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Using Digital Customer Experiences to Drive Loyalty (ft. Ellen Green)
554 Plays11 months ago
In this episode we meet with Ellen Green, who has 20 years of experience building strong relationships between consumers & brands that generate revenue growth, minimize discounts and drive engagement. Ellen collaborates with brands across the globe to evolve their loyalty strategies and create industry-leading experiences customers love.
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Transcript
Personalizing Customer Experiences through Loyalty
00:00:10
Speaker
Get personal with loyalty, where we're discussing using loyalty to deliver personalized, relevant customer experiences. Hello, everybody. Welcome to today's podcast.
Introduction to Ellen Greene, VP of Loyalty Strategy
00:00:21
Speaker
I'm here with Ellen Greene, the VP of Loyalty Strategy at Bounteous. Hey, Ellen, how are you? I'm great, Erin. How are you doing? I'm doing really well.
00:00:31
Speaker
I'm really excited to have the conversation with you. We've just recently met over the last couple of months. I love your background and all of your knowledge on loyalty. So super excited to have this conversation.
00:00:41
Speaker
Yeah, thanks so much for having me on. I appreciate it. Well,
Ellen Greene's Hybrid Role in Loyalty and CRM
00:00:44
Speaker
let's start there. Why don't you let everyone else know what you've shared with me about your background and how you got into this crazy loyalty space? Yeah, absolutely. So right now I lead loyalty at Bounteous, but I've been in the marketing space for about 20 years, highly focused on both like loyalty and CRM. And so I've worked across a lot of different industries. I've worked client side and agency side, so I kind of understand
00:01:09
Speaker
some of the pain points and also some of the joys of working in both of those different types of environments. But I consider myself kind of this hybrid of like a marketer and a strategist. Basically found loyalty and just fell in love with the space and really helping brands be able to create deeper relationships with their customers. Because at the end of the day, I feel like that's what it's all about. It's more than just creating a program or anything like that. It really is like this relationship builder
00:01:38
Speaker
between customers and brands. And so it's really exciting to see different ways to be able to structure that and help it evolve over time. I think that's one of the things that has really drawn me to it too, because I've been at it for a very long time, as you know, as well. And yeah, it's like the greater good. We're helping. We're helping people. Absolutely.
Bounteous' Acquisition of Hathaway and Loyalty Strategy Development
00:02:00
Speaker
So then your role specifically at Bounteous, Bounteous didn't have loyalty strategy. You guys were acquired by Bounteous when you were at Hathaway, right? Correct. Yeah. So I previously worked at Hathaway and then about two years ago, Bounteous acquired Hathaway. Loyalty wasn't offering that I built from the ground up at Hathaway. And so as we were acquired, we basically brought it to the larger organization.
00:02:29
Speaker
And so now I'm running loyalty across all of our four verticals. And so one of the articles is around consumer. So we see brands in retail, hospitality, CPG, entertainment within that vertical. Then we have dining and convenience as a vertical, financial services, and then health care as a fourth vertical.
00:02:48
Speaker
So pretty diverse and wide areas of expertise. So get to work on a lot of different things and work with a lot of different clients, which is really exciting.
Bounteous' Unique Approach to Customer Experience
00:02:56
Speaker
We kind of see ourselves sitting in the middle of like these three different circular areas. So one of them is like a management consultant where we do a lot of the strategic thinking.
00:03:05
Speaker
A lot of the loyalty strategy work fits in that bucket. We also consider ourselves a digital agency. So building digital experiences, marketing experiences, doing marketing activation. So a lot of that ongoing optimization work and evolution happens there. And then also a systems integrator. So we grew up as a technology company.
00:03:25
Speaker
that was really focused on bringing technology ecosystems together, building out digital experiences, and then over time have added additional capabilities like marketing and loyalty. And so the way I like to talk about it is it's really this great place where essentially we are able to enable end-to-end customer experience everything you would need from a loyalty perspective, except for the loyalty technology itself.
00:03:50
Speaker
And so that's where we can create partnerships with great companies like Annex Cloud and basically marry the two together. And so really helping our clients understand what the right technology is based on the strategy and helping pair all that together to be able to power their loyalty experiences. Well, thank you for sharing all of that. That certainly helps me understand better. Hopefully for everybody else that's listening as well.
