Birdzi launches custom coupon tech at Strack & Van Til

Customer engagement technology company Birdzi has partnered with point-of-sale software company LOC Software, to enable grocers to offer digital coupons and other specials that are personalized for individual shoppers. 

Birdzi and LOC have already tested their technological mashup with Indiana-based grocer Strack & Van Til, which implemented Birdzi’s Customer Intelligence Platform with the point-of-sale technology. The partnership has helped Strack & Van Til boost the open rate of its personalized emails to more than 37%, Birdzi said.

“The partnership between Birdzi and LOC Software has already increased the engagement rates of our personalized digital weekly ad and coupons,” Michael Tyson, Strack & Van Til chief marketing and merchandising officer, said in a statement. He added that customer feedback on the layout of the customized coupons and search functions “has been extremely positive.”

Shekar Raman, CEO and co-founder of Birdzi, told Winsight Grocery Business that since going live with LOC on Jan. 10, the company has processed more than 1.3 million coupons.  

“I don’t think we’ve gotten a single customer complaint, so clearly the integration has worked quite flawlessly,” Raman said. “And we can scale up many, many more times, so we can handle millions of coupons a day.” 

Raman explained that Birdzi’s Visper technology generates coupons that are tailored to each user, which means the service can generate thousands of potential coupons based on that customer’s shopping preferences.  

“What’s unique here is the way these coupons are generated. Typically what happens is the CPGs will work with some big aggregator and push out the coupons that they’re putting out into the system, and those aggregators will send them down to the retailers and the retailers will execute. So, they’re working off a preexisting library of content that is being pushed out by the CPGs,” Raman explained.  

He said that an audience of 100,000 users could result in 8,000 to 10,000 unique coupons, and most digital coupon systems don’t have the ability process that many different coupons, Raman said. The LOC integration allows the contents in the basket to be paired up with digital coupons the shopper has saved, and the discount is automatically applied to the order. 

“LOC has to do nothing on their POS—all they have to do is call us, send the information, insert the discount, and send it back and boom—it’s done and this all happens in 150 milliseconds,” Raman said.

*This story was updated to correct the spelling of Shekar Raman's name.