Paula: Hello and welcome to today’s episode of Let’s Talk Loyalty and Loyalty TV. Today we’re featuring a corporate name that originally I wasn’t familiar with. But which in fact includes five leading omni channel grocery brands in the United States. Ahold Delhaize USA is a division of global food retailer Ahold Delhaize and includes Food Lion, Giant Food, The Giant Company, Hannaford and Stop and Shop, which taken together comprise the largest grocery retail group on the East Coast and the fourth largest grocery retail group in the nation.
My guest is Megan Chickrell, and she is the senior manager of loyalty strategy for ADUSA. Megan joins me today to share some of the incredible learnings from the many years across her career, leveraging loyalty for multiple retail brands. I hope you enjoy our conversation.
So Megan, welcome to Let’s Talk Loyalty and to Loyalty TV.
Megan: Hi, so great to be here.
Honestly, it’s just a joy to meet somebody who is as passionate about our industry as I am. I know you’re fully fully committed to our whole industry with an amazing career that you’re going to talk to us about today. I know you’ve listened to the show a lot as well. So, a real honor to hear all of the kind of work you’re doing.
So welcome, and I’m looking forward to a great conversation with you. Yes. Wow. Here we go. Let’s go for it. Brilliant stuff, Megan. So first and foremost, as you know, we have a very important opening question, which all of our audience really look forward to hearing from everyone that we bring on the show.
So you’re in the hot seat right now. So tell us what is your favorite loyalty program?
Megan: As I think about loyalty programs, I don’t really have a single favorite. What really stands out to me is when a program effectively uses their data that they collect to enhance my personal local experience. There are a few programs that come to mind that I feel like that do localization really well.
Starbucks and Panera, for example. But I promise not all the great ones are food related. I believe the more companies can connect with customers in a way that makes their lives easier, The more successful they can really be truly passionate about seeing brands maximize their data collection to show they understand where a customer is how the local weather might be impacting them or which products or flavors might resonate the most.
To me, it’s about illustrating that the custom, the company values the trust that the customer has placed in them. That we’re not just a big corporation, but we’re your neighborhood store run by people who understand your community. Ultimately, it’s about building those connections, I think, that foster loyalty and create that long lasting relationship.
But, yeah, I think the associate engagement is really key to anything you implement within any kind of business to consumer experience. A lot of times I get Gets lost. I feel like we, we end up with like this MBA financial approach to business and it’s like, that’s all true, but we also need to keep in mind the connection from the business to the stores and the customer base.
Yeah. That’s something that Ahold Delhi actually does, I think really well. Especially at Food Lion. It goes beyond the customer’s always right to more of a count on me is how they approach it, where it empowers the associates to provide whatever interaction is needed to make things right and can maintain that relationship with the customer.
So yeah. Beautiful.
Paula: Yeah. And it was your LinkedIn. I can’t remember the context, Megan, forgive me, but I wrote down this cause I really liked it and it might even have been the actual company LinkedIn page, but there was this idea of treating customers like neighbors. And I thought that was gorgeous, you know, because nobody’s going to be, you know, either abrupt or whatever, you know, we’ve all seen store associates.
don’t do a good job at the point to sell for whatever reason in different kind of outlets. But it feels like you guys have that level again of integrity in terms of how you want everyone to feel when they come into any of your branded stores.
Megan: I would say across all five of our brands we really try to tie into neighborhoods.
Nobody wants to feel like they’re shopping solely at a corporation from a price perspective. You want to feel like you’re going. To your everyday around the corner grocer, and you’re going to get the best local produce and at the best price so that you’re not having to choose as food line likes to say between gas and rent or dinner and and I’m sorry it’s gas and groceries or dinner and rent.
Totally got it.
Paula: Totally got it. No, that’s cool, Megan. And we’ll definitely get into talking now. I know there’s definitely a lot of inflationary pressure. So your industry does have, I suppose, a whole unique set of challenges, I guess, as well. And because it is, you know, that the household, you know, budget in terms of feeding our families.
