#21: Loyalty Lessons from Australia

Australia is renowned as a sophisticated market when it comes to loyalty – and who better to talk us through it than Sarah Richardson – Chairperson of the Australian Loyalty Association. Sarah has an extensive career that spans over twenty years in direct marketing, CRM and also strategic loyalty programmes on both the agency and client side.

Sarah now operates her own consultancy firm and loves to bring together the loyalty community in key cities in Australia to share ideas, training and inspire each other.

Show Notes: 

https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarah-richardson-47852155/

https://www.australianloyaltyassociation.com/

https://www.sciensa.com.au/

Audio Transcript

Paula: Welcome to Let’s Talk Loyalty, an industry podcast for loyalty marketing professionals. I’m your host, Paula Thomas, and if you work in loyalty marketing, join me every week to learn the latest ideas from loyalty specialists around the world.

So welcome to episode 21 of Let’s Talk Loyalty, and today I’m delighted to be talking to a leading lady of loyalty, uh, by the name of Sarah Richardson. Sarah is extremely well known internationally, and particularly in the country she’s now resident in, which is Australia. And I guess the reason she’s so high profile is in addition to many years of working in the industry, um, from her days as a direct marketing practitioner through to working, um, as a CRM director and all the way up to founding and becoming chairperson of the Australian Loyalty Association.

So Sarah has over 20 years experience in the industry and is planning some fantastic events including education and conferences, both in her, um, adopted country and also internationally, which I’ll be super excited to talk to her about today. So without further ado, let me welcome Sarah Richardson to Let’s Talk Loyalty.

Sarah: Thank you very much, Paula, for welcoming me and happy to be on your show.

Paula: Fantastic. So, as you know Sarah, the uh, the first thing I always like to do at the start of the show is to share an insight in terms of, um, either a favorite loyalty statistic or just maybe even a fact that really intrigues you about the industry and gives us a sense, I suppose, of exactly why you love working in loyalty.

So tell me, what is your favorite loyalty statistic?

Sarah: So my favorite loyalty statistics relates to the staggering value of velocity. And velocity is the loyalty program affiliated to Virgin Australia. And what I came across a few weeks ago is that 60% of companies cannot, cannot prove that their loyalty program makes the company.

Any money. And so the reason why I find velocity so fascinating is in 2014, the Affinity Group bought 35% of the program and they paid 335 million, which I’m sure we’d all be very happy if our program that. Yeah. And. And last year, Virgin then bought, um, the stake for twice the amount and the value of velocity is at 2 billion Australian dollars.

And so, wow. The reason I think it’s so important is that loyalty practitioners do often struggle to monetize their programs, and it’s something that we should be focusing more on. So your program should demonstrate a clear financial benefit to the company that it represents. And when we are consulting with companies, It’s something that we really try and focus on because it’s a benefit to everybody, obviously the company, the practitioner, because they’re allowed to get on with their job without constantly being in the spotlight about the money that they’re spending.

And if they’re making money, then that money generally gets filtered back to the customer, and so the customer’s happy too. So it’s win-win for everybody.

Paula: And I love that focus, Sarah, because, you know, I’m on, as you know, 21 episodes now of, of interviewing people all over the world. Um, and what I’m really finding I am most impressed by and most interested in is when there is a commercial mindset around the program that’s being operated.

Because I think with the best will in the world, we all know, um, consultants who are very well intentioned and have very good, uh, frameworks, but don’t necessarily have that very hardnosed evidence. Which means, as you said, they can get on and do the job they’ve been asked to do. And I know for me, I hate being asked, you know, to justify the spend.

So, uh, so you’ve obviously focused on that extensively over your career. So

how did you get into loyalty and on right now?

Sarah: So originally I’m from the uk. Like so many marketers in Australia for some reason, marketers of the sun. And so we all come to Australia. Unfortunately some of us end up in Melbourne where there’s very little sun. Um, so I worked for over 20 years in mainly large corporates, including Telstra, which is the dominant telecommunications company in Australia, Suncorp, which is a major home and car insurer, Australia Post.

