Paula: Hello, and welcome to Let’s Talk Loyalty and Loyalty TV, a show for loyalty marketing professionals.
Paula: I’m Paula Thomas, the founder and CEO of Let’s Talk Loyalty and Loyalty TV, where we feature insightful conversations with loyalty professionals from the world’s leading brands.
Paula: Today’s episode is hosted by Amanda Cromhout, the founder of Truth and International Loyalty Consultancy.
Paula: She’s also the author of the book Blind Loyalty 101 Loyalty Concepts Radically Simplified.
Paula: Enjoy.
Paula: I’m delighted to announce Capillary Technologies as the new title sponsor for Loyalty TV.
Paula: Capillary’s mission is to bring the loyalty market out of the 1980s and into the present, ditching the slow, chunky manual services of the past.
Paula: Capillary’s all about making loyalty management easy with scalable, AI-powered tech that turns loyalty managers into superheroes.
Paula: Say goodbye to outdated methods and check out the exciting new way to achieve loyalty excellence in 2024.
Amanda: Hi, I’m Amanda Cromhout, the CEO and founder of Truth and the author of Blind Loyalty.
Amanda: Today’s conversation on Loyalty TV and Let’s Talk Loyalty is with Kelly Goldsworthy.
Amanda: She’s head of Live Better Rewards at Capitec.
Amanda: Now, Capitec is South Africa’s largest retail bank.
Amanda: They have a market share of 60 percent with 24 million clients.
Amanda: And Kelly takes us through a story of how the Live Better Rewards program has a 92 percent penetration of the 24 million clients at Capitec.
Amanda: It’s a remarkable story, which is young.
Amanda: It’s only 3.5 years old.
Amanda: Live Better launched recently three and a half years ago, but already relaunched in an enormous way.
Amanda: And this conversation is on the back of that relaunch.
Amanda: In its early years, it’s already an award-winning program.
Amanda: And Kelly talks the story of hyper-personalization.
Amanda: Her personal background is engineering, so the hyper-personalization is delivered with precision and already with amazing results.
Amanda: So enjoy the conversation.
Amanda: It’s an incredible story, and Kelly is leading a remarkable change to customer centristy in retail banking.
Amanda: So, welcoming to Loyalty TV and Let’s Talk Loyalty, we have Kelly Goldsworthy, and she is head of Capitec Live Better Rewards.
Amanda: But not only is she head of an amazing program we’re going to hear about today, but she is actually also the recipient of a talent award, the Loyalty Talent Award, at the South African Loyalty Awards recently last year.
Amanda: So, Kelly, welcome to Let’s Talk Loyalty and Loyalty TV.
Kelly: Hi, Amanda, it’s awesome to be here.
Kelly: Looking forward to chatting.
Amanda: So, you’re one of the first recipients of the new question on Loyalty TV in Let’s Talk Loyalty.
Amanda: So, what is your favorite business book?
Kelly: I had to think a bit about that one.
Kelly: I’ve actually just finished my MBA, so the last year and a half has been quite a tedious one of studies and reading.
Kelly: So, out of that process, one of the books I fell back on quite a bit was actually Blue Ocean Strategy by W Chan Kim, I think.
Kelly: So, maybe a little bit practical and able to implement in the context of what we were doing.
Kelly: But in Capitec, actually, there’s one book that we lean on a lot, and that’s Good to Great by Jim Collins.
Kelly: And we really, we utilize this framework and the principles around strong leadership and having the right people and being honest and brutally honest around whether we’re doing the right things.
Kelly: So, Good to Great is probably one of those books that I think stays with us in general, and Capitec as a whole, and means a lot to me.
Kelly: Yeah, so those would be my two.
Amanda: As I’m recording this with you, I have my bookshelf in front of me, and I’ve got both of the, I’m very proud to say I’ve got both of those books on my shelf.
Kelly: Awesome.
Amanda: I actually think about the work you’re doing at Capitec, and I think Good to Great, obviously, but Blue Ocean Strategy as well, the work that you’re going to talk to us about today really is a Blue Ocean Strategy.
Amanda: So great.
Amanda: We’re looking forward to hearing all about.
Amanda: So Kelly, what I really want to unpack before we get going is your career into loyalty isn’t a normal loyalty career.
Amanda: You didn’t necessarily start in loyalty marketing or in marketing per se.
