Coop Alleanza 3.0: Scaling personalized engagement across 316 stores with WhatsApp
As an Italian large-scale retailer, Coop Alleanza 3.0 competes with a difference. It is the country’s largest consumer cooperative and its measures of success go beyond revenue. Resources are reinvested into local communities, into the activities that serve members, and into creating value for the people who interact with the cooperative every day.
To better understand how this cooperative model influences digital engagement, we spoke with Giovanni Mezzetti, Digital Marketing Specialist at Coop Alleanza 3.0, who leads digital analytics, martech initiatives, and the exploration of new communication channels.
“We are competing with other market players, but doing so with different objectives,” says Giovanni. “The resources we generate do not go exclusively to the remuneration of external shareholders. Instead, they are reinvested in the territory and in creating value for our members.”
This ethos, what Giovanni calls the “consumerist vocation,” shaped the cooperative’s approach to one of its most successful recent initiatives: bringing the weekly printed flyer into the digital age through WhatsApp.
The audience gap WhatsApp filled
Coop Alleanza 3.0 was already active across a wide range of digital channels. Social media, programmatic display, email, and SMS were all part of the mix. But a significant segment of customers remained deeply attached to the printed flyer. These were customers who discovered the cooperative through traditional channels. They were comfortable with digital and they used it, but they valued directness and simplicity.
“We simply noticed that they need an interaction, a contact, a more direct form of communication,” says Giovanni.
This insight became the strategic turning point. Rather than pushing these customers toward existing digital channels, the cooperative looked for a channel that already lived where they were: WhatsApp.
Organic growth, real results
Today, Coop Alleanza 3.0’s WhatsApp service is active across all 316 stores. The use case is simple and effective. Customers scan a QR code in-store or on the printed flyer and choose the location they shop at most. From there, WhatsApp becomes a direct way to send weekly flyer updates tied to the right store, instead of a generic message.
The selected store helps the team keep broadcast messages relevant and creates a foundation for more personalized communication over time. At the moment, these WhatsApp broadcasts are managed manually, with messages sent to customers based on the store they selected during onboarding.
The service now reaches 14,000 people every month and drives more than 20,000 sessions to the digital flyer. What makes these numbers compelling is how they were achieved entirely through word of mouth.
“We have never run TV advertising to promote the service on other channels,” Giovanni notes. “We simply placed QR codes to subscribe on our printed flyer and in our stores. So this, in a way, is a sign of genuine interest from our users.”
A partnership built on understanding complexity
The technical challenge behind the initiative was significant. Coop Alleanza 3.0 operates 316 stores, each with its own commercial offer. That means one unique flyer is needed per store. Customers needed to receive updates about the right flyer for the store they actually shopped at, not a generic national promotion. This simply was not something an off-the-shelf solution could handle.
Through the partnership, Infobip helped Coop Alleanza 3.0 simplify the onboarding experience using its chatbot building platform. Customers are guided to select their preferred store from the start, making it easier to deliver updates and offers that are relevant to their location.
Once the preference is set, Infobip’s broadcast takes over. Each time a new weekly flyer is published for that store, customers receive a WhatsApp message with an update and a direct link to open it. Discounts, offers, and promotions tailored to their chosen location.
Technology was only part of the story. For Giovanni, the real difference came from having a partner who understood the cooperative’s operational complexity
The collaboration with the Infobip team did not stop at platform provisioning. What we value most is precisely the fact that a professional relationship developed. One that allowed us to communicate our complexity. We have 316 active points of sale, each with its own commercial offer. So it was essential that Infobip was able to understand our complexity and operationally build an interface that allows the customer to easily select the store whose offers they wish to receive. Having a team present locally, speaking Italian, and able to support us was critically important.
Giovanni Mezzetti
Digital Marketing Specialist at Coop Alleanza 3.0
What comes next
Looking ahead, the cooperative has two strategic areas in focus.
The first is progressive profiling. Using each interaction to better understand what individual customers need, then shifting the content toward what they actually need. The right format, the right offer, the right store.
The second is integration with the membership program. Since Coop Alleanza 3.0 is fundamentally a cooperative of its members, deepening the WhatsApp relationship with that community is a natural priority.
“The players that will realistically win are those who will be able to combine the most innovative technologies with a relationship of trust with their customers,” Giovanni concludes. “It is not just about finding the most innovative channel possible. It is about genuinely understanding what the customer needs.”
