Coborn’s Sees MORE Success With Loyalty Program

1/26/2021

Birdzi technology has helped Coborn spur higher levels of engagement with its brand.

Since Midwestern independent grocer Coborn’s tapped Birdzi, a provider of personalized digital customer engagement solutions, to enable it to easily create and deliver personalized offers to shoppers through the MORE Rewards program, back in 2016, the retailer has seen a 355% increase in customer retention, a 16% increase in trips per month and a 23.7% increase in spend per month.

“Throughout the development of the MORE Rewards program, Birdzi leveraged cutting-edge and forward-thinking technology to drive customer engagement in new ways that were unique to the grocery industry at the time,” said Diana Barr, Coborn’s director of digital and loyalty marketing. “Birdzi is incredibly nimble and flexible, and a great partner. Anything we can ask, they’re ready to jump at the task and figure it out. At the same time, they keep that forward-looking context, creating the foundation for further enhancements and innovative features down the line.”

Birdzi has provided Coborn’s with advanced customer insights and digital engagement tools, among them:

MORE Rewards Program: Birdzi’s proprietary shopper-profiling platform allows for a deeper understanding of shopper behavior that enables it to help Coborn’s engage with customers in a much more personalized way. Birdzi sends relevant offers to shoppers and drives customer loyalty through a dedicated consumer-facing website, mobile shopping app, personalized emails and in-store beacons. Coborn’s shoppers can sign up for the MORE Rewards program, check their point balances through the Coborn’s mobile and web app, and access digital receipts after they complete transactions from the app.
Weekly Interactive Personalized Emails and Fliers: Using the shopper engagement platform, Coborn’s offers weekly personalized and interactive mobile and web app ad fliers and digital coupon emails based on customer purchase history and shopping app behavior. Also, the Birdzi platform permits Coborn’s shoppers to create shopping lists based on recipes. By integrating with Williamsville, New York-based ShoptoCook, Birdzi offers recipes that users can browse, filter and search to add ingredients to their shopping lists.

Along with the increases in retention, trips per month and spend, Coborn’s has discovered that shoppers like receiving more rewards, having access to shopping and planning tools, getting personalized emails and taking part in loyalty clubs, all of which have spurred higher levels of engagement with its brand. Further, as customers grew worried about in-person shopping during the pandemic, the enhanced customer engagement portal provided digital coupons and issued customers’ receipts on the grocer’s mobile app and website.

“COVID-19 has accelerated existing trends and led to a skyrocketing of digital engagement,” noted Shekar Raman, co-founder and CEO of Iselin, New Jersey-based Birdzi, which described its experience with Coborn’s in a recent case study. “Consumers want to consistently shop with a trusted grocer that will provide a simplified, personalized and convenient buying experience. Coborn’s MORE Rewards program uses data-driven insights to provide this and more. As such, it’s no surprise the supermarket has seen enhanced loyalty and customer satisfaction. We look forward to continuing our work with Coborn’s as we collaborate to find new ways to create an elevated digital experience for shoppers.”

Besides its work with Coborn’s, Birdzi has teamed with such grocers as Foodtown, Niemann Foods and, most recently, Weis Markets.

St. Cloud, Minnesota-based Coborn’s Inc. is an employee-owned grocery retailer with more than 9,000 employees and 58 grocery stores in Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wisconsin under the Coborn’s, Cash Wise Foods, Marketplace Foods and Hornbacher’s banners, as well as stand-alone convenience, liquor and pharmacy locations. The company is No. 82 on The PG 100, Progressive Grocer’s list of the top food and consumables retailers in North America. Sunbury, Pennsylvania-based Weis Markets, operating 196 stores in Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, New York, West Virginia and Virginia, is No. 58 on PG's list.