Jacob's Creek launches smartphone app to connect with customers

Australian wine brand, Jacob’s Creek, says its new smartphone app is the first step in a long-term plan to build relationships with customers through their digital platform of choice.

The brand launched the Premium Drinks App for smartphones last week as a way of allowing shoppers to scan store receipts to receive immediate rewards. The app was released to coincide with the launch of the new Jacob’s Creek Twin Pickings wine range and to drive customer trials.

Historically, all promotional activity in-store relied on traditional redemption mechanics such as posting in or uploading receipts for manual verification, said marketing director of Jacob’s Creek owner Pernod Ricard Winemakers, Anne Martin.

“We wanted to create a direct way of communicating with our shopper and rewarding them with a simple and instant redemption mechanic for in-store promotions,” she said. “This is the first step in Jacob’s Creek developing a digital communications platform with its shoppers.”

The app can be used for competition entries, updates to a loyalty program, and to verify sales receipts and results in real-time.

“Longer term, Jacob’s Creek is looking to develop a direct relationship with a wide range of shoppers that can be targeted with offers or relevant information,” Martin said.

The app will be increasing used with upcoming below-the-line campaigns and will be communicated in-store, via retailer media such as catalogues, and via social media, she added.

Smartphones are increasingly becoming a crucial part of the customer purchasing cycle and now dominate the pre-purchase research phase. A recent survey by Google and MARC found 84 per cent of respondents used their smartphone to help make purchases while in-store, most commonly for price comparisons, finding offers and promotions and finding the location of other stores.

The Premium Drinks App is based on ScanZp technology and available on iTunes and Google Play.

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