iPoints e-coalition unveils Christmas loyalty bonus
The UK-based online loyalty coalition programme, iPoints, is launching a Christmas promotion in which it is giving away millions of free loyalty points to members who shop online through its retailer network.
The aim of the Christmas Points Giveaway campaign is to encourage its members to carry out all their online Christmas shopping with iPoints' loyalty partners and affiliates, which include e-tailers such as 101cd.com, sendit.com, prezzybox.com, greenfingers.com, Boots.com, amazon.co.uk, comet.co.uk and Debenhams.com, Johnlewis.com, and MarksAndSpencer.com, among others.
Spend requirement All members that spend more than £50 during November and December 2006 will automatically qualify for the iPoints bonus. Those spending over £125 will get a bigger bonus. On receiving their free points, members will be able to redeem them for a number of rewards (such as blockbuster vouchers, USB mobile phone chargers, iPods, CDs, LCD TVs, and so on).
According to Roz Brown, iPoints' member communications manager, "By giving members the chance to earn extra bonus points, in addition to the points they earn already via the programme, we anticipate driving significant traffic to our partner and affiliate websites."
Launch campaign To launch the Christmas campaign, iPoints will be sending out an initial e-mail to more than 1 million iPoints members. Throughout November and December, it will also broadcast several million more e-mails, with a plan being in place for over 20 e-mailshots focusing on various popular Christmas gift areas (such as games and consoles, CDs and DVDs, health and beauty, mobile phones, and food and drink).
The targeting for each email campaign will be based on behavioural analysis of iPoints members to ensure that each recipient is pre-qualified as having already bought products in the appropriate product category (or at least has visited web sites selling each kind of product).
Gift picking feature iPoints is also launching an online 'Gift Selector' feature to help members that are stuck for ideas of what gifts they can buy for friends and relatives who already seem to have everything. This tool allows members to click on the type of person they're having difficulty in choosing a gift for (e.g. mother, father, grandfather, grandmother, and so on) and provides a selection of the latest and most popular presents for that group. Essentially iPoints has done the hard research to give members the most common ideas about what to buy - and even where to buy it.
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