So. definitely keen to get into exploring all of that. But let’s backtrack a bit, Megan. As I said in the opening, you’ve been in loyalty. You love loyalty. A bit like me, as soon as you found it, I think you’ve never left. So just for the sake of our global audience who might not have come across you personally, first of all, would you give us a sense of how did you get into the industry in the first place?
Megan: Yeah, I have to say, I kind of stumbled into it. I went to school for something that I always said. Scares my mom law and society, which essentially was a lot of psychology and anthropology which seems like a natural state into marketing, right? You need to understand the psychology of the consumer and ended up in manufacturing and stumbled into loyalty at Sears where I Got to have the wonderful experience of being what we called in the trenches at the start of their shop your way rewards program.
And from that point on, I’ve never left. And it’s been like an ongoing evolution of experience and knowledge. I credit. All the people that I’ve met along the way for really helping to teach me not only the emotional connection to the customer being the core of what we do every day, but the financials and the really technical planning behind loyalty to be successful and how to integrate within an organization to utilize business objectives to meet the needs of the customer.
So I’ve worked at Sears. Chico’s, FAS, White House Black Market, Tractor Supply, Goodlion, and Goodlion is a subsidiary of now Aholdel Hayes.
Paula: Okay, brilliant. Well, thank you for that. The tractor one sounds the most unusual, Megan. Was that like a B2B, I guess, or is it like directly to farmers? I mean, I just don’t know anything about that industry.
Megan: Yeah, so, it is definitely an up and coming industry, highly recommend the stock, but it actually they meet, you know, it’s, they like to be out there with their customers. So they are a rule supplier interestingly enough, though, over 50 percent of their business is pet supplies. And that includes everything from.
You know, cat, dog bird. I still go there for all of my birds. I like to, you know, think I’m snow white or something. But they also do, you know, hay and feed for horses. They sell chickens like 42 weeks out of the year or something like live chicks. But yeah, so it’s more of a everyday retailer for your rural farmers, but they are popping up in more suburban areas as the sprawl of like, within the U.
S it’s a trend at least, especially with COVID like your backyard farmers, if you will people everywhere started wanting to buy. And like doing their like millennial gardens, if you will we all picked up like our old woman habits, like at 30, so yeah, gardening and everything. So they have over a thousand stores across the U S.
And in both suburban and rural areas, some of their main competitors would be like Farm and Fleet or Rural King. Yeah.
Paula: Okay. Okay. And tell us then, as as I confessed in the opening section, I don’t really know or didn’t really know the corporate brand of Ajol del Hayes. USA. So for anyone like me, would you mind introducing now the business where you are?
And we’ve talked a little bit about the actual grocery brands that you do represent, but just a bit about the corporation and a sense of the scale because you guys are actually very impressive.
Megan: Thanks. I appreciate that. Yeah, I’ll hold on Hayes. I would say conservatively is probably one of the top five retail groceries within the U.
- So we are under the 80 USA brand, but we are part of global. I’ll hold on Hayes, which is based in the Netherlands. So we have a much broader reach if you will, but U. S. base. We are consist of all hold and L. Hayes. They were Yeah. Merge probably about 10 years ago. Now the Dell Hayes brands represent food lion in the Southeast and Hannaford up in Maine.
And then the whole brands represent everything in between. So we have giant food out of land over Maryland, giant Carla or giant. And Martins out of Carlisle, Pennsylvania and stop and shop out of the Boston Quincy area. So across those 5 great local brands is how we like to, you know, mention them is roughly 2000, over 2000 stores, over 20 million customers.
So we’re, we have a broad reach along the East coast. And then 80 USA also has an office out of Chicago. With a lot of our technical product IT groups, so.
Paula: Okay. Okay. Yeah. And that 20 million number. Thank you Megan for that. . Very helpful. The 20 million is is loyalty customers, as in people registered, signed up across the five different brands.
Is that, am I getting it right?
