Carly: Hello, and welcome to today’s episode of Let’s Talk Loyalty. My name is Carly Neubauer, and I’m the Managing Director of Elevate Loyalty, an Australian based company specializing in loyalty and incentive services, and Managing Director of OneTap Group in the UK, specializing in loyalty payment technology.
I’m excited to be introducing Rob Harker, Head of Customer Loyalty, Bupa Global, a long-term loyalty professional with a career spanning industries such as airlines, hotels, travel experiences, banking, and FMCG.
Rob brings a true loyalist approach to the development and rollout of Bupa’s life rewards.: Please enjoy my conversation with Rob Harker.
Carly: Hi Rob, and thank you for joining me today.
Robert: Hi Carly, pleasure to be here.
Carly: So in today’s conversation, we are discussing the features of life rewards, the Bupa Insurance Loyalty Program. But even more so, how loyalty is integrating across the entire business to become an essential part of the full member journey. Moving away from being seen as a separate division or a nice to have program or set of features on the side, this is truly integrating loyalty as a principle throughout the business.
But before we delve into life rewards, let’s kick off the question that we always begin with. Which is your favorite loyalty program?
Robert: Yeah, it’s a tough one. I thought long and hard about this, but keeping it local to Australia, my favorite program at the moment would be the Qantas Frequent Flyer Program for a number of reasons.
Since coming back from Spain after the pandemic had ended, I joined Qantas Frequent Flyer and since then, have earned almost a million points just from transacting through the Qantas Frequent Flyer Program for both flying and for shopping on the ground.
I think why it’s my favorite is because there’s everything in the program that touches someone’s everyday life, whether that’s financial, whether it’s utilities, electricity, whether it’s shopping or retail or flying, holidays, organizing your travel money, whatever it is, it’s all in one ecosystem which wraps around really well to the core airline brand. That’s one thing I really love about the program. Yeah, just a passionate avgeek, as you’ll probably hear a little bit later on in the podcast. So yeah,
Qantas Frequent Flyer is my favorite program at the moment.
Carly: So you mentioned a million points. I’m guessing you haven’t earned all of those through flying. Tell us a little bit about how else you’re earning these points.
Robert: Yeah, look, flying certainly contributes to that. I do fly a lot for Qantas, both for work and leisure internationally. But I think as a loyalty person, understanding where I can hack the system as much as I can. So a couple of ways I’m doing this at the moment, I’m obviously a loyalist to Woolworths Everyday Rewards as well. So I’ve got their Everyday Extra subscription program, which gives me double Everyday Rewards points, which then also allows me to get faster Qantas Frequent Flyer points as well. And obviously, that balance boosting those weekly offers that come through the Woolworths Everyday Rewards app also plays a role there.
And I think the other one as well, which I’m really getting into at the moment, is using Life Rewards, my own program at the moment, it’s a bit of a hack into Qantas as well. So an example there, looking to buy the new iPhone 16, as a Bupa health insurance customer, I can actually go and purchase a Apple discounted e-gift card through Bupa and get 5% discount. And then go to the Apple earn store via the Qantas marketplace and earn three points per dollar spent and take that as 5,000 bonus points from buying my iPhone and also getting the 5% discount at the same time. So extra value where you can.
And just doing those little things that you would do every single day is what boosts your points, which certainly helps. I mean, I’ve earned almost 130,000 Qantas points just this year alone by shopping with Woolworths and utilizing the Everyday Extra program. And just to give the listeners a bit of a view around what that means, it’s 130,000 points from Sydney to London for a business class upgrade from economy. So I’ve literally earned an upgrade just by shopping at Woolworths and engaging in their business this year.
And I think lastly, around why Qantas is the program of choice for me is, I’m not just recognized by one airline. Qantas is a part of OneWorld. So whenever I travel, I’ve got the option of being recognized and rewarded by flying across 12 other OneWorld alliance carriers as well.
