Tanya, tell us about your background and how you came into your current role.

My background has always been in retail, working for brands like Boden and Debenhams before starting at Robert Dyas. I have primarily been in the ecommerce and digital marketing space but over the last few years I’ve moved into a wider role, launching the loyalty scheme here at Dyas as well as the same day click and collect offering. I am now heading up the Marketing and Loyalty teams, looking after everything from CRM and social to our ATL media and in-store activity.

You launched your loyalty programme two years ago – what’s the goal now?

We’ve built enough critical mass over the last two years to start using the data in a more sophisticated way. We’ve built up a good base of over 1.5 million members, and 600k are opted into email. Our challenge now is keeping momentum and ensuring that we are using the data we have fought so hard to win. We also need to continuously test and iterate the offering to ensure we are providing real value for our customers through the scheme.

How engaged are your customers with the programme??

We now consistently have 25% of our store orders coming through with a loyalty ID attached which is giving us amazing insight on how our customers are shopping. The data allows us to not only fine tune our store operations and product ranges but also allows us to get really targeted with our marketing campaigns as well.

What trends are you seeing in footfall and e-commerce?

As is the case on the high street in general, footfall to stores remains our biggest challenge. With more and more people feeling the pinch we need to ensure we are providing the right products at the best possible price.

Online is a different story. Overall we are seeing growth in this channel due to a continuous increase in breadth of our range as well as ensuring we remain competitively priced across the categories we operate in.

You’ve mentioned other retailers’ loyalty strategies – what stands out?

I think loyalty strategies vary widely across retailers as well they should. What works for a supermarket will not necessarily make sense for a luxury beauty brand. There has been a big shift towards exclusive pricing in the market but we need to be careful to use it in a way that doesn’t create resentment. Ultimately your loyalty programme needs to reward its members and be an attractive proposition to non-members. How that manifests will then depend on the brand and the relationship they want to build with their customers.

How do you see loyalty evolving for you?

It’s about shifting from pure, price-driven offers to more personalised, data-led experiences. We have the data and it’s now about how we use it to drive our core KPIs and improve our LTV.

Outside of this we are still building out additional functionality that will help us deliver more ways to delight our customers and drive them back into our stores.