Paula: Welcome to Let’s Talk Loyalty, an industry podcast for Loyalty Marketing Professionals.
Paula: I’m your host, Paula Thomas.
Paula: And if you work in Loyalty Marketing, join me every week to learn the latest ideas from Loyalty Specialists around the world.
Paula: Thank you.
Paula: So welcome to the final episode of Let’s Talk Loyalty for 2020.
Paula: Now, I realize for many people listening all over the world, 2020 is probably a year that a lot of people are going to be glad to have behind them.
Paula: So whether people suffered maybe with them any physical illness, any financial impact, or even I really believe the psychological impact of the pandemic.
Paula: And first of all, I want to say, okay, we’ve come through hopefully the worst of it, and very much looking forward to 2021.
Paula: From our perspective here, from the show was Let’s Talk Loyalty.
Paula: I really wanted to particularly extend my thanks, first and foremost to Epsilon Europe, for becoming my very first sponsor of the show, way back in April of 2020.
Paula: I also want to thank Comark out of Poland, who’ve done some extraordinary work with me this year.
Paula: And the third sponsor I also want to thank is Epsilon Asia-Pacific, who again have started working with me just in the last couple of weeks.
Paula: So to all of those three brands, thank you so much.
Paula: We couldn’t do the show without you.
Paula: And without further ado, I’m going to get into some incredibly interesting content.
Paula: So today my guest is an inspiring entrepreneur by the name of Maths Mathisen.
Paula: Now Maths is Norwegian by nationality, and he has a number of claims to fame.
Paula: First of all, he is the chief executive officer and co-founder of a technology company called Hold, which I’m gonna talk through obviously in great detail throughout the conversation today.
Paula: But alongside that company, or perhaps because of it, Maths has been named one of Norway’s top 30 under 30 entrepreneurs by leading Norwegian financial newspaper.
Paula: He has also been named one of the 30 under 40 leading entrepreneurs by Loyalty magazine out of the UK.
Paula: He has also been quoted extensively by the BBC, by the Financial Times and other brands like Deloitte.
Paula: So an incredibly interesting person to talk to with some great insights on loyalty.
Paula: So first and foremost, Maths Mathisen, welcome to Let’s Talk Loyalty.
Maths: Yeah, thank you so much for having me as a part of the show.
Paula: Delighted to talk to you, Maths.
Paula: And I really, I find the work that you do very inspiring, as you know, and I think the reason I find it inspiring is there’s so much that you’re aware of that’s going on in marketing terms that I certainly wasn’t the least bit aware of.
Paula: So I think the intention of today’s show is really just to give the loyalty professionals listening a sense of some of the topics that you’re addressing with your own platform.
Paula: So before we get into hold as a concept and exactly what you’ve built over the last five or six years, as always, we always start the show by asking about our favorite loyalty statistics.
Paula: So Maths Mathisen, what is your favorite loyalty statistic?
Maths: I think that my favorite one is, it’s connected to several actually.
Maths: So if you start out, one of the most important thing about building a good loyalty program, for example, is to make sure that people use it.
Maths: And I think some people at least, don’t take it into account that actually 54% of members are churning the first day.
Maths: You invest a lot of money in to get them on board, but then they’re gone.
Maths: And that’s for me at least, from at least the perception of what we in a whole are trying to do here, is to actually build this habit.
Maths: And what we see connected is that, the first time we, you get people in person into stores, 27% higher chance of that person coming back again.
Maths: But if you get in second time, the chance is 45%, and then third time, 54%.
Maths: And what that I mean is, it’s very important to actually keep them engaged, not only engage them the first time, because the importance of this is not there anymore.
Paula: Absolutely.
Paula: And I can imagine now the CFOs and many of the companies, for listeners, for example, if you really were honest and said, we’re going to build this loyalty program, we’re going to spend a lot of money doing that, and then 54% of people who join will never engage a second time.
Paula: I think they’d be pretty shocked and might not help the business case in the first instance.
Maths: But that also is connected to what kind of KPIs you’re setting for yourself.
Maths: Because it might be that you try to set number of downloads, number of sessions in an app, for example, but the number of downloads doesn’t have anything to say about the actual number of people coming to your store, actual number of people coming back again.
Maths: And there’s more, so that’s the understanding, the data behind it.
