#468: Leaders in Customer Loyalty: Anil Mansukhani on the Evolution of MGM Resorts’ Loyalty Program

Welcome back to our Leaders in Customer Loyalty series. This is Brand Stories. It's Thursday. We're glad to have you every Thursday for a new edition. For most successful brands, customer loyalty is becoming an increasingly important focus. These organizations are leaning into their customer loyalty programs, aligning them closely with their brand values and also their marketing objectives. Internally and externally, both the brand and its customers recognize and appreciate the value these programs bring. However, enhancing loyalty programs through partnerships can be quite challenging. Many partnerships are challenged to align exclusive benefits and offers that strengthen the value of all the programs involved. For example, adding partners like Marriott Bonvoy and Royal Caribbean Cruises might seem counterintuitive for a hospitality lodging brand. Yet for MGM Resorts, these partnerships deliver incremental and measurable value to a marquee brand and preeminent loyalty program. Today, we're joined by Anil Mansukhani. He's the Vice President of Loyalty Marketing at MGM at MGM Resorts International. He's going to share his recent wins for the program and his vision for keeping this award-winning initiative ahead of the competition. Anil, great to have you back on the podcast. How are you today? Doing well, doing well. Mark, how are you? Doing well, thank you. Thanks for taking the time to speak with us. For those who may be new and are not familiar, can you give us a short introduction to MGM Resorts International, what you guys do, how you do it? Sure, absolutely. MGM, as many probably know, is one of the world's largest gaming, entertainment, and hospitality companies in the world. Our operations are primarily in Las Vegas, but we also have locations up and down the East Coast, as well as in the Midwest. Then we have a number of international locations as well. Currently, we have properties in China. Then we have some development projects going on in the United Emirates and Japan. Okay. How or why was the company started? What's the backstory with MGM? The backstory is probably a bit longer than we have time for here, but it was definitely, at one point, as many people know, a combination of both TV and movie assets, as well as gaming and entertainment. I think at its core, we're a gaming and entertainment company, but I don't remember the exact number of years. A number of years ago, they split off the media assets into a separate division that I think was ultimately acquired by Amazon, probably in the last five years. We are the live entertainment, gaming, and entertainment portion of that business, again, primarily in the Las Vegas market, but nationwide, and also have a growing worldwide presence as well. Okay. When you look at the success of MGM, the resorts, what has led to the great success that you've seen? What's led to the extensive growth? I think the simple answer is that we just provide excellent service and experiences for our highest value members. That's what keeps them coming back. The longer answer is that the company has really been strong at being able to evolve as customer preferences have evolved. Over the past 25 years, Las Vegas market has evolved from primarily being a gaming destination to being an early adopter in the experience economy. That was always well-known for concerts and shows, but then started gaining a reputation for being a culinary destination through partnerships with celebrity chefs, and more recently, being a sports destination between the UFC and the NHL and NFL and Formula One racing that hosts races every year. Then coming soon, Major League Baseball with the A's moving from Oakland to Las Vegas. Absolutely. Your role at the company, you're in charge of all the customer loyalty, customer experience efforts within the organization. Can you tell us a little bit more about the role within the organization? Then also be great to know how did you get to where you are today? Were there some positions that you had leading up to this role? How did you fall into the loyalty marketing game? Sure. Definitely, I would say a non-linear path to get to where I am today. For the past four years, I've been leading, as you mentioned, loyalty for MGM Resorts. This includes everything from loyalty strategy and marketing to operations and systems, to financial and loyalty partnerships, to member experience. Prior to that, I spent a number of years in the cruise industry, leading revenue teams, marketing, product management, operations, analytics, and business development. Then prior to that, I also spent a number of years in strategy roles, marketing, and analytics in a variety of different industries, including telecom, consumer electronics, and financial services. Definitely had a lot of variety in terms of industry background, as well as functional background, which is supporting a number of different functions. Ultimately, I think what my career has been tied to is how do I drive growth? How do I drive customer experience? How do I drive new product innovation fundamentally? When you look at your role, it's diverse. Obviously, customer loyalty is very important. It's growing from impact, but also importance. It can be more so challenging than it ever has been before with data, segmentation, understanding the customers, being able to listen to and understand. When you look at your role holistically, what are some of the challenges or opportunities you face that may keep you up at night? For this role, I think two of the bigger ones, which I, to some extent, wasn't fully anticipating when I probably started in the