Coborn’s Successfully Tests Birdzi’s Customized Offer Solution
After piloting Visper 2.0, a new solution from Birdzi that enables grocers to create personalized promotions with no manual input, enabling every element to be specifically customized to each individual shopper, regional grocer Coborn’s Inc. experienced an increase in loyalty.
The solution leverages KIC Scores, a shopper quality index, to create the optimal promotion for each customer. The promoted products are selected from across the entire catalog, instead of from a preset list of vendor deals, and paired with the images, text and discount most likely to engage the shopper, with no manual intervention required.
“Visper 2.0 ensures higher relevancy and makes it easy for shoppers to find deals that will encourage them to visit the same grocer time and time again,” explained Shekar Raman, CEO and co-founder of Iselin, N.J.-based Birdzi. “Already we’re seeing fantastic results from our customer base. It’s clear Visper 2.0 is redefining what it means for grocers to create personal digital experiences.”
Longtime Birdzi customer Coborn’s tested Visper 2.0 between April 2022 and August 2022. The solution automatically created thousands of customized offers for the store’s shoppers and distributed them through Coborn’s app and website. The grocer saw improvement in customer loyalty and retention, without investing any employee time in managing the personalization campaigns.
In fact, among shoppers who took part in the Visper 2.0 campaign, there was a 6% increase in retention or growth of shopper loyalty segments, and a nearly 32% improvement in migrating shoppers upwards through loyalty tiers.
“After we saw how well our customers responded to this new style of personalization, we were inspired to expand the implementation across all of our locations,” noted Diana Barr, director digital and loyalty marketing at Coborn’s. “The solution fits seamlessly into our existing customer touchpoints, and the impact on our customer’s lifetime value was quickly clear.”
Visper 2.0 also allows grocers to partner with consumer packaged goods brands on highly relevant promotions to interested customers. This generates another revenue stream for grocers amid rising prices and demonstrates additional value to CPG partners, according to Birdzi.
St. Cloud, Minn.-based Coborn’s Inc. is a 101-year-old employee-owned grocery retailer with nearly 10,000 employees and 66 grocery stores across Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wisconsin and Michigan under the Coborn’s Cash Wise Foods, Marketplace Foods and Hornbacher’s banners. Coborn’s also owns liquor, fuel and pharmacy locations. To support its 130 various retail business units, Coborn’s Inc. operates its own central bakery, dry cleaning facility and grocery distribution center. The company is No. 82 The PG 100, Progressive Grocer’s 2022 list of the top food and consumables retailers in North America. It was also named a 2022 Top 10 Regional Operator to Watch by the publication.