Amanda: When we chatted previously, and obviously I know you in the industry here in South Africa.
Amanda: It’s just fascinating actually, and I can understand entirely why you’re in the role you’re in, given your approach and background.
Amanda: So please share that with all the listeners of loyalty TV.
Kelly: Yeah, I am actually an industrial engineer by profession.
Kelly: So I went into hardcore engineering from day one.
Kelly: But one of the things that I recognized about myself as a youngster even, like when I was a teenager, is that I had this ultimate desire to make things better.
Kelly: So I always wanted to optimize stuff.
Kelly: I was constantly figuring out how to redesign my room or change things around and optimize different spaces in the house.
Kelly: So at my core, I think that’s really who I am.
Kelly: So my journey has been very diverse.
Kelly: I started off in, like I say, hardcore manufacturing and engineering, and then moved into FMCG and retail supply chain.
Kelly: Did everything from designing warehouses to building manufacturing lines.
Kelly: And then found myself in Capitec about just short of eight years ago.
Kelly: But in a similar role, almost like an internal business consultant, and worked on a number of really cool strategy projects throughout the bank.
Kelly: Everything from the cash supply chain to how we implemented SAP from a financial perspective.
Kelly: So very left field, all sorts of weird and wonderful things.
Kelly: And then one day out of the blue, I got a call from our retail exec at the time.
Kelly: And he said, would you like to come and start up rewards?
Kelly: And I said to him, rewards?
Kelly: We do rewards?
Kelly: Since when?
Kelly: And he said, well, since now, do you want to take the job?
Kelly: And I thought to myself, I have zero idea about rewards, to your point.
Kelly: I had no context.
Kelly: I’d never been in a client facing space before.
Kelly: No background in marketing.
Kelly: But I think the skills that I had of being able to understand a business quickly, be able to learn and then disrupt, right?
Kelly: So my whole stance was always, don’t come in and do what everyone else is doing.
Kelly: Figure out what works for us and what’s best for the client.
Kelly: And do that.
Kelly: So that’s how I landed up in Loyalty and Rewards.
Kelly: And it’s now, what, four years later, and it’s been an absolute journey.
Kelly: Loving every second of it.
Kelly: Wouldn’t change it.
Amanda: I think that’s the word disrupt is the word we’re going to remember from today’s interview, because just knowing you as a person and knowing Capitec as a brand in the business and knowing Live Better as a loyalty brand in the marketplace, that is certainly the impact you have on the market.
Amanda: So you personally, the loyalty brand you work for and the banking brand.
Amanda: So let’s start off, given that the audience for loyalty TV is obviously global.
Amanda: You and I have been based here in South Africa.
Amanda: No one in South Africa doesn’t know the Capitec brand.
Amanda: But it’s a young brand, 24 years old, but disruptive as ever has really landed in the marketplace.
Amanda: And from what you told me previously, the largest retail bank brand in the country.
Amanda: So I think for our global audience, please explain the impact, the size, the relevance of Capitec to the South African marketplace.
Kelly: Yeah, spot on.
Kelly: I’m 24 years old, as you say.
Kelly: And interestingly enough, 24 million retail banking clients.
Kelly: So in the South African context, 60 odd million South Africans, we’ve got the lion’s share of the banking sector.
Kelly: And we’ve grown exponentially in the last few years in particular.
Kelly: So when I first joined Capitec, call it 2000, like I say, eight years ago, I think at the time, we probably had about 6 million clients.
Kelly: And through innovative digital access as well, and we’ve got a very strong service model.
Kelly: So we’ve got one of the biggest branch networks in the country, and we are still opening our branches.
Kelly: We still believe in personal service and that interaction-based type environment is specifically for banking.
Kelly: People like to have somebody that they can talk to.
Kelly: But we’ve aggressively grown that share, like I say, from call it a couple of million to now 24 million active clients.
Kelly: So those are active banking accounts.
Kelly: That’s not dormant accounts.
Kelly: And of that 24 million, we are also the largest digital bank in South Africa.
Kelly: So we’ve got 13 million app users.
Kelly: We grow that base significantly every day.
Kelly: And what’s exciting about that is it means that we can actually communicate to each and every one of those on an ongoing basis and really ultimately change their financial circumstances.
Kelly: So over and above being the largest retail bank, we’ve also been known to completely disrupt the market in terms of how we work.