00:04:15
Speaker
I think it's really fascinating being able to walk into an organization that has such a diverse client set and then digging in from the loyalty and marketing and loyalty perspective. Maybe customer experience is a good way to talk about it, how to help each of these companies build.
00:04:32
Speaker
stronger experiences for their customers.
Cross-industry Inspiration in Loyalty Strategies
00:04:35
Speaker
I've been in this space a long time and I've had lots of conversations with people where we're maybe being introduced for the first time. Maybe it's a retailer. Well what's your experience in retail or my specific area. I tend to be a little more upscale. Who are you working with. And so many people
00:04:53
Speaker
believe, feel like you have to have experience in their space to warrant the discussion and to be valuable to them. I've always been of the belief and maybe this is short-sighted, but
00:05:06
Speaker
By working in many different verticals you see so many different things that you're able to bring potentially something that works in I don't know restaurant into retail that maybe isn't being used right now. It could and it would actually be super effective. And frankly a differentiator. What's your take on that.
00:05:30
Speaker
I completely agree. I love to use cross-industry inspiration whenever we're figuring out loyalty strategies for companies. I feel like there's so much to be learned. It's interesting because these different types of verticals and clients that we work with, they're all in different stages of their loyalty journey too.
00:05:50
Speaker
Some of the areas that we work with like CPG or B2B like those are big growth areas for loyalty where they're not as sophisticated as some of like the travel and hospitality brands that have been doing it for a really, really long time. And so a lot of the things that we're trying to solve for those clients.
00:06:05
Speaker
It's like maybe we learned some different tracking components or things like that from using our dining clients that then we can kind of apply to the CPG industry or we can look at some of the ways that retail and hospitality have brought in different elements of the experience and apply that across.
00:06:22
Speaker
you know, dining or some of these other categories. And so I think it actually helps to have a really broad look at how everything is. One of the things I love to do, especially when we're workshopping with clients, is bring in a lot of the cross-industry inspiration. So we look at like a lot of the top gaps and opportunities and we bring ideas from the space, but we're always bringing ideas from outside the space too and talking about like how it can apply.
00:06:46
Speaker
I've even had clients that I've worked with in the B2B space where they're like, our vision is to be Delta Airlines because of the great experience that they have. One of the big focus areas was, yes, we'll basically revamp your loyalty structure and everything to make it more effective for your business, but let's really focus on the experience and what that looks like and making it easier for their partners to be able to participate.
Applying B2C Insights to B2B Loyalty Strategies
00:07:15
Speaker
in it and make it basically have a lot of those elements that are delta ask. And so I'd really be able to bring a lot of those types of thinking into the equation when you see something that works and then apply it to a completely different space.
00:07:30
Speaker
That example is near and dear to my heart too, because I think B2B was one of those areas that I think marketers there, rightly so, feel that they're very different than B2C. My customer's different, my customer purchases differently, the competitive set looks different, it works differently, and rightly so, a lot of things that are different, but yet there's so much learning on the B2C side that they can take and apply just like you talked about.
00:07:58
Speaker
And I think forcing to in that space is a lot more experience, a lot more interaction, and it tends to be more training on product. So really becoming more of that trusted advisor. And there's a lot that you can, to just your example, pull from B2C that are where they're really doing that.
00:08:20
Speaker
unique ways that they can apply. Great, great example. Yeah, yeah, I agree. Yeah, the B2B space is really interesting, and I feel like there's a lot of growth happening in that space.
00:08:32
Speaker
So I know a lot of the things that we see clients come to us and say like, oh, wow, I'm just giving away a bunch of discounts. I'm rebating all of these different things. And when I look at what it's driving for my business, it's not. It's just a discount. And I think that just goes back to loyalty as a whole. It's not about discounting. It's all about building this relationship.
00:08:55
Speaker
So looking for ways to do that and going beyond just the discount, looking for ways to reduce it with some of the other things, but also making the experience better or more product training or ways to help them grow their business and a lot of those aspects too. So bringing that into the picture actually helps add a ton more value to the relationship and not having to use discount as the lever to do it.
00:09:19
Speaker
Does it make it harder, though? I'm just thinking about the process of developing the strategy. It's not that it's super easy, but like, oh, if I throw out a bunch of points and then I turn those points into discounts, well, I can throw something out there pretty quickly into the market and make an impact and compete with my competitors. But when you have to, what does this experience mean? Is that harder or is it just being more thoughtful?