And my final client’s side job was the GM of Loyalty at Meyer, which is one of the two large fashion retailers in Australia. Mm-hmm. I also worked, um, as a CRM director at an advertising agency called Sapien Nitro, which was great fun before opening my own consultancy in Melbourne. And as you alluded to before, this is now merged into a consultancy partnership called, and we specialize in loyalty strategy development, and.

Paula: Fantastic. Um, Sienta is an interesting name. Sarah, is that a word or is there a story behind the name that, uh, it, it sounds quite interesting.

Sarah: Well, we looked at different names and came up with, with both quite scientific in the way that we approached loyalty. Mm-hmm. And. So we looked at the Latin word for science, uh, and then we didn’t like it as much as we thought we would.

So we just put an A at the end of it. Cause we, it goes and we thought it was, uh, was

Paula: a great name. Brilliant. Yeah. No, it’s, it’s certainly it, you know, it, it lands very well, I have to say. So, um, you know, the, the, the marketing, uh, speak, I always find naming conventions super difficult. So, um, yeah, it’s, it’s one that I, I think will do very well for you.

Thank you Paula. Brilliant. Um, so we’ve talked a lot, Sarah, and we’re gonna go through today, I think some of your favorite loyalty programs in the Australian market. Um, but also what I loved, even in terms of your background, you mentioned that um, the loyalty market in Australia is extremely sophisticated and it’s not something that I was actually particularly aware of.

I’ve done quite a few podcasts with people that I admire and work with, maybe in, in South Africa. So, um, you know, there are certain markets that I would expect to be more advanced, but it almost sounds like from what you discovered you landed in Australia. Um, I think it was around the nineties, um, or that’s when the industry started, whereas maybe in, say the US for example, it started, you know, way before that in the fifties and sixties.

But I think the benefit of that is it sounds like it took all of the latest learnings from around the world and, and brought it into Australia. So, so tell us how, how does loyalty work in Australia and, and some of that sophistication and your favorite programs. Well

Sarah: there, there are four major programs in Australia.

There’s Velocity that I’ve mentioned before, which is the program for Virgin Australia. Yeah. Qantas Frequent flyer, which is the program for Qantas, which is that they’re the two main airlines that we have here. Mm-hmm. Flybys and Woolworth Rewards, so they’re. The programs that are affiliated with the two major supermarkets brands, and they’re so strong and so dominant and all extremely profitable based in part on their affiliate programs, which means that a whole lot of other companies in Australia can use those programs to enhance their brands.

And retain customers, ex, et cetera. So I think it, what it’s meant is, is that so many smaller companies here can have very strong and sophisticated loyalty programs based on their affiliation with those four. Um, having said that, there’s also other, um, really strong programs that have, have either broken away from those major programs or have been started because it’s a very tight, um, dare I say, loyal community loyalty practitioners.

Good. There is a fair amount of, of moving around and, um, taking those skills and, and bringing them to other programs. And for instance, I worked a few years ago on a program for a recruitment, um, company and, and in fact, even drier than recruitment, it was it specialist. Oh gosh. Yeah. And, um, but we put together a fantastic loyalty program that was extremely profitable and, um, and used many of, of the, the very sophisticated techniques in, in order to, to do that.

So if you can do that with, uh, with Lty, um, if you can implement loyalty for technology consultants, then I guess you can do it for anybody.

Paula: Absolutely. And I like the terminology that you used, Sarah, the affiliate type structure. And I don’t think that I’ve come across any other country that kind of works in, in such a way, so a as, as we both know, um, coalition programs or, or, you know, company owned programs tend to dominate in, in, in mature markets.

But it sounds like those four, literally, as you said, it’s, it’s a very commercial arrangement and um, and very overt. So anyone who wants a loyalty program can simply buy the. Points and leverage the, the power of that loyalty brand.

Sarah: Yeah. Well, they are currencies here. People consider them as currencies.

There’s always a lot of debate about, you know, if you die, do people inherit your, your points and, and, uh, yeah, it’s treated, definitely treated like, like cash.