role, was the real need and desire to focus on identity and customer identity in particular. The second one just being data and how critical it is to having clean data and being able to leverage that data. I think we operate in a highly regulated industry, given our gaming background and ties. We have to make very, very sure that we know our customers very well. We have to make sure they're 21 years of age. We have to understand if they have any specific guest preferences on their account. We don't want to create duplicate accounts because ultimately, we want to value people. You talked about segmentation. We want to value people based on their holistic value. Having two separate accounts oftentimes makes that job a little bit more challenging. I think it's really focusing on clean data and identity and making sure that we truly know who our customers are. One of the things we're very interested in is understanding what customer loyalty means to individuals, but also organizations and the individuals that run these programs. When you look at customer loyalty, what does customer loyalty mean to you and to MGM? It's a good question. I think the primary thing that we talk about as a team, as a leadership team, is how do we build that emotional connection with guests and have that everyday association with our brand and being able to deliver great value and experiences. Effectively, just making sure that when we're looking at a customer's holistic value that we know that they're, or we have at least a good understanding that they're spending and visiting our properties more than others and engaging with other capabilities we have in their everyday lives. Our co-branded credit card being one of them that drives that everyday association with our brand. We also have a sports betting joint venture partner, BetMGM, that allows people to play and do sports betting and iGaming in the comfort of their living room at home. Again, it's really driving that everyday association and connection and brand love with MGM so that they don't want to necessarily visit our competitors as frequently. Okay. When you look at the MGM Rewards Program, you've added some new benefits to it. How does the MGM Benefit Program or the Customer Loyalty Program, should I say, and specifically the new Milestone Rewards functionality or incremental benefits that you've added, play into that vision you have for customer loyalty within your organization? Yeah. We introduced a number of new benefits at the end of March. As you mentioned, one of those benefits was the introduction of Milestone Rewards. Part of the rationale or background behind introducing that was we looked at both our qualitative data, so we do a lot of ongoing survey work of our members, and we also look at some quantitative data in terms of how people spend with us. We noticed a few things. Really, at the core of it was when people achieve a certain tier status, there was a percentage of our customers that effectively stopped or significantly slowed down in their engagement with us. As we tried to peel the onion a little bit on that, what we found is that, again, this is probably very similar to many programs out there, that some people just feel like attaining that next tier status was maybe unattainable. We wanted to provide incentives along the way without having to just significantly lower the tiers, make it easier for people to get there. We took a lot of effort when we relaunched the program three years ago in making it a bit more difficult to make it feel a little bit more special and a little bit more like the people that earned it are truly recognized for their spend. We really took a lot of time to introduce things like Milestone Rewards to give people an incentive to continue spending. One of the Milestone Rewards that we introduced was specific to rollover tier credit, so it effectively gives them, if they hit the milestone, they would get tier credits that would roll over into the following year that would give them a head start towards achieving elevated tier status the following year. That was one introduction of that. Then the second one had to do with when they actually achieve a tier status that would unlock certain benefits, so a tier celebration credit, so they'd have the ability to get anywhere from $100 to $500 in value when they stayed at our properties, whether that's through food and beverage credits or whether it's through spa treatments or entertainment. At the higher levels, we also introduced the ability for folks to qualify for an air travel credit, so we would effectively fly people out to Las Vegas for their stay. We would effectively cover that expense. Now, the last set of benefits I mentioned, those weren't new benefits, but we tied them to a Milestone Reward to make it clear that these were something that you had to earn in order to achieve, so that was really the rationale there. That's a big discussion point within the members of Multi360 MGM being a member. We meet and talk about different topics, but keeping the customers engaged throughout not only their lifecycle, but as they navigate tiers and making sure the customer value proposition is spot on is very important. Early engagement, early redemption opportunities, engagement opportunities, but also more consistent opportunities is something that brands are pretty laser focused on right now. When you look at some of the things that you've done from the Milestone Rewards program, what went into making those changes to the program? Yes, so a lot of it was I feel like we do a pretty good job of listening to our customers, and so beyond Milestone Rewards, we introduced a number of new benefits with our partner Marriott as well as our