00:09:47
Speaker
I mean, in my opinion, I don't think it's harder, but maybe that's because that's one of the main pillars that we're always focused around whenever we're developing loyalty is the experience. So we say, like, loyalty is the outcome of great experiences. And so it's core to what we do. So, I mean, from my perspective, I think it's critical. Like, if the experience is bad, it just falls apart. Like, if people can't easily participate and they don't have
00:10:13
Speaker
visibility and the value of their relationship on a lot of those different elements, it really makes it hard to have that relationship. And so I think it's like a critical piece and it's just kind of integrated into the way we do things. So for us, it's just second nature. There you go. Experiences should be second nature. That's what I'm taking from that.
00:10:37
Speaker
So as you continue this conversation around this and how you're helping and supporting clients, are you seeing client needs change or their goals change over the last couple of years? We talked a lot coming out of COVID, but we've been a couple of years really past that now. Are we seeing pendulum swing back to what it was before or have we elevated the bar and now people have higher expectations in certain areas?
00:11:06
Speaker
be curious to what you're hearing and seeing out there. Yeah, I think from a client perspective, one of the pain points that we've seen again and again is this whole notion of like, how do they reduce discount, especially with all the economic pressures
Post-COVID Shift in Loyalty Strategy Focus
00:11:19
Speaker
that are going on? And so we have a lot of clients that are coming to us saying like, hey, we have something in market, you know, we need to reduce the discount. And so we're always looking for ways like, OK, how can we add value to the relationship if we are reducing discount and in looking for ways to do that?
00:11:35
Speaker
We have had a couple of clients, so we actually had been working with Domino's and Wawa who just re-released programs this month, and both of them actually are making it more favorable from a customer perspective. They put the opposite approach as like, the customer is really important to me, and this relationship is really important to me, and I'm okay with giving them more value. That was very, very important to their executive team, was making sure that that was a piece of the equation.
00:12:04
Speaker
And that it didn't get lost, you know, in translation as things launch because a lot of brands have done the opposite. And so we kind of see both sides of the equation.
00:12:14
Speaker
and can solve for both. But whenever we are facing the discount reduction, because of the ways that we approach things from an experience standpoint, and also kind of looking beyond just that core discount percentage for a lot of these other benefits, we're able to basically find ways to structure in a way so that either you're rewarding your, you know, your best customers and making sure that you're keeping them sticky to the brand, but also
00:12:40
Speaker
I think for one of the clients that we've worked with, Dutch Bros, when they came to us, they were like, can you cut our discount rate in half? And we're like, OK. So we restructured it. But a lot of the elements that we added added so much value from a customer perspective.
Digital Transformation of Loyalty Programs at Dutch Bros
00:12:53
Speaker
They removed from a paper stamp card to a digital experience. So now people didn't have to carry around the card. They had a contactless payment, and they could auto tip, and they could do all these different things that made it super seamless. So whenever we did research with customers, they said it actually felt like it had more value to them.
00:13:10
Speaker
because of the easiness of how it was used, which is great. That's an amazing example. As you were talking, I was thinking about the word value versus the word discount. And ultimately, maybe a discount on the books, right? So if I've identified Ellen is worth a certain amount to me, Erin's worth a certain amount to me, this is how much I'm going to spend in my
00:13:38
Speaker
Loyalty benefits, maybe we call it.
00:13:41
Speaker
There's a way to just equate, I guess, points to a discount or actions to a true discount, like you're getting 20% off, or you can do it as more of a benefit that's a value and it may be worth the same amount, but you're not talking about it the same way. Maybe an item might be a service or something, right? Is that fair distinction to be making? Yeah, I think that's a completely fair distinction.
00:14:11
Speaker
It's fair to look at it in those different capacities in ways. Are companies looking at that that way? Do customers respond similarly? I would say various. Of course it does. Yeah. I mean, from a company perspective, I think some companies see it that way and some people see it very much as like a discount line item that it's focused on.
00:14:39
Speaker
I think ones that are really focused on building the relationship with the customer, there's some sort of core value, but they are also doing so much, especially on the marketing side, to really build the relationships and do things in a very strategic way. And so we have seen a lot of brands take their core value proposition and then layer on a lot of more surprising delight elements and things like that that are used in a very strategic fashion.