Paula: Wow, my goodness. Well, it seems to have really, um, embedded itself in the Australian psyche from what you’re saying.

Sarah: Yeah, it really has. I was very fortunate to, to come here and to be part of it.

Paula: Wow. Yeah, I think then it sounds like it’s a nation of, uh, of junkies, which I think is, uh, you know, probably not the best word, but it certainly describes the behavior, um, that you’re, you’re talking about. Well, you know, I’ll leave that one alone. So tell me, Sarah, you’ve mentioned then those four very dominant programs, um, clearly, um, they’re, they’re very powerful.

It sounds like they all have a very similar strategy, but I’m guessing you have some favorites of your own, um, either within those four or, or maybe outside of those. So tell us exactly what are your favorite loyalty programs uh, in Australia?

Sarah: Well, one of the ones I’d like to talk about today is the, my One program, and I did work on this program, so I’m very familiar with the workings.

Mm-hmm. It’s the program for Maya, which is a, a very large retailer here, here in Australia. And towards the end of my time there, I was lucky enough to travel internationally to go and visit. Other retailers around the world and I was very surprised and I think they were quite surprised as well at how sophisticated the program was.

One of the reasons is because in the days when it was set up, which was in the nineties, there was quite a lot of money around in retail and and in Australia. And so they were able to set up the program really well with a very. Robust structure. Mm-hmm. So the way that it works is basically the customer shops at one of the Mayer stores or online, they accumulate two shopping credits per dollar spend.

Mm-hmm. They then receive the 20 Maya one rewards card automatically in the post or electronically now. Mm-hmm. For every 2000 shopping credits that they have accumulated. So for instance, if they’ve accumulated 3000 shopping credits, they just get their 20 voucher. Mm-hmm. This is a very expensive way of doing it and possibly not very environmentally friendly, and I know that they’re looking at that now, but people see it as a real gift in a way that something electronic can never be and people are gifting it to other people and they’re bringing it in and it’s a real treat.

Something that they feel that they can spend on themselves without the guilt associated. One of the really interesting things about it is, is that when the member comes. Back in store to spend their gift card, they spend on average 3.8 times the value of the reward card. Wow. So if you look at the amount of discounting that goes on these days, it’s really no, no worse than that.

In terms of of that spend. Maya then accumulates all that valuable data relating to the customer’s shopping HA habits. They then engage with the My one member with relevance and targeted offers. And, um, the cycle begins again. So it’s an extremely complex program in the backend, but from a customer’s perspective, it’s very simple and it pushes so many, um, of their buttons.

Paula: So amazing. Yeah, and I love that because actually I do think, um, you know, sharing rewards is a lovely idea. Um, and, and there’s probably not enough programs I think that focus on, here’s a reward that you can gift to somebody. Um, I know some of the guys I work with do it in, in convenience retail, for example.

So you can gift somebody, you know, a free, you know, coffee or whatever. But it’s lovely to hear because it’s coming out by post, I guess, that you can give that to, uh, to somebody else to spend in the store.

Sarah: Yeah, well, when I was there, I implemented a loyalty app at mm-hmm. Great time and expense in those days, and the research all came back, you know, that the customers were so keen on this and wanted it, and.

Came down to it. They didn’t want it at all for a couple of reasons. One of them is that they weren’t able to gift that nobody wants to, to give or receive an an electronic $20 voucher. Yeah, and the other thing that was really interesting was when we did choice modeling on the customers, we found out that the main benefit that the customers were interested in was going up to the counter and showing their gold card.

And the pristi they got from that. And on an app, no one can see that you’ve got a gold card, which is not something that anybody would admit. But if you, if you ask a question enough ways that

obvious. Sometimes it’s not so obvious.

Paula: And I still think that, um, that continues to this day. And I worked, um, in the past, for example, in British Airways, and I know our customer research was exactly the same. And like I, you know, I’m lucky enough to have a silver card with Emirates and I get great pride out of making sure it’s sticking out, you know, whenever I get to the airport to, to, to feel that little bit of exclusivity.

