#632: Behind the Scenes of Australia’s Favourite Loyalty Program… Plus a Special Edition

What happens to loyalty when the customer never visits your loyalty program? Today, customers are using AI to discover brands, evaluate options and make purchase decisions, changing the traditional path to engagement. Faden is leading the discussion on what this shift means for loyalty leaders. Where brands risk becoming invisible and how organizations can prepare for a future where AI sits between the customer and the brand. Reserve your spot at loyaltyinsiders.com. That's loyaltyinsiders.com. If you work in loyalty, you know transactions alone don't build lasting relationships. Emotional loyalty does, but it's rarely measured or put into practice. And you consume a research report from Faden reveals the gap between customer expectations and loyalty delivery. Where programs are falling short and where brands can differentiate. You can download the full report at humanizingloyalty.com. That's humanizingloyalty.com. Hello and welcome to Let's Talk Loyalty and Loyalty TV, a show for loyalty marketing professionals. I'm Paul Atamas, the founder and CEO of Let's Talk Loyalty and Loyalty TV, where we feature insightful conversations with loyalty professionals from the world's leading brands. Today's episode is hosted by Carly Newbauer, managing director of Elevate Lawyerty, on Australian based company specializing in loyalty and incentive services. Carly is also the managing director of OneTap Group, a UK based company providing loyalty payment services. Enjoy. Hi, I'm Carly Newbauer, managing director of Elevate Loyalty and OneTap Group. Today I'm speaking with Phil Hawkins, a loyalty veteran with over 30 years experience in the loyalty industry. Phil has particular expertise in coalition programs having worked extensively with flybias in Australia over several stints, remits inception in 1993 until moving into semi-retirement three years ago. More generally, Phil has loyalty experience covering program design, all aspects of program operation and specific experience in email and digital communication. These days Phil is a keen loyalty observer, commentator, writer and occasionally creating Mr. Phonlington. Please enjoy my conversation with Phil. Hi Phil and welcome, great to have you on the show today and I'm really looking forward to this conversation. For the upcoming series of Let's Talk Loyalty and Loyalty TV, we are asking two key questions about guests. The first one being, which is your favourite business book? Thank you, Carly for the question and thank you for having me on Let's Talk Loyalty TV. I'm going to break the rules and show two books. The first one is The Loyalty Leap by Brian Pearson. That book's about probably 11 or 12 years old now and I like that book because Brian, I suppose, is a contemporary of mine, a huge experience, particularly initially with the Canadian loyalty market with the M.R.S. Canada but then ran loyalty one, a global loyalty company and I love what he has learnt over the years but what that means going forward. And my second book is this one which came out last year. Great choice. I'm the channel Retail by Tim Mason and Sarah Jarvis. I like the lessons in this book, particularly given Tim's background going right back to the start of Test Club Test Co Club Card in 1993. I love the way that he brings the lessons he's learnt from that but makes it relevant for our digital present and future. Great choice. I love this one and the Turn the Dial Model that he has. The data insights, action, loyalty. It's so great to be able to apply it in our everyday loyalty world. I totally agree. Good. Now we do have to ask the other famous question as well, which is your favourite loyalty programme and why? The programme I've chosen is a simple programme at my local bookstore and it's not dramatic. It's like I suppose quite a few of the bookshop programmes. My purchases there go and provide a future credit for me to use on subsequent purchases. The thing I like about it apart from its absolute pure simplicity is that each time you purchase they play back to you what benefit or credit you have at that time. And that solves a challenge for loyalty marketers. How do you keep reminding customers of the way the programme is assisting you and providing benefit to you? And this constant playback that's just part of the normal purchase experience, I think that captures an important essence of how to make a loyalty programme good. Now it's a funny choice because the local bookstore doesn't have a complex CRM programme, doesn't send birthday emails, doesn't send me spend-get offers. It's pure simplicity is what makes it strong and enjoyable to be part of as a customer of that bookstore. And what else do they do? What sort of things do they do that really engage with you as well? Why them? Well I had massive excitement in my world a couple of years back because I didn't know but I must have exceeded a threshold in that year's purchases that entitled me to go to a VIP night at the bookstore after it had closed and me and quite a few others. We had drinkies and it was one of those surprising delight moments and you know interesting reflection from my perspective. I didn't know the threshold you had to spend to get there and you know a loyalty marketer might say you should have had a counter in all your emails saying you're only $150 away from getting the invite to the drinks but the surprise and delight was a wonderful thing and again simple sad to say the last two years I haven't had the- You didn't read threshold obviously. You didn't make it. Yeah but it was the it was the bookshop equivalent