Maths: I think that’s the thing that it’s of course very important to build a good program that’s actually solving the problem you have instead of, because it’s not one solution fits for everyone.
Maths: You have to have your personalized program in order to make it work for you.
Paula: Absolutely.
Paula: So I would love to get you to explain HOLD as a company and I suppose really the story behind it, Maths.
Paula: So, you know, my definition or understanding is you describe it as ethical technology, you know, really based on an insight around a concept, which I can’t believe dates back, I think you told me to 2006 around this idea of mindful marketing, which I believe is a huge trend that we as consumers are all very much keen for our loyalty programs and brands that we interact with to actually communicate with us in this new way.
Paula: But I think the whole problem that you identified was around this concept of digital distraction and how can we address that as as a really big problem in society?
Paula: And you built a technology solution to address it.
Paula: So I’d love you to tell the story of where it came from and what you’ve built.
Maths: Of course.
Maths: And so to understand a bit where it all started out, we were three students studying together at Copenhagen Business School.
Maths: We struggled a lot to actually stay focused.
Maths: We had some clear goals.
Maths: We want to get a good job.
Maths: We want to get the good grades that we needed.
Maths: But we were checking our phones like 150 times a day.
Maths: And we didn’t maybe go as planned.
Maths: But throughout this time, we actually saw that how much time we wasted on it.
Maths: And we started to give ourselves a cup of coffee if we didn’t check our phone.
Maths: So if I didn’t check my phone throughout the school day, then my friends have to buy me a coffee.
Maths: And the fact that we were trying to compete here and also actually getting pedigrees, it’s kind of the competition part and actually a real price at them was very effective.
Maths: So that was kind of the start of whole.
Maths: Then we saw that this was a problem, not only that we had, but a lot of other students as well.
Maths: So that’s why we said, let’s try to create something around this.
Maths: That was the start of whole and whole is basically an app that gives you incentives to put on your phone when you want to focus.
Maths: So you decide what you want to focus on.
Maths: And then for the time it don’t check your phone, you get points and those points you can exchange for maybe getting a free cup of coffee.
Maths: You can get a discount from Just Eat, but this is where we kind of try to build in this mindful marketing because where the brands come into play here is that they want to reach and be engaged students, for example, and they want to put the products in the hands of those people.
Maths: And the students, they want to get better grades.
Maths: They want to be engaged, of course, and they want to have a better price than what…
Maths: Because they don’t have the willingness to pay for a student.
Maths: It’s maybe not that high during the start of the start.
Maths: Sometimes you’re quite broke when you’re a student.
Paula: Totally.
Paula: We’ve all been there.
Maths: What we saw is that a lot of people struggle to reach students, like 50% of people or students use ad blocks, and that’s shown 87% actually don’t trust ads.
Maths: So how to actually be able to engage them?
Maths: For us, it was that we saw that the brands are fighting.
Maths: We call it the war over attention.
Maths: The war over attention is when you have a limited set of time, but they all want to kind of engage you.
Maths: They’re like Netflix, Google, Facebook, and they know so much about you.
Maths: They may be more, know more about you than you know about yourself.
Maths: They know how to actually trigger you.
Maths: And that’s what we, and to put it into context there, like if you, the CEO of Netflix, Reed Hastings, said that they’re not competing against HPO.
Maths: They’re competing against sleep because sleep is the kind of the limit.
Maths: That’s the additional time they can engage you.
Maths: And that’s the thing that all these brands, all these platforms are getting paid by the number of impressions that you give to them, but it’s not on your terms.
Maths: And that’s where we believe is mindful marketing.
Maths: It’s what we believe may be the next generation marketing.
Maths: Because it’s a way that we are purpose-driven.
Maths: We care about what the brand stands for, and we want to control our time.
Maths: And that’s what we felt.
Maths: A student that we take away this pressure marketing, we put the users in charge, and it turned out to work quite well.
Paula: It’s an incredible insight, Maths, and I think very relevant because I think many listeners will have seen the particular documentary on Netflix called The Social Dilemma, which I think for the first time brought maybe mainstream attention to this war of attention that you’re referring to.
Paula: And you founded Hold back in, what year was it?
Paula: Was it 2015 that you started the company?
Maths: I don’t know if you can call it started a company in 2015.
Maths: We launched a prototype in 2016.
Maths: And that gained a lot of traction.
Maths: We still have two years left to complete to get a masters.
