Nectar reveals how little traction its shopping site gets
Links on Head for Points may support the site by paying a commission. See here for all partner links.
Nectar has just relaunched its online shopping portal. It will now be operated by an arm of Collinson, owner of Priority Pass and operator of most other major reward portals.
The reason for the switch may have been in a member email sent out yesterday. In it, Nectar made a revealing statement: “Last year Nectar customers collected over 30 million points by shopping online with Nectar partners”.
The small print confirms that Nectar issued 30,719,686 points in 2022 via its shopping portal.
Now, with 1 Nectar point worth 0.5p, this means that Nectar issued points worth just £155,000 last year via its shopping portal. This is shockingly low, given the millions of members that Nectar has and the prominence that the portal has in the app and on the Nectar website.
(Put in context, assuming that 75% of Sainsbury’s sales include a Nectar card, the retail stores issue over £100m of Nectar points each year.)
I don’t know why Nectar is so bad at this, but I suspect the weak earn rate and the low number of merchants (which will double under the new Collinson contract) are part of it. However you cut it though, anyone who thinks that these portals are a licence to print money is wrong.