of the lounge getting into the you know the- Get into the lounge. I love this. So that was another good thing about the program but I've always been an advocate for a good program as a simple program so and that's a classic example of it. Yeah. Fantastic. So we definitely have to talk about you and your experience of over 30 years in the loyalty industry. For those that may not know the Australian programs or have heard of flybites before some of our viewers and listeners can you tell us a little bit about your history your background and and the flybites program that you are so well known for. I'm happy to do that that Kali you know in 1993 Shell in Australia started talking to Coles Meyer a conglomerate retailer in Australia about ways that they could undertake activities for mutual benefit and somehow a loyalty program the idea of a loyalty program popped up. I think for international listeners it's it's really important to note that in the early 90s Australia wasn't a market particularly for retail that knew anything about loyalty programs they basically didn't exist in any particular form. Even the frequent flyer programs at that time of both corner synanses they're only six years old and they were much much different to what they are now in that they were the domain purely of frequent flies and the concept of flybites that is getting to fly for your buying struck a very strong chord at the time with Australian households. The concept of getting to fly which was not something as common or utilitarian as it is now, it really was associated with surf, sand, escape. The concept of getting a benefit for your like a free flight for your everyday shopping, that resonated really, really strongly. That led to the name of the programme, 'Slybos', and it was a very exciting time to be involved with it, and such a feeling, Carly, of stepping out into the unknown, not knowing whether this would work in the Australian landscape. I was doing a lot of the economic modelling for it, and I thought, 'Oh my gosh, we need to get three or four hundred thousand households for this thing to fly'. And a million households joined in six weeks. And we're away. But flybuses had many twists and turns over over the 30 years of its operation. Plenty of highs, plenty of lows, so many learnings on the way, and there are so many different chapters in that story that could form case studies, some very positive, some less positive. But I'm proud to have been associated with that programme over so many years until I went into semi-automate three years ago, and so proud that it's Australia's most popular programme to this day. Yeah, absolutely, yes. There's no one that doesn't know it in this country. Now, I need to say, Carly, I was a disloyal loyalty practitioner because I did leave flybuses twice, but came back and ended up with a very long third stint. So, I was associated for many of those years. And with those stints, you didn't just go off and take minor roles. You took some decent roles in between, National Australia Bank, Coals. You moved off and came back with some pretty significant roles in between. Yes, and particularly at National Australia Bank, this got us a long time ago now, but I was basically in the credit card team, and learnt quite a few lessons there about the dynamics of credit card programmes, which was an interesting time. And on my return to loyalty Pacific, which operates flybuses, in one of those stints, I was involved at the very start of the MI1 loyalty programme, which basically loyalty Pacific assisted MI1 with for a number of years. And that was fascinating to see a different type of programme stuff from scratch, and how that fitted into an operation like MI1. Yeah. Wow. Now, you said you semi-retired for about three years. So, are we going to see another Phil Hawkins return to flybuses? What do you think he's done now? No, no, I'm not returning to flybuses. And since semi-retiring, I've deliberately not become a loyalty consultant, but I suppose you can take the boy out of loyalty, but you can't take loyalty out of the ball. He means that I've stayed involved from a mentoring perspective, and for my own mental stimulation, writing articles on LinkedIn, and sometimes making myself a little bit of a nuisance on that forum. Well, that's great for today. Fantastic. We definitely have some great questions for you as well. One thing before we move on from the flybuses conversation, I'd love to ask you, you've been a speaker a number of times and been interviewed a number of times. But is there anything that you can tell us, if you look back, do you ever look back and go, wow, why did we do that? Or, geez, I should have done that differently. Tell us something we don't know. Any key challenges that you are facing through the flybuses, especially around a launch, do you go, what did we do there? And with your, now, perfect hindsight, what would you have done differently? Yeah, the excitement, probably more trepidation around launching, I immediately jumped to the re-launch of flybuses in 2012. The period leading up to say 2011, the number of years leading up to that, it's fair to say that flybuses wasn't particularly loved by its owners at the time, which was Coals and NAB. And it was treading water in lots of ways. And in 2011, Coals purchased NABs 50% share of flybuses and a massive re-launch. And it was so exciting because there were a lot of positive changes to the program, better value, new partners, a change to what was a fairly unpopular exploration rule. And Coals really made a fantastic investment in flybuses. The scariest bit of all that was that we had a new card, produced, new branding. And