Megan: Yeah, so grocery is one of the oldest. Loyalty within the U. S. So they are carded customers. So essentially that some point we have a card assigned to a customer’s individual transactions.
Paula: Amazing. Amazing. I do love the jargon at the individual kind of levels, you know, in different sectors, different verticals.
Like I’m much more ex airline background. Like I’ve got all that jargon down pat, but I’ve never done retail. So there you go. Learning by talking to you. So, amazing brands, clearly you’ve touched on how do you guys manage loyalty? Is it brand by brand? Is it across the whole corporation? Tell us about the proposition or propositions that you have in market.
Megan: Yeah, so it’s both a little individual brands as well as some scalability. Obviously we’re always looking for efficiencies, both for strategy testing, as well as execution. So we like, internally, I like to refer to Delhaize’s dollars and Ahold as points because Delhaize through Poo Lion and Hannaford both issue dollar based reward structures, whereas the Ahold brands are points and gas.
So with, yeah, within those we have personalization through rules based engine supporting monthly campaigns as well as ad hoc campaigns and mass campaigns. There’s a whole slew of stackable gamified support for our customers savings needs, but I personally support giant food and giant company.
And their approach is. Monthly campaigns through individual transaction offers as well as what internally we refer to as more continuity or multi trip driving offers. So you might see it as a challenge where you spend. 50 in produce over the course of a month period, and you might earn 500 points.
So something along those lines would be a multi trip. Driver and we combine those based off of the business objectives and personalized offer strategy. So really highlighting what offers we have. That would make sense based on the customers. Purchase history, as well as our business objectives.
So we might be highlighting private brand right now, which is 1 of our big initiatives over the next 5 years which is a hot topic. I’d say within the industry is how do we elevate private label as an exclusivity play as well as a price play for our customers.
Paula: Interesting. I like that because that’s a side of loyalty, Megan, that we don’t talk about a lot, you know, and I’ve always said on the show, like we’ve called it, let’s talk loyalty, but not let’s talk loyalty programs, you know, to allow for that kind of insight to come through.
So you’re absolutely right. Like certainly in Ireland, the the private labels were originally seen as, I suppose, the discount version, but probably manufactured by the same people as the big brands. But there was an opportunity to have, I suppose, the savings piece, which, I mean, I go, I know you guys are having some inflationary challenges in the U S so I guess that private label pieces is growing, as you said, at that level, but you’re right.
I exclusivity pieces. Well, even in to me, Discount grocery retailers again, back in Ireland. It was lovely to see a luxury positioned product because of course then it meant I had to go back to the store to pick it up every time once I fell in love with it. So actually there’s an importance of doing, I guess, both ends of the scale.
Megan: Yeah, we actually launched across our whole brands this past spring a program called compare and save where we. We stick national brands against our private label similar to, not dissimilar, I would say to I believe Trader Joe’s which is also a U. S. grocery store specialty, I’d say where you can try something and if you don’t like it, we stand behind it with guarantees but similarly, we are trying to illustrate the price savings opportunity of national brands to private label, and then to your point regarding accessibility, Exclusivity, we have seasonally relevant, what we call limited time only offerings that support, you know, right now it’s fall in the U S so pumpkin spice is so pumpkin, everything I’m always looking for my pumpkin fix.
I
Paula: just bought my first pumpkin style cookies. I don’t think they’re pumpkin flavored, but anyway yeah, definitely. We’re in the fall season here and Halloween is a really big one. So, I mean, that’s a huge amount. I mean, given what you’ve just talked through, Megan and you told me off air, some of the scale, I suppose, on the personalization, which I’d love if you wouldn’t mind touching on again for the sake of the audience in terms of, you know, how many offers is an individual customer.
likely to be able to look forward to in maybe their monthly mailing. I’m assuming it’s all predominantly digital kind of email based or app based as well, I guess, is probably where you’re doing most of that communication. Would that be fair to say?
Megan: Yeah, great questions. I’ll try to go down the list cause there’s a lot there.
