Exchange Post Update: Senior Leaders Thrilled with Veterans Online Shopping Benefit’s Success
Senior leaders are thrilled with the success of the Veterans online shopping benefit since its launch on Veterans Day. The benefit has resulted in $28.5 million in sales on ShopMyExchange.com since the program’s soft launch in May.
These Veterans are making multiple visits to the website to browse and buy, which indicates clearly their acceptance of the benefit, said Dr. James Skibo, senior vice president of Customer Relationship Management.
“What that tells us is that our website, prices and stock selection are resonating with them, otherwise they wouldn’t be coming back,” he said.
In 2018, the Exchange will continue to spread the word about the lifelong online military exchange shopping benefit to Veterans through marketing and public relations efforts. For instance, the Exchange reached out via email to 200,000 Veterans who had registered on VetVerify.org to let them know they could live-stream the Winter Olympics for free through ShopMyExchange.com.
More than 580,000 Veterans became eligible to shop online with the military exchanges.
Skibo and other senior managers were surprised to find that roughly 121,000 of those were military retirees who already had Exchange shopping privileges.
“We called about 60 of them and most of them said they didn’t even know the Exchange had an online store,” Skibo said. “It never occurred to us that there would be somebody out there didn’t know Exchange has an online store.”
Karen Cardin, senior vice president for e-commerce, said her team will continue publicizing the Veterans online shopping benefit in 2018, especially to Veterans who don’t know about ShopMyExchange.com or have never shopped online.
“All Exchange associates play a vital role in the success of the Veteran online shopping benefit,” Cardin said. “We need each and every one of you to continue spreading the word – tell your friends and family, and encourage customers to tell their family members about this new benefit and ShopMyExchange.com.”
