Tesco has started trialling promotional initiatives utilising Clubcard data to target customers with ultra-specific deals at the checkout. Dunnhumby, the consultancy helping Tesco develop Clubcard, said trials had started in January in a cluster of stores in Wales. If they are successful, they will be rolled out across the estate. Speaking at an Insight Research conference on promotional strategies, Dunnhumby Retail md Steve Gray said the new generation of promotions grouped customers into bands according to how they shopped a category and rewarded them accordingly. For example, when a customer's Clubcard is swiped at the till, it might recognise that she has made the fourth purchase of a particular detergent brand in as many weeks and reward her with £1 off. Conversely, she might be offered a ticket to a local tourist attraction that can be generated instantly at the checkout, the reward depending on her customer profile and the type of offers she has expressed an interest in. Clubcard data was like gold dust when evaluating promotions because it told Tesco exactly how customers responded to them, said Gray. "All EPoS data can tell you is that you've seen a sales uplift while the product is on promotion. It doesn't tell you whether this is generated by regular purchasers buying in bulk, whether the deal attracted new customers to the category, or whether people have switched brands." With this information at its disposal, Tesco is working on targeting these different categories of customers with more tailored offers, said Gray. Whether competitors were at a disadvantage because they didn't have the data Tesco and Sainsbury had gleaned from loyalty cards was a moot point, said Gray. Safeway may have been right to axe its ABC card because it was not geared up to utilise the data it had and so the card merely represented a drain on resources. However, "you have to work very hard to get insight from EPoS data alone", he said. {{NEWS }}

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