Business News HMV Timeline Marketing & PR Retail

HMV phases out loyalty programme in favour of My HMV platform

By | Published on Wednesday 29 August 2012

HMV

HMV is axing its lacklustre loyalty programme, which went by the name Pure HMV, as it rolls out a new marketing initiative called My HMV, which aims to more closely integrate the flagging retailer’s online and high street operations (and about time too), including in-store events and the previously reported ‘social media’ café idea being piloted in Cambridge.

Or, in the words of HMV e-Commerce And Marketing Director Mark Hodgkinson, who spoke to Marketing Week: “My HMV offers a 360 degree platform that integrates loyalty with online and offline retail, social media and content”. Aha, my favourite kind of platform. He added: “It will also allow HMV to offer more personalised engagement with customers than it has previously been able to”.

As part of the new programme, HMV is rolling out wi-fi into its stores, which, combined with the My HMV platform, will enable consumers who connect with the retailer both online and on the high street to integrate those experiences, and could result in regular customers getting personalised digital messages on arriving in store recommending offers, products and events.

Which you might think sounds a bit intrusive, but many reckon it’s the future of retail, and others in the sector will no doubt be watching HMV’s experiments in this space with interest. And for his part, Hodgkinson reckons the roll out of My HMV could help turn round the fortunes of the entertainment retail firm, which has refocused its energies more or less exclusively onto its core high street retail business, which I think everyone would agree is a challenging place to be in 2012.

The two million odd people who had signed up to Pure HMV will be transferred over to the new system.



READ MORE ABOUT: