The boss of computer and video games giant Game Group says the company is planning to exploit its Reward Card loyalty scheme and aims to raise £100m in sales within two years through marketing to its members.
The company is also to invest £15m in building a truly multi-channel operation, as part of a strategy to boost its online sales.
Ian Shepherd, group chief executive, said the company would deliver a step change in Game’s online revenues, and that “seamless multichannel integration” in the next three years was the goal. The £15m will come from cost savings to be achieved in the next two years.
But the loyalty scheme will be at the heart of the strategy, said Shepherd: “The ability to take a customer on a journey from buying a console to buying a game to buying a points card to trading it in is immensely valuable. We’re now at 16 million Reward Cards and will continue to grow the number of these relationships.
“Take the Gamestation Elite card. It only launched in October. We’ve issued 650,000 cards already and we’ve just awarded our billionth point. You can see the customer demand. How many of our cards are used in any given year? Roughly 60 per cent, but a more interesting number is the concept of the super user,” he explained.
“They use it more than seven times every 20 weeks – they’re engaged with that model. That super user accounts for 10 per cent of the Reward Cards issued, but the annual value of that customer to Game compared to the rest of the people who have a Reward Card is more than three times bigger.”
Shepherd, a former head of customer marketing at BSkyB, added: “These are extremely important customers. In the UK in 2010 how many bespoke user communications did we employ? Around 500,000. This year the target is 12 million. The total amount of money we made across the Group by stimulating customers with communication was less than £5m. By 2013 that will be more than £100m, and we will deliver on that number.”