partner World Caribbean, and so with Marriott, we introduced some enhanced tier match capabilities where our members would be able to tier match into the Marriott Bonvoy program. We had a program last year that was sort of in its pilot phase, if you will, and so we've sort of continued to extend that for the duration of the partnership, but made it a bit more generous starting in February of this year, and then with World Caribbean, a lot of that was around providing enhanced cruise benefits for our members when they sail with World Caribbean, and so for instance, our gold tier, which is sort of our third tier across our portfolio, they previously didn't receive an annual complimentary cruise benefit, and so now they are entitled to an annual cruise benefit, and then for our Platinum and Noir members, the two highest tiers, we provided effectively better cabins for them when they sailed with World Caribbean and Celebrity Cruises. We provided longer and better access to their itineraries. We provided better onboard benefits, and a lot of that work that I just talked about, like I said, was really just listening, was a direct result of listening to customers and hearing what they wanted from the partnerships that we had and working with the partners to deliver those benefits, and I think our early results have been well-received by members that we've seen. Okay. The inter-tier, I think it'd be inter-tier, the benefits, the engagement between the different tiers, very important, right, to keep them progressing, keep them engaged. How does the new Milestone Rewards Program kind of enhance the member engagement between tier levels or kind of more holistically? Yeah, as I mentioned, I think because one of the observations that we had with some of the data was that people really slowed down their spend, or in some cases, you know, maybe, you know, they stopped visiting us after achieving that tier level. What we were trying to do is to keep people motivated to continue spending with us, and so we placed milestones in between the tiers in order to get people to continue to engage with us, and so that was the real motivation behind introducing those Milestone Rewards, and to recognize them. The other part of it was the tier celebration credits, and so to really recognize them for their spend. Okay. Many brands are looking at the Customer Loyalty Program, putting more focus on it than they may have in the past. Some brands like MGM and others are laser-focused on customer experience, customer engagement, that more holistic customer loyalty engagement, and they prioritize it within the organization. So when you look at MGM, you know, how important is the Customer Loyalty Program to kind of your whole marketing efforts, and you know, how do you prioritize within the organization? Yeah, it's very, it's critically important to us. I mean, it's tied to almost everything that we do. I mean, from the entertainment and events that we program to the data that we collect, you know, to the offers and promotions that we run, to the service experience that we provide, the Loyalty Program is core to all of that. So whether we're, again, programming for things like hosting a Formula One event or hosting a citywide Super Bowl, like the first conversation is, how do we take care of our highest value guests and make them a part of it, offer them early access or exclusive experiences, you know, elevated service, whether that's through the product, whether that's through the room type, or whether that's through the seating at some of the events that we host. It really permeates its way through everything that our teams do on the front lines. I mean, there's laser-focused on the NPS of those highest tier members that we get. It's tied to, you know, 65,000 or 60,000 employees bonuses, and just really making sure that we're delivering excellent guest service and experience for, you know, those highest value members. Okay. Value is a pretty strong area of interest right now within the community. It has a number of different pillars, valuing the program, value in the tiers, which is just, you know, what you went through when you looked at kind of redoing and enhancing the program, value to product. It's impacting different brands, hospitality, pretty significantly, grocery, also in kind of the restaurant, fast, casual. So when you look at value, the challenges potentially with inflation, some of the uncertainty with the tariffs, no tariffs, tariffs, you know, what are you looking at with regard to value? Are you seeing your customers asking more from a value perspective from you, from the program? Because many brands are seeing that, but they're also seeing the customers lean into the program a little more than they may have in the past as well. Yeah. So there's, there's a lot there. I mean, I think at its core value, you know, we're, we're not unique in that regard where I think consumers, you know, they expect to get tremendous value out of their vacation experiences. And so, as I mentioned, we, we spent a lot of time obsessing about guest experience and making sure that people, when they're here, they're well, well taken care of, especially our highest value members. And so, you know, we've put plans in place for the last several years and really making sure that those high value members are well taken care of. So it's everything from, you know, we'll waive resort fees. I just talked a little bit about how we've offered enhanced benefits through partners, you know, so adding value that way. We've, we've provided exclusive access to experiences. I just talked about, you know, Superbowl and Formula One and, you know, providing access to the masters and, you know, you name