Leaders in Customer Loyalty, Powered by Loyalty360
Leaders in Customer Loyalty, Powered by Loyalty360
Leaders in Customer Loyalty: Executive Spotlight featuring Per Jensen, Director of Loyalty, Stop and Shop
Welcome to the latest installment of Leaders in Customer Loyalty, the podcast where Loyalty360 sits down with some of the most innovative and accomplished leaders in customer loyalty, engagement, and experience. As part of our Executive Spotlight series, we’re excited to feature a conversation with Per Jensen, Director of Loyalty at Stop & Shop.
Per brings a global perspective to loyalty strategy, drawing on his rich career across Europe and the United States. In this discussion, Per offers valuable insights into how Stop & Shop is evolving its loyalty approach to align with changing customer expectations, including the rollout of the retailer’s innovative Savings Center, a major shift in how customers access and engage with digital offers.
Throughout the episode, Per shares his thoughts on the importance of associate engagement, the growing role of private brands in driving loyalty, and why simplicity and clarity are critical for both internal teams and customers when it comes to program design. He also reflects on the differences between European and U.S. loyalty landscapes, offering practical takeaways for brands operating across markets.
Whether you’re looking to refine your loyalty strategy, enhance internal education about your programs, or gain a fresh perspective on how to build meaningful customer relationships, this conversation with Per Jensen delivers actionable insights and forward-thinking strategies.
Good morning. I'm.
Speaker 1:Mark Johnson from Loyalty360. I hope everyone's happy, safe and well. I wanted to welcome you back to our new Loyalty360 series. The Leaders of Customer Loyalty series is called our Executive Spotlight series. It will be part of the Leaders in Customer Loyalty series, of course. In this series we feature conversations with some of the most influential minds in customer loyalty. They are driving success within the most esteemed customer loyalty programs in the market today, all of which are members of Loyalty360. Today we have the pleasure of speaking with Per Jensen. He is the Director of Loyalty at Stavinshop. Per, thank you for taking the time to join us today. How are you?
Speaker 2:I'm doing good. I really enjoy these conversations and what Line 2 360 have helped me learn over time.
Speaker 1:Absolutely Well. Thank you. First off, for those who may not know about you, can you give us a brief background on your focus at Stop and Shop?
Speaker 2:Yeah, the past year the focus really has been on rolling out and testing and then rolling out our savings center. I've spoken of that in the last conference, but it's a big change for our shoppers and the way they can interact with digital offers, and so that's where most of my energy has gone, where my energy has gone into over the past year.
Speaker 1:Excellent. When you look at Stop and Shop, customers are evolving different expectations today than last year and even five years before that. So how does Stop and Shop work to meet the evolving needs and expectation of today's customers?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I general in retail, we all feel that that pricing is is a big deal. It has always been a big deal, but more so now. Um, but there's more to it than just pricing, and so what we're what we're doing is we're looking at simplifying and enhancing kind of the experience and the offers that we have. That's one part. Another part is to grow private brands. We want to extend and expand on our digital engagement as we have it, but make it even better. And then there's in-store as well, to improve the shopper experience when people are within our stores. We have an online business as well, but there's also a focus on that experience in the store.
Speaker 1:Okay, and how does the customer loyalty play into meeting those evolving needs and expectations?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So we try really at the strategic level, at the higher level, to align with what we can not everything we can affect, but we put in some new campaigns that will help those efforts that I mentioned before. So one of them is we are building a private brand focused campaign. Another one is we are expanding on offers that we give to our associates to get them become more knowledgeable about our private brands so they can become ambassadors of those private brands to their friends, their families and the shoppers that they meet in the store. And then we're trying some innovation through our programs where we work closely with our CPG partners that are able to put together meal kits out of their family of products so that we can provide discounted quick meal kits for them.
Speaker 1:That's awesome. You do a number of great things for the Stop and Shop program, award-winning program, very focused on customer experience and customer expectations. What's the single biggest factor you think that influences a great customer experience?
Speaker 2:I'd love to say it's our loyalty program. But there are more important things, and to me it's really our customers' interaction with store associates, how the store is laid out, the cleanliness of those stores, those things kind of play into what I'd call larger loyalty. But that's where kind of customers really get their first level of truth with our brand, and so to me that's the most important thing.