Carly: This is really cool. I like that we get the loyalty hacks as well from an expert, but also some plugs in for some really great programs that are interacting and partnering together to give their members such great benefit as well.
Robert: Sure.
Carly: Now, I’m not surprised you said Qantas also. You have come from a bit of a loyalty airline background yourself. Can we go back? Can you talk just a little bit about your early days in loyalty? You have worked across a couple of airlines. Talk to us about that. Talk to us about your experiences.
Robert: Yeah. So you’re absolutely right. I’ve been in the loyalty business now for about 15 years, and I kind of tripped into it actually working for Qantas Frequent Flyer. And I joined Qantas in 2010 to roll out the first iteration of the Woolworths Everyday Rewards Program. And it was the biggest thing to happen in the Australian grocery space at that time.
And then from the Qantas Frequent Flyer program, I sort of then jumped over and worked with the Virgin Australia business into their Velocity program at the time, when they were relaunching Velocity Rewards, as it was known back then to Velocity Frequent Flyer, which was a part of the game chain strategy from Virgin Blue to Virgin Australia, with the new CEO coming in at the time.
So yeah, I have dabbled quite a lot in the airline and tourism space, and then obviously, going from Virgin Australia, Velocity, that job actually opening up an opportunity for the family and I to move to the Middle East and work for one of the luxury hotel brands, Jumeirah Hotels and Resorts, to build out and relaunch their Jumeirah Sirius program. From there, I stepped back into the aviation space in the Middle East, building out and launching two airline programs, one for Air Arabia in the United Arab Emirates and one for FlyNAS in Saudi Arabia.
And then just really sort of keeping in that whole consulting piece. I’ve worked with a lot of big brands in the retail space, in the hotels, cruises, FMCG retail, B2B. So yeah, I’ve been fortunate for it to take me all around the world, which is great.
Carly: Absolutely. One thing that does stand out a little bit is that you’ve really got a strength around bringing those partnerships into these big programs also. So even if we go back to the Qantas role, it was one of the earlier days where key partnerships such as a supermarket Woolworths chain was brought in. And how did you come up with that? Who was part of that? And tell us a bit about that journey of being in early days, bringing those partnerships together.
Robert: Yeah. So I think the partnership between Woolworths and Qantas was well and truly formed before I joined the business. But if I think about the importance of partners in a loyalty program today, I think there’s a real benefit to both the member and the partner, and also the business around creating that triangle of value and benefit.
And in some cases, a partnership is absolutely critical to a loyalty program or a business, such as a coalition program, like we see in various parts of the world. But then we’ve got that proposition where it’s adding value to the overall loyalty or business proposition, which is what we have today in Life Rewards with our 60 plus program partners that we manage day to day.
It really is about identifying where there’s tangible value for the member, but where there’s also the commercial win for both, for example, Bupa, but also the partner that we’re in conversation with around how we drive reciprocal value and benefit both to our members, but also through to the partnerships business as well.
Carly: Yeah. Now, before we move into the Bupa program, for anyone listening that may not be fully across Bupa Insurance and Life Rewards, can you give us a little bit of a background around the business and the program itself?
Robert: Yeah, certainly. So Bupa is an international health care group which has been committed to allowing our members to live longer, healthier, happier lives all around the world for more than 70 years.
We have a big presence here in the Asia Pacific region, so Australia, New Zealand and Hong Kong. And through that region, we support around 7.5 million customers through a broad range of health and care services. And that ranges from obviously health insurance, aged care, which we have here in Australia and New Zealand, and dental, optical and hearing services as well. It’s a pretty big region for Bupa. It’s got just over 22,000 employees working.
And over the past 17 years or so, we’ve invested more than $30 million in partnerships, focused on improving the health of communities all around Australia as well. So something that we’re really passionate about as an organization.
Then sort of building into Life Rewards and where that kind of plays a role. So Life Rewards was really designed and it launched in 2022. And it was designed to address sort of two key member pain points. The lack of value perception in having a health insurance product.