it. We, we have, you know, if you watch the NBA playoffs yesterday, you know, Golden State Warriors, like we, you know, we're a sponsor of theirs. And so we have, you know, front row seats, suite access to a number of different sports teams across the country. And so we try to provide, you know, tremendous value to those highest value, highest value members through everything that we do experience wise, whether that's comping rooms or food and beverage, or the experiences that I just mentioned. It's, it's a huge part of what we're focused on. Okay. I know it's early, but you know, what have you seen so far with regard to the new benefits? Is it making impact? You've seen some measurable differences, or maybe you have some maybe qualitative feedback from your customers regarding the changes that you made? Yeah, it's like you said, it's definitely, it's only been a little bit less than two months. So it's definitely probably a little bit hard to gauge customer, you know, actually utilization of some of the new benefits just because it's new. But I think what we've tried to do is understand a couple of different things, just anecdotal feedback from, from our employees, not just customers, because a lot of our employees, you know, speak directly to our customers, especially like hosted customers, trying to understand, trying to share information, because obviously, there's a lot of clutter and noise that that our customers are very busy and like cutting through all the other noise. So the hosts are there to help provide, you know, hey, this is what's new in the program. And the early early feedback has been overwhelmingly positive about, you know, pretty much everything that we just rolled out in terms of the milestone rewards. And in terms of the new cruise benefits, we haven't talked about it, I don't think yet, but I think we also launched a new co branded credit card. And so like, the early early feedback on and all of them have been positive, and people are voting with their with their clicks. And so we've seen, you know, nice uptick on the new credit card that we launched, and as well as, you know, really positive qualitative feedback from employees about the new benefits. Okay, personalization is very important. New credit card offering a new intertier rewards are very important as well. You know, how is MGM looking at personalization? You know, what does it mean to you from a kind of marketing opportunity from a customer loyalty perspective? You know, how are you looking at personalization? I mean, it's probably stating the obvious, but I mean, it's it's obviously critical to what what we do. And we do this very well. And I would say we're probably we're probably early adopters with, you know, the highest value guests for those customers who are hosted customers, we do this, you know, exceptionally well, where we know our hosts know their members preferences very well. And they they do everything in their power to make sure that they're delivering, you know, a memorable experience for those types of members. So they're they're doing everything from arranging air travel to arranging transportation from the airport and you know, black car service. You know, they're, they're helping with their property and room selection, they're making reservations at dining outlets there. You know, they know their food preferences or beverage preferences. All of that is critical, especially at those very, very high value customers. I think our our challenge, and most brands challenges being able to do this and deliver this level of service at scale. And so that's where, you know, our team is a bit more focused on trying to make sure that as I talked about earlier, collecting, collecting data and making sure it's available to our other business partners, so that when we're, you know, sending out offers or promotions or invites to experiences or events, that we fully understand the customer. And so it's, it's critical to our roadmap, but we have, we have a long way to go, like, you know, most other brands. But it's it's very much at the heart of what's going to make us successful and driving additional trips and additional revenue and additional engagement and brand love that we talked about earlier, to build that emotional connection with the brand. And partnerships are another area that are front and center for brands as well. And you've done it actually, remember, we introduced you to a hotel partner way back in the day, not the current hotel partner, but one and you guys have always seemed to have an affinity for partnerships that work for both partners, because that can be a big challenge for brands, a often everyone wants to be the redemption partner, they want to have the most beneficial accrual or redemption currency, you know, opportunity. So it can be challenging, especially in kind of this challenging economic environment to get the programs right. But you guys seem to do with aplomb. Well, you know, how do you do that so well? And how holistically, how are you looking at partnerships? Holistically, I think my perspective is, we have to set up scenarios where it's win, win, win, ideally, so you know, both both brands win, and then ultimately, the customer wins. And those are the partnerships that are most successful. And so I would, you know, give you the Royal Caribbean celebrity cruise example where like, I think that's a good, really good example of the win, win, win scenario where, for instance, we're offering a terrific benefit where people can cruise literally almost around the world to our highest value members. So it's a great benefit from a loyalty perspective. You know, Royal Caribbean is acquiring new customers through that partnership. So