Speaker 1:Excellent. For those who may not know, you have deep roots in Denmark and Austria. You later built the Catalina Marketing Program from the ground up in Germany and now you live in the US. So when you look at those different and very diverse wonderful environments, what do you enjoy like about these other countries?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I would say, first and foremost, what I like is change. So, having lived in different countries, different cities, just the change in itself is interesting. But if I contrast, let's say, more Europe versus the US, is the walkability and bikeability of cities and towns. There are great, let's say, town centers that that exist in in europe. Those have to some degree been lost here in the us. Other things that that I that I notice is that the food, either in restaurants or in the supermarkets generally are healthier in Europe.
Speaker 2:We have here in the US a much, much higher variety and selection of offers the store, the supermarkets, for example, a much larger here in the US. And then what else? A number of years back I spent three months driving around the us from the east coast to the west coast, from north, north to to south. That was still when gas prices were low, um, but there is, the landscape changes so much, people change so much and it's hard to appreciate. You know, for me, for example, growing up in denmark, you know the us was one thing, but it's so many different things, um. But now I live with my family here in massachusetts and I feel it's a good kind of middle ground of it has a european feel, has a strong us feel to it. It's a nice mix that's awesome.
Speaker 1:Uh, when you look at the focus on customer loyalty the customer how is the focus? Maybe similar or even different. When you look at Europe holistically in the US.
Speaker 2:Consumer promotions, for example, is only a relatively recent phenomena in Europe. Regulations changed around 2000,. But still it's not at the level as it is here in the US. So that's one thing. Then there is privacy. It's much stricter in europe than it is here, which enables us here in the us just to to do to get access to a lot more information on on the customer. And lastly, I would say that scale here in the US it just creates an advantage on its own. We at Stop Shop we have 5 million customers that's the size of Denmark set. That enables to offset the fixed costs of all the work that goes into personalizing offers and experiences. And so that's really what I see as the main differences that we just have a lot more flexibility here in the US to do things.
Speaker 1:That's awesome, your family. You brought them up a little bit. Can you tell us a little bit more about your family?
Speaker 2:Yeah, at a high level. I'm married. We've been married almost 30 years. We have three children. The two older ones, they are in Denmark and they studied at my alma mater. They studied machine learning, or more broadly known as artificial intelligence and mathematics. And the youngest one, she's a high schooler, she's a senior and she will be following in their footsteps this summer.
Speaker 1:That's awesome. It's great when kids follow in your footsteps. My first two are marketing and econ majors as well. It's great when kids follow new footsteps. My first two are marketing econ majors as well. So, uh, the rest probably will not be, but uh, it's good to get two out of four and it's cool to have the same passions as them, for sure, yeah, yeah. So you talked, uh, you mentioned that, uh, you went to school in europe. Uh, what? What college was that? What university was that?
Speaker 2:yeah, it's um, it's called denmark's technical university, uh, and at the time it's interesting, there's Technical University and at the time it's interesting, there's no bachelor, there's only a master's you can go for. So it was kind of a long haul because at the same time I was doing a lot of sports and working. So it was really hard not having that kind of bachelor level where you can kind of take a break and start working full time. And then later on I went to the US of bachelor level where you can kind of take a break, start working full-time and then, uh, later on I I went to the us and I went to colombia business school for, uh, for a business degree in finance, and marketing.
Speaker 1:Uh, what sports did you play?
Speaker 2:what sports? Yeah, oh, um, I do. I I've done a lot of different sports at a relatively high level, but my passion was for a long time was team handball.
Speaker 2:It doesn't really exist here in the US. I did play in the National League here in the US for two years. We were number four, so I played for Boston, but it's far the other. The next team is so far away. The next team would be at West Point in New York. Then it might be in New York City. In the city itself there was a team, then it might be Duke University. So that was just too much travel for me. Was used to the next time the. The competition could be held with the next time town over, so that was a little bit uh different and just took too much time to get involved in further excellent, and what was your first job after college?
Speaker 2:after college I started out on my own and it was a little bit by chance. Someone was calling for my my father he was. He was an engineer and he had published many, many books around machine design. And this person he was looking for my father to help him on some design, but my dad was in the US. I was looking for my father to help him on some design, but my dad was in the US. I was in Denmark so I said I can help you and so I got involved in making and designing food machines and it was just the two of us building that for restaurants that supplied other restaurants, so it was kind of semi-industrial and I had a good time doing that.
