My Coke Reward Case Study: 5 Strategies to Create a Successful Rewards Program

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Loyalty programs are only effective if your customers actually use them. Your brand will get stronger the more often they interact with you. See how Coca-Cola boosted interaction with its My Coke Rewards program by switching to highly personalised and segmented emails. Their average clickthrough rate increased 46%, and member activity is up 57%.

Here is the mechanism of the campaign: members who log in to the My Coke Rewards website and enter specific codes get points toward products ranging from a cell phone ring tone to a flat-screen TV. The program has changed a great deal since its debut two years ago. Initially, Coca Cola did not send any emails to its members. Then, four months later, Coca Cola began sending the same email to their entire member list and started seeing a little bit of an uptick in activity.

It didn’t stop there. Coca Cola redesigned the email program and website to adjust for specific member preferences. The result is the average clickthrough rate has increased 46% and members who subscribe to the personalised emails are 57% more active in the program than members not receiving communications.

Email Marketing Strategy

Monthly emails from the My Coke Rewards program are not intended to sell products directly. They’re meant to get members to click on the program website, log in, enter a product code and redeem a reward. Content includes personalised greeting; member’s point total; header graphic; a few paragraphs of text highlighting a series of calendar events, like a fall football sweepstakes; six image links to reward products; images of Coke products redeemable for points; and a CAN-SPAM footer. The content is also personalised toward each member. For instance, those who express an interest in the outdoors might get a hiking header with codes for sandals or a telescope.

Coca Cola Email Design Example

Here are the 5 strategies that Coca Cola followed:

1. Optimise the message

The email is personalised slowly but sure. Their emails are now based on:

  • Basic demographic information (age, location, marital status, number of children, etc.)
  • Number of points registered
  • Reward products received
  • Product codes entered
  • Sweepstakes entered
  • Website clicking activity (like reward category most visited)
  • Interaction frequency
  • Length of time in the program
  • Other areas

One important distinction is the generational difference between customers.  From there, Coca Cola gave a similar targeting perspective to the website. This way, when someone logs on, a variety of different elements adjust based on what the company knows about that particular account.

2. Optimise zealously

Coca Cola email marketing team sent an average of 100-200 different emails for every blast. At times, the number can exceed 7,000. It’s all dynamically driven, so it’s not a completely different email. People might have the same top of an email and the content inside might be a little bit different.

3. Run email tests often

Coca Cola has also conducted a range of standard email tests to boost member interaction. Not only time of day but day of week, every subject line and types of messages are being carefully tested. They have done a slew of testing in all of that, and consistently use that information to try to refine and try to optimise the email.

4. Offer special content

At times, members receive special content depending on their customer profiles. For instance, members may receive a coupon for Coke products for a regional distributor in their area – although emails are not set up to sell Coke products directly. Valuable members sometimes receive bonus points to keep them in the program.

5. Measure activity rate

Coca Cola doesn’t try to independently analyse all customer actions, such as entering product codes, redeeming them for points, browsing rewards, etc. Instead, to gauge the program’s success, they have rolled these actions into one metric: activity rate. Through this analysis, they’ve discovered that members scroll looking for specific topics that has resulted in increased program participation, including a 200% increase in site logins and 100% increase in PIN entries.