it's a win for them. And then, you know, the customers benefiting from hey, it's I'm getting recognized and rewarded for my spend at MDM. And I'm getting to take these fantastic cruise vacations. So it's I think it's the to answer your question more directly. I mean, the focus has to be on making sure that it's a win for everybody. And I think that's, that's one of the reasons why I think we've, we've leaned into partnerships. And it's definitely not easy. These things take time to negotiate and try and figure out the economics and try and figuring out all of the logistics that go involved that are involved in connecting brands, which otherwise from a systems perspective are typically not connected. And so getting all that right, it does take resources, it takes time and takes the right sort of strategy and execution to pull that off. Okay. You look Marriott, Bonvoy partnerships, the partnerships with the with Royal Caribbean. Are there other partnerships that you're looking to kind of bring on to add more value to your customers in your rewards program? Yeah, I would say our getting back to the philosophy question, I think our approach is we're very much open to new partnerships, I would just say we probably are a little bit more on the quality over quantity level, because I mentioned these things do you take time and resources. And so I think we're focused on like, how do we how do we work with partners that, again, are great brands that have great, great databases that, you know, it helps both sides in a in a in a meaningful way. And then, you know, it just it has to has to make sense for the for the customer ultimately. And, and so that, so we're open to it, I think, you know, there's probably a couple different categories, if you will. So one being sort of everyday categories, like I mentioned, that reinforce everyday connection with the brand. And then second would be adjacent categories within the travel space. So, you know, we have a hotel partner, we have an airline partner, we have a cruise partner, but, you know, there may be other partners in the in the travel space, that may make may make sense. Okay, when you look at customer experience, customer loyalty, what's the next big thing, new technology, AI, you know, how do you how do you plan to keep the program rolling along in such a, you know, a positive manner? I mean, it's probably hard to answer that question without saying AI has to be a part of it. And we are leaning into one aspect of AI in terms of digital concierge. And so today, our digital concierge is primarily focused on the hotel experience. So if someone needs help, I forgot a toothbrush, I forgot a tie, I need a towel, things like that, there's something wrong with my room. But we're we've recently sort of expanded that digital concierge or the capabilities within that to be focused on MGM rewards as well. So the loyalty program. So today, it's really, I would say, primarily a tool that people can use to get answers to frequently asked questions in a very, you know, seamless way, as opposed to maybe having to hunt on the web or on the mobile app for those questions. But but I think, you know, the vision for that is to be able to provide, you know, we talked a little bit about personalization earlier, using the digital concierge as a way to drive more personalization, recognizing your tier status, recognizing what benefits are available to you. And then ultimately, reducing friction from the experience and potentially performing transactions to help. Okay, you know, a call call center, go to a concierge type desk, so that they can perform, you know, these things in their in the comfort of their living room or in their in the room if they're visiting us. So those are I would say, the focus is on how do we improve the member experience and reduce friction going forward. And you know, AI is going to be one of those tools that will help us do that. What are you seeing? And how individuals are engaging with the digital assistant? positive results? How are customers engaging with that? Yeah, it's early days on that one as well. That's something that we recently introduced. And so I think we're we're still doing a bit to help. We're kind of I would say more soft launching it for now and kind of just understanding what are the types of questions people ask. And to my point earlier about listening to customer feedback, we want to see what people want to how they want to engage with the digital assistant as it relates to the loyalty program and help help have that guide some of our future product roadmap, because we think we know generally speaking what some of the issues or questions that they typically have, but a digital customer that's this engaged may have a different set of questions that we maybe hadn't thought of. So I think we're trying to do a little bit of a hybrid approach of like, put some things out there, but also be ready to potentially pivot and understand how they want to engage in the digital concierge. Okay. When you look at the program holistically, great success, great partnerships, new co-brand, you know, driving a great value to the brand. When you look at it holistically, what are two or three things you are most proud of when you look at the program? Yeah, it's a good question. I think for me it's, and I've mentioned probably a couple times is I'm proud of our ability to listen to customers and understand what are some of their pain points and then use that to prioritize product features and benefits, like the ones we just rolled out. And then ultimately execute against that plan, against that roadmap and deliver, you know, for instance, the thing like similar to the things we just delivered, whether it's