Those five cities are: Phoenix, Kansas City, Indianapolis, Denver and Charlotte, North Carolina. The program is free to sign up for and offers benefits like a 1 percent return on all Target purchases and a special birthday reward.
The rewards will be selected based on a customer’s shopping preferences, and could be clothes, groceries or electronics.
Other perks of the program include free delivery with Restock, a program where customers can put items like bread or shampoo, up to 45 pounds, in a box. Loyalty members also get half off a year-long membership to same-day delivery service Shipt, which Target acquired for $550 million about a year ago.
However, the retail giant is taking the program one step further, by allowing loyalty members to select a local nonprofit to donate to. In Dallas, customers have donated about $250,000 to 50 different nonprofit organizations.
“We wanted a program that was … not just about collecting points to get savings,” said Rick Gomez, Target’s chief marketing and digital officer. “We think this is a much bigger platform to build relationships with our guests.”
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Gomez said the company wants to make sure it gets the program right before rolling it out across the country.
“I think this strategy is a way for us to grow,” Gomez said. “Americans love loyalty programs.”
Research shows that almost 40 percent of customers who claim to be loyal to a brand will spend more time there, regardless of whether they can find something cheaper somewhere else. Also, 52 percent of loyal customers said they’d be willing to join a rewards program if they had the option to do so.