So I think you’re dead right. And, you know, we all love digital and. Benefits it offers operationally, but I, I think you’re right. It’s important not to lose the sense of exclusivity, particularly I think in, in fashion retail where it’s so hard to get an emotional connection with your customers.

Sarah: Well, I did a lot of research on psychology when I was writing the course that I think we’ll speak about a little bit later.

Mm-hmm. And I was absolutely amazed at what came back in terms of human behaviors. Mm-hmm. And how we all are, no matter where we are from in the world. And also, I was staggered by the interest from the pupils. On this module, it was by far the most, uh, the most engaging of all the modules, even being at the end of the day.

So, yeah, it’s a fascinating area and any, uh, direct marketer or loyalty practitioner should absolutely know their psychology if they’re going to be successful in this area.

Paula: For sure, and it’s a favorite subject of mine, so I’ll definitely ask you about that now in one second. Even before, just before we leave the, the Maya story.

Sarah. Sarah, I love that you went, as you said, Deb, to visit other retailers around the world. And I presume Maya is not an international markets. I could be wrong, but I don’t recognize the brand. Did you find that loyalty managers were, um, open to sharing, um, let’s say quite, you know, commercially sensitive data?

When you, when you went to, to visit them, how did that go? Yeah, I was quite surprised

Sarah: actually. We, we were looking at doing some programs with them. For instance, if anybody wanted to shop at Sex fifth Avenue and they went through the, my website, then we’d be clipping the ticket and the opposite. So, so we did go in.

The premise of, uh, collaboration. But yeah, they were extremely happy to see us and share what they were doing. There was quite a lot of similarities and, and there were some absolute pearls that I was able to bring back to Australia and, uh, implement within the program.

Paula: Wow. Well, I love that idea actually.

It’s, it’s always been a passion of mine to take learnings either from one sector or from one country and leverage that in somewhere else, because it’s probably the only way that you really get the, the, the nitty gritty Grady detail of exactly what’s going on, because otherwise it’s too commercially sensitive to ask the question.

Yes, exactly. So, um, so let’s talk about the, uh, the course that you developed, Sarah. Um, as I said, I, I’ve, I have a personal passion for psychology. Something I’d love to, to study at at another time, but tell us about the, the programs that you run on the education side, and actually even before that, we should probably ask, you know, why did you set up the Australian Loyalty Association and, uh, and, and some of the work that you do there?

Sarah: Well, I’d like to say that I had a big strategic purpose, but really I’ve just been working like crazy, like all of us for years in these different roles around the country. And when I left Maya and client side work, I decided to get all my friends together and have a dinner. And we got 25 people along and a few vendors.

And after the first dinner somebody said, well, you know, you really should take this maybe to the next stage. And a couple of the vendors said, look, we’ll sponsor you. And so it really went from there. And I think the reason why it has been so successful, and it’s such a close knit and you know, great networking experiences because it has come outta such grassroots.

Um, such a grassroots, um, beginning and there was never any commercial desires, um, upon it. And, and so hopefully that really shows One of the measures that we have of success for all our events is, you know, you look around the room and see how many people are on their phone or standing by themselves. Of course, now we’ve got these fantastic apps.

That you play games with, and so everybody’s on their phones, so now it’s very hard to tell what they’re doing. Yeah. But yeah, so we started it seven years ago is when we first had the dinners, and it just got bigger and bigger. Five years ago we had our first conference, and that’s gone from. 120 people to 300 last year.

Wow. And we were doing it Sydney, Melbourne. For anybody who hasn’t been to Australia, they’re, they’re quite a distance from each other and they’re quite separate, um, the people who live in each area. And so the Sydney guys complained and asked if we could have a conference there as well. And so what we’ve started to do now is we have a.

In Sydney, which this year will be capped at two 20, which is on the 19th of March. And then the Sydney, oh, sorry. The Melbourne conference, which is on the 22nd of July.

Paula: Wow. Okay. Um, and, and the Melbourne format, then that’s, that’s more of a traditional conference format? Is it

Sarah: Sarah? Yeah, we keep it two a day.