00:15:06
Speaker
with their customer base. And that doesn't have to be discount related. That can be recognition and status and all the other wonderful things that can build that relationship between the customer and the brand. I love that you brought that up too. As I was growing up in this space, it was always reward and recognition.
00:15:26
Speaker
or the benefits and I think as an industry perhaps we've really aired more toward reward and less to recognition and I'm hoping that we'll see more on the recognition because I believe recognition can go a really long way.
00:15:44
Speaker
Yeah, it absolutely can. I think, I mean, that starts getting into where you're moving beyond the transaction, you really are starting to build that emotional connection. And like, if a brand is recognizing you, and they know you, there is value in that. And so and I think that there's especially different customer segments and things like that, that find a lot of value in that.
00:16:06
Speaker
even more than the discount. And so we've done some segmentation around like different personas and things like that. And there are certain subsets that value that much more than some sort of monetary discount. Yeah. You think about it from a customer perspective, the clients that you're working with, how do you identify those? Is that a
00:16:25
Speaker
analytics exercise that gets tied to the strategy piece so front you identify some of those or do you end up identifying that over time and and growing the recognition components later. Well so for some of our clients we have like segmentation strategies in place where we're looking at you know certain pieces of the data to identify like what customers are fitting into those segments.
00:16:49
Speaker
I also think there's ways to like capture data over time around the relationship and those certain interactions and things like that. Whether that be based on behavior that happens after these certain moments in time, or whether that be through things like.
00:17:06
Speaker
like zero party data capture and starting to basically lay out different elements, whether that be like having customers choose things that are like discount related versus more things that are like status related and kind of getting some of those learnings. So that's like, that's one of the things I love incorporating into strategies and a lot of the communications and into elements of the experience along the way. Cause I feel like you can learn so much more about your customer just by asking and so easy.
00:17:32
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. And for so many years, brands really weren't doing that. And now it seems like it's kind of resurrected again, but in more fun and interactive ways as well. Yeah. Yeah. I agree. And there's tons of brands that we're working with that have looked at, you know, fun ways to put it into the experience. Like one of the brands we work with is
00:17:53
Speaker
And last year, around New Year's, they had this whole poll that they got around what people cared about in the New Year. And then they customized the whole first part of the year's communications and everything based on what customers were telling them. And those results were incredible.
00:18:09
Speaker
I'd love to hear more about that story because it's amazing to be able to take the data and actually use it because I think that's one of the places a lot of brands fall down to. It's like, okay, I can have great, fun, interactive ways to collect the data, but now how am I going to get it out and actually use it in meaningful ways?
00:18:28
Speaker
Yeah, and we found really successful ways, especially as they're capturing the data, to be able to deliver something personalized at that moment is crazy and factual. And so Noodles is actually one where they have it built into their onboarding structure, where they ask a question in there, and then essentially it delivers a personalized offer that's based on exactly what the customer's clicking. And so it builds that trust very early on in the relationship.
00:18:58
Speaker
and those customers continue to come back again and again and again. You make it sound so easy. But I think that that's huge and I'm glad you shared that example because one of the big areas brands really have challenges is that early churn. The churn after the first or second or maybe even the third transaction and then people aren't ever coming back and talk to a number of CMOs over the years.
00:19:22
Speaker
where you say something like, well, I don't have a retention problem. I've got a program for that. And they can't even move their hand. It's way back there. Once they've been with me a while, I can put a fence around them. But they're missing that early aspect and continue to look at that as acquisition. Like, oh, well, I've got to increase my acquisition spend 80%. It's like, OK, but you're not growing at that rate. Why? Why? There's something else going on here. And so I think of that example around
00:19:53
Speaker
How do you engage them right off the bat and really get them moving? I was actually, I was on Taylor Maid's website this morning and a new pop-up had come up and it said, tell me a little bit more about your game. And it was the first time I had seen them do that first thing. And it's like, just what you're talking about. Bring it out there early, make it seem fun, make it, I want to know more about you and how I can help you.
00:20:18
Speaker
Exactly. I know. You make it fun, make it easy, and just make it very seamless in the customer experience. People are willing to participate and give you the data, and especially if you deliver on it, it's great. But yeah, I feel like that first piece of the relationship, that's when customers are so excited about your brand, and so if you can capture those things early on, it's going to serve the relationship better for the long run. Yeah, deliver early.