Maths: But based on that, we said that we need to just spend time on this because we want to solve this issue.
Maths: And we believe there is a very good connection between students getting better grades and brands won’t actually engage them.
Paula: To reach them.
Paula: Yeah.
Paula: And I know you’ve had clients or have clients such as Disney, 7-Eleven and Coca-Cola.
Paula: So clearly an extraordinary buy-in.
Paula: And I think when I first met you, I certainly hadn’t realized how big the impact I suppose was in tangible terms on the attention, particularly for that cohort, as you said, of difficult to reach students.
Paula: So am I right in saying the revenue model then is working with those brands to fund the platform and to commercialize it?
Maths: Yes, that’s correct.
Maths: So the brands are paying a fixed fee connected to be part of the platform.
Maths: And then they can expose either offers or other competitions, etc.
Maths: And we give them what we, of course, have different ways that our brands are interacting with the users that we have.
Maths: But the one thing that we started out with and really have been trying to nail down is what we call the sampling 2.0.
Maths: So because if you think about it, how many cans of Coke does Coca-Cola sample each year?
Maths: There are millions, right?
Maths: They want to get the product in the hands of the people.
Maths: But if you question how much data do they have connected to that?
Maths: Do they know which person actually picked it up?
Maths: Do they know if that person is in their target group, would that person pick it up again?
Maths: Those sort of things is what we believe is lacking in the standard format of sampling.
Maths: And that’s what we want to put in to play because what we do with HOLD is that first we start out, but we do a brand test, that we test kind of the brand recognition and liking, etc.
Maths: Then we get the users actually to invest their time in order to get access to a product.
Maths: They feel like it’s not because if you always give away your product for free, that product will decrease in value.
Maths: You will not pay full price if it’s always a discounted product.
Maths: Then you expect to be discounted.
Maths: So if, for example, to get a free coffee, you need to invest 17 hours of your time.
Maths: And 17 hours is a lot of time.
Maths: But it’s also, if you turn around, when that user after spending 17 hours of focus, of getting learning grades, they come into the store, and then it’s more like it’s winning, right?
Maths: It’s more like this amazing feeling, like I’ve been putting in every effort I need here, and this is the price provided to me by 7-Eleven.
Maths: And that is where we believe it’s really effective, because you have all these hours of brand thinking.
Maths: And that’s also why 97% of our coupons are getting picked up in store.
Maths: And if you compare that to maybe the industry average of 4%, because people invest their time, they care about this, care about this.
Maths: And it’s creating this win-win like I talk about.
Paula: Totally, totally.
Paula: And just for listeners, Maths, I think I’ll just recap on the student’s journey.
Paula: And correct me if I’m wrong, but let’s say I’m going to university, as you said, in Copenhagen, and I’ve got a bad habit, let’s say, of checking my phone.
Paula: So the first thing I will do is download the HOLD app from the store.
Paula: And I know it’s mainly in Norway at the moment.
Paula: Once I have that app, then once it comes to time to study or attend a lecture, I essentially just tap the app and say, okay, now I’m going on hold.
Paula: So I signal my intention not to get distracted.
Paula: And then it counts up, as you said, up to, let’s say, 17 hours over whatever period of time where I’m totally in that focused zone.
Paula: I haven’t made calls, I haven’t checked Facebook.
Paula: And after that time, then I earn a reward from the brand.
Maths: So you can browse between the different brands that we have.
Paula: Okay.
Maths: So we kind of treat it as a marketplace.
Maths: So with like the brand decided themselves what kind of price point they want to like or want to add to their product.
Maths: I want to have, it doesn’t have to be free.
Maths: It could be like one pound off.
Maths: For example, it could be 20% off.
Maths: And what we see is that we have created kind of a game.
Maths: We make it something to put on your phone.
Maths: And that’s where we have the brands that make sure that you have this place to build it on.
Maths: And then we have the high score where we compare it and compete with friends.
Maths: And then we have the stats.
Maths: So we kind of we treated like you can get the when you go to the next level, you get additional variable points or variable prices.
Maths: We tried to build in because our tension span are not probably the best at the moment.
Maths: And we’re getting bored quite fast.
Maths: So how to make sure that this is, all this in itself kind of loyalty scheme that we kind of you have the pact against yourself, but we just help to keep the pact and have a positive connection to the way you use your phone.
Paula: Absolutely.