We start very early, take delegates through a journey through loyalty. Mm-hmm.

Speakers, but we also have vendors who have specific, uh, areas of expertise. We, we ensure that that sponsorship and speakers are not tied together, so we really do assess everybody on their merit. And, um, yeah, if anybody listening would like an excuse to come to Australia.

Paula: You know, I, you know, I’m dying to get there.

Yes. Paula, I was talking to you. Yes, yes, yes, yes. Super exciting. Um, yeah, no, and I know, obviously we know so many people in common around the world that, uh, it, it does feel like it would be literally a gathering of friends if, if I got there. So, um, so hold that space and hold that thought, Sarah, if it’s.

It’s not this year. I, I promise to, uh, to join you next year in, in one of your events. And, and speaking of 2021, I know you have a fabulous and radically innovative, I think is the way to describe your 2021 plans for the world of loyalty. So, so tell all of the listeners, what are you doing in 2021? So

Sarah: our latest endeavor is to run an international customer engagement and loyalty ski trip in Japan.

And this is gonna be held, um, between the 18th and the 22nd of January, 2021. Paul, I’m not sure, have you been to Japan?

Paula: Many, many years ago, Sarah, and it certainly wasn’t in a professional environment. Um, I think I partied most of my, my time there with some university friends. Uh, but it’s actually a country that I know, uh, my partner and I have been talking about going back to, um, and it’s more high profile, I suppose, with the Olympics this year, but I haven’t really associated it with skiing.

And I hadn’t certainly planned on, um, on, or wasn’t expecting any loyalty conference to happen there that would be relevant for me. So, so how did you even end up choosing Japan as a location?

Sarah: Well after the event in July last year, it’s usually quite a boozy event by the end of the night when our sponsors, mm-hmm.

Who’s called and owns a prominent digital agency in Australia called Digital Al. And he mentioned to me that he owns some hotels in the mountain, in mountains in Japan, which I thought was extremely random. And we decided that we were gonna put together a ski trip. And the next morning I had completely forgotten about it.

Reagan. So are we doing this? I was, I was me. And so I actually went to visit Reagan in Japan a couple of weeks ago thinking, really, this is. A great opportunity to go to Japan and I love skiing and I was just blown away by what a fantastic co country it is. And that from the airport to the snow, it takes two hours in these crazy bullet trains and, um, yeah.

Wow. So before I knew it, we, we had organized. Trip and so the delegates can stay in these hotels. It’s extremely good value. Mm-hmm. And we’re just finalizing the details now, putting together the program. Itll be a networking event. Mm-hmm. They will be some education. Mm-hmm. We do hope to also do some skiing, and if it snows overnight and there’s a bright blue, sunny day, then we will not be talking about loyalty.

We’ll be skiing. We have to make very flexible. But having said that, it’s just a wonderful way for us all to share something. I’ve never met anybody in loyalty who’s not incredibly passionate about it and doesn’t wanna talk to other loyalty practitioners, so I’m extremely excited. Formally at the event in March, so all the details will be on the website.

Paula: Wow. Well, so it sounds like we’re getting an exclusive news bulletin. Uh, it’s not awful that I have breaking news on, on the show, so I’m delighted to hear it. That that is my plans. Sarah, I mean, as you talk about it, it is everything that I, I love. I mean, like you said, I love talking about loyalty. I love picking people’s brains about loyalty, and as I said, um, Japan’s been on the list, but tell me, I’m not a skier, so is it still appropriate?

And, and, and a good, uh, resort to attend for, for, for me and listeners who don’t ski.

Sarah: Well, the, the evening that I got there, everybody was telling me you’ll not be able to ski tomorrow because the snow’s terrible. And I woke up the next day to the best snow skiing I’ve ever done. So if you speak to anybody in Japan, basically, and this says powder, they’re not really interested, which for anybody who’s ever skied in Australia would think that was quite laughable.