00:20:44
Speaker
One of the things as we were prepping for this conversation that we were chatting about, and I think it's a great loyalty debate at the moment.
Are Points Necessary for Effective Loyalty Programs?
00:20:53
Speaker
I think we've all heard people say is, I don't want points. I think it's because people are feeling like points are discounts. If I give out some points, it immediately means I'm giving that 10 or 20 percent or whatever discount. I guess I look at it as,
00:21:12
Speaker
You can have programs with points and create a lot of value. You certainly can have points programs that are just discounts for sure. I can see where that's kind of a race to the bottom. But then there's also the option of having a meaningful program that doesn't necessarily have a
00:21:32
Speaker
points or even a currency is that accurate to say yeah absolutely so i consider points to be one of the can be a solution or a tactic but there's a lot of things that you can do on the strategy side to create value with customers and it certainly doesn't need to be points.
00:21:52
Speaker
So I've had many clients come recently and say, you know, points is not the solution for us. Or I've had clients that are using points and saying like, my program is I'm using this, but like, it's not profitable. But they're actually not doing anything on the marketing activation side, build the relationship or drive any additional behavior. So it is acting very much like a discount.
00:22:16
Speaker
So I, you know, I think it's one of those things like we always take clients on a case by case basis and understand like what they're trying to achieve and really look at it like what the customer needs are and what their business goals are and what's right for the brand. And so points is going to be a solution in some cases and in some cases it's not. But I've seen a lot of brands out there that when they're not using points, they're bringing in a lot of the elements of
00:22:41
Speaker
the experience. So like we have a client that we're working with that it was looking to do something a little bit more, like very targeted and surprise and delight based. And that's not the only piece of the equation, but it's also pulling in elements from their brand and looking at like different activations throughout the year that we can build with customers as well as having that personalization piece, but also big on like making it easy and seamless to interact.
00:23:08
Speaker
as well as for them, like the employees are a big piece of it. So they're like, we want to make employees the hero. Like we want them to be able to deliver these benefits. So help us figure out in the experience, how can we notify them to have them actually deliver the message to the customer? Like, oh my gosh, you've unlocked X, Y, and Z and actually build that relationship too. So I love it when
00:23:34
Speaker
The organization has a very strong view of their employees because that's always a huge piece of the equation too, if you can bring that in as another relationship touch point. Making the employee the
00:23:47
Speaker
And what it also will do is now that employee feels so good about the role that they have for the organization, that they're this ambassador. They're making somebody's day. They're making them super happy because they're able to give them this kind of rewards. It does so much on so many levels.
00:24:09
Speaker
That's phenomenal. Yeah. Employees absolutely love it. Then they're also more bought into the whole thing because they feel like they're doing good and they're helping customers. It's one of those things where if you can get it in a sense where they're helpful to customers and not pushing something on them, it completely changes the dynamic of everything. Yeah. Here, join this program. Join, join, join. Oh, look, here's your free cup of coffee for today. Thanks. Your coffee's on me today.
00:24:40
Speaker
One of the pushbacks that I've heard from people when we have this debate around points no points is that people the consumer is not going to understand that they're not going to if I'm not going to get points or I'm not going to get something that's tangible.
00:24:57
Speaker
Why do I want to join or how do I even know that this exists? Or is it, does it become too complex? I am the school thought that no, I think you can tell people if you, that there's a two way value exchange. And if you explain that, if you share data or you raise your hand to join this program, is it air quote this, you will get additional benefits and you will get personalized experiences from us that that promise I believe is enough.
00:25:25
Speaker
How do you coach your clients on it? Because obviously you are doing programs without points. How are you making sure that the
00:25:32
Speaker
consumer of the program is really understanding and getting engaged right from the beginning. Well I think one of the big pieces too is like whenever we're doing these engagements like we're always doing consumer research to to get the consumer's voice and perspective. And so that's always a really great tool to help clients understand like what customers really think. And like do they actually need points or not need points. And if there's ways to actually bring that value through in other ways.
00:26:01
Speaker
So I find a lot of programs that have like a nice hybrid where there's like some level of value, whether it be points or not, you know, that always helps to kind of set the stage for what it could look like. But I think it's have, you know, the communications piece and being able to actually drive relationship there is just as important as having like something for customers to raise their hand and say that they want to participate in.