Paula: And I know for sure, my use of my phone is definitely excessive and increasingly aware of it every time I talk to you.
Paula: But so far you haven’t arrived in my country in the UAE now to reward me for disconnecting.
Paula: But I remember you mentioned as well, Maths, that people are starting to wonder when is the tipping point where on our phones we end up scrolling more in meters than we walk in an average day, which I thought was shocking.
Maths: It’s still a long way there, but the number of meters we increase every day, we’re definitely going to get there some time.
Maths: But I think now the average scroll per day is 220 meters or something.
Maths: But there’s still a lot of space in the number.
Maths: Your thumb is just going up and down, looking for new content.
Maths: That’s also the thing about TOL.
Maths: We’re not against tech at all.
Maths: We love technology.
Maths: We just know it’s so hard to get the things that you want to get done at the time you should.
Maths: Because we can just, if we think about it, get the text message or a push message from Snapchat, for example.
Maths: If you just check it, it takes you 20 minutes to get back to focus again.
Maths: That’s where we see that people just need a helping hand.
Maths: And try to treat it the way that…
Maths: So we try to just use the mechanics that games or these platforms are using to keep you hooked.
Maths: We try to do the same to make sure that you are able to focus.
Paula: Yeah.
Paula: Yeah.
Paula: Yeah.
Paula: Brilliant stuff, Matsu.
Paula: The other really interesting stuff we talked about before was what you’re seeing in terms of the level of engagement with your platform, depending on the source of the actual enrollment.
Paula: And I thought this was absolutely genius.
Paula: So the two options we talked about is, let’s say you put an ad on Facebook, which obviously is my preferred platform of choice for personal use.
Paula: If I saw a hold there, I might end up joining the platform.
Paula: Or alternatively, it could be a friend of mine who tells me about it.
Paula: So I’d love you to explain to listeners that the difference you’re seeing when you really analyse the source of where your membership is coming from.
Maths: I think this is very much connected to trust.
Maths: Again, the stats I didn’t share that today on like very few people, trust ads, especially this target group.
Maths: So it’s kind of with getting a friend to invite you, you trust more the content and actually the solution and the brand behind it.
Maths: While you’re trying to showcase something through an ad, it’s more like you don’t trust that at all.
Maths: So what we see is that we included that you get points to invite your friends, and you only get 30 points, which is basically an hour off your phone.
Maths: But that in itself is we today we have 99% of our users are coming or connected to our platform.
Maths: It’s basically a viral effect of people because it’s much more fun to use all with friends, to building more of the social type of mechanics, but also, when we get a friend on board, or that you might have a friend, the chances of him sticking to the platform, it’s much higher.
Maths: Yeah.
Maths: So it’s more, it’s kind of, if you find a way to use this social mechanics, that’s one of the most powerful mechanics you can use to get people engaged and keep them engaged.
Paula: Yeah.
Paula: Yeah.
Paula: And I think that’s where the light bulb went off for me, Maths, because the getting them engaged, I was totally clear.
Paula: And everyone listening to this show, I’m sure has a refer a friend program.
Paula: But for me, I was really only valuing it as an activity that was easier and more cost effective, let’s say, to acquire a new member.
Paula: But what I’ve never looked at, which is the point I think you made, is after that point, then how do they engage with the platform?
Paula: How long do they stay?
Paula: How much do they trust it?
Paula: How much maybe are they talking about it?
Paula: Their own friends.
Paula: So I think I had really missed that big insight about engaging after acquisition rather than just at the very beginning.
Maths: Yeah, I think that’s one of the most important things, because if you can create this kind of tribe of people to support you, then that itself is just going to spread.
Maths: And I think that’s the thing that people, if you find a solution, how you can integrate that into your loyalty scheme, a way that users can do something throughout with a friend, not only the first time.
Maths: For example, you can do two for one offer, but you have to be two people in order to access it.
Maths: And because, like I said, there are a ton of ways that you invite users the first time for free drink or something like that.
Maths: But then that also connected back to my first ad, which is 54% are not active more than once.
Paula: And you lose them.
Maths: And then that mechanic doesn’t work.
Maths: The viral mechanic is actually not viral anymore.
Paula: It’s just stopping.
Paula: Yeah.
Paula: Yeah.
Paula: And I mean, it is always the holy grail.
Paula: And I know a lot of people again will have great intentions for building something that goes viral.
