When the Scottish Newstrade Steering Group was set up recently as a joint initiative between News Scotland and SLR, the key principle behind the Group’s activities was that actions speak louder than words. That’s why the Group is already progressing with a nationwide implementation of the highly-lucrative Sun Savers programme.
Sun Savers is the richest loyalty programme in the newstrade and rewards customers by giving them £5 for every 28 copies of The Scottish Sun that they buy. It’s that simple. The programme is app-based so shoppers can quickly download the app to their smartphones and start collecting. All they have to do is scan the barcode every time they buy a paper and when they reach 28 copies they can either collect the cash or carry on saving – and all for doing nothing more than buying their favourite paper every day.
For retailers, the programme offers several concrete benefits: it encourages shoppers to buy the newspaper more regularly, it drives footfall to the store, it drives up incremental purchases and it creates loyalty to both the store and the paper. Everybody wins. Not only that, retailers receive an incentive for signing up customers and to help them do that, a range of high-quality POS is available to create excitement in-store and communicate just how easy it is to get started.
Group member Saleem Sadiq of Spar Renfrew commented: “The plans for the Group are quite exciting and it’s great to see some real activity happening in the category and driving some interest and some value back into news. Sun Savers is a great example and I can see it working really well for both retailer and customer if we can jointly communicate the initiative in-store. The high-quality POS kit certainly helps.”
The Scottish Newstrade Steering Group was due to meet just as SLR was going to press and in that meeting the plans for the next set of activity is due to be agreed with full input from members of the Group.
