The Home Depot Expands Pro Loyalty Program

Courtesy of the Home Depot

October 1, 2020— The Home Depot just announced the launch of some dramatic upgrades to their Pro Xtra loyalty program, adding earnable shopping perks as customer rewards and revamping the user experience to be more mobile-friendly.

“We wanted to make this more than just a loyalty program — it’s what I call a ‘system for pros’ that isn’t just about rewards,” says J.T. Rieves, vice president of pro business at The Home Depot.

What Rieves refers to as a “system for pros” starts with how pro customers shop and track their spending. For The Home Depot, one of the main goals of expanding their loyalty program was to streamline the checkout experience for pro members.

“Historically if you were a pro member there were really two ways we would capture your transaction at checkout,” say Rieves. “One would be you punching your phone number in the pin pad as you were checking out, and that phone number is your member ID. Or you could register a tender, like a credit card, gift card or a checking account.”

The new program improves on that process by giving every member a unique virtual ID within the Pro Xtra mobile app. This way they can simply scan their phone at checkout to ensure they are tracking their spending and getting credit for their purchases. Making sure members get credit for their spending is even more important now that the Home Depot has added a perks system to the Pro Xtra program that rewards members for purchases made online and in-store.

“We’ve never really had anything that rewarded you for your spending, other than for some of our really big customers that are under contract and situations like that,” says Rieves. “For our smaller pros, our handymen, some of our most important customers that are in our stores every week or multiple times a week, now there’s a program out there for them.”

Through Pro Xtra, members can unlock and redeem perks that include “Tool Rental Perks,” discounts on in-store tool rentals, and “Pro Xtra Dollars,” essentially a digital rewards card.

“That perk is going to be delivered in the app. It’s not going to be something you get in the mail,” say Rieves.

The entire Pro Xtra experience now runs through the mobile app. The Home Depot views focusing on mobile as a natural evolution that reflects the technology upgrades they’ve seen on jobsites over the last decade or so.

“We’re trying to get everybody to be mobile first, recognizing that that’s the way the world goes,” says Rieves. “And in many cases, if we’re talking pros over the years, we’ve seen a noticeable pivot away from the yellow legal pads to iPads and smartphones.”

Pro Xtra members will also receive occasional bonus perks that serve mostly as a way for The Home Depot to thank pro customers for their loyalty.

“The bonus perks right now will be a drink or a snack,” said Rieves. “That’s what we’ll do as a sort of welcome to the program.”

UPDATE (February 3, 2021)— The Home Depot announced this week that it is adding paint rewards to its Pro Xtra loyalty program in a move that reconfirms the home improvement company’s commitment to its professional customers. The addition of paint rewards is just the latest in a series of recent major changes to the Home Depot’s Pro Xtra loyalty program that have included expanding the scope of the program’s rewards and updating the overall user experience for the better.

The Home Depot’s freshly revamped paint rewards program rewards high-spending customers with different levels of discounts. Pro Xtra members will now be placed into savings tiers based on the amount they spend on qualifying purchases of paint, stains, and primers in Home Depot stores. Those tiers are:

• Bronze Level: 10% off when you spend $1,000
• Silver Level: 15% off when you spend $3,500
• Gold Level: 20% off when you spend $6,500

The amount a pro spends over the course of the calendar year will be tracked and accumulate on their Pro Xtra account over the course of a calendar year. Once a ProXtra member has hit a discount threshold they will receive that discount on every qualifying paint purchase until they reach a higher tier or their rewards reset in January.

Pro Xtra paint customers will also still have full access to the rest of the Pro Xtra program’s rewards and benefits, including the ability to earn Perks through purchases and earn additional discounts.