Paula: And very rarely does that actually happen.
Paula: And I think with Hold certainly you’ve managed, as you said, to create a tribe.
Paula: And in fact, how many members do you have at the moment in Norway?
Paula: I think you’re still only in Norway.
Paula: Am I right?
Maths: Yeah.
Maths: So more than 50% of the users or the students in Norway are active users on Hold.
Maths: So it’s kind of how we manage to build.
Maths: It’s more like a tool, right?
Maths: It’s a tool where the average user spends five hours on Hold each day.
Maths: It’s not only a tool that you pick up once a quarter or once a year.
Maths: It’s something to interact with.
Maths: And that’s where we see that we can put your brand in the top of students’ minds on a daily basis.
Maths: And we see this how we can move trackers like brand recognition, preferences, etc.
Maths: Just based on actually throughout the period creating this habit.
Maths: An example of that is one of the case studies we did with 7-11, where we ran an offer of student coffee.
Maths: So once a day, you can exchange your points to get access to a crash card, which you can get either a coffee for free, 5 kroners, 10 kroners or the standard price of 15 kroners.
Maths: But all the people that didn’t win, they just get the message like, but you have really good offers since you’re a student.
Maths: Based on this, we saw that 92% will not have gone to 7-11 if the offer didn’t exist.
Maths: Because they personally didn’t know about the student, that they had the student offer.
Maths: Number two is that it’s a way that we engage them and create the habit.
Maths: And this is where we hopefully can get users to and then understand how can build up the basket value here of the end basket.
Maths: If we provide you with this kind of this product, would that make sure that you buy a coffee on top or like lunch there as well?
Maths: And also, I think if we can learn the entire customer journey, I think it would be super cool.
Paula: And also, I think what those brands are probably recognizing is what you’ve already touched on, in fact, the power of sampling.
Paula: So I think we’re making a lot of lifelong decisions about the brands we consume when we’re in that kind of student time of our lives.
Paula: So one thing is, yes, drive the immediate sales and change behavior at that time when I’m in university.
Paula: But then if I do start consuming, for example, Coca-Cola, Diet Coke, or whatever the product might be, the chances are, I’m sure, that that adoption will stay for many, many years.
Paula: So the lifetime value is going to be extraordinary.
Maths: Of course, the first point is to get the product in the hand of the people that you want to do.
Maths: And then of course, understand why they like it, if they’re potentially going to buy it again, because you can keep on running ads.
Maths: But if that target group doesn’t have the willingness to pay for it, doesn’t like it, or only liking it during this period of the year, then it’s kind of understand the complete picture of whom you actually want to reach and try to personalize it.
Maths: I think it’s important.
Paula: Wonderful.
Paula: And I know you’re evolving the product now, Maths, very much into students like yourself, who’ve grown up and moved out into the business world.
Paula: I think with this pandemic that we all know so well, there has been an increase probably in terms of the problem of digital distraction, as we’re all working from home, and there’s less separation maybe between work and personal life.
Paula: So tell us about the way that you’re thinking of, I suppose, building a concept for people who are working, like professionals.
Maths: So the reason why we kind of explore this is, first of all, that we have a lot of people that were students and are now working.
Maths: And then we saw when, well, what we discovered when COVID-19 hit is that our screen time increased by 60% during this period.
Maths: 60%, yes, 60%.
Paula: Wow, oh my God.
Maths: But it’s a new way of interacting, it’s newer working.
Maths: And of course, it took some time for people to adjust.
Maths: Maybe now they’re getting sick and tired of working from home.
Maths: So what we saw is that the people, the time management and the task management of actually understanding how to focus, what to work on, when to take breaks, all this kind of thing is something that we could help with.
Maths: So we kind of explored further to build the cross.
Maths: Platform where workers could, instead of blocking everything, you decide what you need access to, and then we block the rest.
Maths: And then you decide how long you want to focus on.
Maths: For example, I’m going to create this presentation.
Maths: Then you only need access to PowerPoint or search on Google, for example.
Maths: But you don’t need access to Slack or Gmail or something like that.
Maths: So to understand how we can put you in this extreme focus mode.
Maths: And for us, we want to just be your productivity trainer.
Maths: It’s kind of the aim here, to make productivity more understandable.
Maths: Because if you ask a person, how much have you done today?