when programs re-launch in this manner, what they normally do, or they did back in those days, when it was much more about the plastic, are let's send new cards to our existing members. We were given a challenge by Coals, which was basically, no, why don't we send it to send cards to all of Australia? And we thought, oh, okay, how do you do that? And so you didn't want to send them to business addresses or to holiday houses. And so we worked with Australia Post and with some data firms. And we did pretty well the best job we could to mail what ended up being, I think about 18 million Coals to about 8 million households. And we got it nearly right. But one of the data sources, which I think the undertakings that we provided weren't quite accurate, was to get the right name for, because we wanted to put a name on the address rather than to the householder, because the latter tend to get chucked in the in the bin pretty quickly. Absolutely. Yes. But they were out of date. And because I was heading up operations, I had the task of speaking individually to a folk where we had addressed it to someone who'd passed away in the last few years. So that wasn't great. And it didn't happen a lot. But it did happen. So that was a point of reflection. This was not a good thing, as I said, it was the absolute minority, but it was a little exercise in just trying and find the right sweet spot to say, we're going to do the best job we can in that circumstance. But try and use your best judgment. And I think the thing there, Carly, has reminded me that when you've got such a big program, a small error becomes a significant thing. When you're sending millions of emails and you get a half a percent error rate, that half a percent can create quite a bit of noise. As opposed to if my local bookstore made an error, and they invite you to the VAR P9, so you'd forgive them anyway, that's fine. That's right. Oh wow. Well, thank you for sharing that as well. What I would like to talk to you a bit more about are your views and opinions as well. I mean, you've called yourself a loyalty observer and that you wear a range of hats, mentoring, speaking roles, and maybe a bit of consulting and assisting in the industry as well. And with over 30 years experience, you've told me once before, you have the privilege of now knowing the answer to all this. So I thought, well, fabulous. I've got questions. I'll ask you. And I'll just read them straight off my answers. And the answer can't be question. Exactly right. So if you know the answers, I'll ask the questions. First of all, I wanted to ask you about program types. What do you believe? Which ones work? Which ones don't? The thing that occurs to me straight up and what I've lived through, my experience has been in coalition loyalty programs. And if you think about the particularly the 90s and the 2000s and where there were big companies basically traipsing around the world selling coalition models, one of the most debated things, particularly in the last few years, has been the coalition model work still. And we've seen examples of coalition programs blowing up, such as. in the examples in the US, which has always been a very challenging market for coalition programs. We've seen examples of programs being bought out by major partners such as St. Petersburg's buying out the nectar program in the UK and very sadly in this decade, the woods this month, at the end of this month, Bob Eis New Zealand operated by a lot of the UK. I've been working with the UK for the past 20 years. In summary, I think that the barriers to entry for individual programs are much lower these days. Individual retailers can more easily launch their programs back in the coalition days where we would go in this flybos and say, "Look, we have the experts. Let us do this for you and become part of our program." I certainly think that's less a factor now. The thing that is still there is, and it is a little bit different now with digital cards, but back in the day, when you the flybos card was more likely to find a place in your purse or wallet, because you could use it in so many places. I remember the days of, "I didn't want to have the world's biggest wallet," so there were some multi-programs. I would take it out. Of course, then I'd go to that retailer and say, "We've got to have their card." Now, surely it is different now where you carried your identification digitally, but it still is a factor that, thinking about flybos in Australia, at Bunnings, you'll be asked for a flybos card. Officeworks, Kmart, Target, Coles, First Choice, liquor, liquor and etc. That still makes a program compelling and top of mind. That is still there. Definitely. As we're talking about that as well, one pass. Flybos, one pass, what are your views when I'm going to the store? Which one am I supposed to scan or both? It's a really fascinating question. I think you've captured in your question, Carly, the fact that they are closely related, particularly in the West Farm's stable. Flybos is owned 50% by West Farmers and Coles. The West Farmers retail brands all participate in one pass. It is a subscription program. It is a subscription program, a loyalty program. They are complimentary, particularly with the chains that was made 12 or 18 months ago for one pass members in trying to enhance the benefits of my membership of one pass that I'll get five times flybos points for all of my transactions. That's brought the programs closer together. My view is one pass that had an interesting kind of gestation period. Part of the challenges for one pass have been subscription programs aren't easy. In an Australian context, and I