Most promotional campaigns do exactly what they’re built to do. A striking on-pack design. A well-placed retail media buy. A five-second video that stops a shopper mid-scroll. Then, more often than not, that shopper walks away – and the budget behind that moment doesn’t follow them home.
That gap – between the campaign moment and the actual purchase – is where a lot of promotional spend quietly disappears. Not because the idea was wrong. Because there was nothing there to close the loop.
That’s the gap savi Smart Rewards was built to close.
What it is
savi Smart Rewards is a rewards layer that sits alongside whatever campaign a brand is already running – on-pack, retail media, experiential, social, in-app or digital. Shoppers engage with a mechanic – a game, an instant win, a simple coupon – claim a reward, and redeem it in-store across major UK retailers, including Tesco, Sainsbury’s, ASDA, Morrisons, Waitrose, Co-op and Aldi: over 84% of UK grocery. And because it runs on outcome-based pricing, brands pay when a shopper actually activates, not for distribution that might never convert.
We call it the savi loop: Engage, Reward, Activate, Evaluate. Four stages, one connected system, one continuous read on what’s actually working while a campaign is still live.
Why gamification works
One of the clearest signals in our own research: shoppers are 77% more likely to play a game or enter a prize draw when they know a reward is guaranteed at the end of it*. That’s not a nice-to-have – it’s the mechanism that turns a passive ad impression into an active moment of engagement.
Müller proved it at scale. Their Gingerbread Run – a skill-based game launched into the busiest week of the grocery calendar – generated 602,786 game sessions, a 100% coupon claim rate, and 4.85 replays per user. Coca-Cola took a different route, building their Flavours relaunch entirely inside their own app for a Gen Z audience already living on their phones, and saw 65% game completion and a 53% redemption rate. Pringles went further still, adding savi’s reward infrastructure directly into their own Poptopia platform rather than building anything new.
Three different briefs. Three different mechanics. One underlying system.
Built for control, not just reach
Reach matters – savi Smart Rewards is live and accepted across the majority of UK grocery retail, so a mechanic works wherever a brand’s shoppers actually do their shop. But reach without control isn’t much use to a marketer answerable for budget. That’s why every campaign runs with in-flight management – brands can adjust who gets a reward, when, and how many, while a campaign is still running – and every redemption feeds first-party data straight back, so results are provable, not just felt.
The takeaway
A good campaign creates a moment. savi Smart Rewards makes sure that moment counts – converting attention into activation, and activation into proof.
If you’re planning a campaign that needs more than a moment, get in touch. We’d love to show you what this could look like for your brand.
*OnePoll survey for savi, November 2025 (n=2,000 UK grocery coupon users).