As we know, health insurance is a expensive product to have. It is something that’s essential for a lot of people in Australia. And the other piece was around the lack of tenure recognition.
So just not doing a great job at saying thank you to our customers for being with Bupa and for choosing Bupa to be their health caring partner. And so yeah, Life Rewards as it stands at the moment. And we are on a bit of an evolution with the program. But we’ve been really proud of the results that we’ve seen to date. And through the engagement we’ve had over the last sort of two years.
And it really comes down to the design of the program being launched around what our members actually wanted. So we actually did a whole lot of market research and spoke to a lot of our members and did a lot of research both domestically and globally around what propositions work in the health insurance base.
But the messaging back then was really clear and simple from our members. We just want everyday value that we can leverage for having our health insurance policy with Bupa as a single couple or a family. And that’s where the Life Rewards proposition really came to life. And I think if we look at what the program really unlocks for our Bupa health insurance members.
So we’ve introduced five membership tiers in the program, and that’s based on longevity. So how long you’ve been with Bupa as a member. And obviously, the more time you spend with Bupa, the greater the rewards, benefit and recognition that unlocks as you progress through the tier, as you would expect through any other tiering program.
Our members have got access to member-only offers and discounts. We have a big, general insurance arm of Bupa, so our members get 15 to 20% discount on car, home, pet, travel, discount insurance policies.
There’s over 130 discounted e-gift cards in the program. There’s discounted cinema tickets through Hoyts events, Village and Birch Carroll and Coyle Australia-wide. Members can collect cash back, which is a really great part of the proposition. So members can shop through Life Rewards, collect cash back, and then use that cash back to make further purchases through the program. And you know for our tiered members, there’s an e-shop with thousands of discounted products and discounted holiday and travel packages.
But you touched on partnerships before, and that’s such a critical thing in a loyalty program. We’ve had some long-standing partnerships with some pretty big brands here in Australia, and it continues to grow for the last couple of years. But we’ve got over 50 direct partnerships within the Life Rewards program that our members engage with on a daily basis. Some of those, the likes of Emirates and Qatar, booking.com. We work quite closely with Adore Beauty, Avis Budget Group, Blackmores. We’ve just launched Crunch Fitness and Elite Supplements, and we’ve had some great partnership with Endotis Bar and Garmin. And there’s dozens more there, but they’re just the big ones that our members love to engage with on a day-to-day basis, where they get real value for being a Bupa Health Insurance member.
Carly: It really stands out that you’re bringing a lot more partnerships in that health focus as well. It’s health and wellbeing focused, which obviously is very complimentary to the core business.
Can you talk to us a little bit about, you mentioned that the membership tiers are based on tenure. This is an interesting one because you could easily assume that tiers are based on level of spend and aligning the level of spend with Bupa to therefore be in a certain tier. How did you decide as the team to move on to the tenure tiering structure?
Robert: Yeah. It was one of the most challenging parts of program design. With the health insurance industry, just over the last couple of years, there’s been a bit of a consolidation from the government around how we represent our products in terms of bronze, silver and gold product ranges.
So even thinking about having a bronze, silver, gold tier in the program would have caused problems because a customer said, actually, I’m on a silver product, but why am I not in gold or silver in the program? We looked at all different variations around what tiering could mean for customers, whether it be engagement-based tiering or interaction-based tiering, spend tiering, to your point.
But it really came down to listing to what our customers were looking for in a program because we went and asked them, if we were to reward you based on your tenure or your spend or whatever it might be, where would you see the most value? They said, well, I just want recognition for the time I’ve spent with Bupa.
Some of the feedback was, we see all the new members coming into health insurance getting all the great deals. We’ve been with Bupa for 30 years and we don’t really get recognized. We just want that recognition for being with you all that time. It was pretty clear to us as a team that recognizing our customers by their longevity and tenure with Bupa was the right decision.