suppose global brands exist. Subscription programs always look to Amazon Prime and say we want to be part of that and do what they do. All of the examples I've seen in Australia, it hasn't been an easy path for them. There are benefits to West Farmers having one pass because thinking about the Coles and thing and potential data sharing, they are collecting their own data. Some of the conflicts you get in Coles and programs around who gets whose data. It gives West Farmers clean data in that sense. I watch it closely because it's an interesting case study with a multi-part and subscription program with some pretty big roots on names in an Australian context. Will they get there? They're suffering all the challenges like to try and bump numbers, we're going to discount it. It's a bit like the experience we all have with our streaming services. We all like to jump in for the free or discounted early offer, but will we stick when the regular price comes in? I think one passes to being challenged by that a little bit. Even the fact that in some of the reports we don't actually know how many full subscribers they have at this stage, there's a lot of debate around this, the disclosure of data as well. To your point, subscription programs, there's also discussion around, is that considered even a loyalty program or not? The concept of paying for your loyalty program, the first instance we saw of that were in the early 2000s with credit card programs when there was a change to the interchange rate. We saw banks introducing annual fees to be part of the loyalty program. So paying to be rewarded, that's not an easy concept to get across to your customers where it's like, well, you do the sums and if you get a return, that's good. That's what subscription programs basically play into because, although most of us won't get a spreadsheet out and try and work out, well, am I ahead, there'll be some kind of internal counter that says, yeah, I'm thinking I'm getting enough benefit from this to overcome my subscription fee. But there's something a little bit unsettling there, isn't it? Because if you think that an essence of a loyalty program is, thanks for being a great customer, Carly, I want to reward you for your custom. This is just a thank you. It's more like, well, if you want to be in this, there's a price and good luck to you in getting enough benefits to overcome that price. It's a totally different dynamic there. Yeah. So one other question I want to ask you about program type as well, Tid programs. Yeah. Okay, your reactions is a lot. Tid programs. Are we good or bad? Where are we at? So I did write an article on LinkedIn, which is still there called, were your program ending tears? And you know, and my gut feel is that that particularly retail programs, they jump too quickly to having tears. And the simplest argument against tears is that it makes a program more complicated. And guess what? Don't expect your customers to look at the rules of engagement about how I get up between tears. Now, the obvious, the office exception to that, I think, is around frequent flyer programs and putting points currently once to one side. It's all about the status credits and the fact that it's being demonstrated very clearly that people will make unaccompanied decisions to gain tears. And the pull of getting up to a gold tier or even higher, that's where tearing seems to work. But even the airlines, in my view, have a problem that all retailers have. And it's usually about the difficult second tier. Put the grade out washed into your bronze or whatever. But the silver tier I find is universally a challenge because what treats do you give that middle group? It's sometimes a big group. And economically, I see companies struggle to provide a suite of benefits that makes the silver tier look any good at all. And whereas the top tier, you can see where even retail companies sometimes can do it quite well. I think of all of the health and beauty programs like Medica, Cosmetica and their peers. The treats you get for being a big customer or a high spending customer are there. The big question for me is though, can you stool side to your best customers? Thank you for being a fabulous customer. he is a treat I want to give you, can you still do that without having the formal tear structure? It's a little bit easier these days with digital cards because back in the day with plastic cards you always have to reissue cards and the toughest bit about tearing is when you downgrade people. I feel you used to be important to us now you're not. Throw away your glitzy sparkling card and have this comparatively dull card and by the way do better in future. You're not as important anymore. Can you deliver that message? You can't leave everyone at the top tears and limit it. Exactly. I've seen some absolute disasters with tearing programs where clearly they've had very high paid consultants, global consultants come in and advise them on program design and end up with a construct that even the marketing people in the company didn't know how the tears worked because it was so complicated, let alone customers and so you do I think you tread into that tearing structure very carefully because before you worry about any benefits and any rules it's making a simple program more complicated. Well to your point earlier keeping it simple it gets the excitement factor and make sure the customer of the member can understand it and engage with it accurately. Now points programs I'm guessing you've got a view there as well, you've got a little bit of history in that one. What do you think about points? How do we use them sizing of the currency? Yeah. I