Finland is a small Nordic country, famed for its beauty, its architecture, an exceptional education system, and more impressively, for achieving first place on the global list of the world’s happiest countries in recent years. It’s clearly an extraordinary country that deserves to be increasingly recognised for its global contributions. In our view, Finland is punching well above its weight and we are excited to be doing some great work with our friends in R-kioski in Finland, another market leading brand within the Reitan Group, and with around 500 stores, it boasts brand awareness of 98% throughout the country.
Having just passed the impressive milestone of 150,000 members joining its loyalty programme, here we discuss the background to the digital strategy, and some of the great results being achieved by this “entrepreneur-driven convenience chain”.
Coffee is a key category and R-kioski focuses on more generous offers than its competitors
Background and Business Idea
R-kioski has operated cardboard stamp cards for many years, and the team was excited to notice how well digital stamp cards were performing in other countries within the Reitan Convenience group.
It gave them confidence that the same system could be used for their business risk-free, to help build their loyal customer base, that they could gain some synergy effects and apply the same idea that is loved by convenience retailers around the world, to simply “copy-with-pride”.
Scratch and Win is a key part of the gamification strategy for R-kioski
Consumer Concepts
The IT and marketing teams have designed their app called R-kantis to include all of the global best-practice ideas and concepts that their colleagues throughout the Nordics use so successfully. These include:
- Use of instant gratification – everyone who downloads R-kantis gets an instant free coffee.
- With R-kantis stamp cards, every sixth coffee, bun and hodari (hot dog) is free.
- Loyal customers benefit even more, earning rewards even faster, for example after every 5th or 4th purchase.
- As coffee is the category they are focused on, they directly incentivise coffee reviews with a free bun.
- The programme includes exciting coupons and games with constantly changing prizes.
- Members can also collect free coffees by recommending R-kantis to a friend.
- Of course, on their birthday, members are celebrated with a free coffee.
- The app even includes the option to pre-pay coffee, with a generous 25% discount. R-kantis members pay just €15 compared to the usual cost of €20.
R-kantis is leveraging the power of prepaid for its coffee
Powerful Performance
A key insight driving the success of this programme is their focus and determination to differentiate R-kioski in the market. They noticed that Finnish retailers usually award points that members save long-term in order to earn rewards.
The R-kioski team instead believes in the importance of rewarding their members quickly and easily – delighting them from the very start to keep them engaged. And the strategy is working.
Marketing Director Ann-Charlotte Schalin said:
“Just over 1,5 years in to our digital loyalty programme, we are delighted to see engagement rates in excess of 20%. We know how important it is to focus on our key customers and R-kantis is proving to be the direct powerful channel we needed to stay connected to our customers, even when they are not in our stores. Reitan Convenience prides itself on being the market leader in each of its countries of operation so this innovative platform is helping to continue our mission to deliver the best ideas in the world of convenience retail globally and connect with our loyal customers to remain the powerful profitable retailer that we are famous for.”
About Us:
Liquid Barcodes is a leading global loyalty and digital marketing technology company specialising in the convenience store and foodservice industries. Our proprietary cloud-based technology platform allow retailers to create and manage their digital marketing campaigns with a proprietary process we call the “customer connection cycle’ to engage, promote and reward customers activities in real-time across digital and media channels.
How we do it:
We have developed the most advanced loyalty and digital marketing technology platform specifically for convenience store and foodservice retailers globally.
Retailers use our self-service dashboard to create and manage loyalty driven marketing campaigns that increase purchases with their existing customers, as well as effectively target and acquire new customers through partners or paid media channels.
One core component of live loyalty is gamification. We have gamified branding, loyalty and promotions. We believe this approach is essential in order to get customers’ attention and ultimately truly engage them with repeatable actions thereby winning their loyalty.
Check out some of our exciting/proven results here:
About Me:
Chief Content Officer, Liquid Barcodes and Independent Loyalty Consultant
With over twenty-five years marketing experience, I specialise in loyalty marketing consulting, managing consumer loyalty propositions, strategy and operations. In addition to working with Liquid Barcodes, my clients have included Telefonica O2 Priority, Three Mobile, Electric Ireland, Allied Irish Bank and The Entertainer Group (UAE), as well as Avios – the global points currency for some of the world’s top airlines. I am also a former judge for the Loyalty Magazine Awards and host of the “Let’s Talk Loyalty” podcast.
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