But I did notice that there was some really, uh, good beginner. Slopes and part of the deal will be free ski lessons. Mm-hmm. And um, but having said that, there was some extremely challenging, um, black runs that, uh, I was far too petrified to go down. So I don’t think be a problem. And there’s so much to do in Japan and everything is so close that even if you don’t ski, there’ll be plenty for people to do.

And we’ll bus people around to, um, the different on sends, et cetera, every day.

Paula: Wow. Well, I mean, I think you’re, you’re doing it extremely well, um, as, as clearly you do everything else, Sarah, in that, you know, we’ve got 12 months notice now to organize ourselves. And I think you mentioned to me you’re hoping about 50 loyalty and I’m guessing quite senior people you’re expecting.

Is it about 50 that you’re expecting to attend the, uh, the first event?

Sarah: Well, we are inviting families, so in total, 50 would be a good manageable number. Mm-hmm. So I imagine it will be around 30, but we already have 40 expressions of interest. Mm-hmm. But obviously saying you want to go and actually going are two different things.

So we’ll see how many registrations we get, but I’ve got a definitely a very good feeling about it. When you organize things like this for many years, you can get a very good sense of whether something’s gonna successful or not.

Paula: Yeah. Brilliant. And then the piece we haven’t talked about yet, Sarah, is the, um, the loyalty education program that you’re running.

So, um, I know you have dates coming up and that’s separate, I suppose, to the actual events that you do. So, so what kind of, um, loyalty training do you do?

Sarah: So we launched our education program in October last year, and we’ll be running the next one in Sydney on May the 20th and 21st. So we’re doing that in conjunction with Macquarie University this time.

So the course goes for two days and covers eight modules. So it covers strategy, customer journeys, financial modeling, technology, psychology, et cetera. And we make sure that it’s very. Hands on that we have exercises after each of the modules and that the, the attendees get to work very closely with each other.

We had 24 people attend the last one, which we were absolutely stoked about, and it was such a big number that we’ll be capping it at that we also. Are looking to do private education in various organizations, because some organizations just don’t want their people going out there and sharing too much about their programs.

And so it looks like we’ll be doing that, the first one of those in

Paula: Singapore. Wow. Okay. So yeah, also extremely exciting because I think what we’ve said, and, and again we, we’ve, we’ve both done a lot of work in this area. Um, you know, there isn’t just enough loyalty training in the world, and most of us either fell into it or, or, you know, it’s, it’s almost.

Practitioner led. So you know, you might have to bring in expensive consultants, but where else do you get the expertise? Unless there’s, there’s people like you running programs. Yeah.

Sarah: Well that’s why we did it in conjunction with universities and we were lucky enough to have some people that we were close to who helped us to accredit these programs for us.

Um mm-hmm. And it’s one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. I, I thought it would be hard to write the course. Mm. Um, it was, uh, it was. Significantly harder than I thought it was, and we were extremely relieved when we got good ratings. And, uh, we’ve now got registration starting again because like anything, Paula, if you try and do something new, you’re always terrified that it might fail.

Paula: Of course, of course. But what I’m loving, Sarah, is that you’re, you’re getting out and trying things. So whether it’s dinner or skiing in Japan, like, it’s just a, I like your appetite for innovation and just giving it a go. Thanks Paula. Brilliant. So listen, um, we’ll probably start to wrap up now. Um, I know, uh, we, we’ve covered most of the subjects that we wanted to talk about, but you did mention to me, I suppose your favorite, um, aspect of, of loyalty programs is, you know, really monetizing them and proving the value.

So, you know, just before we close, do you want to, um, to cover that topic? I know you mentioned, for example, there’s an increase in paid subscription programs in the Australian market. Fully. So just thought that that might be a final, um, nice area to talk about before we wrap up. Well pay

Sarah: programs are great because it brings revenue into an organization upfront.

I’m extremely fascinated about it because it reverses the usual construct of a loyalty program in the traditional sense as it doesn’t reward members for loyalty gained over time. Instead, it lets them pay upfront to instantly become. Say a gold member with all of those sorts of benefits. So when I first started to think about it, I thought, oh, it doesn’t really fit into loyalty.

