#124: Bringing Global Loyalty Innovation to Australia (Summary Show)

Simon Rowles is a loyalty expert whose company Beyonde specializes in identifying disruptive technologies that have proven successful overseas and bringing those new ideas and solutions to his clients in Australia.

Whether it’s loyalty technology, payments, personalization, digitization or identity solutions, Simon explains the unique characteristics and profile of the Australian market, as well as some of his favourite technology ideas that both customers and clients are excited about.

Recorded in April 2020, the original interview is a thoroughly enjoyable 40 minutes of loyalty insights that’s definitely worth listening to!

Show Notes: 

1) Simon Rowles

2) Beyonde 

3) Let’s Talk Loyalty Episode #31

Audio Transcript

Speaker 0 (0s):

Welcome to ‘Let’s Talk Loyalty” is 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.

Hello and welcome to let’s talk a little loyalty. Today, I’m looking back at my conversation with Simon Rowles, the Founder and Managing Director of a company called “Beyonde” based in Sydney, Australia.

Beyonde specializes in identifying disruptive loyalty and customer experience technologies, particularly those that have proven successful in any mature market around the world. And then they bring those new ideas and solutions to Australian clients. Simon has a background in the technology industry, the payments industry, as well as in a number of startup firms.

So he’s uniquely qualified to combine that expertise in order to measure and achieve his favorite metric for clients. Our return on loyalty investments, Simon shared some fascinating numbers, such as the potential return on loyalty in various industries with an industry average in grocery retail of 5.1%, but yet in fuel retail of about 9%, these numbers have been developed by the partner company ellipsis and have been tested and proven over many years of statistical research numbers that can be taken to any CFO.

When there’s a discussion about whether a company’s investment in loyalty is worthwhile relative to other asset classes. Simon’s passion is to discover breakout strategies that have been successfully deployed somewhere in the world, ideally in similar industries to his clients. So he can connect those emerging platforms with his Australian clients who often have similar needs. He’s discovered it’s a much faster approach than trying to build technology solutions locally.

It’s also a cheaper route to market with proven results and much less riskier. This idea works in many industries. So Simon shared some of the key sectors of the Australian market that he is finding are getting really excited about this approach to their innovation. He explained that about half the loyalty market in Australia is funded by banks who partner with the airline loyalty programs, such as Quantas and Virgin Australia, and that the overall loyalty market is worth about four and a half billion dollars.

He then explains the five key areas where the majority of innovation for new customer experience propositions are emerging. These five areas are in loyalty in payments, personalization, digitization, and identity solutions. And he mentioned how global brands such as McDonald’s and Australian market leaders, such as Woolworths supermarkets are busy, either building or buying technology solutions in these key areas of business.

Of course, all of these clients everywhere in the world have a whole new focus on their digital transformation. Given the emergence of the COVID pandemic, which was just kicking off at the time of our interview, we then discussed some of our favorite emerging trends in these five areas, including card linking or payment link loyalty, which is still one of my favorite ideas. And Simon explained how this particular approach solves pain points for all stakeholders, for consumers who no longer have to swipe a loyalty identifier for merchants who want to maximize their identities.

And also for banks who want to drive increased insights and retention, it’s an extraordinary approach that is still emerging in many global markets led in my experience by the UK in particular, Simon also mentioned a company that has a software platform that offers exclusive airline upgrades at discounted prices. A unique concept that again, particularly is targeted at helping banks to retain their best customers, innovative ideas like these help large companies in particular to continually evolve their customer value proposition with a wow factor that drives retention and word of mouth marketing too.

Finally, Simon shared some of his favorite thought leaders to follow for the latest ideas in consumer innovation, and then invited any of my listeners who offer great technology solutions in these areas to get in touch quite simply, anyone who has enabled a first in the world strategy where some large corporate has trusted you to bring it to Marcus than Simon has said, Australian really needs you. So please do get in touch with either me or Simon Reynolds directly on LinkedIn.

If you want to explore working together to bring your great solution to the Australian market, that’s it for this episode of let’s talk

Speaker 0 (5m 42s): A little loyalty. If you want to listen to the full interview, it’s episode 31 on let’s talk loyalty.com and I can assure you it’s 40 minutes of your time. That will definitely be worthwhile. This show is sponsored by the wise market here. The world’s most popular source of loyalty, marketing news insights and research. The Ys marketeer also offers loyalty marketing training through its loyalty academy, which has already certified over 170 executives in 20 countries as certified loyalty and marketing professionals.

For more information, check out the wise market tier.com and loyalty academy.org. 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 let’s talk loyalty.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.

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