In Tasmania’s grocery market, Hill Street Grocer occupies a unique position.
With 10 stores across the state, the family-owned retailer competes directly with national supermarket chains. This competition isn’t based on store footprint. Instead, Hill Street is winning customer market share due to its exceptional service, fresh produce from local suppliers, and a genuine connection with its community.
That connection was supported by a loyalty program that for more than 5-years provided a way for Hill Street to give something back to its customers.
But as the grocery landscape evolved, so did Hill Street’s ambitions for loyalty.
A Loyalty Program Ready to Evolve
Hill Street already had a strong membership base and an engaged group of loyal customers. The program rewarded regular purchases and offered members a sense of recognition when they shopped in-store.
Yet the team could see an opportunity to take loyalty further.
While points and rewards encouraged participation, there was limited visibility into how campaigns influenced customer behaviour or how different groups of shoppers responded to offers. Promotions were often broad rather than tailored, and understanding their true impact on spending was difficult.
Hill Street wasn’t looking for a completely new program. Instead, the goal was to modernise what already worked and unlock deeper understanding of its customers.
Partnering with Slyp, Hill Street launched Hill Street Rewards, a new generation of its loyalty program built to combine the retailer’s strong community relationships with smarter campaign tools and richer customer insights.
The vision was simple - empower the team with better insights and greater flexibility so loyalty could drive measurable growth.
Designing Campaigns That Influence Behaviour
One of the first opportunities to put the new program into action came through a campaign designed to test a simple idea – could the right incentives encourage customers to stretch their weekly shop?
The campaign analysed customer spend data to segment members into groups based on their typical weekly grocery spend. Rewards members received a personalised challenge, supported by email and push notifications via their Go Rewards app, to simply exceed a tailored spend target to unlock a meaningful points reward.
Rather than discounting products across the board, the campaign focused on motivating customers to increase their overall basket.
Across all rewards customers, the campaign delivered:
- A 71% increase in spend
- An average weekly uplift of $35.00 per customer
- 609% return on investment
But the most powerful result wasn’t the campaign spike. It was what happened after.
Customers who participated didn’t simply revert to old habits. The majority maintained higher spend levels 4 weeks post the campaign, demonstrating the commercial impact that loyalty-driven campaigns can achieve when they are grounded in real customer behaviour.
Empowering Store Teams to Drive Growth
While the new loyalty program introduced powerful campaign capabilities, perhaps one of the most overlooked drivers of success is internal engagement at the store level.
To accelerate adoption of Hill Street Rewards, the company launched a staff incentive campaign encouraging team members to help customers join the program. With simple sign-up available directly at point of sale, staff could quickly enrol customers during checkout.
The initiative quickly gained momentum across stores.
Team members embraced the opportunity to connect with customers, with one staff member enrolling 142 new loyalty members in just three weeks.
The campaign reinforced something Hill Street has always believed – loyalty is not just digital, it’s built through human connection.
From Rewards Program to Growth Strategy
Today, Hill Street Rewards provides the retailer with a far deeper understanding of its customers and how they shop.
With more than 55% of transactions now linked to loyalty members, the business has a clearer picture of purchasing behaviour than ever before. Loyalty members account for 62% of total revenue, and they spend 36% more per basket than non-members.
More importantly, loyalty has become a platform for experimentation and learning. Targeted campaigns allow the team to test new ideas, measure their impact, and continually refine how they engage with customers.
What began as a loyalty program is now becoming a commercial strategy that helps Hill Street influence customer behaviour, strengthen community relationships and drive long-term growth.
In a competitive grocery market, Hill Street Grocer is proving that independent retailers don’t need the biggest budgets to compete.
They simply need to understand their customers better than anyone else.
“Loyalty has always been important to Hill Street, but with the new Hill Street Rewards program we’ve been able to take it to another level. We now have a much deeper understanding of how our customers shop, which allows us to run smarter campaigns that genuinely influence behaviour. The results have been incredibly strong and it’s helping us grow in ways we couldn’t before.”
Nick Nikitaras, Founder Hill Street Grocer