a new credit card or new benefits with partners. I think it's very gratifying to see that journey because these things don't happen overnight. They take a lot of time. They take oftentimes a lot of resources. So it's gratifying to see that process and see the customer reaction and employee reaction as well, get that positive feedback. And then ultimately the KPIs that we, I think we're pretty confident will come along with it, which is, you know, greater engagement and just overall greater overall satisfaction with the program and building that emotional connection to the brand. Okay, excellent. When you look at opportunities you may see, you know, how can loyalty360 help you and your team in your customer loyalty journey? I think there's probably a few things. I mean, one of the things that we've talked about with you guys at loyalty360 is trying to get a better set of benchmark data against, you know, people in a similar industry, at least. I mean, ours is a little bit unique in the gaming side of it, but certainly in the hotel industry, when it comes to looking at KPIs, like what are some of the engagement metrics that other hospitality brands look at and how do we compare to that? You mentioned, we talked about earlier the partnership opportunities. So I think that's another way in which, you know, if there's partners that make sense, like if there's good ideas out there, you know, we're open to listening to those ideas and working with some of the membership within loyalty360. And then I think, you know, with some of the content that you guys put out around just being able to network and, you know, for us, as I mentioned, probably at the start of this conversation, identity is a big challenge for us and clean data is another one. And so just being able to connect with other brands that maybe face similar challenges or have faced similar challenges and understand how they've addressed some of those challenges, I think can be pretty valuable. Awesome. And thank you very much for taking the time to speak with us today. You're not off the hook yet. We have the quickfire round of questions. So we like to keep these to a word or a short phrase or I get in trouble with Hannah and Ethan and everyone. So I'm already in trouble with them enough. So no more. So how would you describe your work life? In a word, I would say dynamic. Lots of variety. As I mentioned, we do, you know, five and six different things between product and technology and operations and marketing and strategy, all that work. Excellent. If you have a day or a week off from work, what are you doing? Travel. This past weekend, I was traveling for Mother's Mother's Day, my wife and friends and next month, travel next month after that travel. So definitely love travel. Excellent. If you could live in any city, any country, where would you live? Any city, any country? I mean, I'm pretty happy where I am in Southern California. So maybe I would change the question a little bit and say, where would I want to visit? So big fan of Tahiti. I've been there several times. I'd love to go back. Places I haven't been that I'd love to go. Australia, Spain, probably two others on the list. OK, excellent. If you go back to school, what would you study? That's a tough one. I don't think I would change anything. I mean, I sort of started in finance and then for graduate school, got a degree in marketing for my MBA. So I feel like those are the right ones for me. OK. Is there an area, a facet of your job that you would like to maybe know a little bit less about or maybe not be as involved with? We're in the we're in definitely in the detail business of lots of details in hospitality. Just given the complexity of everything we do and it's sometimes it's a bit overwhelming. And I'd like to know less. Is there a facet of your job, an area of responsibility that you maybe would like to do more with, be more involved with? Yeah, I probably I mentioned it earlier, just the benchmarking KPIs and probably the short answer versus industry peers. Excellent. And what do you draw inspiration from? What lights your fire? What keeps you fresh? I think it's just it's a variety. I think it's what we just went through with just working with various teams, looking at problems, looking at customer feedback, you know, from and looking at it through the lens of several different angles and trying to decide on which strategies we that that we want to pursue. And in some cases, you know, benefit partners if it's a partnership initiative. So I think it's just it's just the the variety and in driving growth and driving engagement. Okay. What is your favorite sport or hobby? Golf. I love love to play golf. Love to watch sports. Either one of those. What's your favorite sport or hobby? Golf. I love love to play golf. Love to watch sports. Either one of those. Okay, excellent. And what do you think? And last question, what do you typically think about at the end of the day? I would say probably the next day, in three words, it's trying to plan ahead and knowing, you know, what's on my calendar and what what may need some pre pre planning for. Okay, excellent. Well, Neil, thank you very much. It's always a great pleasure speaking with you, giving an update on the program, just the comprehensiveness of the program. The approach is great and looking forward to learning more from you and your team in May 25. So thank you very much for taking time to speak with us today. Thanks, Mark. Appreciate it. Have a great day. Absolutely. And thank you, everyone, for taking time to join us today. Make sure you join us every Thursday for our Brand Stories edition of the Leaders in Customer Loyalty podcast. And until then, have a wonderful day.