How Aimia helped the world’s leading beverage brand build relationships.
By Jonathan Harman, Chief Development Officer, EMEA
Read the full study by downloading the PDF.
Summary
Leading beverage manufacturer Coca-Cola engaged Carlson Marketing's (now operating as Aimia) UK business to build an innovative web-based reward program designed to reach the notoriously hard to impress teen market and prompt them to engage with Coca-Cola. The result: Coke Zone is the most successful online packaged goods program in the UK and delivers highly positive return on investment.
Challenge
Headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia in the United States, the Coca-Cola Company is the world's leading manufacturer, marketer and distributor of non-alcoholic beverages, with nearly 400 brands and operations in over 200 countries. Coca-Cola Great Britain markets 21 brands and over 100 products to consumers in the United Kingdom.
Coca-Cola approached Carlson Marketing’s (now operating as Aimia) business in the UK to help them solve a key customer loyalty problem: how to recruit the next generation of Coca-Cola consumers, whilst maintaining the loyal consumer base they had built over 125 years of existence.
The Opportunity
As designers and operators of loyalty programs for some of the world’s biggest and best-known brands, we know that customers are a brand’s most valuable assets. We also knew that Coca-Cola’s historic brand equity combined with a robust customer database could provide insight that keeps their customers engaged between promotions. We identified the following areas of opportunity to build a reward strategy for Coca-Cola in the UK that captured loyalty and built marketing ROI:
- Capture customer insight: Customer data is the key to retaining high-value households and driving cross-portfolio trial and adoption at key life-stages. Packaged goods manufacturers typically struggle to capture proprietary data on individual customers; however through driving unique code entry from products provided a way to build a robust customer database.
- Encourage customer engagement: Coca-Cola needed an interactive virtual environment with web content designed to reach the notoriously hard-to-impress teen market, as well as unique and entertaining rewards designed to capture interest and drive customers to the virtual environment.
- Integrate with global CRM efforts: We knew that any marketing activity in the UK market needed to integrate with Coca-Cola’s global loyalty strategy to maximize cost efficiencies.
Our goal: Give UK consumers another reason to choose Coke lest they lose out on unique rewards and experiences that only Coke can deliver.
The Solution
Carlson Markeing (now operating as Aimia) helped Coca-Cola design and execute Coke Zone: An innovative rewards program that combined a compelling web experience with unique promotions designed to capture interest and drive customer insight back into the program. Our solution included:
- A differentiating rewards program: We devised a “lean forward” CRM/Loyalty program that used on-pack code entry to engage loyal Coke consumers with prize draw entries, rewards and unique experiences.
- A multi-channel communications plan: We created Web and mobile communications channels to feed Coca-Cola’s global insight database, deliver behaviour-triggered message prompts, segmented emails and SMS communications.
- Brand extension into social media: We helped Coca-Cola execute a Christmas campaign that gave consumers the opportunity to tweet personal Christmas messages that appeared on the iconic Piccadilly Circus sign in London. The promotion was designed to increased the brand’s Twitter followers and acquire new Coke Zone members.
- Program ROI: We worked with Aimia’s sister company LMG Insight & Communications (now operating as Aimia) to establish robust incremental revenue attributable to the Coke Zone platform.
The result of our efforts: Coke Zone, an interactive web-based reward program environment designed to reach the notoriously hard to impress teen market and prompt them to engage with Coca-Cola—and keep them coming back for more.
The Result
The results of our work on the Coke Zone reward program are phenomenal:
- The most successful packaged goods program online in the UK as measured by average dwell time, page views and unique visitor numbers.
- Highly positive ROI, based on observed consumption uplift of members participating in the two leading grocers in the country.
- Strong enrolment among the key hard-to-reach audience of teens and young adults.
Coke Zone is now consistently the UK's no.1 Food & Drink brand website.
Thanks to Aimia’s partnership with Coca-Cola in the UK, the world’s No. 1 beverage brand, Coca-Cola now has an always-on relationship portal for consumers, combining revenue-driving loyalty, brand immersion and relationship marketing into a winning formula for their best customers.