Ahold USA's Digital Ops Hit Milestones, Expand
Carlisle, Pa.-based Ahold USA has revealed a number of milestones it has reached in its digital growth strategies, including growth in its digital user base, digital coupon activations, web traffic and social media follower base.
The digital growth strategies include significant investments in new digital tools, including relevant digital coupons, new websites, mobile app improvements and a new recipe center. Their aim is to drive customer loyalty through savings and personalization.
New milestones include:
- 1 million new digital users and counting over last year
- New, responsive brand websites, leading to 20 percent growth in web traffic over last year
- 76 percent increase in monthly app users, and tripling of mobile app downloads
- More than 1 million social media followers across platforms
"Through the introduction of new technology, Ahold USA brands are able to offer more savings, faster shopping, and a more transparent connection with their customers," said Matt Simon, VP, loyalty and digital marketing at Ahold USA. "Since the implementation of their digital growth strategies, Ahold USA brands have seen record-setting engagement, activation and redemption."
Additional milestones and innovations include:
- More than 174 million digital coupon activations in 2017 to date at Ahold USA brands, a 179 percent jump versus the previous year. Ahold USA credits the success to its Load to Card programs, which, with the push of a button, directly load digital coupons to loyalty cards, making it easier for shoppers to find and use coupons. The programs also offer exclusive digital savings via e-mail – 29 million-plus of them loaded to cards this year so far – and new digital bonus week events that stack another $100 in digital coupons to each user’s account.
- More than 15 million views this year alone of videos in the Fresh Stories YouTube video campaign. The initiative, created in an effort to provide “meaningful, transparent information” to customers about the food they buy, contains a library of 30-plus “engaging and emotional” videos about fresh product suppliers. One video, “True North Salmon: A Partnership for Sustainable Seafood,” has been viewed more than 200,000 times.
- A partnership with Toronto-based digital flier aggregation app Flipp has improved the digital circular experience, letting customers quickly clip relevant items, browse bonus buys, add items to their shopping lists and even load coupons directly onto their loyalty cards.
- The ability to select from more than 3,700 recipes featured in Ahold USA’s monthly Savory magazine with the click of a button, transfer ingredients directly into a Peapod digital shopping cart via the Savory Shopping Tool, and have them delivered.
- An expanded social media presence for each Ahold USA brand through Instagram, a visual social media platform the retailer plans to use to develop “unique strategies to engage with consumers in fun and unique ways.”
Ahold USA, through its Stop & Shop, Giant Landover, and Giant Carlisle banners, operates approximately 780 supermarkets with 115,000 associates in 14 states and Washington, D.C. It also operates Peapod, its Skokie, Ill.-based grocery ecommerce arm.