think the first article called points programs are dead probably I read about 20 years ago and they come out with regularity and I do admit my bias here because I'm associated with the program. I've also been associated with the program. I've also got a points program and probably at the more transactional end of the scale as a points program. I think if you think about points programs as really having a currency of influence and a point is a very flexible currency of influence and when we were recruiting new partners to fly by us back in the day we would say look this currency is for you to use however you like within limits, if it's cool and legal and all that kind of stuff. But certain limits. Whatever behaves you change your seeking throw point satter and test and learn and in that sense points programs are very flexible. Now the argument against that is yeah but what's a point worth? So that will lead programs to say our program is all about dollars and so to be fair my favourite bookstore program that don't talk to me in points they say I feel just letting you know you've got eight dollar credit. Do you want to use that now? And that's dollars so I'm not saying there's not a place like that to have points programs but you know dollars are limiting and so for a program like flyby's that has advertised in the past and probably still can with there are over a thousand reward choices and this is how many points you need for that and points you need for that. It's not about his how many dollars you need for that you know it provides that flexibility. Now another argument about being focused purely on points is it's you know it's its transactional nature and you know you'd think about programs with soft benefits that it's nothing about points and I think programs that adjust points benefits are very self limiting but let me give a flyby's example you know for many years flyby says sent out on behalf of Coles you're weekly specials and that is just saying to me each Wednesday feel here at 12 items that are on special ink holes this week we know that their products you buy and and there are no special bonus points on them they are just highlighting from the whole catalog of hundreds of specials just letting you know feel the twining's t-bags are on special. Now that's an example for me it's got nothing to do with points and and it does bring a different dimension into loyalty programs that they just make your life easier and that this this concept of yes reward programs are by their by the very name intended to be rewarding well this is a reward in a different way it's not a financial reward it's it's making your life easier you know. For a new Coles on a line customer, new to Coles on line if you put your flabras number in it'll say oh it's you feel. Today customers are using AI to discover brands evaluate options and make purchase decisions changing the traditional path to engagement. Faden is leading the discussion on what this shift means for loyalty leaders where brands risk becoming invisible and how organizations can prepare for a future where AI sits between the customer and the brand. Reserve your spot at loyalty insiders.com that's loyalty insiders.com well here's a starting shopping list for you to make your first shop with Coles on line easier again that's that's an example of making your life easier so that's that's been an emerging dimension. What about the introduction with some of the supermarket programs where they introduce the $10 off at checkout? What are your thoughts there? Because that's a real change to bring that in where this is instant $10 off or X amount off when you're at checkout and you're about to lay the store finalizing transaction. If you work in loyalty you know transactions alone don't build lasting relationships emotional loyalty does but it's rarely measured or put into practice and you consume a research report from Faden reveals the gap between customer expectations and loyalty delivery where programs are falling short and where brands can differentiate. You can download the full report at humanizingloity.com that's humanizingloity.com now just a note for viewers this is the secret sealed section so proceed it gets better from here that's fine. No it's it's it's it's an interesting it's an interesting concept first up the years and years and years if you ask the general consuming public what's your favourite award they say give me the cash and so that almost suggests the model that is oh we just have cash as rewards but the other side of the coin is we will be agnostic about reward you have here's a thousand different rewards and you know someone will go for the toaster someone will go for the flights someone will go for the discount of movie tickets others will go for the cash and guess what the numbers who say cash is our favourite award not all of them take cash so so there's a couple of schools of of thought here it's interesting and it wasn't just flybyes but you know through the 90s you could see a lot of programs that were very hesitant to put out cash or near cash rewards because it it gave direct translation for what each point is worth other award types you know certainly there there wasn't that exact oh because taking flybys and flights what's a Melbourne Sydney flight worth back in those days you'd get 10 different answers and so we thought oh we'll be bad if people have a exact equivalent between points and the cash but we went down that track and certainly very popular with people and flybys you know in the flybys world we extended it to flybys dollars which is still on an important reward type and as you said recently flybys and coals