Boots loyalty card digitised to add personalised offers

By

Sandra Halliday

Published
May 17, 2019

UK beauty retail giant Boots is hoping to add to the appeal of its popular loyalty card with a feature that allows Advantage Card holders to collect points on their smartphone and spend them in-store straight from those phones.

The major move to take one of the UK’s best-known loyalty schemes digital is a recognition of how important app and smartphone-based shopping is to the beauty sector at present.

The new feature comes embedded into the Boots app and also allows shoppers to use offers from the app that have been tailored for them. 

The retailer’s UK marketing director Helen Normoyle said digitising the Advantage Card “makes it more flexible and available, and gives customers more opportunities to tailor and personalise offers.”

The card was launched 22 years ago and has a massive 17.1 million members today, making it one of the top cards of its type in Britain. But with UK beauty being hugely competitive and plenty of physical and online retailers grabbing market share, the card has been losing members. As many as 200,000 of them exited the card scheme in the last financial year, a period that coincided with falling sales at the chain.

Other new initiatives linked to the card include in-store marketing alongside a competition that offers points as prizes when shoppers use the card on their phone.