Spotlight turns its VIP Club card into an owned mobile CRM channel
Spotlight operates 130 superstores across four countries and is part of Spotlight Retail Group, which owns and operates more than 300 stores across Spotlight, Anaconda and Harris Scarfe. Litecard gives a retailer of this scale an owned mobile CRM channel for loyalty, offers and customer engagement across a high-volume, multi-brand network.
Spotlight VIP Club gives members access to exclusive offers, birthday rewards, early sale notifications, events and ongoing member pricing.
Spotlight previously supported digital membership cards through Stocard. While this gave customers a way to store their card on their phone, the experience sat inside another third-party application.
Litecard enabled Spotlight to move its VIP Club card directly into Apple Wallet and Google Wallet, giving the retailer greater control over the mobile experience and a direct channel for communicating with members.
The challenge
Using Stocard meant customers needed to download and use a separate app to access their Spotlight VIP Club card.
This created an additional step in the customer journey and placed the digital membership experience inside another company’s ecosystem.
Spotlight had limited control over how the card appeared, how the customer interacted with it and how mobile communications were delivered. Push notifications and ongoing engagement were dependent on the functionality and customer experience provided by the third-party app.
The retailer wanted a mobile experience it could own and manage directly, without requiring customers to install another application.
The Litecard solution
Litecard moved the Spotlight VIP Club card directly into Apple Wallet and Google Wallet.
Customers can add their personalised card from an email, SMS, online account or in-store QR code. Once saved, the card remains available in the customer’s native phone wallet and can be presented at checkout without opening a separate loyalty app.
Insider One provides the customer data and personalisation layer used to deliver the relevant Litecard pass and manage customer journeys.
Spotlight can now control the branding, information and actions displayed on the pass. It can also send relevant push notifications directly to members through the mobile wallet.
This gives Spotlight its own mobile CRM channel, rather than relying entirely on email, SMS or a third-party wallet application to reach customers.
An owned channel for membership and rewards
Spotlight uses Litecard for both persistent VIP Club membership cards and individual digital vouchers.
The membership card gives customers an ongoing way to identify themselves in-store. Separate wallet vouchers allow promotional rewards to be saved and presented when the customer is ready to redeem them.
Because both experiences sit in Apple Wallet or Google Wallet, Spotlight retains greater control over how members discover offers and interact with the program.
Push notifications can be used to bring an offer, event or member benefit back to the customer’s attention without requiring them to search through an inbox or open another app.
Technology stack
- Insider One
- Apple Wallet
- Google Wallet
- Litecard digital membership cards
- Litecard digital vouchers
- Mobile wallet push notifications
What Spotlight has done well
Spotlight has supported the mobile wallet experience across several customer touchpoints rather than relying on a single download method.
Members can access their card through email, SMS, their online account or an in-store QR code. Spotlight has also created detailed help content covering installation, compatible devices, offline access and voucher redemption.
This makes the wallet experience easier to understand and reduces the support burden for store and customer service teams.
More importantly, Spotlight has treated the wallet as an ongoing customer channel rather than simply a digital copy of a plastic membership card.
Why owned mobile CRM matters in promotional retail
Retailers invest heavily in building customer databases, but email and SMS do not always provide persistent access to the customer.
Third-party apps can improve convenience, but they also place the brand experience and customer relationship inside another platform.
Litecard gives Spotlight a direct presence in the native mobile wallet. The retailer controls the card, the customer experience and the communications delivered through it.
For Spotlight, this creates an owned mobile CRM channel that connects membership identification, promotional vouchers and push notifications in one accessible customer experience.
