Borders Rewarding Customer Loyalty More Often
By Jane • Mar 27th, 2007 • Category: Publishing News • •
Yesterday, Borders Rewards members received an email announcing changes to the Rewards program. Last year, when you made purchases, a percentage of those purchases were rebated back to you to spend during the Holidays. This year, you’ll receive a $5 Borders Buck coupon for every $150 spent. This is akin to other shopping programs such as the Banana Republic rewards card. The goal is to increase traffic year around by enticing customers to spend more money to reach the $150 level and then bring them in once they’ve received the $5 Borders Buck.
It works pretty well for me with the BR card. As soon as I receive my reward, I’m at the store trying to pick out what item I don’t need so I can waste my $25 reward card. Of course, it also serves to remind me that I spend way too much money at BR. I blame this on Ned. He’s a BR freak.
Jane is a long time romance reader whose passion is, you guessed it, reading. Jane also does not like to talk about herself in the third person, but apparently this is the way that this biography thing works (although in a true biography, someone else would be writing this blurb). Anyway, currently Jane loves urban fantasy authors Patricia Briggs and Ilona Andrews. She's really excited about this year's crop of historicals including Joanna Bourne's The Spymaster's Lady and Sherry Thomas' Private Arrangements and the upcoming Loretta Chase Her Scandalous Ways.
She's looking for a good contemporary author. Email her with a recommendation!
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I’ve been trying to figure out if this is a good thing or a bad thing. My immediate thought: good thing! But then I read the blurb at Galley Cat and followed it out to the WSJ article and I’m wondering.
Says the woman who has had a personal discount day every month so far this year. :sigh: Including one coming up in April.
JMC, I thought the same thing…that it was a good thing…but it really isn’t, we end up the losers.
Last Saturday when I was there, I spent $26.79 and I accrued $1.34 for my then Holiday account, plus it put me over to give me another personal shopping day for April.
Now, no more personal shopping day (I’m going to miss that extra 10% off).
Now for every $150 we spend we will receive $5 Borders Buck coupon, the old way we would have earned $7.50….that’s a loss of $2.50 if I did the math correct. $150.00 x 5% = $7.50.
At least they are not eliminating their % off coupons.
[quote comment="25477"]JMC, I thought the same thing…that it was a good thing…but it really isn’t, we end up the losers.[/quote]
Danielle,
I agree with you. After getting the email, I went to the Borders Rewards site, logged in and looked up all my activity for 2006. Then I started adding it up. If they had been doing their $5 for $150 deal last year, I would’ve gotten nearly $10 less in rewards than from their Holiday account.
In addition, while I suppose you can hold on to your $5 Borders Bucks and use several of them together, it’ll be more difficult to buy lots of things at once with rewards. (And they’ll probably come up with a rule against that, too.)