How Mister-Auto builds customer loyalty and boosts sales!

From the initial idea for the loyalty program to its realization, it all took 9 months. Was it really that urgent?

It’s not so much a question of urgency. Above all, at Mister-Auto, we like to do things quickly and well. And when we identified the need to create a loyalty program, we wanted to move quickly to be able to offer it to our customers. In concrete terms, we initiated the project in the summer of 2022 with Maxxing, and nine months later, in March 2023, we officially presented it to our customers. To release a program like this in less than a year is, quite frankly, a source of great pride, because there’s a huge amount of work to be done upstream to get everything ready and operational before launching it. A big thank you for that, by the way, to our partner, Maxxing, whom we’ve chosen to develop “La Cagnotte Mister-Auto” with us.

How does the Mister-Auto Kitty work?

It’s 100% free and available to all customers. All you need is a Mister-Auto account, and every time you place an order with us, you’ll be rewarded. We wanted it to be as simple as possible, with a euro-based prize system rather than a points system that is complicated for customers to convert.

With the Mister-Auto Kitty, you earn euros with every order. Specifically, 2% of purchases, and even 4% on our own-brand products, Bölk and Bproauto. Understanding is ultra-simple. Even better: this loyalty kitty can be combined with all current promotions. We’ve also launched an App for smartphones that offers even better benefits, since the jackpot is boosted by half a point to 2.5% of purchases and 4.5% on our private labels.

What needs does this meet for Mister-Auto?

Customer satisfaction is, of course, our prime concern. We’re delighted to be able to reward their loyalty in a way that reflects the value they bring us. This is the most important point. This loyalty program also aims to help us to improve purchasing frequency and, while it’s still too early to draw any definitive conclusions – remember that La Cagnotte Mister-Auto was launched last March – the initial feedback we’ve received has been very positive.

Our customers are very satisfied, whether they are private individuals or professionals, our “VIP” customers, who are already the most loyal, or those who were more volatile. We get nothing but excellent feedback from them. The figures for frequency of purchase are also very good. This is a very important issue for us, because over the last few years, our priority has been focused on a single objective: achieving profitability. That’s why, for example, we stopped running campaigns to boost our brand awareness for a long time, to concentrate on the company’s profitability levers. Now that we are, we’re determined to win new customers. The Mister-Auto Kitty is one of the major levers for achieving this.

What are the next steps for this loyalty program?

It needs to grow and attract more and more new customers, and we’ll keep it evolving as needs change. We’re still in the process of weighing up the costs and benefits. But, quite clearly, I’m not worried about the balance being on the right side of things. We’ve already got lots of development ideas in mind : making sure that this kitty service can be offered in after-sales service, for example; working on specific sales gestures; proposing a sponsorship system, etc.

Above all, in the short term, our ambition is to duplicate La Cagnotte Mister-Auto outside France – in fact, Mister-Auto is already present in 19 countries around the world. This is also one of the reasons why we chose Maxxing, which offers an international service, capable of easily managing multi-languages and multi-currencies. Their solution is highly adaptive, which is exactly what we were looking for.