How Asda runs its Asda Rewards app with Amplience CMS
Asda, one of the UK’s largest supermarkets, uses Amplience CMS, part of the Amplience Content Operations Platform, to run around 85% of its Asda Rewards loyalty app. Banners, seasonal themes, games and supplier content now change without a developer or an app release.
Asda already used Amplience CMS to run its grocery shopping website. Now it runs the Asda Rewards loyalty app as well.
Key takeaways
Amplience CMS, part of the Amplience Content Operations Platfrom, runs around 85% of the Asda Rewards loyalty app for iOS and Android, having first powered Asda’s grocery shopping website.
The first use case, home screen banners, went live three months after Asda’s first conversation with Amplience, working with app development partner Apadmi.
Business teams at Asda now change banners, seasonal themes, games and onboarding in Amplience CMS, without a developer or an app release.
Up to six games now run at once in the Asda Rewards app, including supplier-funded games, up from one at a time.
User roles, teams and repositories in Amplience CMS control who at Asda can change high-impact content, such as seasonal themes.
On New Year’s Day 2023, the Asda Rewards app team was at work pushing an app release. Its only job was to remove the Christmas campaign.
A few weeks earlier, the team had pushed another release through the golden quarter change freeze to add it.
Tracey Burnett, Product Manager for Asda Rewards, shared that story on the Power User stage at Amplify: Agentic Commerce Live. It’s a story from the app’s early days. With Amplience CMS, Christmas now goes up and comes down without a single app release.
Why every Asda Rewards app change needed a developer
Asda Rewards grew fast
Asda Rewards began in June 2022 as a small pilot for colleagues in Asda’s Yorkshire stores. In September 2022, it launched to every Asda customer.
Weekly active users grew quickly, and the business wanted to keep growing the app. That meant a steady stream of new campaigns, supplier promotions and features.
Every change needed a developer
The app couldn’t keep pace. Its text, colors, icons, images and banners were all hardcoded, built directly into the app’s code.
So changing even one word needed a ticket, a dev sprint, QA and testing. Changes took weeks to go live, and the team couldn’t react to what was happening in stores.
Christmas took a two-week sprint
For Asda’s Elf Christmas campaign in 2022, the app team wanted an Elf welcome screen and seasonal touches across the app. The campaign had to be kept confidential until launch, so the app team received the assets much later than they needed them.
Adding them took the dev team a full two-week sprint and an app release during the change freeze. Removing them took another release, on New Year’s Day.
Time-sensitive copy meant working at midnight
Asda Rewards customers can save towards Christmas with the Christmas Saver Cashpot, which unlocks on a set day in November. Until then, the app showed customers a message about how the Cashpot worked. The moment it unlocked, at one minute past midnight, that message needed to change.
That message was managed in Asda’s loyalty platform, the system behind customers’ rewards and offers, which only updates overnight. So colleagues worked late into the night to change it by hand.
Changing one banner meant reloading all of them
Banners on the home screen promote offers, supplier competitions and new features. They appeared in the order they were uploaded to the loyalty platform.
So removing one banner meant starting again. If six banners were live and the team wanted to take down the third, they had to delete all six, then upload the other five again in the right order. Then they waited overnight to check it had worked. Nothing could be scheduled in advance, so every change had to be made by hand, at the moment it was needed.
Only one game could run at a time
Asda Rewards customers can earn plays on online games by buying certain products in store. Each game’s button, icon and color was set up by a support team in Firebase, Google’s app development platform.
Every change needed a change request with a seven-day lead time. And only one game could run at once, which limited what Asda could offer brands.
New customers got a dated welcome
New customers need to find their vouchers and coupons quickly to get value from a loyalty app. But the Asda Rewards onboarding was three years old. Because it was hardcoded, any update needed developer time, and the team hadn’t had the chance to touch it.
Sign-off a month ahead, in a last-minute industry
Together, these limits meant copy, colors and icons needed sign-off at least a month in advance. Anyone who works in retail knows it rarely works that way. Plans change late, and campaigns get approved at the last minute. In Tracey’s words, retail is “very much last minute.com.”
How Asda moved its app content into Amplience CMS
Choosing Amplience CMS for the app
With Amplience CMS already running Asda’s grocery website, using it for the app was, in Tracey’s words, “quite an easy decision.”
Asda brought in Apadmi, its app development partner, to work with Amplience through a series of workshops. The first use case went live in the app three months after the first conversation.
In-app banners first, because they never sit still
The team focused on one use case first. Banners, because they changed most often and caused the most work.
With banners in Amplience CMS, the proposition team schedules them in advance, reorders them by drag and drop, and changes them on the fly.
The banners have kept evolving since. Stacked banners became a carousel. The latest templated banner has a title, short copy, a button and an image.
The old banners were small, so suppliers had to squeeze their whole message into a tiny space. Now the banner can be big, bold and visual, which Tracey says makes it much more impactful for customers.
The detail lives one tap away. When customers tap the Find out more button, a full content screen opens, also built in Amplience CMS, with more images, bullet points and links to the supplier’s website or a competition. Customers get a cleaner app, and suppliers get far more room to tell their story.
Making Amplience CMS the default for new features
Banners worked so well that Amplience CMS became the starting point for everything new in the app.
