From 24 March 2014, the Thalia book retail group will be joining forces with PAYBACK, the market leader for loyalty programmes. Customers in the approximately 230 Thalia bookshops across Germany will now receive PAYBACK points when they purchase DVDs, games, music CDs or products such as the tolino eReader. “This partnership puts us in a unique position in the industry, giving us a reach that extends to over 20 million customers who actively use their PAYBACK cards. It provides us with direct access to customers, whom we can then send personalised offers across every channel. This underlines both our cross-channel strategy and our aim of securing our customers’ loyalty by addressing their specific needs,” says Dr. Gerlinde Leichtfried, CEO of Thalia Holding. "We are particularly pleased about this partnership, as it once again shows the confidence that an important new partner puts in our programme. Thalia is of great importance to our customers because of its wide range of products and relevance to everyday life,” says Bernhard Brugger, CEO of PAYBACK Europe. “We are confident that this partnership will be a success, because Thalia will use PAYBACK as a multi-channel marketing platform and efficient means of approaching customers, and can also reward its customers with many advantages using targeted coupons and offers.” He added that, alongside the networking effect from the strong brands in the PAYBACK network, Thalia also has the opportunity to get to know its customers better, and thus target its communication more effectively than before – offline, online and on the move. Thalia issues its own branded card, but all other PAYBACK cards can also be used. PAYBACK can chalk up the last few months as among the most successful in its history. In addition to the new collaboration with Thalia, partnerships were agreed with Opel, Telekom, Expedia.de and REWE, among others, and dm-drogerie markt recently extended its contract by a further five years. A PAYBACK card is used 1.5 million times a day – that means 18 are shown at German tills every second. Customers also collect points at over 600 online shops and using the multi-award-winning mobile app.
About Thalia:
With just under 300 bookshops in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, Thalia is the market leader in the German-speaking retail book trade. The company is also active as a cross-channel retailer in the German book market. Competent and close to the customer in its conventional bookshops and its online shop, Thalia provides expert advice and inspiring buying experiences in both the “real” and the “virtual” book world. In the “best of many worlds”, book-selling tradition is combined with great commitment to supporting reading and culture and with the systematic shift towards the new digital opportunities for the medium of books. Together with partners in the book retail industry and technical partner Deutsche Telekom, Thalia launched the tolino brand in March 2013, and has since brought out the tolino shine eReader and two tablets. With over 1 million eBooks, the partners can boast the largest range of German-language eBooks. Founded in the Thalia Theatre building in Hamburg in 1919, Thalia has been part of Douglas Holding AG since 2001.