Speaker 1:That's awesome. We've had a number of conversations throughout the years. You are a very passionate person, obviously, about the brand, customer loyalty, data and doing as much as you can for the customer. One of the things that you championed is a training, education process within your organization, creating awareness around the program, educating up and educating down. You know how did you start that training process within Stop and Shop.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think it was a unique chance because I started the role as a new person and I had an excuse that way to meet with people. There was kind of I needed to get on board within the organization, but I used that same use that as an excuse as well to, um, while I was learning from other people to educate them on the loyalty program and kind of see what what they knew and what they didn't know, and and so that was a large effort that I spent the first three months doing and it became, as I learned and got feedback, I could kind of refine my own story that I would bring into these meetings and I met with more than 100 people within the first three months to kind of learn and to spread the word around what the loyalty program could do for them that's awesome.
Speaker 1:When you first began to look at the need for a new process, better process, uh, you know what did you see?
Speaker 2:yeah, what I learned was that the, the, the loyalty program that that we had together. I call it program, but it's really three different loyalty programs two legacy ones and one that was started maybe a year before I went into the role, and so there's a lot of confusion between you know, one person might be familiar with one component of it, the one they were participating in but not so familiar with the other components, and so I learned really that I had to explain that we had these three programs, how they worked, and so I built up one slide that kind of gave people one overview. But my learning was really that the design of our loyalty program was too complex for ourselves to understand, so it's got to be very hard for our shoppers to understand and to make improvements and communicate out to our customers the benefits. Our program was even exponentially harder to do program was even exponentially harder to do.
Speaker 1:So, going forward, you identified a need state. You put together processes to kind of address them. How do you work going forward to keep those within the organization up to speed on the customer loyalty program and your efforts?
Speaker 2:I try to focus on something that's going to be important to the listener, the interlocutor, and so right now we focus, for example, on what our savings center is able to do for our shoppers and able to do for the business able to do for our shoppers and able to do for the business. And it's a relatively complex value proposition. And with that complexity there is always a component that is of value to whatever department I talk to, whether it's the PR team, the team, our merch team, our finance team and um, so so we're just reiterating the value prop of that part of the loyalty program. We've included that as part of the loyalty program and so now it's a very specific thing that it's important for us to kind of rally the troops around.
Speaker 1:Excellent. Going back to your work life, stop and shop and, before you know what's the best work advice you've ever been given.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's interesting, I think, to me. I took a Dale Carnegie course many years ago and there was a concept called KISS. I'll change it into keep it simple, simple, really focused on simple. I have degrees in engineering and business and the language can become quite technical and you know, but it's not good for communication. So it's really been something I learned over time is really to simplify the stories, simplify the language, and it's really something that has helped me, uh, over time, to to become an efficient and effective communicator is to keep things simple and it's something I try to install within my team is to reduce, reduce, reduce to the pure essence of of the message and that's awesome.
Speaker 1:I know you put a number of pieces in place, uh to create some simplicity within the stop and shop loyalty program. Uh, it's definitely something that's uh kind of very relevant right now within the industry simplifying the programs, and you seem to do a great job with that. So congrats around that, thank you. When you look at your career success, you know what are a couple of things you're most proud of. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Let me see. So the first one was maybe not one thing, but I'd say first off, right out of college, just starting out in business without knowing all the difficulties you can run into and thinking about financing and you know the future, just going in the now and here. When I look back, if you know what you're going into, you probably wouldn't do it. There's a lot of risk with it, but it paid for me to go to Columbia Business School. So that was one thing.
Speaker 2:The second one is really having launched Catalina Marketing in Germany. It was a cold start, so consumers didn't know about consumer promotions, Retailers didn't know about it and manufacturers didn't have budgets and there was no infrastructure. So everything kind of the whole story had to be built from scratch and it's almost like a whole worth a whole hour of discussion all the hurdles that had to be overcome with that. But that's one I'm really really proud of. And the latest one is just getting this savings center launched, because it's a complex story with many unknowns, but it solves for so many different problems within our company that I'm really really proud of it, that it was a creative solution. How we execute it having a saving center is nothing new, but how you execute it, so it's in the details. That's what made it really, really powerful, and I'm super proud of what we're able to do with that.
Speaker 1:That's awesome. If you could bring one great change to the workplace, or a change in general, what would you focus on and why?
Speaker 2:What I've observed, to some extent a difference between at least Denmark, the US, and Denmark and Germany. It's about autonomy, so giving people freedom to make the decision, you know, let's say closest to where the decision can be made. If you give people autonomy, they think more about what they do and they get more satisfaction out of achieving results and they get more ownership of the results. So that's one thing that I try to do within my team and I can see good results coming from it.
