JD Sports has partnered with HyperFinity to test how personalised offers can increase loyalty sales and improve the relevance of customer incentives.
The sports fashion retailer worked with the AI-powered actionable intelligence company to develop and trial a personalisation engine across its UK business, creating an evidence base for its future loyalty strategy.
The programme tested how active customers responded to ‘buy again’ category offers and different spend-multiplier incentives. It also compared the effectiveness of cash-based rewards and spend multipliers among high- and low-spending customers.
Cross-sell offers based on customers’ previous purchases were used to assess whether product affinity and relevant category recommendations could increase basket spend. The trials found that relevance and personalisation consistently performed better than simply increasing the value of an incentive.
Higher-spending customers responded more strongly to spend multipliers, while lower-spending customers reacted similarly to both cash rewards and multipliers. The results also indicated that campaign frequency should be tailored to individual shopping behaviour to reduce offer fatigue.
The partnership delivered an uplift in total in-store loyalty sales across JD Sports UK during the trial period, although the companies have not disclosed the exact increase. Based on the results, JD Sports believes there is a significant opportunity to grow in-store loyalty sales as it scales the programme.
HyperFinity also provided JD Sports with measurement dashboards, customer segmentations, campaign templates and insights into product seasonality and affinity. These tools will allow the retailer to continue developing and measuring its personalised loyalty campaigns.
Chris Hope, global head of insight and analytics for customer and loyalty at JD Sports, said:
“HyperFinity quickly understood what we were trying to do and helped us run the trials in a clear and structured way. The insight we gained into customer behaviour has been really useful for shaping how we approach personalised offers going forward.”
Thomas Hill, co-founder of HyperFinity, added:
“JD Sports is one of the most recognisable retailers, and the challenge the brand brought to us is one we hear often – how do you build genuine confidence in personalisation to enable the execution at scale? By running structured, evidence-led trials, we were able to give JD a clear picture of what works, why it works and what the commercial opportunity looks like. That kind of actionable intelligence is exactly what we’re built to deliver.”