00:26:31
Speaker
So I think that's why we always look at like that end-to-end experience. So it's not just like, okay, here's your value proposition, but it is like, what's the marketing surrounding it, how customers are interacting with it, and all those pieces are so critical to really making it successful.
00:26:49
Speaker
Thank you for that. Can we dig into that a bit? I know you have a number of clients that you've worked with in this scenario where you're not doing points and you're doing maybe a surprise and delight or some kind of other structure. Can you share maybe a little bit about what their situation is or was around
00:27:09
Speaker
their objectives and what alerted you to, hey, surprise and delight's a better way to go. I'm thinking about our audience and how, as they're listening to us, you have this debate and now are comfortable with, okay, I can go multiple ways. How do I then home in on the point that going outside a point is good for me? What are their signs or certain
00:27:34
Speaker
I don't know aspects of my brand and my promise to my customer that come into play to help point me in that direction. And you will consider what considerations should I have when I go down this path.
00:27:46
Speaker
I'll give a couple different examples. Sometimes we find that just the brand itself has never really been about discounting. We'll walk in and start working with different clients, and they're really hesitant to even explore loyalty because they're so worried that it's about discounting. We have to convince them that it's not what this is about.
00:28:13
Speaker
We don't need to ask for anything related to discounting. We can explore all of these other elements. And so I think that's key, especially like some of these brands are just like that. They're very scared to go down that path. And I just think there's so many other solutions on what to bring to the table. And then I think there's another
00:28:33
Speaker
element that we work with where there's a lot of brands that are actually one of the benefits is getting people to raise their hand and track themselves. Well, there's a lot of brands that if they have a lot of their transactions running through digital or e-commerce channels, they're capturing a lot of that customer data.
00:28:50
Speaker
And so they're able to do different types of activations that actually make it much more experiential and really lean on the CRMPs to activate a lot of the different customer segments and do it in a really strategic way.
00:29:03
Speaker
And so they don't necessarily need something that's going to have the value tied to it, but more use this DRM component to do it strategically. And then look at, you know, different ways to basically bring in experiences. So we have one client that decided to launch like a secret menu.
00:29:23
Speaker
because they have so many transactions that they're tracking from customers, but they wanted to bring in fun experiences. As this new movie launched, they partnered with the people that were making the movie and then brought to life this whole secret menu that tied in flavors and everything. It was really exciting. Customers loved it. It's looking for activations like that to build loyalty along the way in combination with the CRM.
Aligning Loyalty Programs with the Brand
00:29:48
Speaker
And that example that you just gave is something else that we haven't touched on. But it's super important for the success of a loyalty initiative is that it has to be part of the overall brand. And if so many of I think the programs that people point to and go points or discounts.
00:30:05
Speaker
Those also tend to be super siloed and separate from everything else. So to do this while you really need to make sure that it's an extension or of the brand. And I'm not even sure I use the right word there. How do you how do you coach on that? Oh, yeah. So that's part of our whole loyalty framework that we start with. It's all about the customer business and brand. So the brand element is so key.
00:30:29
Speaker
So especially like restaurant industry, a bunch of restaurants went out and launched like the same program. They have points and they have menu items and there's nothing different. So like bringing in a lot of the brand elements and making it special and looking at looking at ways like how are customers already interacting? Like what do they get excited about?
00:30:49
Speaker
with your brand and bringing in those elements of it is what makes it special and then also build a lot of the emotional side too. So we always look for like what makes a brand unique, where they differentiate it and then how loyalty fits into that overall experience. And that's like a piece of the whole equation as we're looking at it from a strategic standpoint of it's not just about the value proposition, but it's about this other element too and bringing in those brand right elements. And that's such an important piece that I think
00:31:18
Speaker
So many organizations are missing today and have been for a number of years because of all the discounting that we've seen with or without a loyalty program that you launched your business for a reason. There was an opportunity in the market. You stood for something.
00:31:35
Speaker
And then you're out there for a while you start watching your competition so much the clothing that you're selling looks similar your customers are similar so you all begin to act very similar ways and market in some ways but you've forgotten.
00:31:51
Speaker
what made you different. You forgot what made you special. And frankly I think if you're in that situation as a brand today going back and realizing what that is and to the points you're making create your loyalty initiative around that could actually bring you back to to your roots and give you those points of differentiation. Yeah.