But in any loyalty program space, I think health checks are very important along the journey of the program, and that’s something that we’re constantly looking at to see, is that still the right structure and framework, and do the benefits still make sense? We do that through a couple of different mechanisms, and the most important one is actually continuing to talk to our members around, does this still make sense for you? Does it work? What would you like to see next to make sure the program remains relevant for you as a member?
Carly: And it seems to fit very well with conversations we’ve had around Bupa really focusing on how to support people through cost of living challenges. And by focusing on tenure, obviously what you’re doing is engaging with them in that way, but also not compromising someone if they need to change their level of cover, let’s say. They’re still with you, they’re still a loyal member, however, they may have had to drop their cover for other reasons.
Now, one thing we have looked at, and I love hearing about the different brands that you have as partners within the program, but also the size of value and the amount of savings that your members have received over time. Do you want to talk to us a little bit about the benefits they’re receiving?
Robert: Yeah, love to. So I think the most important thing, certainly that me and my team go into every day with life rewards is making sure that when we are putting value in front of our members, that it’s tangible and visible. We’re doing that through a couple of different ways at the moment, both from a digital perspective, but also through our email communications and our communications more broadly when we talk to our members.
But since we’ve launched the life rewards program and we’ve just come on being two years old now, our members have almost redeemed $100 million in rewards and benefits and there’s the savings in excess of $6 million.
We’re really proud that we have a cohort of customers in the program today who have actually saved more spending through life rewards and engaging in the rewards and benefits than what they’ve actually spent on their health insurance premium.
Carly: Wow.
Robert: So yeah, a really, really powerful message and something that we’re learning a lot about to make sure, well, what is it about those members and their engagement activity and how do we drive that through our other members in the program?
But it’s a really great message to also be talking about as we come into that period of annual rate review, which is a mandated thing from the government, that we’re making sure that value is visible to all of our members and these little community social stories around how a member has saved more than what they’re spending on their health insurance premium through everyday spend.
Some of the big brands, as you mentioned there, so the direct partnerships here, I mean, just since we’ve launched, our members have saved nearly a million dollars just from shopping through the Woolworths discounted e-gift card, as well as JB Hi-Fi, so there’s two very big popular products there. They really haven’t moved from the top five since we launched two years ago. Obviously, Woolworths is growing at a rapid pace for obvious reasons with cost of living pressures.
Another one that we’ve identified is our members in Life Rewards love tech and travel. Also, our members have saved just over half a million dollars using the Apple discounted e-gift card as well. Yeah, tech, travel, fuel, and groceries are the key categories our members love. As you mentioned, the new partners that we continue to bring in, that we’re landing monthly and the value propositions they bring. For example, Qatar gives 10 percent off international flights for our members, and Emirates up to $750. There’s a huge discount right there, which could be half of someone’s premium if they took that offer up.
But keeping it into the Bupa ecosystem as well, it’s really important that we use loyalty to drive penetration and attribution to our own Bupa businesses. Certainly, as I mentioned earlier around the general insurance portfolio, but we work really closely with our dental and optical health services arms. We own those networks where we work with those businesses to provide additional value to our members on a day-to-day basis. And more recently, we’ve just completed a Bupa optical campaign where there was a spend threshold, where members got a discount based on how much they spent in store or online.
But also in the Life Rewards program, we also issued every member a Bupa Optical, $50 voucher to spend online or in store. Purely funded through the business as a way of just creating a little bit more value for the member. And that generated quite a lot of redemption, which helps me achieve KPIs for the program, but also is supporting emblematic KPIs across the rest of the business as well.
So it really comes down to that entry point of loyalty being core as an enterprise part of the business, rather than something that just sits at the side that we talk to customers about whenever we’ve got a spare five minutes, as I’ve seen in other businesses.
Carly: Now, you mentioned that you have dedicated loyalty squad. I love this, by the way, a loyalty squad internally, and the team are working across business functions, et cetera, to really bring the loyalty principles throughout the business and not, as I said earlier, just seen as this sort of side program. How are you staying top of mind, whether it’s with the customer and or member or internally? But what are some of the things that your squad are undertaking?
