Atterbury Europe and its Serbian partner MPC Properties have been celebrating the freedom of a Covid-free summer in its portfolio of malls. We get the lowdown from Nevena Martinovic, PR and digital manager at MPC.
What has been the highlight of the summer so far in the malls?
Early in June we had a special carnival to celebrate the second anniversary of BEO Shopping Centre. It took the shape of a huge carnival party, a shopping weekend and a concert that brought the spirit of Brazil to Belgrade. We transformed the entire central square of the mall into a big dance podium where Brazilian dancers performed their hot routines, and famous Serbian music artist Saša Kovačević entertained the crowd.
The birthday celebrations extended all the way to the end of the month, when we had another weekend of incredible discounts offered at the stores, as well as launching a competition to win a trip to Rio de Janeiro. The carnival atmosphere will continue throughout July, with themes around football, coffee, and dance and music each following on the other. The winner of the grand prize will be drawn on 24 July at another special event.
You recently launched a mobile app with a customer loyalty programme – tell us more.
The Tvoj Centar app was designed with the express purpose of enriching the shopping experience and rewarding the loyalty of all MPC’s mall visitors. The idea behind the app was to incentivize shoppers to support our malls while also connecting the four assets. UŠĆE Shopping Center, BEO Shopping Center, Delta City and Mercator Centar are situated quite close to each other in Belgrade, and we realised that if we found a way to combine them, we could strengthen MPC’s overall market position.
The app connects the four malls, and it allows shoppers to collect points as they visit the malls. These loyalty points can be exchanged for exclusive gifts and discounts across the four malls
This app was a first for Serbia, so there was also an educational aspect, not so?
Correct! What we have been doing with the marketing campaign is to get customers to experience the malls as linked to one another through this app and loyalty programme. And we really pulled out all the stops, with a 360 campaign that used OOH, city lights, radio, TV, social media, guerilla activities across the city, influencer campaigns, PR, branding in the malls, and more!
And what has the customer feedback been like?
We are very happy with the results. The rewards programme with which we launched this was very popular and people jumped at the chance to get discounts (between 15% and 40%) as well as shopping vouchers for treats like coffee, burgers and ice cream. We’ve had 49 000 downloads of the app, and more than 600 loyalty programme rewards have been created, with 30 000 rewards redeemed so far! We are satisfied that our customers are enjoying the programme and are actively using the app and redeeming their rewards. We are excited to see this unfold over the summer and beyond, as we position our four malls as the most sought-after shopping destinations in Belgrade.