00:32:12
Speaker
Absolutely. Every single brand that we work with, we're asking for all of their brand materials upfront to get infused. If they're not a current client, we're going to get infused with their brand and what they think about and make sure that that comes through in everything that we're doing. We even have a piece of our research that we do with customers where we put different brand elements and themes in front of them to understand what do they gravitate to, what's important to them, and then we end up infusing that into the overall strategy.
00:32:41
Speaker
That's that's amazing and fun. Another question I want to ask you around all of this is, are there different KPIs? Is there anything that we need to be thinking about that that different than a traditional points program, let's say? Yeah, so we have.
00:33:03
Speaker
a measurement frame we use. Essentially, it has different tiers. One of the base tiers is really around customer perceptions. I know a lot of people commonly use NPS as a customer perception, but there's a lot of things you can use beyond that. We have an emotional loyalty scoring mechanism that we do that's often in part of that perceptions. But there's also a lot of different elements, even the way
00:33:30
Speaker
customers are engaging with certain pieces of like digital experiences or things like that and like taking that into account and then also looking at their behaviors and what they're doing which is a lot of the traditional loyalty metrics that we have often see you know around like penetration of the program and active members and understanding if they're
00:33:49
Speaker
how the different segments are behaving and things like that. And then all laddering up to the main overarching ones that at the end of the day, clients are looking for transactions and sales and all the things that we all love.
00:34:02
Speaker
But it's this whole notion of understanding you don't need all of them, but really customizing that per client and understanding based on their strategy and how customers are acting, which ones are meaningful and which ones they'd be looking at. And then focusing on that and actually building a lot of the customer reporting and everything around those so that they can easily track those and see what's happening over time, especially as things like change and evolve in the marketplace or change and evolve with things that they're doing from a strategic standpoint.
00:34:32
Speaker
That's great. And I think KPIs are so important. And being able to look at I like your customer perception piece because you can look at the numbers and maybe I'm thinking average order frequency purchase and maybe you're not seeing major blips there. But you might see something in perception monitoring early before bigger dives are happening somewhere else. So it might be a way to to catch something before
00:35:02
Speaker
before it becomes a problem. Absolutely. Yeah, if you are monitoring and tracking that, it's huge.
00:35:08
Speaker
So yeah, there's a lot I like to do to also infuse different touch points throughout the experience to get like ongoing feedback from customers. So, you know, a lot of brands do the big research study when they're developing the strategy, but I love to integrate these touch points within to basically get like this. It's not a big giant survey. It's more of like these micro interactions and then using that data to actually help develop out like the roadmaps for the future strategies and things like that. Yeah. Yeah. I love that.
00:35:38
Speaker
And she's back. Well, this has been really, really interesting, Ellen. Thank you for sharing everything that you're seeing in the market. We covered from what's happening with the different verticals, how you can educate and learn from different industries and bring that into your own program to create some things that are unique. We dove pretty deep into points, no points.
00:36:04
Speaker
experiences, added value, things like that that you can bring and wrapped here with different types of KPIs and different things to be watching and that can really help you directionally and make decisions early. If we look to wrap up the conversation, is there any other guidance or advice or anything that we missed that you'd like to share with the audience today?
Holistic Approach to Loyalty: Customer Needs, Business Goals, and Brand Alignment
00:36:28
Speaker
One of the things that really
00:36:30
Speaker
I see as being successful and it really ties everything together is this whole notion of like think about loyalty very holistically from an experience standpoint and really focus in on like what your customer needs are and make sure that you're still addressing all of your business goals, but then that whole brand aspect. And I think if you bring those three elements in as well as look at things holistically from an experience standpoint, like that's where you're going to have the most success.
00:36:56
Speaker
Wonderful. That's a fabulous way to finish this up. Thank you so much. For the people that are listening, if they want to get more of you, want to learn more from you, connect with you, how do they do that? So you can find me on LinkedIn. Ellen, green, just like the color. And then Donnius is B-O-U-N-T-E-O-U-S.
00:37:18
Speaker
So you can find me there. And then also if you want to contact me via email, I'm just ellen.green at bounteous.com. I would love to follow up and have any conversations with people that want to chat loyalty. Terrific. Thanks, Ellen. Appreciate your time today. Yeah. Thank you so much. Thanks for listening to this episode of Get Personal with Loyalty. Join us next time for more loyalty insights. Until then, dare to dream. Let Annex Cloud help make your dreams a reality. Visit annexcloud.com. See you soon.