give you the option of being prompted at point of sale once you've hit a certain point of threshold to say do you want x dollars off your shop and clearly in the Australian context, well, worse has been doing that for quite a while. How much does that help with the dopamine hit that all like loyalty practitioners like to look at, you know, the moment of truth at redemption? We learnt very early on that if the reward experience went well and they chose the right award, then members will re-double their efforts in the program and it's all beauty and light. If the reward process stuffed up and it didn't quite work, people would be trying to say, I thought this programme was going to be a rip off and it is. Thankfully, not many of them. What kind of hit do you get when you get a small amount of dollars back and we learned, I think it was just anecdotally, but there was certainly effect with other programmes over the seas that said I'll get $x pounds off at point of sale and that would be part of the experience with the checkout person. They would do a Vox Pops interviews 10 seconds later and say, what just happened then? And a significant proportion of people didn't realise what that interaction meant and that because of the loyalty programme involvement and their, and their, they were getting a reward, not a big reward for that shopping experience. It passed them by and so for that cohort, no, there wasn't the, there wasn't the, the warm glow and the regumbling of, doubling of efforts in the, you lost the moment of truth. Yeah. So I think based on all of that, the truth lies somewhere in between. I don't have the definitive answer in my answer sheet here. So, but it's been very interesting to, to see that change with Coles and Flybys and, you know, it was reported publicly. A lot of members actually redeeming for the first time at Coles. So that, that's, that's a positive thing for Coles. I think a challenge for a Coalition is if all the happy faces are in one retailer with redemption and by definition, not at the other retailers, how does that, how does that make the Coalition partners all feel about that, that mechanic? So, it'd be interesting to see how that goes in future. Absolutely. End of sealed section. We might open it up again. So being from Adelaide, I think I'm correct there. There's another very popular gentleman from Adelaide, who currently based in Adelaide, Byron Sharp, Aaron Bergblass, they're plenty of articles from Byron and his views on loyalty. Plenty of quotes around Byron Sharp trusts. No one when it comes to loyalty, customer attention. It's too inefficient. It's expensive schemes are very little impact. It goes on. You can Google a lot. What are your views on this? No comment, Curly. Beating this out. No, no, it's a great topic. And, you know, Byron Sharp's first comment on loyalty was, I think, within the first couple of years of flybyes launching. So it was probably something like 1996, 1997. And came around with some quantitative research and, and Byron Sharp and his institute have been pretty consistent over the years in homogading a certain message and, and, you know, backed up by, by data and, and research. I think it's a good test for the loyalty industry. It's, it's popular to dismiss out of hand. What's been contributed by that institute. And I don't think that's fair. Having said all that, you know, the, the longevity, the growth, the expansion of loyalty programs, particularly in Australia over the last 30 years, would, would, it is in itself a testament to the fact that these programs do work. And it's, and it's, and it's not just some apparition. But I think my main point, Carly, is that it, it does, I think, make loyalty practitioners, they, they should, as a response, think about the measures. And by which you assess whether your loyalty program is working or not. And, you know, in programs like everyday awards and flybys and, quantifying flyer, you know, there are, there are a lot of, there are big teams that doing a lot of that and a lot of it's probably not the publication. But, you know, I, I think it puts the, the emphasis on loyalty practitioners to do a good job to convince themselves, can, convince their shareholders, and, and convince their customers that these, you know, these programs are not a tripling thing. They're not a scam, you know, I, I really detest programs being called schemes because schemes are for scheming. And, you know, nearly everybody is not scheming in the loyalty program. They are well intentioned. And so, you know, I, I think it's a good thing that, that bar and shop and, and others are there in the background, keeping programs honest. Yeah, pushing everybody to do better and, and making sure we're reporting on the right things. That is also a good conversation around, I'd like to ask you, member versus non-member metrics, I think is hilarious. Yes, you're laughing because we always talk about this self selection. But then so many programs still measure that. Why, why are we still measuring member versus non-member when it, it stands for reason that your higher spending, that customers and members are going to be your highest participants. Yeah, it's, it, it really is crazy. And I think, I think a couple of things, it's, it's naivety. I mean, it's absolutely naivety if you're reporting that to your, your stakeholders, that member spend more than non-members. It's, it's lazy when you want to come up with metrics to convince the great unwashed. And, you know, the media and that, and so the fact that this is so often reported, in annual reports and in news releases. And it's a source of annoyance that in Australia, some, some