Right now Yahoo needs all the help it can get in its battle against the seemingly omniscient Googliath! And here’s help with a capital H!
Carol Bartz’s little helper is none other than UK retail loyalty card scheme Nectar which boasts some 16.8 million members who busily collect points by shopping at thousands of participating outlets – both cyber and concrete-located. Consumers then redeem the points they accrue with purchases at participating shops and websites.
A highly profitable carousel!
More than 50% of UK households collect Nectar points whilst shopping for groceries, vacations, paying household bills, buying auto fuel and even eating out. Collectors also earn points every time they shop online via Nectar eStores at over 220 leading online retailers.
All of which enables Nectar to amass one helluvva lot of valuable data on shoppers’ age, sex, socio-economic status and purchase/ brand preferences.
Just the kind of data, in fact, that Yahoo needs to woo advertisers away from Googliath.
To which noble end the duo have signed an exclusive deal to combine their databases for customers who opt into the joint venture.
Nectar’s historical data can highlight shoppers who may have bought a rival’s product or were loyal customers in the past. They can then be matched to their Yahoo log-ins – without revealing personally identifiable information – and shown more relevant ads across Yahoo’s sites.
The results will then be monitored using Nectar’s database, providing a “return on investment” metric – a rare and highly desirable advertising Holy Grail.
Rah-rahs Yahoo’s UK managing director Mark Rabe: “For the first time UK advertisers will have a simple way to track offline sales from online advertising campaigns.”
Harmonizes David Buckingham, commercial director at Nectar’s insight and communication division: “It allows FMCG [fast- moving consumer goods] brands to serve up highly targeted adverts online to an extremely relevant audience. We can prove to them what the effect of the advertising was.”
This blog predicts that the UK is serving as a neat little test-bed for the partnership prior to a stateside rollout – maybe in 2011.
The infrastructure is already in place, given that Nectar’s parent, Groupe Aeroplan owns Aeroplan, Canada’s premier loyalty program as well as Carlson Marketing, an international loyalty marketing services and events provider headquartered in the US.
More on this at MarketingTomorrow.com.
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