Watsons Elite Membership Programme Launched

International health and beauty retailer AS Watson has initiated a global VIP loyalty program.

The group has announced the program to enhance its connectivity with customers, planning to extend it to all of its 130 million loyalty members in 24 markets by early next year. It is an additional and invitation-only tier of membership which aims to reward and retain top customers.

Malina Ngai, group COO of AS Watson Group, said: “We appreciate our customers, no matter how much they spend in our stores, and we know they love to feel valued. Our existing loyalty programs reward everyone with great offers, but our VIP programs thank our most loyal customers for shopping with us with amazing benefits and even more tailored rewards.”

AS Watson first invested in CRM programmes back in 2010. Data insights and analysis of the programs have since revealed that around two thirds of the brand’s customers who qualify as “VIP members” continue their membership in the following year. These VIP members spend up to eight times more than average members annually. This year, the newly-qualified VIP members’ spending saw a year-on-year double-digit increase.

Many of the new advantages are personalised to the individual or otherwise considered valuable to the lifestyle of the local customer – for example, free health and wellbeing classes in Watsons China, and cooking classes for Watsons Malaysia VIP members.

This year, AS Watson has also launched its DataLab initiative to examine its average of 4300 terabytes of customer data every three years, extracting customer insights to provide more personalised, exclusive offers.

Ngai added: “With cutting-edge data technology, we are turning transactions to interaction and that is how we are staying connected with our customers.”