regular producers of newsletters or news updates just pass that information on blive without questioning it, which, which keeps me active and grumpy on LinkedIn. But it's, it's like lemmings falling over the cliff. It's as if people can't help themselves and they fall for that every time. And, you know, this, this opens up the wider topic, which I've explored quite a bit over the last two or three years. And, and thankfully is becoming more of a discussion now about what are the metrics that you should be talking about. And some of them are hard, you know, one really, one really hard one and, and something that, that we kept very close to our chest in the flybyes days was redemption rate, you know. And I can understand why for, for commercial reasons, metrics like that, kept quite safe. But then you see, you see reports of, oh, this cashback program is so popular that I've given back this many millions of dollars. And you divide that by the number, by the number of members, you say, oh, that's, that's 80 cents each world. What a great program that is, you know, so it's, it's a slippery slope. But for anyone who's read my grumpy pronouncements on LinkedIn, they all know that the one that I've chased down the most is around membership numbers. Because again, for fanatical reasons and for corporate chest thumping reasons over the years, too many programs, most programs would say, we've got a million members. And it's usually very close to the number of members who have ever joined. And, you know, I saw a report from someone in South Africa said, oh, yeah, our biggest program. Then number of members is more than the population of South Africa, you know, and we've got pretty similar. We have seen this here as well. Pretty similar stuff in Australia as well. And, and when spokespeople get up and say, do you realize that three quads of Australians are in bi-programmed? It is a fiction. They're dead people. They're a duplicate people. There are people that have thrown their cards away 15 years ago. And purely for vanity reasons to say, "House is bigger than yours." This is persisted. But there's been light at the end of the tunnel. And part of this was, when I was working for flybys, we had two difficult and, er, it's nice, both. Our numbers are always smaller because since 2012, if you don't use your flybys card for a year, not only do we expire the points, but we kick you out of the program. And I think, you know, that's a good thing in these privacy days that, oh, you know, we found out 15 years after we threw the card out that that company X still had all my details. And guess what? They've all been breached. And so there's, you know, this is bad times. But happily over the last couple of years, there's been a mini revolution that the likes, well, the major programs in Australia with two big exceptions are reporting on active members. So, well, with everyday rewards, report on 12 months active members. My outdo, although they still like to put their big number in as well, price line do. You know, the major retail programs and now reporting this thing on activity, but the two big frequent fly programs don't. And I think part of that is because unless you attach to a credit card, unless you fly a lot for business, then you're not going to use your card so, so much. There are a handful of metrics that have been produced in industry reports over the years that that that that hint at that because they'll say, well, which programs do you belong to? Carly and and the frequent fly programs will be, you know, fourth and eighth in that list. But, you know, whenever the popular press wants to report, I don't they'll pick out, they'll pick out whatever is being quoted by those countries and say, oh, these two programs are massive and they've got 16 million members and 12 million members respectively. And yeah, away from the fact that you still would annoy me because it would make programs look more acidic than they were. It's a really big, loyalty lesson to say it's not just about people joining your program. They're very, you know, they're not big barriers to entry to joining. It's about what do you do once they're there and and engaging those members and keeping them active. That's the big game. Not have they got the card. So you end of rent? Not at all. I'm going to keep that one going. So you are a season professional and have seen a lot of different programs worked in a range of programs. I mean, obviously with one very big one. What would you say is the silver bull at what's the secret to success for this industry? I'd say keep things simple, genuinely be rewarding. It sounds like it sounds like a kind of motherhood statement. But, you know, treat your members with respect. You know, one of my favourite loyalty quotes is it's not about you them being loyal to us. It's been us being loyal to them. You know, I'd say from an engagement perspective, be respectful in terms of the number of times you contact them. You know, I think the problem with email these days is it's too cheap and you know, it's something that flyby's eye talks. We talk very seriously because with so many partners, you didn't want to flood the inboxes with stuff from flyby's particularly stuff that they'd given you enough signals. It wasn't relevant to them. And so, you know, I think running a good loyalty program embodies a lot of important human behaviours like respect and fairness and generosity. So, you know, you see the programs that succeed doing that while keep things simple. I think that's and I think that's important these days where there's a lot of talk about devaluation of programs and sometimes devaluing a program is