SNDL needed to find the best way to drive customers into their stores, and they wanted to optimize loyalty membership engagement to better serve those members. They turned to Vibes to help them develop the right solution to fill these gaps.
When cannabis became federally legal in Canada in 2018, SNDL quickly became the largest private-sector liquor and cannabis retailer in the world. SNDL owns over 350 cannabis and liquor retail stores across five provinces in Canada.
SNDL had a company mandate to build a loyalty program for their liquor and retail banners as a means of aggregating customer data and drive customer retention. Once built, SNDL began thinking about two objectives: how to best offer incentives such as points, discounts or other benefits to drive customers into their stores, and how exactly to contact their customers.
While SNDL already used email, Loyalty Manager Connor Young believed there were more engaging channels they simply couldn’t miss out on: “We recognized that channels like SMS are much more intimate, with higher response rates, than email. We all get 100 emails a day, including junk mail, so we started looking for a partner who would be able to fill that gap for us.”
SNDL launched their Vibes program with SMS transactional messaging and Mobile Wallet for both digital offers and a loyalty card for their members – all in an effort to optimize which members they reach, in order to better serve them.
SNDL’s mobile wallet loyalty card is already aiding in a smoother checkout experience for their customers. Young says that now, “Instead of giving your phone number at checkout, now customers just have to scan their card, which brings up their account and ties it to that transaction, and off they go.”
Between the need for multiple short codes and integration with multiple vendors in their existing tech stack, implementation was going to be a lot of work. However, Young says that Vibes made the integration efforts seamless. “Vibes was able to walk us through and help us understand what work needed to be done. The team – particularly the Technical Account Manager – is truly amazing and super helpful. They were with us every step of the way.”
Young nods to how using the Vibes platform itself is also seamless – from campaign setup to the analytics, and the flexibility allowing them to segment their SMS subscriber lists, he finds it all super easy to understand and implement, made especially important for a very lean loyalty team.
Having a vendor that natively offers both SMS and Mobile Wallet capabilities had been critical for SNDL, and why Vibes was an obvious choice. “The two-in-one offering is huge for us” Young says, “and on the digital wallet front, we’re seeing well over a 50% save rate. It’s great to see people active with and finding the value in it.”
Up next for SNDL: utilizing more of Vibes’ AI-centric platform features, and elevating the use of customer data to bring even more relevant, highly-personalized offers in front of them to influence their shopping behavior.
Utilizing the various channels SNDL has to communicate with in a more personalized manner remains their top priority. Given the performance to date of their mobile campaigns, Vibes will continue to be a big part of that picture.
Having a vendor that natively offers both SMS and Mobile Wallet capabilities had been critical for SNDL, and why Vibes was an obvious choice. “The two-in-one offering is huge for us” Young says, “and on the digital wallet front, we’re seeing well over a 50% save rate. It’s great to see people active with and finding the value in it.”
Up next for SNDL: utilizing more of Vibes’ AI-centric platform features, and elevating the use of customer data to bring even more relevant, highly-personalized offers in front of them to influence their shopping behavior.
Utilizing the various channels SNDL has to communicate with in a more personalized manner remains their top priority. Given the performance to date of their mobile campaigns, Vibes will continue to be a big part of that picture.
"Having a vendor that natively offers both SMS and Mobile Wallet capabilities is huge for us, and why Vibes was an obvious choice. On the digital wallet front, we’re seeing strong engagement - it’s great to see people active with and finding the value in it.”
Loyalty Manager
