GameStop’s PowerUp Rewards and Best Buy’s Gamer’s Club are in a head-to-head battle for the hearts and minds of the world’s game-playing cyber geeks (where heavy users spend 30 hours a week playing video games!)
In a speech to 500 retailers at the CRMC conference in Chicago this week, Jenn McMillan, Vice President of Loyalty and CRM for GameStop revealed the exceptional results of it’s PowerUp Rewards loyalty program which launched May 28, 2010.
Lest you think that video games are child’s play, Game Stop is ranked 262 on the Fortune 500 list and boasts 6,500 stores in 17 countries doing a whopping $10 billion in annual revenue.
McMillan shared that 67% of Gamestop’s 10 million members have enrolled at the “Pro” level, paying a $14.99 annual membership fee for enhanced benefits noting that “paid programs are not dead.” Nearly 50% of GameStop’s sales are now attached to a PowerUp club membership with the average member spending three times more than non-members.
Just a few days ago, GameStop competitor Best Buy announced that they were enhancing their Reward Zone Gamer’s Club by launching a paid tier with a price point and benefits that are virtually identical to GameStop. “When I was in High School, we called that plagiarism” McMillan quipped. Or maybe she should have called it “play-giarism.”
