GNC shoppers can be segmented into three general groups: those who want to improve their physical performance, those seeking to lose weight and consumers who want to maintain their general wellness. These varying goals make personalization a priority for GNC. The retailer has focused on maximizing personalization across the customer journey, including through receipts.
“We have very disparate customer groups that have different goals they’re trying to achieve,” said Jennifer Biefel, Director, Customer Marketing & Loyalty at GNC in an interview with Retail TouchPoints. “If I have a message about pre-workout products, sending that to everyone doesn’t really make sense. We really need to be able to segment or look at purchase history to be able to talk to the right customers about those individual products.”
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The retailer is working with FlexEngage, a personalized receipt and confirmation solution provider, to ensure that every e-receipt includes relevant, easily accessible information. GNC sends more than 8 million digital receipts annually, and the average customer checks their emailed receipts twice, helping these messages break through filters and reach customers’ eyes.
Emails that are related to relevant purchases include a banner advertising auto-delivery, which draws a 10% clickthrough rate, according to Biefel. The emails also offers qualified shoppers a chance to upgrade to myGNC Pro Access, a paid higher-tier version of the myGNC loyalty program, which resulted in a 10X lift in signups compared to a control group.
Additionally, GNC uses its receipts to encourage shoppers to review the store they visited, and the retailer plans to add individual product reviews in the future. Shoppers who are checking their receipts still have their experience fresh in their mind, making them good candidates for requesting positive reviews.
“That helps us both with Google and the search rankings,” said Biefel. “People are super engaged with this — they just walked out of the store and it’s an easy thing to do, so we’ve seen some great engagement through this on the receipt as well.”
E-Receipts Connect To Product-Specific Content
Beyond personalization, each item on the email receipt includes a link to the corresponding product page, which includes additional information on the item and its proper use. This can reinforce any information the customer learned from associates in-store, while directly placing customers back into GNC’s e-Commerce ecosystem and encouraging repeat purchases.
“The main goal is to drive retention and repeat trips,” said Biefel. “We’re personalizing everything within the receipt in order to do that, to make it relevant for that customer. Offering the digital receipt gives the customer mobile convenience, and because we’re populating it with relevant information for them, they get additional product knowledge and additional product savings to incentivize them to come back and make another purchase.”
The mobile receipt technology also works for e-Commerce orders, which saves the labor of printing and inserting individual slips into every package. These receipts include offers designed to bring shoppers back in-store, driving omnichannel engagement.
Going forward, personalized offerings will be added to print receipts for those customers that still prefer a paper copy detailing their transaction. Additionally, GNC will feed additional data into its receipts to improve personalization even further, such as by including product recommendations and one-to-one promotions.
“That’s really where personalization is so important in our space of health and wellness,” said Biefel. “Everything is so individualized — whether you’re looking to treat a condition or trying to augment something, having the knowledge and vision of all our customers’ purchasing behavior really enables us to make future recommendations for products that enhance their regimen or ensure they’re continuing on the replenishment cycle for a product they’re already taking.”
For further details on how GNC and other retailers are engaging beyond the traditional customer journey, check out the free Connected Consumer Series webinar How GNC, Under Armour & Aldo Leverage Personalization To Reshape The Post-Sale Experience. In this session, executives from all three retailers discuss how they worked with FlexEngage to address post-purchase challenges.
