IGA Digital Marketing Platform

The word "digital" gets thrown around a lot nowadays, and for good reason. The new generation of shoppers is made up of digital natives who have always had inexpensive access to the internet. So much of marketing is digital now that it might seem like the only form of the trade. That's because digital marketing—marketing efforts that use electronic devices or the internet, like social media, mobile, and email—not only reaches these digital natives and older generations, but also delivers feedback to marketers about shopper behavior, allowing for more personalized and effective marketing.

Thanks to this feedback and the precise targeting capabilities, brands are increasingly spending their marketing dollars on digital. In fact, brands in the U.S. and U.K. spent 23 percent of their budgets on digital marketing in 2017, compared to just 16 percent in 2016, according to a recent study.

IGA has been investing in digital marketing to help our independent grocers succeed through the National Digital Ad and IGA Social programs. According to Jim Walz, the vice president of IGA Brand Development, these practices put IGA stores on par with national chain stores.

For IGA retailers to better compete and get ahead of national chains, we must use digital marketing to enhance our unique differentiator, which, Walz says, is the personal relationship IGA retailers have with our shoppers.

"Chains are starting to mimic the one-on-one relationship with the shopper—they are trying to take that from us," Walz says. "We have something that they will never have—that authentic in-store relationship that shoppers know who you are and you know who they are."

The next step, says, Walz, is to expand that personal relationship to digital. "To be winners of the future, we also need to have a digital relationship. It's not one or the other, and in our view, it's not optional."

And that’s where IGA’s new Digital Marketing Platform (DMP) comes into play. Bringing together all of IGA’s digital tools under one umbrella program, the DMP is  the key to and making  IGA more competitive with national chains.

The IGA Digital Marketing Platform

IGA's new Digital Marketing Platform (DMP) allows IGA retailers to compete with big chains by establishing that digital relationship while enhancing our unique personal relationship with shoppers.

"The digital marketing platform is really a very simple, nimble platform that lays on top of the POS system in your stores," Walz explains. Instead of converting every store to the same POS system—which IGA CEO John Ross says could take decades—this DMP uses the cloud. "We embed a little tiny bit of code in the POS system and it pops that data up into the cloud," says Ross. "Once it's in the cloud, we can begin to do cool stuff with it." These digital marketing tools will:

• Create connectivity to your existing or future e-commerce initiatives
• Build sales with digital offers
• Drive shopper engagement with a weekly personalized email to your shoppers
• Increase shopper loyalty and excitement with IGA Receipt Rewards
• Expand with additional features in time

Take a look at some of the features offered in IGA’s DMP.

Digital offers and automation

Inmar, whose team is project managing the Digital Marketing Platform implementation, will build a microsite for your store that loads coupons for products you actually have in the store, ensuring the offers your shoppers receive are ready to be redeemed.

To benefit from the new DMP, shoppers will need to register. "The registration for this digital platform is easy," says Bethany Matthews, the client development director at Inmar. "Probably the most difficult part of the registration process is choosing your password."

Then the shopper will receive a welcome email where they can click and enter the store's microsite to see the available digital offers. The shopper can begin the personalization process here by choosing the types of offers they want to see first (pet, baby, produce, etc.).

Inmar is also automating the National Digital Ad for participating IGA retailers, so they won't have to load the IGA offers into the POS system. This automation also  gets the coupon money back from the manufacturers automatically.

Targeted, personalized emails

Once the shopper has registered, the platform will start tracking their purchases and customizing coupon offers for them. Then the personalization gets even better, according to Matthews. "Another piece of this digital marketing platform is targeted email,” she says.  “As shoppers register for digital offers, and they come inside your store and do their shopping, we are able to see what they're buying. When we send out emails to these buyers, it's going to be personalized to them."

These emails provide a personalized experience that is very in-demand with shoppers. It demonstrates that you are listening to what they want and need. For example, shoppers without young children don't want to see coupons for diapers, and if they do, they may tune out of that store's emails and offers. With the DMP's targeted emails, the offers will correspond to the shopper's purchasing patterns, so they will be more likely to read and use the offers they receive.

IGA Receipt Rewards

In addition to the targeted emails, the DMP will also print a message on every receipt. If a shopper is already registered, an IGA Receipt Reward will be printed on the receipt; if the shopper is not yet registered, a message encouraging them to register will be printed on the receipt.

According to Matthews, the highlight of these rewards is that the shopper doesn't have to do anything. Initially, the Receipt Reward will be the same for all shoppers. After the program is established, , it will be possible for retailers to make sure they receive relevant rewards and offers based on their shopping history from the deals IGA negotiates with CPG brands, which will keep your shoppers coming back.

Walz feels these receipt rewards are the "unique differentiating component of the DMP," as IGA is ahead of shopper demand with the feature. He says these rewards act like a casino game—they're random, fun, and expire, and are replaced with a new reward the next week.

Do we need to add social in? No

We Need You

For the Digital Marketing Platform to operate at its best, IGA retailers must join together. "With DMP, we can negotiate national offers and initiate national marketing programs for all IGA stores," Walz explains. "We can have a way to uniformly prove to the CPG manufacturing community that IGA is easier to do business with than ever before because we can execute promotions uniformly across the organization. And we can report back the results. Those are really the key elements this digital marketing platform makes possible for us."

Ross echoes that statement, saying, "We need the manufacturers to treat us like a retail chain. And in order to do that we need to behave like one. And behaving like one means that we have to develop this national communications layer."

And at the same time, each store can use information about their shoppers to do local marketing.

Joining together can also save retailers money. Walz has found that stores are spending a lot of money on various marketing programs, but they're working together for the retailer – or the shopper.. With the DMP, all IGA stores will be united under one program, reducing the price to only $100 a month. Together, IGA retailers make the platform effective and affordable, and enable IGA to add more features over time.

Launch Timeline and Next Steps

Walz says that IGA's goal is to have the DMP installed in 90 percent of all IGA stores by the end of 2019. "Today, there are a little over 300 stores that are in some stages of activation for this program," he shares. That is about one-third of the stores in the U.S., while about 200 stores currently on the digital offers program will be receiving a slight upgrade.

In order to stay on track to install the DMP in 90 percent of stores this year, retailers must complete this survey to indicate their interest level and the POS they're using so IGA and Inmar can coordinate the rest of the installation.

To get started, make sure you've filled out the survey so IGA and Inmar can learn  the POS system in your store. Then you will receive a call from Sarah Rivers, IGA's digital marketing manager, with the next steps. After that, Inmar will act as the project manager for the platform implementation.

"Once we learn from IGA that the retailer is ready to get started with DMP, the team at Inmar will contact you, the retailer, and begin working closely with you to implement the store for the features and functions of DMP," says Matthews. That means keeping the store updated with progress, and working with the store's point of sale vendor. The best part? The retailer's work is minimal, since Inmar is working directly with IGA and the store's POS vendor.

Once implemented, the Digital Marketing Platform will act as a solution that will bring together all of the digital tools that IGA has been rolling out—and then some—on a grand scale that independent retailers normally wouldn't have access to, making you more competitive with national chains.

"Every day that you don't have this system is a harder day for you than it needs to be," Walz stresses. "And it's another day that we as IGA are not taking advantage of a tool that we desperately need to be able to put ourselves in position to work with the CPG companies in a way that other national companies can do. We can do it too, as soon as we get this going."