News UK appoints Red Badger for Sun Savers app
British-headquartered digital consultancy Red Badger has been appointed to redesign and enhance the Sun Savers app by News UK. The app was launched just over one year ago, already hosting more than 600,000 users, and aims to save readers money via codes printed in UK daily The Sun.
Red Badger is a UK-based digital transformation and technology consultancy. The firm focuses on clients in the retail, media and financial services sectors, including several of the UK's larger retail banks. Earlier in 2018 it was named one of the fastest growing management consulting firms in Europe, and now as the firm looks to build on its upward trajectory, it has been contracted to help redesign a successful app on behalf of the UK and Ireland wing of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp.
News UK launched Sun Savers in 2017, linked to daily paper The Sun, and since then the platform has proven popular among the tabloid’s readership. Users can use the app to earn cash back when they collect unique codes printed in The Sun, and at time of writing this has saved some 600,000 users a total of more than £2 million.
Now, as Sun Savers looks to kick on from its early success, the Red Badger team will work to improve its usability, as well as to enable new customer-centric features for the app. The product development phase for this commenced in July 2018, with a view to go live at the end of 2018. The new interface will see market leading open source technology, such as React Native, React Native Web, GraphQL, Docker, Terraform, and AWS cloud technologies, used to bolster the project, while The Sun’s team will be empowered to more easily manage content, promotions and automate key parts of the journey.
Commenting on the project, Red Badger’s Managing Director, Ben McLeod said, “We’re delighted to be working on this hugely popular product with News UK. The work we’re doing will make it easier to use for both readers and the marketing team as they aim to grow their loyalty scheme.”
News UK’s Head of Loyalty Justine Salter, added, “Red Badger were chosen because of their design and build capability, their knowledge of React Native and collaborative ways of working.”
The scheme is aimed at incentivising loyalty among purchasers of the paper by offering £5 to readers every time they provide 28 unique codes or proofs of purchase. In 2017 when it launched, sales of The Sun had dwindled by 10.5% to 1.6 million copies per day – as part of a trend across the print media which has seen traditional publications rapidly losing readership thanks largely to digital competition. Meanwhile, as brand loyalty has fallen away in recent years, companies have sought to battle this by offering tailored loyalty strategies – and the Sun Savers app is an example of exactly that.