Maths: It’s impossible to answer, because it’s not a very tangible thing.
Maths: And if we can create that tangible thing, and give you kind of a metric on it, like score, and then tell you how we actually can improve that.
Maths: And that’s what we kind of want to aim for.
Maths: Getting experts into the product and understand more how we can help you plan your day, focus on what’s important, and keep you engaged throughout, and actually learn you shouldn’t add in 10 tasks a day, because you’re only going to complete 4, and then after a day, you’re going to feel bad because you didn’t complete everything.
Maths: Yeah.
Paula: It’s a great concept.
Paula: What I also liked, Maths, when I was looking at it on your website, was it can be used, for example, to, as you said, encourage anyone who’s working to really switch on at work, you know, and focus.
Paula: So switch off the phone, switch on to work, but then the reverse at home.
Paula: So, you know, it’s actually really important that we do have that increasing separation.
Paula: And again, if you can measure that time, like I can see a lot of similarities with the explosion of Fitbit and all of these trackers, which again just measure, you know, whether it’s your steps or whatever.
Paula: And there’s just that explosion.
Paula: Once people are aware how they’re behaving or not behaving, all of a sudden they’re just totally inspired to behave in a better way.
Maths: But I think that’s…
Maths: I hope at least we’re on to something that people want to use.
Maths: And of course, it’s still early in the stage on this work product.
Paula: Totally.
Maths: But for us, I think that we created a product for students because we knew how students felt and how they were thinking.
Maths: That’s what we’re trying to do here with this new product as well.
Maths: Because now we have been working, we have been taking a journey from students to become workers.
Maths: We see other types of problems that we want to help with.
Maths: And especially the work-life balance part, it’s very core.
Maths: I think that especially people, when people are now maybe sitting home with their MacBook or something on their dinner table or in the living room, it’s very hard to switch off.
Maths: Because then the last email or the last Zoom meeting is suddenly getting into the dinner part.
Maths: You have to create those boundaries, because it’s of course not possible to create those boundaries on a physical sense because of space, etc.
Maths: But it’s definitely possible to do that on time.
Maths: Set yourself a very concrete time where we actually should work, when we should take those breaks.
Paula: Wonderful.
Paula: Am I right in saying then, Maths, if we have brands listening, who are looking to drive loyalty, that your platform is something they can consider if they’re looking for an approach that says something around more mindful marketing?
Maths: Yeah, sure.
Maths: I think that we’ve built a very flexible platform and have a lot of case studies how actually we manage to create a long-term fix for customers.
Paula: Yeah, wonderful.
Paula: So the final area I wanted to touch on with you, Maths, is just around any other emerging themes, I suppose, that you’re seeing coming through.
Paula: As I mentioned, you were the one who introduced me to this idea of mindful marketing, and you directed me to an incredible number of resources.
Paula: I know Mindshare in the UK is a massive global agency that predicts trends, and they’ve been talking about this, I suppose, increasing control that consumers want around how they are marketed to, and they’re calling that mindful marketing.
Paula: But are there any other emerging themes that you think as a loyalty industry we should be aware of as we build our programs and go into 2021?
Maths: I think the privacy tracking from both Google and Apple and things happening around there, how the data sharing points is, how we actually need to take that into account that when platforms like Facebook could share information across and actually be able to laser target people based on all different kinds of actions.
Maths: But how it’s actually even more important to have owned that data and actually be able to own your own information because that’s very, very valuable and build up that customer loyalty base.
Maths: I think that’s going to just make the loyalty programs even more important.
Maths: I think one of the things that at least I believe that you should focus on is more to do this from next generation, which is very digital.
Maths: They’re going to be the largest purchasing.
Maths: Group.
Maths: But start deciding for them now, not deciding for what was previously done, because people are going to adapt a lot.
Maths: And that’s why I believe it’s mindful marketing or trying to get some purpose in the program that you’re doing.
Maths: It’s going to be very key of actually getting people to engage and actually like your brand.
Maths: I think that if you like it, it’s also connected to what we saw as people sharing, kind of getting people on board hold.
Maths: It could be exactly the same if people like your brand and they’re proud of being a part and being part of this tribe.
Maths: It’s just the same.
Maths: You can put some purpose behind it.
Paula: Yeah, you’re absolutely right, Maths.
Paula: I think purpose is increasingly important.