Robert: Yeah, it’s a great question. Yeah, we’re really pleased to have a dedicated squad stood up in the business to drive loyalty. I think that just sort of resonates, that Bupa is taking the program very, very seriously, and it’s a strategic arm of how we want to reward and recognize our customers.
But the squad, yeah, it’s been stood up to deliver a whole lot of capability for us this year and into next year on how we talk to our customers, but also how we deliver new products and services to market.
We are working very closely with our cross-functional teams more broadly across Bupa as well. It’s not just loyalty and our squad executing out, but we connect in with so many different parts of the business. This touches every single business unit within Bupa, and we’ve got shared resources that we leverage in marketing, go-to-market sales, our corporate and international teams. Rather than just a small team running loyalty, it’s actually a big part of the business that’s all contributing to the success of this.
But some of the key things that we’ve been able to launch this year through our dedicated squad, we’ve got a whole of loyalty data on our members, which is a valuable asset that Bupa hasn’t had before until Life Rewards came along.
We’re now leveraging all of that insight and data to really understand, well, what is it about our members that gets them to activate and drive retention benefit, but also where they see value and what makes them come back again and again, is it certain products or categories, and how does that differ by customer segment?
Then from there, we’ve been really able to understand, well, that’s going to be how we build out the loyalty lifecycle communication plans, and we’ve launched two of those already, and there’s another six to come in the next couple of months. Really hand holding the member through the life rewards experience as they come on as a Bupa Health Insurance customer and also to our existing membership base as well. We’re using that data in a lot of creative ways as well.
Obviously, we track where members are purchasing and what they’re purchasing. Even cross-selling across the Bupa business, if I’ve got 5,000 customers who are actively buying in Pet Barn or Pet Stock or wherever it may be, well, then we need to do something to tell those members that we’ve got this great general insurance product for their pet at the same time. So it’s building that cross-brand affinity as well.
And I think the next key thing that we’ve been able to deliver with the squad is just a really strong communications plan. So again, as I talked about earlier, just how are we using our data to drive valuable messages to our members on everyday value and spend as it relates to their health insurance premium and we’re testing and learning things all the time across our columns, different segments, uptake types, the standard stuff, subject lines, whatever it may be.
But it really is turned from more, we’re going to go out to half a million people with two or three different messages to now becoming very, very data led and segment driven, which we’re seeing the fruits of the labor on in terms of the engagement and the benefit that members are receiving.
Carly: One thing you have mentioned as well, and I think this is really, really important is using that information, not just for outbound, but it starts to really become a two-way conversation, where your team are looking at if people are using their extras, not using them at all, about to finish and use their annual amount, et cetera, and then talking to the member about their value and what they can do next.
Robert: Yeah, absolutely. There’s so many powerful proof points that we use every day on our front line. Our front line teams are incredible in terms of how they work with our members every day, both retail and on the phones. They’re always looking for the next proof point to talk to members about loyalty and life rewards. And yeah, you’re right.
One of those key proof points is identifying where a member is coming to their extras usage for the year. And that simple messaging around, well, we’ve got more ways that you can get value out of Bupa here. And that’s through the life rewards program.
And there’s obviously key proof points around the proposition and the tenure and the tiering they talk about to the member. And in some cases, we hear from those front line agents, members like, oh my god, I didn’t realize Bupa even had this, which is a problem we’re continuing to address. And that’s just, again, making it front of mind, as you talked about earlier.
But, you know, and the other things we hear is, oh my god, I forgot Bupa had life rewards. Yes, you’re right. Yes, I can see where I can get extra value from now. So it’s not a, yeah, that’s okay. I’ll think about it. It’s like, oh my god, I love this. And that’s what we love hearing from the front line.
Carly: Yeah, for sure. And no doubt the members, what you really bring in is that more of an emotional connection as well as the value driven proposition also.
Robert: Right.
Carly: I’ve got a really cool quote that I found online and it’s from a very famous loyalty expert. Loyalty is never done. Put the member first, invest, invent and learn, repeat. Now, I’m sure you recognize it.