commercially necessary. But I get really annoyed where a program is devaluing and the way they hide that is we're making a number of changes because we've listened to you and probably of them are positive and 16 of them are negative but we will hope that if we blur it all up, then you'll think it's better. Not as genuine and generous as we've previously said. Not quite. Not really. Okay, I've only got a couple more birthday rewards. Do we send birthday rewards? Do we not send birthday rewards? It's up for debate these days. I write an article called Don't Wish Me Happy Birthday. And that was around the fact, you know, my viewpoint was the people that share my birthday. We've got nothing in common except the fact that that's our birthday. So, what I send us all an offer that looks really similar. And look, I think as I'm really happy that during my time at Flywise and to this day we never send a birthday email because it didn't pass the test. It wasn't valuable enough. And you know, I think there are exceptions. I like the fact that I'm not sure what happens these days with the MIRA program but for their best customers, they would send you a gift voucher. Unencumbered gift voucher on your birthday. Thank you, Paulie, for being a fabulous customer of MIRA. Just spend some money and have a great time. You know, that's the essence of the gift, isn't it? Yeah. The other end of the scale is, here's a pretty poultry offer. By the way, it expires in a week or and by the way, this discount only extends if you spend this much. Here's the asterisk as well. Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. And so the curse of the asterisk is a big one. And you know, if you need to condition something that's meant to be a gift, then don't send it. And a worst in class is when a company sends me a happy birthday note with no gift, just to wish me a happy birthday and say, well, you know, where's my gift? Well, firstly, where's my gift? But, you know, who is sending this? There are 20 people, associated with this company who say, oh, it feels birthday. Let's send them something. No, it's Mr Robots sent by ABC company. You know, it's not a relationship. She's been asking, is it? Not really. Okay. So before we close out as well, I would like to ask, what do you think our loyalty world is going to look like in the next five years? What's coming up for us? Five years is hard to predict. And I've listened to and read a few bits about people's predictions for the next year or so. I think by and large, and particularly in Australian context, the climate is quite healthy for loyalty. I think I think programs are doing probably a better job, probably assisted a bit by the technology that enables it. I hope that the narrative will change a little bit on hyper personalisation and AI assisting hyper personalisation. I think it's exciting that the tools are out there, but two comments in that regard, just get the basics right. I despair at sometimes the total lack of personalisation and I won't name that. The culprits, the recent ones I've had, but against that, there is a little bit of a danger to being so laser-focused that it impacts. This show is sponsored by WiseMarketeer Group, operating the WiseMarketeer and loyalty academy. For nearly 25 years, the WiseMarketer is the industry's longest-serving publication and source for news, information and insights, which now includes its own branded industry research, insights and advice. For global coverage of customer engagement and loyalty, check out the wisemarketer.com and become a Wiser marketer member or subscriber. The loyalty academy sets a global industry standard for loyalty education, with its certified loyalty marketing professional or CLMP designation, which has created a community of more than 1200 marketing executives and professionals across more than 50 countries. Learn more about global loyalty education for individuals or corporate training at loyaltyacademy.org. I could make my offers quite boring, you know, allow a bit of fuzziness at the edges. So I think that's I hope there will be that movement with personalisation. Very excited about and eager to learn more about the expansion of retail media, which is making some loyalty programs so much more mission critical for companies than they would have regarded in the past. So, you know, I think that's something to watch as well. And I just hope that there's a maturity around CRM and contact ability that people can see and benefit, not to blasting emails just because you've got an email address. They're the ones top of my own, Carly. They're fantastic. Thank you so much. I really enjoyed chatting with you today and thank you for taking the time to talk to us. Thanks so much, Carly, all the best. Thank you. For nearly 25 years, the WiseMarketer is the industry's longest serving publication and source for news, information and insights, which now includes its own branded industry research, insights and advice. For global coverage of customer engagement and loyalty, check out the WiseMarketer.com and become a WiserMarketer member or subscriber. Learn more about global loyalty education for individuals or corporate training at loyaltyeconomy.org. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Let's Talk Loyalty. If you'd like us to send you the latest shows each week, simply sign up for the Let's Talk Loyalty Newsletter on Let'sTalk Loyalty.com. And we'll send our best episodes straight to your inbox. And don't forget that you can follow Let's Talk Loyalty on any of your favourite podcast platforms. And of course, we'd love for you to share your feedback and reviews. Thanks again for supporting the show.