Paula: I think we’ve all had a sense check in 2020 and really started to reevaluate who we want to do business with and why we want to do business with them.
Paula: I think we have in the past probably relied on interruption marketing for too long.
Paula: And certainly the gurus like Seth Godin, we all know, has been talking about, I suppose, permission marketing for a long time.
Paula: But I think it’s taking on a whole new level as we’re going forward.
Paula: I’m loving seeing the platform that you’re building and the adoption.
Paula: I can’t believe that, as you said, 50% of third level students in Norway are using your app and for hours on end every single day.
Paula: So you’re clearly building extraordinary loyalty and fixing a real problem.
Paula: And I think it’s very rare to find a solution that is really targeted around what does the member actually need?
Paula: Like, how can we take care of them for their own best interest, as you said, with them getting better grades, also building a business, hopefully for yourselves, and building brand awareness and sampling opportunities for brands.
Paula: So it’s an extraordinary story.
Paula: Is there anything else you wanted to add before we wrap up?
Maths: No, just in terms of the tapping into the purpose part of it, again, because just an example of how 7-Eleven, they came to us and they wanted to get people to put on their phone while they were driving their cars.
Maths: Wow.
Paula: As they should.
Maths: Yeah, like, no, because that’s like, 26% of all car crashes are connected to people checking their faults.
Maths: So it’s definitely like a very dangerous zone here.
Maths: And they came to us and asked if we can use the kind of the platform behind Holt in order to do this, in order to build in the same mechanics as Holt students.
Maths: So we created basically just the same app, as part of the same app, and sent to us people to put on their phone.
Maths: And we partnered up with DFT, kind of the Department for Transportation, which were the main partner behind it.
Maths: So we get the trust behind this government player that knows everything about the stats and how you should use your phone.
Maths: But then we get 7-Eleven as a gas station, kind of connected to it.
Maths: And actually helping people focus on the road and not their phone, and same lives, and putting their prices to get people into their store.
Maths: But that was an example of how people are able to build and purpose into their loyalty scheme by solving another problem.
Paula: Yeah, wow.
Paula: That’s an extraordinary example, Maths.
Paula: And yes, I think again what you’re tapping into, I think purpose is something that so many brands realize that if they can connect a purpose to their overall objectives and intention, that people will really connect with them more.
Paula: I think a lot of them struggle how to do it.
Paula: I wasn’t aware that 7-Eleven were doing that with you.
Paula: So it’s a brilliant example.
Paula: And as you were talking, Maths, I was thinking just back to, I remember seeing just on LinkedIn recently, just a story about Volvo, who I believe, and is Volvo a Norwegian brand as well?
Paula: Am I right?
Maths: So it’s a Swedish brand.
Maths: Swedish.
Maths: They were at least a Swedish company.
Paula: OK, OK.
Paula: So Scandinavian, because I’m a huge fan of Scandinavian, all the innovation that you guys come out with.
Paula: But I think it was Volvo who identified the need for a seatbelt.
Paula: And I don’t know if it was 40, 50, 60 years ago, but there was apparently huge backlash, which probably resonates actually at the moment in terms of people not wanting to wear masks at the moment with the pandemic.
Paula: But again, I think what you’re tapping into is, you know, technology is extraordinarily powerful and positive, but also distracting.
Paula: And it can have that, you know, very negative impact, whether it is when you’re driving, the most extreme example, or, as you said, when you’re studying and genuinely your career and your grades are at stake, or people like me who do need to turn off the phone, as we said, for the productivity.
Paula: So there’s an awful lot of good that you’re doing.
Paula: So I want to commend you for the Hold app, for all of the success you’ve had to date and wish you every success in the future.
Paula: Wonderful.
Paula: So on that note, I will say to everybody listening, as I said to all of our sponsors, to all of the guests and interviews that we’ve talked to in 2020, I’m extremely grateful and super excited for 2021.
Paula: So thank you so much from Let’s Talk Loyalty.
Paula: This show is sponsored by The Wise Marketeer, the world’s most popular source of loyalty marketing news, insights and research.
Paula: The Wise Marketeer also offers loyalty marketing training through its Loyalty Academy, which has already certified over 170 executives in 20 countries as certified loyalty marketing professionals.
Paula: For more information, check out thewisemarketeer.com and loyaltyacademy.org.
Paula: Thanks so much for listening to this episode of Let’s Talk Loyalty.
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