Ad Age, General Mills and Fetch on driving consumer behavior through product loyalty

• Businesses and brands are facing a suite of customer loyalty, acquisition and insights challenges.
• The Fetch app is a fun, engaging and insightful tool that brands can leverage to solve those challenges. 
• The General Mills Good Rewards program, an in-app loyalty experience on Fetch, has helped General Mills provide additional shopper value and glean essential insights. 

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Last month, Fetch CEO Wes Schroll sat down with General Mills Chief Brand and Disruptive Growth Officer Doug Martin to relay wisdom on growing brand love and loyalty. In a recent Ad Age Live Webcast, the two discussed challenges facing General Mills – and how the General Mills Good Rewards loyalty program within the Fetch app has been an invaluable solution for engaging consumers, creating loyalty, providing value and increasing brand portfolio awareness. 

General Mills Good Rewards is the brand’s first-ever portfolio loyalty program. The in-app platform exceeded 1 million members within three months of launch and currently has 1.68 million users. Good Rewards provides members-only access to exclusive special offers.

“I’m going to give you a perspective from someone who spends a lot of time thinking about these challenges – and then why Fetch is such a good solution,” Martin began.

Here are the four key challenges General Mills experienced – and how Fetch provided a consumer-centric marketing strategy to drive shopper behavior. 

1. Provide value when it matters. 

“It’s a tough time out there, and General Mills really wins with families. But we have an environment where inflation is very high, and for the average American family, there’s a lot of focus on the food budget,” Martin explains. “As General Mills, how can we offer real value and help families maximize their shopping experience while not needing to trade out of General Mills brands? That’s where Fetch does such a great job.”

The Fetch app – and the General Mills Good Rewards experience – provides personalized rewards when shoppers purchase a brand partner’s product. Once they buy the item and snap their receipt, the user receives Fetch points, the platform’s in-app currency. Customers can then redeem those points for gift cards, merch, sweepstakes and more  – helping them to save money and earn the rewards they want.

2. Grow a loyal consumer base through exposure to the full General Mills portfolio.

The General Mills Good Rewards program houses all General Mills brands – from Cheerios and Chex-Mix to Pillsbury and Yoplait – in a single spot on the Fetch app. This allows Fetch members to discover their new favorite General Mills product – and earn rewards for that purchase, receive members-only offers and more. 

“We have all these wonderful brands, but we don’t really go to market to the consumer as General Mills,” explains Martin. “The Good Rewards program is an opportunity for us to take those consumers and show them that if they love Cheerios, they might also love Pillsbury. We wanted to reward consumers for their loyalty to the brands they love and then show more of our portfolio.”

3. Understand who the General Mills consumer is – and how they behave.

Fetch helps brand partners understand their consumers more deeply. “The audience insights Fetch brings us are an instrumental part of what drives value,” explains Martin. “It helps us understand what a household is buying. From there, we can make personalized recommendations for what else they might enjoy in the General Mills portfolio. Fetch enables us to get a lot more specific.”

More than creating personalized recommendations, the Fetch app can drive purchasing behavior and create shopping habits that last. When Good Rewards members browse the program in the app, they can see which products and brands will award Fetch points after purchase. This helps to guide and influence purchasing across the entire General Mills portfolio – and the post-trip receipt snap verifies the purchase.

Additionally, the Fetch app provides brand partners with an understanding of the final consumer transaction. “Retailers like Kroger have all the purchasing data,” explains Martin. “Fetch solves an incredibly important challenge for us: Understanding and getting that data all the way through purchase.”

The Fetch app follows shoppers wherever they go – whether it’s to Albertson’s, Target or the family-owned neighborhood grocer down the street. When consumers are rewarded for purchasing brands regardless of where they shop, brand partners like General Mills have more opportunities to provide personalized offers – and shoppers are more likely to earn rewards.

4. Create a frictionless loyalty experience.

Loyalty programs can be a great opportunity to connect with consumers. But if there are barriers to entry, brands risk alienating customers and losing users. Fetch is different. “For example, [the Fetch app is] agnostic of where you buy the product. Fetch goes with the customer wherever they are, and really makes it easy for them to get the rewards that they want,” says Martin.

Martin also notes that creating the General Mills Good Rewards experience in Spanish was an “enormous focus.” “We’ve been extremely happy with how much of the consumer acquisition we have here at Good Rewards is choosing to experience the app in Spanish. That tells us that this is not only helping to grow our business, but it’s helping to grow our business with a really important growth consumer. That’s a double win.”

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Martin noted that the partnership with Fetch is “delivering over and above” business objectives planned at the program’s outset. Good Rewards members are bringing in 1.5 more brands from General Mills into their basket than the average Fetch shopper – and they’re having a great time doing it.

“Fetch was such a great fit because we always talk about solving problems and delivering joy. That’s the very starting point of how we approach the consumer at General Mills,” he explains. “Fetch does such a good job of bringing a tremendous amount of power and potential to save to a consumer through one, really quite fun and engaging app.”

Watch the full webinar video here:

Ready to grow your brand’s loyalty with a fun, engaging and insightful platform? Get in touch with the Fetch for Business team today.