On November 1, 2010 the My Starbucks Rewards team made some improvements to the way we deliver your birthday beverage benefit. It started with ideas from you, and while we haven’t reached the nirvana state we are striving for, we do feel we’ve made some great strides!
Every person who creates an account that includes their birthday and registers a Starbucks Card is eligible for the My Starbucks Rewards Welcome level benefit of a free beverage delivered as a postcard for a free drink you can enjoy near or on your birthday.
We used to create the file to mail these postcards in one big batch – one file for all of September for example, which meant if your birthday was in September, you had to have created your account with your birthday well in advance of our process. This meant new members with birthdays that occurred late in the month would get picked up with the following month’s process. Their postcards would be delivered well after their birthdays – and that was no way to celebrate a birthday!
So we took a step back, looked at the process and made some improvements. We now mail postcards every week which allow our newest customers to be included and celebrate on time. We went a step further and added an email to the mix to let members know that their birthday beverage will be delivered as a postcard in the mail! While we were at it, we thought that our newest Gold level members deserved a special notification when they earned their first Free Drink! We added a new email for 1st time Free Drink earners which explains that their Free Drink will come as a postcard in the mail and that it’s on its way! It can take between 7-10 days to receive the Birthday and Free Drink postcards.
Now, that nirvana state I mentioned above would be for us to provide your benefits like Free Drinks, and Birthday Beverages digitally. (Cue the Jetson’s music…) You’d earn the drink, and we’d load to your Starbucks account, and then send you an email or text to let you know your beverage benefit is available for you to use. (SWEET, huh!) There have been lots (LOTS) of ideas posted about snail mailing postcards, and the loss of postcards in the mail. Let me say – I’m working on a special blog to share the reason for snail mail, as well as a sneak of what the future could look like. Stay tuned.
We’ll continue to improve the program with small tweaks, and major adjustments that come directly from all the great feedback and ideas you provide here on MSI – keep them coming!
Happy Birthday and Congratulations to all of our 1st time Free Drink earners!
sbx_nat
Inspired by your ideas:
Starbucks Card Reward Notification
posted by jefry
electronic delivery of rewards
posted by Fat Otter