Norths Collective set to launch app under transformation push

Norths Collective, which grew out of the former North Sydney Leagues club, is planning to roll out a new app to build engagement with its members.

The hospitality group owns seven venues and two fitness centres, mostly in Sydney but also on the Gold Coast. 

Its forthcoming member app was developed by Melbourne-based consultancy Reinteractive.

The app backs onto Salesforce-owned cloud platform Heroku and has integrations with the collective's Salesforce CRM instance.

Launching this November, the app will include digital membership cards and QR code-reading capabilities, the collective's digital transformation, innovation and marketing specialist Robert Lopez told Salesforce's Dreamforce conference.

The app is the latest step in a broader digital transformation that started around 2018, and resulted in partnership with Salesforce in 2019. 

Lopez said the group set out to create a “full 360-degree view of all of our members” and to bridge "disparate siloed systems”.

As the group is “a very data-rich organisation” the transformation would improve business analytics and aid in the creation of "hyper-personalised omnichannel marketing journeys for our customers and our members," he said.

Lopez said the collective's “digital transformation vision” includes using “new, emerging and sustainable technologies as a means to tell our story, build our brand and enrich relationships within our community”.

Personalisation journey

Lopez said while demographic and transactional data is simple to gather through membership cards, the group began to learn “more about our members now than we ever knew before” through specific enhancements to its digital properties.

Norths Collective switched on personalisation features for its online channels in January.

Since launching its personalisation tools, Norths Collective has seen a “six percent decrease in website bounce rate, a nine percent increase in time-on-site, but most importantly, a 45 percent increase in website visits.”

Through web personalisation efforts, Norths Collective “can start understanding exactly” what area of its websites members are engaging with, prompting targeted messages to be sent via email, SMS, and soon, its app.

Once the app launches, Norths Collective will be able to gather “first-party data with every touchpoint”, including email, SMS, social platforms and online, Lopez said.

Kate Weber attended Salesforce's Dreamforce conference in San Francisco as a guest of Salesforce.