Aldi’s social media team has been having fun at the expense of Lidl’s loyalty programme after the scheme underwent a revamp last week.
The team has been poking fun at the generosity level of a new system of points as rewards in the Lidl Plus app.
Lidl Plus users earn a point for every £1 spent, and can redeem the points as free products or a discount on a whole shop once enough have been collected. Some Lidl Plus users were quick to complain on social media that the points system did not look as generous as the Coupon Plus rewards that were replaced.
Aldi leapt on the fact that a free cucumber costs 100 points by giving away “thousands” of cucumbers at a store on Friday and posting the video on Instagram. “POV you heard Lidl GB are charging 100 points for a cucumber so you force your boss to let you give away thousands of cucumbers on a random Friday in May,” the post said.
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Lidl customers used to get a free fresh vegetable after spending £50 in a month in Coupon Plus rewards. They must now spend £100 to get a free cucumber when earning points at the standard rate of one point per £1. Lidl is adamant users will consistently earn more than one point per £1 in practice, thanks to campaigns such as double or triple points. The app is currently offering double points on all fresh fruit bought up until 22 May.
Another Aldi post linked to a report by the BBC last week that some shoppers saw the new rewards system as “less generous”. “Well, this is a Lidl awkward,” Aldi said on Facebook.
A third Aldi post said: “Tickets to the Lidl GB plus app funeral only 8,000 points.”
Marcus Hadfield, chief strategy officer at loyalty app development firm Apadmi, said: “Lidl has no doubt built a points platform that can deliver genuinely personalised, high-value moments. They need to move fast to make those moments matter for their loyal shoppers.”
Lidl has been the UK’s fastest-growing bricks & mortar grocer for 34 four months in a row in Worldpanel by Numerator data, in which time its market share has grown by just over a percentage point to 8.4%, level with Morrisons. In its last financial year, about half of its growth came from increased usage of the Lidl Plus app.
Read more: Apps, loyalty and customers: Louise Weise on Lidl’s winning way
Meanwhile the growth of Aldi, which has no loyalty scheme, has slowed. Latest Worldpanel data, covering the 12 weeks to 19 April, showed Aldi’s market share had slipped from 10.8% to 10.6% in a year.
A reply to one of Aldi’s Facebook posts said: “You don’t even have a scheme.”
Aldi fired back: “We don’t need one.”
Aldi has also been taking a defensive approach to Tesco’s loyalty scheme, in newspaper ads comparing prices and promising “No points, no cards, no faff”.
Markus Schröder, a retail adviser and former buying director for Aldi in Switzerland, said on LinkedIn: “This isn’t just Aldi attacking Tesco. It’s Aldi fighting to reassert its founding identity at a moment when that identity is under threat from both sides.”
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