DFI Retail launched a very successful loyalty app during Covid and quickly built it out to cover delivery and insurance, generating a huge number of downloads that beat expectations.
The ‘yuu’ rewards platform was launched in Hong Kong in 2020 by the DFI Retail Group. The platform allows members to earn points from the group’s 1 million+ POSM across more than 2,500 outlets, and has expanded to offer insurance and online shopping.
Using an integrated full-funnel marketing plan, the app signed up 2 million+ people in just four weeks and now has more than 4.2 million members. YouGov ranked it as Hong Kong’s number three brand in 2022, after Google and YouTube.
Ronald Wong, vice president, Brand and Marketing for Yuu at DFI Retail Group, tells the story behind the launch of Hong Kong’s leading digital lifestyle platform.
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Q: Tell us about the DFI Retail Group.
“The DFI Retail Group is a leading retailer in Hong Kong boasting a rich history and a diverse portfolio of well-known brands that permeate the daily lives of Hongkongers. These brands include supermarkets, convenience stores, health & beauty stores, home furnishings and restaurants.
“With our vision to bring simplicity, convenience, and delight every day to our customers, we saw the potential in uniting our diverse repertoire of brands under one single big umbrella, allowing us to engage them with a seamless retail experience.
Q: 2020 was a tough time for many businesses. Why did you launch yuu then?
“2020 presented significant challenges for us, as pandemic-related restrictions created a difficult operating environment. These restrictions resulted in limited consumer footfall and a complete cessation of tourist traffic to our retail outlets, which had a profound impact on our bottom line. Similarly, consumers encountered financial uncertainties, prompting many to adopt more value-conscious behaviours.
“The COVID pandemic has also been a catalyst for the acceleration of digital consumer behaviours such as online grocery shopping, online food delivery, and online pre-order with offline pick-up, wherein we saw there was a greater appreciation for personalized and convenient experiences that cater to their increasingly intertwined online and offline consumer journeys.
“These shifts have brought about a radical change in consumer expectations and mindset with many prioritizing ‘value for money’ and ‘ease of shopping experience’ as the key drivers of retail purchase.
“In order to provide our customers with even greater value and an enhanced retail experience, it was imperative that we break down the barriers between our brands. While we have extensive experience in delivering excellent service and value through our brick-and-mortar stores, our existing business activities only provided a limited degree of customer insight, and we often relied on conventional methods to engage with them.
“Recognising the need to keep pace with evolving customer needs and realize our vision, we understood the need to undergo a digital transformation and create a unified view of our customers. By doing so, we can offer personalized rewards and offers that cater to their preferences, while providing them with easy access to benefits across our entire group. This approach ensures that our customers can enjoy the rewards and benefits of the stores they regularly visit, while also allowing us to better understand and meet their needs.”
Q: What was key to the success of the high number of downloads?
“Firstly, we had an attractive value proposition that was simple and highly relevant to our customers – we offered them a simple way to save money where we rewarded them for their everyday spending across a wide variety of everyday brands, without changing any routines, all conveniently done in one app.
“Secondly, we developed an engaging and memorable creative proposition that was both direct and easy to comprehend, resonating with a broad range of audiences, including expats and domestic helpers who are equally important to us as customers. We ultimately decided on a "sing and dance" creative expression where we adapted Billy Joel's classic "Uptown Girl" into the yuu brand song and music video with rewritten catchy brand lyrics and upbeat visuals.
"Finally, we have found that the conventional full-funnel marketing approach remains successful in our market. We employed a highly effective and integrated full-funnel strategy that incorporated top-funnel brand marketing activities to increase awareness and drive traffic, while also fully leveraging our owned assets. With over 2,500+ outlets and over 1 million POSM within them, it served as a powerful channel to help us cut-through. And then it’s a matter of our teams working very closely including commercial, marketing and analytics to drive the mid to lower funnel activities and these activities are supported with a series of test and learn, optimisation and personalisation."
Q: How central was data to the success of yuu, and how did you use it?
“Data played a crucial role in our success, enabling us to drive relevancy and meet the evolving needs of our customers.
"As a leading retailer in Hong Kong, we already had a substantial CRM base that provided us with valuable first-party data. Through the yuu program, we were able to build a more comprehensive customer profile, allowing us to gain a better understanding of our customers and their retail journeys, determine high-value customer segments and identify opportunities for upselling and cross-selling.
“We leveraged our first-party data and our CDP to automate the curation of relevant content and offers for our members across various digital communication channels. We also implemented a data feedback loop from the communication touchpoints to gain insights into how our members were consuming the content.
“By utilising data and automation, we were able to provide our customers with personalized and engaging content and offers that catered to their preferences, ultimately driving better engagement and loyalty."
Q: How did you develop the best adspend strategy to maximise Return on Advertising Spend (ROAS)?
“When determining how to allocate our advertising budget, we take several factors into consideration. Our approach typically begins with an inward focus, prioritizing relevancy and leveraging analytics to guide our decision-making process. We rely on our customer segmentation and propensity modelling to guide our direction, and this process is an ongoing journey of optimization that involves selecting channels based on their performance."
Q: You have gone on to expand the service offering. Can you share the rationale behind this?
“As mentioned previously, our vision is to bring simplicity, convenience, and delight every day to our customers. To achieve that we started looking at enhancing our customer proposition to go beyond just giving customers great value and bargain. So, we began exploring services that were complementary to our customers’ lifestyle such as insurance as well as online shopping as well as onboarding new partners such as Shell.
‘Expanding our service offerings allowed us to cover a wider range of life aspects which helps with driving customer retention by building a deeper relationship with us. This expansion also helped us to enrich our customers' profiles across multiple dimensions, providing us with a more comprehensive and robust view of their needs and preferences.”
Ronald Wong is vice president, Brand and Marketing for Yuu at DFI Retail Group.
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