Loyalty program adds the ‘plus’ to consumers’ wellness
Rite Aid’s wellness+, one of the few loyalty cards that proffers an actual healthcare component as one of the benefits of use, continues to be one of Rite Aid’s key marketing initiatives moving forward. The retailer boasted 16 million wellness+ members as of July 26, only 12 weeks into the program, which suggests the company is well on its way to realizing projections of 20 million members by year’s end, according to several analyst reports.
No other loyalty card program provides actual healthcare screenings as one of the benefits of using the card. “[Rite Aid’s] wellness+ is really a key support mechanism for our wellness empowerment brand-positioning,” said John Learish, Rite Aid SVP marketing. “We’ve got some pretty interesting and appealing service benefits that are attached to the program.”
For example, a wellness+ member has around-the-clock access to a pharmacist either through an 800 number or through real-time chat by logging on to the wellness+ dashboard online. And when a customer reaches 500 points, Rite Aid offers a free healthcare screening, measuring blood glucose and total cholesterol. “It’s really a combination of the health benefits…with the savings benefits, that really differentiates this program,” Learish said.
The healthcare component associated with the program is one of those intangibles that helps distinguish Rite Aid’s loyalty card from others on the market, especially as consumers today can rattle their keychains with a host of retailers’ loyalty cards. But none of those programs tie pharmacy into the front-end, and vice versa, quite like Rite Aid does. Only three months into the program, more than one-third of front-end sales (37%) and prescriptions filled (36%) are being made by wellness+ cardholders, according to Rite Aid’s June 23 analyst call.
Rite Aid also is generating quite a bit of marketing data through the card, enabling the retailer to better target market-specific customer groups. “We’re getting some very interesting views into the data,” Learish noted. “We’ve got a lot of transactions coming through now, enough to make the data really meaningful. Across every single metric—average basket size, average units/basket, scripts/basket, margin—the wellness+ customer on all of those metrics dramatically exceeds the non-wellness+ customer.”
Going forward, as that data stream continues to become more robust, Rite Aid will be better able to target front-end-only customers and convert them into crossover customers—customers who both fill their prescriptions at Rite Aid and shop the front-end. For example, a cardholder identified as a front-end-only shopper now can be target-marketed around the benefits of transferring his or her prescriptions to Rite Aid—a $25 gift card and a much faster way to accumulate wellness+ points.
And the potential to capture and grow the number of prescription patients is significant. According to the chain’s annual meeting presentation, 71% of Rite Aid’s total shopper base currently shop the front-end only; and 24% shop both the front-end and fill prescriptions at the Rite Aid pharmacy. However, looking only at the prescription patients serviced by Rite Aid, 85% of those customers also shop the front-end.
So, enticing more patients to transfer their prescriptions to Rite Aid not only should boost pharmacy sales, but front-end sales as well. Pilot stores that tested the wellness+ offering before its national launch in April boasted a $37.09 average basket size, compared with an average basket size of $35.01 in those stores that did not yet offer wellness+ during the program’s pilot phase.