Robert: Yes, I recognize that very well.
Carly: So what I’d like to ask you is a couple of questions around the industry and your beliefs and thoughts around loyalty also. Anything that you think is really stand out in our industry at the moment around the good, the bad, the ugly. Where are we going? What should we be looking at as an industry heading close to leading into 2025?
Robert: Yeah, I think what I’m seeing in the industry at the moment, and I’m a member of hundreds of loyalty programs all around the world. I just joined loyalty programs just to get the experience and see what emails I get, and that in itself, to your usual words, that is the good, the bad, and the ugly in some case. I get things in my inbox I just shouldn’t be getting, and then there’s some stuff that makes perfect sense for me as a consumer.
But I think what I’m seeing happen across the industry at the moment is there’s obviously a few new programs that have come up this year. But what I’m seeing across the industry is there’s a lot of programs going through redesign to really tackle the shift in what’s happening in the economic environment, but also to make sure that retention and that the customer value is there for the business.
There’s a lot of, I’m sure if you’re in the consultancy space, there’s probably a lot of work on the plate at the moment, because a lot of businesses are looking at, well, customer loyalty, it’s so important. I think it’s gone beyond, well, everybody else is doing it, so let’s just get on board. But there’s a real genuine need for loyalty to help drive that sustainable business.
In terms of the room for improvement, I think, and I just touched on this briefly, I can certainly see in some of the emails that I get from big brands even here in Australia, just the relevance of messaging and the frequency of messaging. I think it’s really important to always evaluate what data you’re using to craft your messaging and your value proposition to your customers, and how does that then drive that targeted and personalized messaging? As I said, I get things in my inbox I shouldn’t be getting. I think that could be very detrimental to a loyalty program, where if that happens once or twice, unsubscribe because it’s not relevant. There’s a big problem there around, obviously, that customer coming in and receiving further communications.
Then I think the ugly side of it is there’s programs that I’ve joined most recently and some that I’ve joined some time ago, where I can see that there’s a spray and pray approach to how they talk to their customers, which is not a great way to do things.
But also, even just in some of the big retail stores, getting around on the weekend here, businesses today spend millions on building out loyalty programs and investing in CRM and data platforms and those things.
I’ve walked into retail stores knowing they’ve got a loyalty program and there’s just no point of sale anywhere. When I’ve asked proactively, do you have a loyalty program, knowing full well that they do, yeah, it’s sitting in the drawer under the counter. And that’s a big problem because that obviously impacts a whole range of things. One, the investment return for the organization, but also it’s not putting the customer at the front, kind of go, well, here’s where I can get immediate value. And even transacting with some retailers, knowing they’ve got a full spent out program. They’ve asked me if I’ve been a member of their program and I’ve said no. And they said, okay, that’s no problems. This is what your total is. Whereas there’s no, well, would you like to join? Because these are the benefits you can get right now. So there’s a big education thing that needs to happen.
And I think the reason why that happens across the industry today is there’s just very little ongoing awareness and education about the program internally driven from an enterprise level, rather than it’s a marketing tool that businesses use to promote and give members value, et cetera. If it’s not enterprise, it’s always going to be sitting in the drawer behind the counter, I think.
Carly: And this does go back to a little bit where we started, this conversation around the approach you’ve taken with Life Rewards and then were hit throughout the business of Bupa. It’s, I would guess, a lot of loyalty professionals dream as to fully integrate loyalty as a principle throughout the board of business, but always challenges as well. You know, it’s not always a simplistic approach and exactly as you’ve outlined there in a retail space.
Robert: Yeah, absolutely. I think one of the things that I’ve been really fortunate across my career and more so even with Bupa is working for some pretty big brands and Bupa being one of those. I was very fortunate to walk into the role already knowing that the leadership team was invested. They knew that we had to do something. And it takes a village and an audience to bring everything together and launch something to market.
