Loyalty card in the mobile

In June GävleTidningar threw away the old plastic loyalty card and brought in a new modern loyalty card in the mobile, Tidningskortet (ie “Newspaper card”).

– We wanted to make our card accessible in other channels, get easier administration and of course – make more money, says Carina Offermo at GävleTidningar.

– Now it takes thirty minutes to become a member. Before, with the plastic card, you had to wait ten days before you had the card in your letterbox.

The “Newspaper card” has 30 800 members and out of those 20 400 has the mobile card.

– We have chosen to let the readers that want to keep the plastic card keep it. Some of our readers are elderly and might not have a mobile phone and we do not want to exclude them at this point, says Carina.

In order to get started with a loyalty card in the mobile you need phone numbers. And lots of them.

- We had 14 000 mobile phone numbers from the beginning. We sent a letter to all members in order to get them to update their personal information. We also advertised to inform about the loyalty card and get more people to register, she says.

GävleTidningar advertises offers and deals to the members on Wednesdays and Sundays. Usually between 5-6 offers each week. In order to take part of an offer the member sends a SMS with a code and gets the complete offer to their phone that they then show at the store. The result has been in average 2 000-2 500 SMS. The SMS cost is 0 SEK.

– There has been a great interest and we are really focusing on getting attractive offers that our readers actually want and are interested in. Like for example tickets to concerts, trips and SPA, says Carina.

GävleTidningar calculates on an annual revenue of around one million SEK for the loyalty card in the mobile.