Heineken Biertegoed reinforces the added value in off-trade and will therefore contribute to baseline loyalty. Resulted from the traffic generated to ontrade, we increase beer sales. Additionally, the relationship with horeca customers is strengthened. By tracking visitors, both sales reps and venue owners increase understanding of the business. Direct access to Heineken consumers will create a new communication channel which at the same time offers valuable insights to improve informed decision making and create efficiencies in media buying.

Therefore, Heineken Biertegoed is a win-win-win situation: Bar owners are provided with extra traffic to their outlet combined with real-time insights about their (new) customers. Consumers get the opportunity to enjoy a Heineken beer more often and receive more personally relevant content. Last but not least, Heineken drives traffic to both retail and food and beverage venues and builds on a very valuable first party data set to improve and optimize business.

Heineken Biertegoed involves an app that can be downloaded for free. The most important feature of the app is the activation of Biertegoed codes from packaging (“opwaarderen”) and redemption of beers in different outlets (“verzilveren”). A map with locations provides for an overview of available Biertegoed outlets in the neighbourhood, enriched with important features and characteristics.

For activating a Biertegoed code a consumer simply purchases a Heineken product in off-trade containing a beer credit which can be activated with the app. Once in a bar, users can choose to give a round to friends through selecting the number of beers they want to order. The bar keeper checks the personalized verification screen, no hardware is needed. The transaction is completed, cheers!

Heineken Biertegoed offers a rich data set and therefore a lot of insight on our end-consumer, which was unthinkable in the beer category before. The program is launched in september of 2016 and a multidisciplinary but digital-focused team is still developing features and improving user experience based on behavioural analytics. The objective for the coming months is to accelerate growth of the program with more active users around the country, to stimulate qualitative traffic to our venues.

Within 100 days 140,538 freshly drafted Heinekens were redeemed in our venues, 100,205 app installs and 501,277 beer credits earned from packaging. Results in 2017 show a progressive growth in horeca visits and the number of unique active users is 1,5 times higher than we expected. 15% of the Biertegoed codes on crates are activated with the app. The highest redemption rate we have ever seen!

Additionally, 26% of the users claim to visit venues more often with Biertegoed, 15% indicate that Biertegoed has encouraged them to discover other venues. Most consumers order 2 or more drinks in addition to their Biertegoed transactions, on average this is even higher. About 16% of Biertegoed users indicate to buy Heineken more often since they started participating. To conclude, 34% of the users claim that their attitude towards the Heineken brand has improved as a result of using Biertegoed. (Consumer research, 01-2017, n=1.524)