But you know, when you’re asked, you know, have you got everything you need? Do you need something more like what’s coming up next? Everybody understood immediately why we should be doing this for our members in Bupa. Where I’ve walked into organizations, either from on the consultancy side or directing to an organization. And you know, it’s been a real sell to get loyalty on the table to go, this is so important for our customer. Whereas the belief about it just wasn’t necessarily there. So I’ve been very fortunate in Bupa to walk into an organization where we already believed in what we wanted to do for our members. And here we are two years later with a program live in market performing well.
Carly: Yeah, it’s a really good proof point and that loyalty advocacy within a business. Back to your comment in 2024, a lot of redesign happening in the industry. Do you have an opinion on differentiate or compete with the same? So a lot of programs might be in the redesign phase and considering, should we do same same as our competitor and maybe I’ll assist some tweaks and some nice extra features? Or do we completely differentiate and go something totally new in the same space?
Robert: Yeah, it’s a great question. And I was always taught at school, don’t copy the person next to you because they could be wrong. Look, I think in any kind of program today, there’s snippets and elements and cuts and paste of other things going on in the market.
But I think what I’m seeing today and talking to some of my loyalty peers out in the global market at the moment, there’s a big push on really understanding what our members want, and ensuring that the program delivers what our members will see value in. Because at the end of the day, it’s not me using the program, we’re doing this for our members, right? So it’s always great.
I think it’s an essential part of any kind of loyalty leader role, that you always need to see what your competitors are doing, and what the market is doing. I was even interested last week to read about the new Toyota program, that’s just launched here. It has nothing to do with health insurance, but it’s always interesting to see what these organizations are doing to capture a new audience or a new market, or even a new approach to how they recognize and reward customers’ loyalty. So I think that’s really important, but I would say that copying and pasting, the guy next door is not the way to go.
That really comes down to understanding what business problem you’re trying to solve for your members, and then going to validate that with your members to create a really unique value proposition. And that’s the next evolution of life rewards that we’re leaning into at the moment to expand on the value problem.
Carly: I’m really looking forward to seeing the 2.0. I know we had a quick chat. Look, before we wrap up as well, obviously there’s some really fantastic key messages here that we’ve discussed, and really about how members are getting the most out of a program and getting true value, and that real engagement and across the business, plus engagement and value for your partners, and bringing on lots more, I know, in the future. Anything else you’d like to share with us today, or anything you’d like to talk to us about?
Robert: Yeah. I think if I could think about anyone coming new into the industry, Loyalty is a fantastic part of the organization to work in. It’s one of the fun sides of an organization. I’ve had some people reach out to me recently on LinkedIn, asking me, I’m new in the business, or I’ve just done my grad, and I’d love to learn more about Loyalty. How did you get started?
I think there’s a couple of different ways around tackling that, and that’s just sponge. Be a sponge, listen, learn, and adapt. Building relationships is so important, and I think it’s critical both from a partnership’s perspective within a loyalty ecosystem, but also building your network globally. Linking with many people as you can across the industry.
Subscribed to forums, associations, and listened to great podcasts like Let’s Talk Loyalty to get the best insight, skills, and knowledge. And I’m a massive believer that learning never stops. And the loyalty industry, as we know it, is growing at an exponential rate. And there’s room for real points of differentiation. And I really look forward to seeing some of the newer generations coming into building out some awesome propositions that us oldies may not have necessarily thought of yet.
Carly: So true. Well, an enormous thank you for your time today and sharing not only your insights, but some of the successes of the program today. And I’m sure we’ll all be watching closely around the next evolution as well. More cool things to come. But once again, a big thank you, Rob.
My pleasure. Thanks for having me, Carly.
Paula: This show is brought to you by the Australian Loyalty Association, the leading organization for loyalty professionals in Asia Pacific. Visit their news and content hub for the latest loyalty insights from around the world. Or why not submit your own article for publication?
For more information on their loyalty services and networking opportunities, visit australianloyaltyassociation.com.
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