Speaker 1:Okay, you are one of the more active participants within Loady360, within the brand community. We appreciate everything that you do in that regard, but when you look at it, what have you found value about the community, and would there be some things you would like to see more of, potentially?
Speaker 2:Well, I would say I enjoy the community no-transcript there, so I really enjoy that. That's awesome.
Speaker 1:If you could ask one question of someone else who's running a customer loyalty program? If one question, what would that question be about their customer loyalty program?
Speaker 2:I guess there's not a simple question, but I was. I would say what's the next big big idea that you have, something that can really impact the total business, so not a tactic, but something that really can you know is strategic solves for some larger problem that's aligned with the company's goals? What's that big idea that you have? I'd love to hear about those.
Speaker 1:That's awesome. Everyone's looking for that next big idea, whether it's AI or, you know more, targeted personalization, so that would definitely be a very relevant question to ask, for sure. And the last question we like to wrap this up with is if you could give some words of advice to young marketers, young professionals in customer loyalty, customer experience, about developing effective customer loyalty strategies and elevating the customer experience. What would you suggest to them?
Speaker 2:The following starting place is it's difficult really to get to know your customers directly, but whatever you can try to empathize, be in their shoes. I would call it it's almost like zen right Be and feel like the customer. So, rather than anecdotal, but really try for me with Stop and Shop, for me it means going into the stores and kind of observing customers and get a feel for who they are and then that way I can kind of empathize with their experiences and then from there, once I have some confidence in who our customers are, then from there you can start to look at okay, what are now the pain points, what are the frictions shoppers, in our case, experience. And then you start to then look at research and other things. Now you can interpret it and you can think about how can you translate these insights into action.
Speaker 1:That makes sense, well, great. Thank you very much for the interview, per. It's been great speaking with you. You have a lot of significant and very unique experience. It was great to find out a little bit more. I didn't know that you started Catalina in Europe and Germany, so that's great to hear.
Speaker 2:Yeah it was fun. So thank you so much. I enjoyed this, mark, and I look forward to conference in 25. Excellent.
Speaker 1:And we forgot one thing. We forgot the quickfire questions. We like to keep these to one, to a short phrase or a quick response. The first question we have is how would you describe your work life?
Speaker 2:interesting. I look for challenges and big results, and so that's where all my energy goes, what my energy goes to okay, if you have a day off or a week off from work, what are you doing? Probably some work in the house. I play some piano, I enjoy biking long-distance biking and then I play a little bit of soccer.
Speaker 1:Okay, that's good. If you could go back to school, what would you study?
Speaker 2:What would I study If I really think about it? I would study physics, probably and physics for the reason because it's so abstract that you really have to think really hard. But once you've gone through that and you don't have to get a phd in physics but just you know at the undergrad level, that level of abstraction can can enables learning many other areas much faster.
Speaker 1:Excellent. What facet of your job do you like? Would you like to know a little bit more about Partnerships? Ok, what facet of your job would you like to know less about?
Speaker 2:You know minute details. I like to have conversations at the higher level, but details are really important.
Speaker 1:How do you plan for projects? Are you a strategic planner or more of a just-in-time kind of person?
Speaker 2:It's more, I would say 50-50. And so, between planning and just-in-time, okay, what motivates you in tackling challenges at Stop?
Speaker 1:and Shop. And just in time, okay, what motivates you in tackling challenges at Stop and Shop?
Speaker 2:I'm self-motivated. I look for big challenges, big ideas and on the opposite side, if there's too much routine in what I do, that will be demotivating. So to motivate myself, I just try to look for that next big thing that can have a big business impact.
Speaker 1:Okay, and what is your favorite?
Speaker 2:sports team. Sports team uh team. That would be national uh teams. It would be the danish national team in team handball or the soccer team. Okay, that's what I follow.
Speaker 1:And who is your favorite athlete of all time?
Speaker 2:Their athlete. That would be. It would be Maradona or.
Speaker 1:Muhammad Ali. There you go. Excellent. Well, Perry, thank you very much again for taking the time to speak with us In our new executive spotlight series. You are very passionate about the industry. I appreciate everything you do. I consider you your friend and it's great getting to know a little bit more about you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, thank you, and likewise enjoyed this, looking forward to all the lunch and learns that are coming up.
Speaker 1:All right, thank, you very much, and everyone else. Please join us back again for another edition of our Executive Spotlight series. Until then, have a wonderful day.