We actually, I mean, like everybody else, we’re trying to optimize through cost efficiencies. Providing more digital opportunities for customers to save more. But I will say in the U. S. that’s become a hot topic so that we aren’t excluding any customers legally from accessing savings. So we do still have mailers and mass offer savings but it’s not necessarily going to everybody.
Some of our brands like to do what they call channel of choice. So depending upon where consumers are getting an offer and if they redeem that offer, that then becomes their channel of choice that could be direct mail. It could be we have at the point of sale registers, we have what we call Catalina printers.
They’re a partner of ours. So it could be through them. It could be, we’ve been. Food Lion has these, but we’ve started testing and expanding with Stop and Shop and this coming year, hopefully, Giant Company and Giant Food, what we call kiosks. So when you walk in the store there’s a literal, you know, physical kiosk where you put in your phone number and it prints out and it assigns all of your coupons to your card.
So when you go to the register and put in your phone number, those apply as well. Or through email and through the app those are all different channels that we support. Obviously, we all want digital those to continue to engage with them at a better rate from a marketing cost perspective.
And then what else did you ask?
Paula: Well, it was a lot. Sorry, Megan, I get excited sometimes and I’m just like, Oh my God. And. Honestly, like I never had the CRM piece, like, you know, that, you know, everyone, I guess, who listens to the show would probably know that, like, I started in loyalty on the, like, partner negotiations piece, which is why I always had this, like, you know, fascination with the broader industry.
So that’s why I love hearing from people like you, because there’s so much that happens that, again, whether it’s as a consumer or anyone outside of certainly grocery retail, I don’t think we have an appreciation of the complexity of what you’re actually rolling out on a month to month basis.
Megan: Well, and it’s interesting you say that.
I recently talked with the industry group Loyalty 360 about AI and the influence of AI on, on loyalty. And I realized kind of during the conversation and before it that we in Loyalty have been doing AI for years through personalization. It just hasn’t necessarily been completely automated but it should feel automated to the customer based on the personalization levels.
So I think one of the questions that you had asked is like the number of offers that we’re distributing to customers, or how are we helping them save and personalize their experience? And I would say that really varies based off of business rules campaigns, budgets, of course, because it’s always a thing at frequency of shop life cycle is always key segmentation logic.
So we have. You know, proprietary segments that we use in order to try to get more nuanced in the types of offers individuals are receiving, but also messaging and channel frequency. So those all play a role in loyalty. So it’s definitely a CRM aspect that. I think really helps drive overall program strategies.
But there’s also the nuance that I think you’ve talked about more frequently in your past podcast that I’ve heard is how does the organization utilize loyalty to meet the needs of the business as well as the customer? And so we try to. Find the data side of that obviously measuring the incrementality of the individual transactions and how we’re driving the customer behaviors but also trying to support the programmatic.
Plans of the business.
Paula: Well, that is, I mean, the biggest topic overall, Megan, of course, is measuring through incrementality. Do you feel you have that nailed? Is you know, is it something that is, you know, I suppose, well understood internally? I’m guessing it is, again, just by virtue of the maturity of your sector.
So, Like, honestly, it was the part that always made me the most uncomfortable. Again, I was in telecommunications. I’m like, how am I proving this is incremental again? I mean, I just never quite got my head around it, but I think it sounds like you guys really do have that quite robustly measured at this stage.
Megan: We do have some pretty robust measurements. I would say it’s always evolving based off of data. Data is always changing. I mentioned Ahold and Delhaize merged roughly 10 years ago. Data is not all together. It’s always being, you know, finessed and validated. So, we are currently reviewing how we, we measure incrementality because we do want to make sure that we are supporting not only campaign views and brand views, but also down to our CPG partners.
You may or may not have read, we are rolling out more expansive partnerships through 80 retail media. So we’re always trying to make sure that we’re illustrating value to our CPG partners and brand partners. From the top down and from the bottom up.
Paula: And that’s a whole separate topic, Megan. So I think we’ll have to make sure you’re coming back on the show just to talk about retail media at some point, because that to me is something that really is very nascent and massive opportunity.
And I’m starting to see it coming through in lots of different retail networks. And I saw a big conference on it there in Australia last week. And I’ve seen some of the big groups of retailers here in the UAE as well, starting to roll those out. It’s not something I would confess. I don’t really understand too much as yet, but again, your sector, your industry is exactly where I think you guys are leading in terms of, first of all, the relationships with the CPG brands and their willingness, I suppose, to support getting in front of the right, I suppose, target customer, because that’s the whole point from their perspective.
Yeah.
Megan: Yeah. And it’s, a challenge to remain true to the brand and to the customer while also meeting the needs of the business financially and the CPGs goals, right? So we want to make sure that we always operate with integrity and are thinking about what makes sense for the customer. Again, it goes back to what we started talking about at the very beginning.
I, I try to like use the customer as my North star in every decision I make and I’ll never go wrong. Because if I put myself in their shoes, it’s like, how frequently do I really need an email from a grocery store? How many offers do I really want? Or am I going to like clip in order to go shopping at a specific brand?
How am I going to choose which national brand I really want to shop at? But also we’re working with these partners to help elevate their brands. So there’s this fine balance, right? So it’s always trying to, you know, operate through integrity. But also support the customer.
Paula: Totally. Well said.
And and you guys definitely, I mean, to me, the U S is, you know, the king and queen of couponing. So there are so many reasons to communicate, which all feels super important and valid again, depending where we are in the value chain. So I totally get it, but you’re right. You know, at the end of the day, like sometimes I’ve signed up, I know to I do think particularly U S brands and, you know, I get four emails in one day and I’m like, Oh my God.
Like, you know, just run a million miles away. So, so it is funny and you’re right. We have to balance the needs of all of them. And before I forget, actually, I did want to compliment you on what you were talking about there as well on the legal side. So from my background and this is in terms of the availability of coupons that you briefly touched on when I certainly, again, worked in in loyalty back in Ireland, we definitely had.
You know, I suppose more like moral obligations and that we felt we wanted to make sure whatever offers particularly it happened to be in the electricity sector that, you know, there would be perhaps older demographics that mightn’t be digitally savvy. And therefore, when we were building our loyalty proposition, we really had to think long and hard about, you know, where are we excluding people and how to be fair and cost effective at the same time.
But I didn’t realize it was a legal requirement to the US, which is what I think I heard you say.
Megan: Well, not so much a legal requirement, but it’s become a topic in certain states making sure that we are. Excluding people based off of their access to digital savings. I will say the brands, that to your point, take into account, all customers seem to me to be the most successful.
So when we think about our programs, we’re looking at that new kiosk as a way to really provide that opportunity for customers who may or may not use their cell phone, may or may not want to download the app to be able to continue to engage with us. And still receive personalized savings, because I think at the end of the day, when it comes to loyalty, it’s how do we get away from mass marketed offers that drive minimal lift comparatively for Redeemer, non Redeemer and move more towards that personalized opportunity.
Paula: A hundred percent, you know, like it’s a very well used phrase. And something everybody who listens to this show, of course, is working their ass off, dare I say it, to deliver. Sorry, I couldn’t think of any other better way to say it right now. But honestly, I got an email during the week from a travel brand, which shall remain nameless, but they sent me an offer to go to Mecca in Saudi Arabia.
And I’m like, I mean. On what planet am I likely to travel to Saudi Arabia to go to Mecca? I’m not sure what kind of data they picked up on me, but that is not my world at all. So I was like, I think we have a long way to go. I do think you’re further along the track, but I guess I’d love to ask you that, like, how well do you feel you are doing it?
Given that, as you’ve said, you know, there’s legacy architecture, for example, so there is always technical challenges, no matter where any of us is in the industry. So whether we’re new or old or whatever, there’s always something that needs to be upgraded or or built and maintained. And so. So if you were just to kind of say, how do you feel about the personalization that you’re managing to live at this stage?
