Coborn’s Partners with Birdzi to Enhance Loyalty Program, Increasing Retention and Spend

ISELIN, N.J.–Birdzi, a provider of personalized digital customer engagement solutions for grocery retailers, today announced a successful deployment with Coborn’s, enabling the Midwest U.S. grocer to easily create and deliver personalized offers to shoppers. In just three years, Birdzi has helped forge the retailer’s path to digital transformation by driving Coborn’s MORE Rewards program. Comparing new, digitally engaged shoppers on the Birdzi platform vs. shoppers that are not, Coborn’s has seen a 355% increase in customer retention, a 16% increase in trips per month and a 23.7% increase in spend per month.

In 2016, Coborn’s lacked a comprehensive loyalty program to drive stronger customer engagement across channels. Looking to foster relationships with shoppers by offering savings on relevant products, the supermarket turned to Birdzi to help launch its entire cardless loyalty rewards program through the chain’s website and mobile app.

“Throughout the development of the MORE Rewards program, Birdzi leveraged cutting-edge and forward-thinking technology to drive customer engagement in new ways that were unique to the grocery industry at the time,” said Diana Barr, director of digital and loyalty marketing, Coborn’s. “Birdzi is incredibly nimble and flexible and a great partner. Anything we can ask, they’re ready to jump at the task and figure it out. At the same time, they keep that forward-looking context, creating the foundation for further enhancements and innovative features down the line.”

Birdzi empowers Coborn’s with advanced customer insights and digital engagement tools, including:

  • MORE Rewards Program – Birdzi’s proprietary shopper profiling platform provides a deeper understanding of shopper behavior that enables Birdzi to help Coborn’s engage with its guests in a much more personalized way. Birdzi deploys relevant offers to guests and drives customer loyalty through a dedicated guest-facing website, mobile shopping app, personalized emails and in-store beacons. Coborn’s shoppers can enroll in the MORE Rewards program, view their point balances through the Coborn’s mobile and web app, and have access to digital receipts after they complete transactions from the app.
  • Weekly, Interactive Personalized Emails and Fliers – With the help of Birdzi’s unique shopper engagement platform, Coborn’s offers more personalized digital shopper savings such as weekly personalized and interactive mobile and web app ad fliers and digital coupon emails based on customer purchase history and shopping app behavior. What’s more, the Birdzi platform allows Coborn’s shoppers to create shopping lists based on recipes. By integrating with ShoptoCook, Birdzi pulls in recipes that users can browse, filter and search in order to add ingredients into their shopping lists.

In addition to Coborn’s seeing an increase in retention, trips per month and spend, the grocer has found shoppers have enjoyed receiving more rewards, having access to shopping and planning tools, receiving personalized emails and participating in loyalty clubs, all of which have driven higher levels of engagement with the Coborn’s brand. Additionally, as shoppers during the pandemic grew concerned about physical shopping, the enhanced customer engagement portal offered digital coupons and provided customers’ receipts on the retailer’s mobile app and the website.

“COVID-19 has accelerated existing trends and led to a skyrocketing of digital engagement,” said Shekar Raman, co-founder and CEO, Birdzi. “Consumers want to consistently shop with a trusted grocer that will provide a simplified, personalized and convenient buying experience. Coborn’s MORE Rewards program uses data-driven insights to provide this and more. As such, it’s no surprise the supermarket has seen enhanced loyalty and customer satisfaction. We look forward to continuing our work with Coborn’s as we collaborate to find new ways to create an elevated digital experience for shoppers.”

To learn more about this partnership, read the full case study.

About Coborn’s, Inc.

St. Cloud, Minn.-based Coborn’s, Inc. is a 99-year-old employee-owned grocery retailer with more than 9,000 employees and 58 grocery stores across Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wisconsin under the Coborn’sCash Wise FoodsMarketplace Foods and Hornbacher’s banners. Coborn’s, Inc. also owns stand-alone convenience, liquor, and pharmacy locations. To support its 120+ various retail business units, Coborn’s, Inc. operates its own central bakery, dry cleaning facility and grocery distribution center. In 2016, 2017 & 2018, Coborn’s was named to the Star Tribune’s “Top Workplaces in Minnesota” list and was named to Achievers’ list of “50 Most Engaged Workplaces” in 2017, 2018 and 2019.

About Birdzi

Birdzi is an innovative provider of end-to-end personalized digital customer engagement solutions for grocery retailers. Its platform helps regional retailers leapfrog their largest competitors by driving contextually relevant engagement across every touchpoint, inside and outside the store. Birdzi’s AI-powered personalization uses data science and big data to deliver real-time, personalized offers to individual shoppers to grow basket size, increase the frequency of shopping trips, and improve customer retention. Birdzi’s solutions are used in hundreds of grocery stores, driving millions of relevant offers to consumers each month. For more information, visit: www.birdzi.com.