Cross Promotions Work for Giant Eagle and Citizens Bank
The two companies have been working together for 21 years and have 64 joint locations. Giant Eagle has 228 supermarkets and 160 convenience stores in Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia and Maryland, operating under five banners. It is ranked #28 on Forbes' list of top U.S. private companies. Citizens Bank operates in much the same trading area, so the fit is natural. But Giant Eagle and Citizens have gone beyond the traditional tenant-landlord relationship to operate in-store banks as a perimeter department within the supermarket.
Giant Eagle's goals for the partnership is to increase shopper frequency and basket size, while moving secondary shoppers to primary ones. Citizens looks to acquire new households, deepen existing relationships and decrease attrition. Giant Eagle counts one million households as customers, while Citizens has 259,000 in the same trading area.
Roughly 192,000 households are customers of both companies, so it would appear Citizens has more to gain in terms of potential new customers. Interestingly, neither company views it that way. Giant Eagle sees benefits with joint customers making more visits to its stores than average shoppers while spending more per trip, as well. The same individuals carry higher loan and deposit balances driving revenue for Citizens.
The two companies spend a lot of time working on the joint value proposition and seem to be in alignment on core values and strengths, brand attributes, voice, target audience and business objectives. The parties have succeeded in establishing a single-minded strategy and consistent call to action. Giant Eagle and Citizens work to make sure one and one equal more than two. The companies publish a partnership guide for store teams on the program, bring store and branch managers together twice a year and reward them both for successes.
The companies often conduct joint promotions such as a recent five-week effort offering customers a $30 Giant Eagle gift card if they opened a new personal checking account. Nearly 2,900 incremental checking accounts were opened, achieving a 19 percent lift over a control group and a 28 percent over the status quo. Another promotion had bank employees sampling food products in Giant Eagle stores during a "Dinner's on Us" promotion recently.
Citizens pays Giant Eagle rent for its in-store branches and the retailer also earns bonuses based on deposits. The two companies share results in meetings between their chief financial officers.
The keys to this relationship seem to be that the companies are a natural fit, both geographically and culturally, and top management is 100 percent committed to going the extra mile to make sure the banking "department" is treated the same as all other departments, if not better.