But of course it absolutely does because if you are loyal enough to pay a company to be part of their program and. Part of the psychology that we’ve been learning about is that if you pay for something, then you are much more likely to to use it. And as we were talking about before, I’m fascinated with the Costco model, which if somebody had come to me as a consultant and said, we are going to charge people 50.

In, in Australia it’s 50 Australian dollars to to shop at our store. I would’ve told them they were insane, but it works amazingly well in Australia and I do it myself. I shop at Costco far more often than I should, based on the fact that I pay the $15 upfront. So I think it’s something we’re gonna see a lot more of.

Mm-hmm. The, the only thing I would be wary of from a Lty practitioner’s perspective is to ensure that that money from the paid lty program actually does go back to the Lty department and funds customer benefits. Because in that way, again, as I was saying at the beginning of our interview, everybody’s happy, the loyalty practitioner and their department, the company and customer, and amazing

Paula: sustainable model.

Wow. And just, uh, the actual benefits that Costco do, and I know you mentioned that again, it’s not always seen as a loyalty program because it’s, it’s the discount model. So are you saying that the $15 that you spend on your subscription, does it go into tangible rewards? Like, here’s a gift, um, or does it go into, here’s richer discounts or a combination of both.

Sarah: Well, um, the $50 really just allows you to go into their store, so Wow. You can’t, you can’t go in there if you haven’t paid them.

Paula: You can’t at all. No. Oh my God, I missed that clearly massive, uh, key point about the whole thing. My God, that’s extraordinary.

Sarah: Obviously they don’t have Costcos in, uh, it’s an American company.

They don’t have them in Dubai.

Paula: They definitely don’t, we don’t have them in Ireland that I’m aware of. I’m outta there three years now. Um, I, I don’t think they’re in the uk, but I will definitely, uh, you know, maybe, maybe try and get a case study or get them onto the, uh, Well,

they,

Sarah: they wouldn’t consider themselves a loyalty program and a lot of loyalty people don’t.

But as far as I’m concerned, the customers are unbelievably loyal. So, what would you call it? Yeah. They don’t have segmented comms. They don’t have any points. Points. Um, so if it’s that you, you basically go in there and the products are apparently discounted. Mm. Yeah, I’ve never walked out of the place without having spent at least $600 and oh my God,

Paula: you, you’re clearly their dream customer, Sarah.

That’s incredible.

Sarah: I do, however, also own a bar Forer, but please don’t ask me about that.

Paula: Okay, well, I think we’ll take that one offline because I’ve just moved house and I need a bar, so, uh, I’m definitely gonna pick your brains. Um, so that’s it from my side. Sarah, before we, uh, before we wrap up, was there anything else that you wanted to mention?

I mean, I’m obviously going to include. Links to your own LinkedIn profile in the show notes and the Australian loyalty association.com, which I believe is your, your website. And actually, I, I don’t believe because I know, and in fact, you’ve put my podcast on there. So, so thank you very much for, uh, for, for sharing the love.

Um, so is there anything else you wanted to say before we, uh, before we end the interview?

Sarah: No Paula, and thank you so much for having me on and we all really appreciate what you are doing. It’s not easy to put together what you are doing and uh, to be brave enough to start podcasts. And I’ve listened to everything that you’ve done so far and I’ve learned so much and it’s been really fascinating.

So congratulations.

Paula: Oh my goodness. Well, thank you Sarah. Uh, really, really appreciate the lovely comments and again, I’m a big fan of yours as you can tell. So, uh, so I look forward to working with you and thanks a million for talking to Let’s Talk Loyalty.

Thanks so much for listening to this episode of Let’s Talk Loyalty. If you’d like me to send you the latest show each week, simply sign up for the show newsletter on letstalkloyalty.com, and I’ll send you the latest episode to your inbox every Thursday, or just head to your favorite podcast platform, find Let’s Talk Loyalty and subscribe.

Of course, I’d love your feedback and reviews, and thanks again for supporting the show.