Like do you feel it’s at a good stage of advancement given, as you said, like we’ve been using AI type technology for a long time, even if we didn’t call it that.
Megan: Yeah, I would say as with my career where I’ve continued to make growth with every move I’ve made. Grocery is by far, at least within my company, that I can say the most advanced when it comes to personalized scoring and offer assignment.
It really it. Having tried to stand up personalized rules engines, it is a huge lift both through the technical server side, as well as the business rules and the time it takes to actually run without timing out. If it runs at all, we managed to do so much. So a prime example of that would be our brands are able to take their weekly ad.
So grocery stores have a weekly ad that goes out, right? With all the items that are on sale within that store by like multiple, what we call DMAs, but their price zones. And. We are able to run that through the engine to personalize the assortment of top 10 items that a customer might be more interested in from that weekly ad based on the pricing within their DMA and their purchase history.
It like on top of giving them additional coupons that might align with those offers so that they can feel that they can gamify the system and stack their savings and have a reason to really keep coming back to us because we are constantly trying to figure out how to make it. Feel that we are their local grocer, and we are constantly thinking about them in finding price savings and assortment and convenience.
So, and all through an easy communication that allows them to easily, you know, clip their savings and come in and shop with us each week. So I think that. Grocery, but also ADUSA has an extremely advanced system through our partners and technical services, even with the older structures.
Paula: Wonderful. Yeah. Well, listen, I honestly, I feel like we could talk for hours about this, Megan. Yeah. A font of knowledge and I’m exhausted just listening to you in terms of that depth of complexity. Again, I, you know, never had that responsibility. So I really admire what you are achieving. As I said, that the personalization you guys are managing to achieve is mind blowing probably to most of this audience and certainly to me.
So, so congrats on all of that. I think it’s fair to say the job is never going to be done. And so I guess my closing question is in terms of the future planning, what are you thinking about in terms of prioritizing the evolution of loyalty in the business?
Megan: Yeah, I’d say we’re always trying to find ways to advance the programs that make sense for the customer base.
A great example of that is Was this past year with giant food, we launched our X rewards, which helps provide a savings or a rewarding opportunity for customers who utilize the pharmacies and the stores which has been traditionally a more sensitive topic to try to, you know, go after because of HIPAA laws but finding areas that are untapped.
The white space, if you will, within the store to ensure that the customer feels that they can both, you know, kind of trick the company into offering more savings, creating that gamification and loyalty, but also that it’s in an easy format for, and more approachable for them. I think finding those.
Those programs personalizing and finding scalable efficiencies for execution, always in order to provide more savings. Everything comes back to the customer. We always want to make it easy, convenient, affordable.
Paula: Totally. But also, I really like your insight as well, Megan, which I’m guessing goes back to your college days, which is just that idea that we all want to feel like we’ve kind of beaten the system.
And I think that is a nuance that loyalty professionals probably appreciate more than anything. So, so listen, I’m going to leave it there for today. I know you love to network, so I will say for the sake of our audience, I know you’ve given us permission to put your LinkedIn. into the show notes for this episode.
And you know, just to give a shout out to everybody who does want to connect with you, whether it’s to talk about, you know, retail media or, you know, personalization or any of the amazing topics we’ve talked on today. You’ve really been a brilliant guest from my perspective, Megan. So listen, is there anything else that you wanted to mention that I didn’t ask you about before we wrap up?
Megan: I mean, only that I don’t think I would be here today if it weren’t for some really amazing mentors and supporters through loyalty and through CRM. And I just, I think that we have an incredible network and what you do is awesome. You’ve had 1 of them on your your podcast before Ryan Draude from Giant Food.
So I just, I want to highlight that. We through networking make loyalty better for the customer every day. So reach out. I love to connect.
Paula: Amazing. Brilliant stuff. So listen, Megan Chickrell from Ahold Delhaize. Thank you so much from Let’s Talk Loyalty and Loyalty TV.
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