When Tracey’s team plans new features with developers, they assume the content will live in Amplience CMS. Then they check two things. How often will it change? And could a business user break the app by changing it?
Content that changes often goes into Amplience CMS. Content that rarely changes stays in the app’s code. Copy for Rewards Plus, a new Asda Rewards feature launched as a pilot for shoppers in Scotland in October 2026, is expected to change around once a year, so the team left it with the developers. Today, around 85% of the app now runs from Amplience CMS.
Seasonal app themes, no change freeze required
Retail runs on key dates like Christmas, Easter, Halloween, Valentine’s Day and the World Cup. Asda’s teams can now give the app a seasonal look for each one, without a sprint or an app release.
When customers open the app, a short animation can play, such as snow falling at Christmas or balloons rising for the Asda Rewards birthday. It lasts around two seconds and adds a moment of excitement to an everyday shopping app.
The team can also add snow to the Cashpot card, swap in football icons for the World Cup, add bunting and change colors. Colors are set once in Amplience CMS and update across the whole app.
For most occasions, the team chooses seasonal elements one at a time. For Valentine’s Day, they built a complete theme that turns on with a single switch in Amplience CMS. Turn it on, and the Cashpot card, background and imagery all change together.
Time-sensitive copy, like the Christmas Saver Cashpot message, can now be scheduled in advance in Amplience CMS. Nobody needs to stay up past midnight to change it.
Supplier games and new opportunities for brands
One game at a time is a thing of the past. A dedicated games screen in the app now shows up to six games at once. Asda’s own games sit alongside games funded by suppliers, and several brands can run games at the same time. That gives brands a new way to reach Asda Rewards customers, and gives Asda a new revenue stream.
Each game has its own images, copy and terms and conditions, managed in Amplience CMS. Behind the scenes, Amplience CMS connects each game to Asda’s loyalty platform and the game provider.
Better app onboarding for new customers
The team rebuilt onboarding in Amplience CMS. Now new users see short on-screen tips, called coach marks, the first time they tap into each area of the app, so they can find their way around and get to the good stuff faster.
Because the content lives in Amplience CMS, Asda’s teams can update the tips, copy and colors without a developer.
How business users run the app day to day
Ending the reliance on developers meant business teams had to take the wheel. At Asda, developers build features and then hand them to a business team to run. For that to work, business users need to manage content confidently, even if they only use Amplience CMS once or twice a week.
To make that easy, Asda created a persona called Content Claire, an average business user who doesn’t use Amplience CMS every day. Developers write every how-to guide with her in mind. Each one explains every field in plain English, with a screenshot of the Amplience CMS form and the part of the app it changes.
After one or two guided sessions with Tracey, business teams manage their content on their own.
Freedom with guardrails, using roles and permissions
When business users can restyle a whole app, access matters. Asda uses Amplience CMS user roles, teams and repositories to decide who can change what.
The banners repository is updated around six times a week, so everyone who needs it has access. The seasonal theming repository, which can change the look of the whole app, is tightly controlled.
What changed for Asda with Amplience CMS
Two and a half years in, developers build the features and Asda’s teams run the content. Nobody waits for a sprint to change a banner.
| Before Amplience CMS | With Amplience CMS |
|---|---|
| A two-week sprint and an app release to launch a Christmas campaign | Seasonal themes switched on by Asda’s teams, no release needed |
| App releases during the change freeze and on New Year’s Day | Seasonal content goes live and comes down without an app release |
| Six banners deleted and reloaded to remove one, then an overnight wait | Banners scheduled and reordered by drag and drop, updated around six times a week |
| A seven-day change request for every game | Game content managed directly by the business team |
| One game at a time, limited room for brands | Up to six games at once, including supplier-funded games |
| Sign-off needed a month ahead | Last-minute changes made on the fly |
| Colleagues working past midnight to update Cashpot copy | Cashpot copy scheduled in advance in Amplience CMS |
Developers win too. The development team Tracey has worked with since the start no longer spends sprints on copy, color and text changes. Tracey describes that work as boring and time-consuming.
What’s next for Asda Rewards and Amplience CMS
Asda plans to use more of what Amplience CMS offers, to make life even easier for its business users.
Next, the team plans to start using visualization in Amplience CMS, so business users can preview their content as they build it, without needing the app on their phone. They also plan to use content syncing to move content from the sandbox environment into production automatically, instead of by hand. And they’re moving their remaining content onto next-generation content forms, which Tracey says are “so easy for everybody to use.”
Tracey’s advice for anyone starting with a new CMS
Tracey has two pieces of advice. First, work with a development team that’s motivated to hand control to business teams, because it frees them from routine copy and color changes. Second, go Amplience-first from the start, and grow gradually from there.
Hear directly from Asda
Watch Tracey Burnett’s session from the Power User stage at Amplify: Agentic Commerce Live to see the Asda Rewards app’s before and after for yourself, and hear how her team makes sure nobody accidentally brings down the whole app.
Your next campaign shouldn’t need an app release
Take Tracey’s advice. Pull as much of your app into Amplience CMS as you can, and let it do the heavy lifting. We’ll show you where to start with the Amplience Content Operations platform.