Building ‘Plenti’ of loyalty

Rite Aid’s wellness+ loyalty program was a key catalyst in the company’s turnaround, Ken Martindale, Rite Aid president and COO, told Drug Store News. And now that the loyalty program is evolving into wellness+ with Plenti, part of a first-of-its-kind loyalty coalition, it may serve as another bellwether for Rite Aid as the company transforms into a comprehensive retail healthcare company.

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“We built wellness+ as a true loyalty program, and we built it around the pharmacy,” Martindale said. “The quickest way for customers to earn points is by filling prescriptions.” Now that Rite Aid has partnered with American Express and other major brands, its loyalty program could soon evolve into a strong tool for recruiting future pharmacy customers. “We think this is a tremendous opportunity to acquire new customers into our loyalty program,” Martindale said. “We know from past history that, once somebody engages with wellness+, they tend to like the program. Our goal is to expose new people to those tremendous benefits. And Plenti is a really unique way to do that.”



Rite Aid is only a few months into its relationship with Plenti, but the early results have been quite positive. To date, Rite Aid has enrolled more than 10 million customers, and its Plenti partners have enrolled millions more throughout the coalition, Martindale recently told analysts.



Rite Aid already has been mining its wellness+ consumer loyalty data for consumer insights, which will help fuel personalized offers in the future, especially in digital channels. “Digital is the way of the future,” Martindale said. “Being able to talk to customers one-on-one is absolutely the way to drive business in the future. That’s a big opportunity for us in the next three to five years.”