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.
This episode is brought to you by Collinson Worldwide Leaders in Loyalty, creating and orchestrating loyalty initiatives and programs for some of the world’s biggest brands in travel, retail, and financial services. Doing it globally for over 30 years. Want to know more? Go to collinsongroup.com.
Hello and welcome to this week’s short episode of Let’s Talk Loyalty. I’m your host, Paula Thomas, and today I’m looking back at my episode with Alyssa Callahan from November, 2021. Alyssa’s career had caught my eye as she had just been appointed to a dream job as the Director of Loyalty at L’Oreal Cosmetics, specifically for the Luxe Division.
It was a brand new role for the organization and one that was incredibly exciting given its role and focus on direct to consumer relationships, which had come into particular focus through the pandemic. Alyssa had already been in the loyalty industry for over 10 years before joining the L’Oreal team in New York, and in our conversation, she shared some of our insights and experiences at the time we met.
My opening question was all about my guest’s favorite loyalty statistic, and I really like the one that Alyssa shared. It’s one that had come through originally in the Bond Brand Loyalty Report. Highlighting a huge difference between the perception of marketeers and the perception of consumers on how loyal those brands are being to those consumers.
It seems marketers believe that we are showing much more loyalty to our consumers than we as consumers are experiencing. So I loved that Alyssa had this insight top of mind when starting in her new role. Before L’Oreal, Alyssa’s career included jobs with both Wyndham Hotels and Toys R Us, and for me, her passion for loyalty came through so much in our conversation.
We discussed the true power of loyalty programs for brands and consumers alike, and how wonderful it is to connect with other loyalty professionals to share our learnings and challenges. At the time, Alyssa was excited about the social audio platform clubhouse, so a big be excited to hear her latest insights on where she likes to spend time and learn about loyalty.
As I think the clubhouses used a lot less these days than it was at that time during the pandemic. Some of the other great insights Alyssa shared included her approach of using loyalty mechanics to solve specific problems that members have. She explained how she used the power of personalization to solve a customer’s challenge in real time on the brand’s website, rather than the traditional approach of trying to explain program benefits to members by email.
Which of course are never read at the time, the members’ problems themselves are happening. Alongside this idea, Alyssa shared a few other key projects such as a subscription-based model and some key initiatives launched in direct response to the pandemic with a focus on rewarding essential workers and other people who were really in the front lines of that situation.
She also explained the importance of loyalty led campaigns for employees, which can be so effective at driving engagement and emotional loyalty through the impact and power of your people working on the frontline of your store or hotel. This episode is filled with incredible insights across different industries, so it’ll be fascinating for any of you in hospitality, retail, or of course, luxury products. You can listen to it at letstalkloyalty.com/157.
That’s all for today. Thank you so much for listening to this week’s short episode of Let’s Talk Loyalty. And please do continue to join me over the next two days for some more exciting interviews. Tomorrow’s episode is from the Scene + program, which is now Canada’s leading lifestyle rewards program with more than 11 million members, and being used by 63% of Canadian households. Then on Thursday, I have an episode very close to my heart as it’s the story of building customer loyalty in Maxol. One of Ireland’s leading fuel, coffee, carwash, and convenience store brands, which was this year named the European Convenience Retailer of the Year. So please don’t miss that incredible story.
For any of you celebrating Christmas, I want to wish you a heartfelt, Happy Christmas from myself and my fantastic team, John and Pooja. And as always, our wonderful editor James. We’ll be continuing to publish three episodes a week throughout the holidays, so please do stay listening.
Happy Christmas. Safe travels if you are traveling, and have a great week in life and loyalty.
This show is sponsored by The Wise Marketer, the world’s most popular source of loyalty, marketing, news, insights, and research. The Wise Marketer also offers loyalty marketing training through its loyalty academy, which has already certified over 500 executives in 38 countries as certified loyalty marketing professionals. For more information, check out thewisemarketer.com and loyaltyacademy.org.
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