Kelly: So not only our branch network being big and having that personal service element, but for example, when we first started 24 years ago, our principle was to say it’s the bank for everyone.
Kelly: And how can we ensure that every South African gets access to affordable banking?
Kelly: And in a way that makes sense to them.
Kelly: So as an example, we were the first bank to open our banking hours from before 8 until after 5, which was unheard of at the time.
Kelly: We were the first to load biometrics and have the ability to link directly to home affairs to validate you with your ID or your facial and biometric recognition.
Kelly: So some really exciting and innovative stuff.
Kelly: But it was always hinged around the fact that we wanted to create accessibility, or we wanted to have accessible services, should I say, rather, and in an affordable way.
Kelly: So we are still known as one of the most affordable banks.
Kelly: And yet we treat everybody like they’re a VIP, like they have the Platinum Card.
Kelly: And I think that really is what keeps us or sets us apart from the traditional banking sector as we knew it before.
Amanda: I think what stands out for me, Kelly, knowing this marketplace, but also having so many discussions with brands around the digital transformation, not just of loyalty, but of business, is that massive number of 13 million of your 24 million are app users.
Amanda: And so often we hear more mass market customer is resistant to using digital.
Amanda: And you’ve just proven in that one line that that isn’t the case.
Amanda: I mean, 13 million app users within your portfolio is just utterly remarkable.
Amanda: So I think that’s a real lesson for everyone around the world, but also particularly in a South African marketplace where there’s been a resistance to that.
Amanda: So, yeah, I’m really looking forward to hearing.
Amanda: I know through the loyalty proposition, you’ve made enormous inroads.
Amanda: So I think that leads us into Live Better.
Amanda: So the Live Better program is still a baby in terms of, and I don’t mean that disrespectfully, just in terms of age, in terms of how long it’s been in the marketplace.
Amanda: I think you said three and a half years, but let’s not forget that after your first year, Capitec Live Better picked up the best financial services loyalty program at the South African Loyalty Awards for that year.
Amanda: And it’s a remarkable achievement for a program that had just landed, just started to make impact and obviously made an enormous impact on the South African Loyalty Awards judges.
Amanda: So with that as a platform, I think share with us, share with us around the journey you’ve been on in the last three and a half years, and we’re going to talk about where you’ve got to and where you’re going.
Amanda: But the last three and a half years would be great to understand.
Kelly: What a rollercoaster is all I can say.
Kelly: Like as I mentioned earlier, I came in with zero understanding of what we were about to do.
Kelly: But when we first launched Live Better, I think it was June 2021, we really had this, we had a strong stance of having a super simple offering in the market that literally broke and disrupted what people knew about financial services rewards programs and loyalty at the time.
Kelly: So we really tried to almost emulate more of the retail landscape as opposed to financial services and with strong intent.
Kelly: So when we first launched, we had a basic proposition where we believed in no points, only cash or real value.
Kelly: And we had a couple of key partnerships in the retail sector, so in pharmaceuticals, fuel, you know, the more traditional arenas of partners in the loyalty landscape.
Kelly: And if our clients went and shopped and paid with Capitec, that was really the only rule, was pay with Capitec.
Kelly: And if you paid with Capitec, you got cash back.
Kelly: That simple.
Kelly: Clients loved it.
Kelly: They could understand it.
Kelly: It made sense.
Kelly: And the money actually went into an interest-bearing savings account, which was even better.
Kelly: So the nice part is, is that they could leave their money there to grow, or they could use it for whatever they liked.
Kelly: A completely open-loop system, so no other hurdles or reasons for clients to feel like they were being honed into a space.
Kelly: But what we then started to notice is that we had to find ways to bring our clients into the ecosystem more often.
Kelly: So we did struggle quite a bit with engagement.
Kelly: And more of engagement, like how do I talk to them without feeling like I was being spammy, if that makes sense, especially in the financial space.
Kelly: So through the three and a half year journey, we started to sit back and say, okay, this offering is great.
Kelly: We had, I think by last year already, we’ve got just short of 21 million, or 22 million of our 24 million clients on the program.
Kelly: So the nice part is that we’ve now got the ability to just assume that everybody is actually part of Live Better.
Kelly: So when we communicate as Capitec, there’s no longer this need to try and involve them or get them to register or bring them into the world.
Kelly: They are there.
Kelly: So that’s great.
