Attracting and retaining customers is more challenging than ever for brands, but one agency has harnessed the power of technology to relieve the promotional pressure…
There’s been a dramatic shift in the way consumers and brands engage with each other in recent times, driven by the rapid rise of technology.
We live in a world where consumers expect to be rewarded, and they expect brands to do so instantly, seamlessly, constantly, and in a personalised fashion. Simply discounting products and services just doesn’t cut it anymore.
According to a recent report by Nielsen, Aussie retailers are spending $51 million on discount sales, and 48 per cent of this amount would have happened anyway.
In other words, brands are wasting their money discounting FMCG items that would sell the same amount whether they were on sale or not.
As a result, Nielsen identified an $11.3 billion opportunity (considering the discounted amount) for Aussie retailers to improve the efficiency of their promotions.
With pressures like attracting and retaining customers, improving lift value, capturing data and shortening product refresh cycles, brands are turning to the experts to manage and deliver their end-to-end promotional strategy.
Founded in 2006 and acquired by Village Roadshow in 2012, Edge has heavily influenced the promotional trends in Australia, building and managing thousands of promotions that have removed the need to discount products thanks to its unique and technically driven end-to-end solution.
The agency offers a suite of robust yet flexible, cloud-based promotional platforms for companies to design, implement, and execute dependent on their campaign.
From there, Edge integrates a portfolio of over 750 digital retail rewards to deliver a wide variety of offers, from bonus digital gift cards and cashbacks to mega prizes and bespoke offers.
The final ingredients that make up Edge are promotional insurance and compliance, which protect a clients’ budget and reputation, so brands can run mega promotional headlines that deliver the cut-through, without discounting their products.
Working with brands from numerous sectors including FMCG, banking and insurance, the agency issues over one million rewards each year, totalling more than $100 million.
Furthermore, Edge has collected over 50 million promotional entries since inception, giving it the capability to view different campaigns and customers across industries, and measure their impact.
Case in point
One of the world’s biggest confectionary brands recently enlisted the help of Edge to drive uplift of their product by offering a reward that appealed to a wide demographic across Australia and New Zealand.
Edge helped facilitate the promotion with a truly end-to-end solution, driven purely by technology.
The agency built a fully customised website for the brand, and managed promotional claims using its automated receipt validation scanning system, AutoCHECK.
The technology provided a seamless user engagement experience for the brand’s customers, and garnered a deep data set of consumer behaviour insights for the brand.
The promotion generated ‘feel good’ brand association, with strong traction in market and positive feedback from customers.
It’s all in the tech
In this day and age, the companies at the forefront of technology and innovation are the ones that will taste the most success – and so will their clients.
This is something that Edge is very conscious of, according to managing director Fergus Koochew.
“Most of our profits are put straight toward advancing our technology even further,” he tells B&T.
“We’re always looking for new ways to evolve our suite of promotional solutions and enhance the customer experience.”
Koochew said the future of promotional technology remains exciting.
“In the coming year, the market will see new digital payment technologies come to life, more seamless client integration options and, off the back of enhanced data analytics, even deeper insights into customer behaviour than ever before,” he said.
