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MARkETING CASE STUDy
batavia Stad launches
member loyalty program
Shoppers get savings on
future purchases in
exchange for personal
data on shopping habits.
By dAVE sCHEIBER
Contributing Writer
How do you make one of the
most popular shopping destinations
in The Netherlands – a
bustling outlet center that draws more
than 2 million visitors annually by car,
train and boat – even more popular?
Stable International, the developer
of the 25,000-m 2 Batavia Stad Outlet
Shopping in Lelystad, has found a way:
a customer loyalty card program with a
name that’s hard to forget.
Just remember B Member.
The initiative, unveiled Jan. 25, is the
result of two years of intensive team
planning and implementation among 100
merchants – more than 90 percent of
Batavia Stad tenants. Talks are going on
with the remaining tenants now that the
program is showing such positive results
since its launch.
Within four months of the program’s
launch, B Member had attracted 35,000
loyalty card holders – a pace that will
easily exceed initial projections of
100,000 in the first three years.
“The B is for Batavia Stad, but it
also means to ‘Be’ a member of a club
– we’re Dutch and so we have to keep
the name smart and funny and easy to
understand,” says marketing manager
Natalia de Smalen. “People are connecting
to it. In Dutch, everything sounds
a little bit silly. So in order to make it
international and with a lot of appeal, we
came up with that name.”
To “B” a member, shoppers at the nineyear-old
Batavia Stad pick up a temporary
loyalty card, which can be found at counter
displays in participating stores or in the
B Member Lounge. Each temporary card
18 InternatIOnal Outlet JOurnal SUMMER 2010
Batavia stad’s new loyalty program has
already exceeded expectations by picking up
35,000 card holders in the first four months.
is scanned with the purchase of an item,
and a 5 percent savings is immediately applied
to the card for each transaction.
“It’s money – not points or tokens,”
de Smalen says.
A shopper can continue to amass
savings on the temporary card as long as
he or she likes – all the while remaining
anonymous in the Batavia Stad computer
system. To redeem their accrued savings,
people either take the card to the B
Member Lounge and hold it in front of
a scanner, which automatically requests
name, address and basic personal data,
or they register online from their homes.
“The beautiful thing about the program
is that you can spend that money right
away if you have a permanent B Member
card,” de Smalen explains. “Obviously we
want to know who our customers are and
how to target them. As a marketer, getting
that information is the main reason
to introduce a program like this.”
So far, 30 percent to 40 percent of the
center’s visitors have obtained permanent
B Member status, allowing Batavia
Stad to track their shopping habits and
preferences (even in real-time with a
special reporting tool) and to contact
them. De Smalen says most shoppers
– as many as 80 percent -- prefer to accumulate
their savings over repeat visits
rather than collect the cash right away.
What makes the program unique in
Europe, she says, is that it has never
before been done in a multi-merchant
environment.
“Since the program started,” she says,
“we’ve seen a striking influence on average
transactions and other key performance
indicators. So it’s very promising.”
The groundwork for the program began
with an expansion of the center two
years ago, but the concept sprang from a
defining Dutch characteristic, de Smalen
says.
“We Dutch people like savings. We like
stamps. We like stickers. We like to collect
stuff. So it’s a very Dutch thing, and at the
same time, it’s a proven program within
retail. Loyalty has been successful in many,
many retail chains. So we thought we would
make something of our own.”
Something memorable, like B Member. c