CPG & Customer Loyalty: Insights from Clarissa Schealer

Introduction

This article features Clarissa Schealer, SVP of Sales (North America) at Capillary Technologies. The article is based on a transcript of a recent video uploaded to Capillary Tech’s YouTube Channel on February 20, 2024. The original video is part of Capillary’s #LoyaltyOutlook2024 video series.

CPG Loyalty & Industry Insights from Clarissa Schealer

I’m Clarissa Schealer, and I’m the SVP of Sales in North America. I’ve always been interested in human behavior and how to motivate change. Having said that, I’ve ended up being everywhere from billboard advertising all the way through every facet of marketing technology and loyalty. The continuity across all of those experiences was finding creative ways to motivate human behavior and to use data to make behavioral changes and help brands grow.

How Important Is It for CPG Brands to Leverage Loyalty to Grow Their Business?

Leveraging loyalty marketing has certainly become important for CPG [Consumer Packaged Goods] brands for many reasons. One is that it’s one of the few ways for a CPG brand to gather consumer data. There is that distance between them because there are multiple purchase paths, and having that direct connection is key to acquiring data for CPG brands. Historically, CPG brands used loyalty to scan a QR code, much like a punch card, right, where you’re just keeping track of what they bought and then rewarding them for the next purchase.

The CPG space needs to embrace motivating change. It’s important to begin looking at things like milestones as well. For example, maybe I’m a brand that sells baby care products, and a shopper purchased diapers from me but never baby food. You would be able to see that data, know what SKUs have been purchased, and then offer rewards for purchasing across categories. So, I bought diapers and baby food, and I got extra rewards for that. Maybe I got free samples and unlocked access to products I’d never purchased before. We can even look at it from the perspective of stock. I may have an overstock of certain products in my warehouse, and I want to offer double points or buy one get one on those products to my best shoppers.

Loyalty is a great way to look at all sorts of business challenges. Motivating that change in customer behavior to encourage cross-purchases is an area where CPG brands can really leverage loyalty. Again, whether it’s moving excess stock or encouraging cross-category purchasing, there are lots of ways loyalty can be useful for CPG.

How Does a CPG Brand That Wants to Leverage a Loyalty Program Go About It?

It’s really key for CPG brands to choose a Martech loyalty solution that can come and easily integrate with all of your other tools and offer that consultative service as well. CPG businesses need a partner who’s got that marriage of technology and consultation. So, not only are they giving you a robust platform, but they’re also telling you how to use it. They’re leveraging in-solution AI and human power around you as well. So, finding a solution that gives you that 360⁰ degree use of loyalty is key.

How Can Managed-SaaS Help CPG Brands Build and Execute Their Loyalty Programs?

Capillary is really a purpose-built loyalty solution, but we’re also couched in human expertise, and that’s a magical combination because we are certainly leveraging data; we’re leveraging AI with Generative Loyalty. Still, we have that human capital of experts that have been doing this for over 20 years, and they can really bring to the table those best practices, those ideas, and support you. And certainly, fill in the gaps because your team might not have the bandwidth to think of new ideas and implement new strategies, and that’s where our team can come in again and fill in those gaps and help you create a robust solution.

It'll start in a few ways. We’ll certainly do a deep discovery and get to understand the business challenges you might have. And again, those business challenges might not be just about loyalty. It could be challenges that your finance team is experiencing, or your logistics team is experiencing, and we’ll do a deep dive to understand all the business challenges and then figure out ways that loyalty can help you solve those.

We’ll start onboarding your data and taking a look at data because that is truly the foundation of loyalty, and we’ll start to understand your customers, and then we’ll run it through our solution, which is with different AI nudges for example. That will show us whether your shoppers are behaving as we thought, and then we will show you the data and provide recommendations. Then, alongside all that data and the SaaS platform, are also those experts in loyalty who’ll be by your side to guide you with additional recommendations and any other consultation you may need.

Conclusion

Capillary Technologies provides the top SaaS loyalty and rewards platform solution for CPG brands. Our loyalty strategists and data consultants, combined with an industry-praised technology platform, can help brands improve their engagement strategies through data analysis.

By collaborating with the Capillary and Brierley loyalty experts, brands can navigate the intricacies of data analytics, unravel insightful findings, and craft engagement strategies that resonate with their unique customer base.

Contact us today to learn more!

Trevor Antley edited the transcript for this blog.

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Trevor Antley is the Head of Global Content at Capillary Technologies. He has over 10 years of digital marketing experience, including content marketing, SEO (Search Engine Optimization), B2B marketing, and more. In his spare time, Trevor loves robotics / mechatronics and current tech trends, including artificial intelligence (AI) and large language models (LLMs).