ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. -- Using its shopper-history database and a personalization or “preference engine,” digital media company Catalina offers a new service to retailers that can give customers deals based on what they have purchased in the past.
As shoppers check out at the point of sale (POS), the “My Favorite Deals” solution sorts through hundreds of items to be included in the next week’s ad circular, finding the five that are most relevant to each consumer. The program identifies deals, prints them out and the cashier hands them to the shopper. To determine what to offer, Catalina scores deals based on both their value and their relevance to each shopper’s purchase history.
“My Favorite Deals is not about delivering coupons,” Marla Thompson, senior vice president of U.S. strategy at St. Petersburg, Fla.-based Catalina, told CSP Daily News. “This is a true omnichannel solution that delivers personalized circular deals to shoppers via our in-store media hub, through the retailers web site and email communications with customers.”
“One-size-fits-all ad circulars are not the most effective way to maximize sales lift and shopper loyalty, especially at a time of rampant decline in newspaper circulation and readership,” said Steve Seckar, senior vice president of products. “My Favorite Deals … [cuts] through the clutter of hundreds of irrelevant advertised items to call out what’s really important to each shopper.”
“Catalina’s preference engine processes a tremendous amount of information in selecting those five deals,” said Thompson. “It looks at the shopper’s brand purchases, category purchases and where the consumer is in the purchase cycle. If the consumer buys that item every 180 days, the ad is most relevant as the shopper nears her or his next purchase. We also integrate outside third party data, for example the weather or if it’s flu season, to deliver a truly relevant experience for the shopper.”
The new solution is designed to increase the return on investment in a major area of marketing spend for U.S. retailers. Retailers spent an estimated $5.84 billion on newspaper circulars alone in 2014, according to Borrell Associates. Meanwhile, newspaper readership has declined precipitously. In 2012, just 23% of Americans said they had read a print newspaper yesterday, compared to 41% a decade earlier, according to Pew Research. Catalina research has found that two-thirds of shoppers typically do not buy a single item from a traditional ad circular.
Catalina’s POS ads and offers are read by 80% of the shoppers who receive them, the company said.
The new solution, currently operating in the United States and France, is driving retail trips and sales, including incremental lift of 1.5% to 5% in sales of promoted items and up to 1.5% increase in sales to targeted shoppers, the company said.
My Favorite Deals is one of a series of upcoming developments from Catalina’s newly formed Retail Solutions Group, which is focused on bringing omnichannel loyalty and marketing capabilities to retailers. Catalina works with consumer packaged goods (CPG) manufacturers and retailers in the United States, Europe and Japan.
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