customers.
"We did a case where we sent an email to those who came to McDonald's using the transport card but didn't come (to an outlet) for 30 days. It was a reactivation campaign and we got 30 per cent response, which is very high. (In comparison) a coupon campaign gets less than two per cent."
The company also used SmartClub to send out 2,000 SMS to registered members last week. "We sent it to members who say they shop or visit coffee shops after work; we wanted them to stop at McCafe. We're presenting a buy one, get one free offer and will track this for three days," said Lee.
McDonald's will run the SmartClub programme for two years, with the option of extending the scheme to five years. "If SmartClub can't go to other markets (in China), we can use the learnings to do this on our own," said Lee.
The tool also has a simple interface that allows marketers to access information online through charts and graphics. Henry Winter, CEO of Groove Street, said it was hard for companies to have standalone points programmes that were both affordable to the company and attractive to consumers.
"Point value is a percentage of sales, and consumers just don't spend enough, frequently enough, with one company, to earn a nice prize in a reasonable time."
Groove Street is also developing a 'customer predictor', a regression analysis tool to identify VIP customers.