Hibbett continues to add to its loyalty program to keep shoppers engaged and bolster its customer analytics. Email and SMS marketing help drive in-store purchases.
Email and SMS marketing are pulling their weight and then some at Hibbett.
The sports apparel and shoe retail chain has millions of shoppers in its SMS program and millions more on its email list.
And the majority of these shoppers are also members of Hibbett’s loyalty program. This customer information and engagement opportunity helps keep Hibbett’s repeat purchasing and customer retention humming.
“They’re both extremely valuable,” said Kayla Brown, director of customer lifecycle. “Our text customers are more instantaneous shoppers, so you see that return a lot quicker than emails. But we do see large value in both of them. They’re two of our biggest revenue driving channels — email and SMS.”
While Hibbett’s paid media spend is higher than the costs of its email and SMS programs — and the channel drives a high ROAS — search and social ads mainly drive online sales. But anywhere from 50% to 85% of its email and text revenue is generated in store, Brown said.
“Sneakerheads especially really love that in-store experience and (shoe) launches drive a large portion of our business,” Brown said.
Gathering customer data
Hibbett uses an analytics company, promotions and its loyalty program to help attribute sales from emails and texts to purchases.
In fact, one of the major benefits of its loyalty program is the data it can acquire on shoppers.
“Loyalty is huge from a business standpoint,” Brown said. “It’s really the only way that you can accurately track the customers and have the analytics and proof return.”
Another way Hibbett gathers data on its shoppers is by sending polls via SMS. It does this through its mobile marketing vendor Vibes, which it also uses to send SMS marketing messages. For the polls, Hibbett will ask shoppers which product categories interest them or if they are shopping for themselves or someone else.
“It’s mostly for engagement; We find that it’s more engaging than just a traditional SMS,” Brown said. “We also have used it in the past for segmentation as well.”
Hibbett sends text message to its shoppers throughout the week. At least once a month it tries to spice up its engagement with a poll or a multimedia type message to get something new in front of its audience, she said.
How Hibbett continues to enhance its loyalty program
Keeping its loyalty program fresh and relevant with customers is a priority for Hibbett. The brand offers two levels to its program, allowing shoppers to earn points for their purchases to redeem for rewards, exclusive promotions and free shipping. The biggest draw for shoppers is the rewards, which is $10 off their purchase for every 200 points, Brown said.
“If you look at loyalty programs as a whole, across all these different industries, [retailers] that are succeeding the most are the ones that have a pretty aggressive loyalty program,” Brown said.
The most recent update to Hibbett’s loyalty program was allowing Hibbett Rewards shoppers to connect their Nike account to their Hibbett account. This unlocks access to community events throughout the year that Hibbett and Nike coordinate together. Previous events included a holiday shopping spree and an exclusive basketball event in Birmingham, Alabama, which is where Hibbett is headquartered.
Hibbett sells Nike’s products, so this helps strengthen the relationship that it already has with the brand and lends some of Nike’s cache to Hibbett.
“It’s just that knowledge of we are a Nike partner, I think is really big with the consumer,” Brown said.
For the future, it is looking to add more bonus points and exclusive events and opportunities for customers to earn points.
Hibbett also uses Vibes for some of its mobile wallet initiates. Hibbett shoppers can add their loyalty card to their mobile wallet through Hibbett’s app, emails or text flows. Five times a year, the retailer will send an instant offer that shoppers need to add to their mobile wallet in order to redeem.
Roughly one year ago, British sports apparel retailer JD Sports acquired Hibbett for $1.1 billion. For the marketing team, the acquisition has been positive, Brown said, as the Hibbett has access to more resources and can share ideas about tactics and vendors with the larger team.
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