Kelly: But we did a lot of reflecting in the last three and a half years to try and figure out, yes, the simple program was fantastic, and clients were getting significant value out of it.
Kelly: And I think that is really why they loved it in the beginning.
Kelly: But how could we now make it even more exciting?
Kelly: What did we need to do to figure out the next steps?
Kelly: And we’ll talk about that later, I’m sure.
Kelly: But that’s where we are.
Kelly: So 22 odd million clients, this amazing cashback program that our clients really love.
Kelly: I mean, I’ve heard some phenomenal stories from clients themselves about what they’ve done with that money.
Kelly: And it will blow your mind.
Kelly: I mean, from allowing them to just get that last taxi fare on a month, we generally pay out our cashbacks on the 10th of every month.
Kelly: So we’ve almost coined it as a second payday.
Kelly: We call it Live Better Day, but it really is that.
Kelly: So they use those funds for weird and wonderful things.
Kelly: Like I say, last mile home, I’ve got no money left from my salary.
Kelly: Let’s use my Live Better Day money to go and catch the taxi.
Kelly: Others just love it for that awesome moment at the end of the month, spoil themselves.
Kelly: So a takeout or the hair appointment that you couldn’t afford out of your salary.
Kelly: So those are also awesome.
Kelly: And then we’ve got a huge proportion of our client base who leave the money in there, allowed to grow with the interest, as I mentioned.
Kelly: And at the end of the year, either pay their holidays, school fees, books.
Kelly: It’s just, and for me, that’s the essence of what we were trying to do.
Kelly: You know, yes, it’s there to create stickiness and loyalty to Capitec and drive the Capitec top of wallet strategy.
Kelly: That’s ultimately why we have it.
Kelly: But for the clients, it’s around the value that they receive from us over and above just being a bank.
Kelly: And we really want to show them we can help them live better.
Kelly: So that’s the fundamentals of the program as it stood.
Kelly: And those are some of the learnings that we’ve had out of the journey, but we’ve done some exciting new things.
Kelly: So I’m looking forward to what the next three and a half, four, five, six, seven, eight years will bring us.
Kelly: Yeah.
Amanda: We’ll be older and grayer by then, Kelly.
Kelly: I think I’ve gotten so great.
Kelly: That’s why we’re blonde.
Amanda: You said a couple of things then that I just want to highlight.
Amanda: So you talked about 22 out of the 24 million clients of the bank are Podilive Better.
Amanda: That’s a 92% penetration.
Amanda: I mean, that’s unheard of.
Amanda: I don’t know.
Amanda: I don’t have a comparative stats for global retail banking, but that feels unheard of.
Amanda: That’s just remarkable.
Amanda: So, wow, what a fantastic stat.
Amanda: Thank you for sharing.
Amanda: And then the other things that I love there is that we’ve spoken about this often about how loyalty plays a role for helping clients, helping members get to the end of the month.
Amanda: So, you know, how the Live Better Day helps them get the taxi fare home or something more, more less essential, but maybe a hair salon appointment.
Amanda: And then I love the piece around the savings capability and then leaving it in till year end.
Amanda: And maybe it’s a school fee payment, which we know is an enormous strain on most households.
Amanda: So, they are super stories, how special.
Amanda: But that 92% penetration is sticking in my mind.
Amanda: Wow.
Amanda: So, okay, so that’s the last three and a half years, but I do know, and you’ve mentioned to me a few times, because we chat often, but you’ve mentioned to me a few times that changes are coming, and I think now we’re in January 2025, the changes have actually happened.
Amanda: So, please talk us through where that value proposition has moved from that initial concept you just described through to where we are now in January 2025.
Kelly: Yeah.
Kelly: So, as I mentioned, the learnings, the key things we identified is that we just didn’t have the ability to engage our clients more regularly.
Kelly: And we wanted the program to feel organic.
Kelly: We didn’t want to feel like we were pushing it onto clients at any given point in time.
Kelly: We wanted them to come into our world.
Kelly: So, like I said, about a year and a half ago, we started re-strategizing what needed to be done.
Kelly: And principles like gamification and additional value, and how could we also make it more appealing to other retailers and partners potentially in the bigger ecosystem?
Kelly: Because we recognize that because we’re such a large organization and with that 24 million client base, it does make it a hefty financial, I don’t want to say burden, but it’s a massive cost to the bank to run a program like that.
Kelly: So it’s a bit of a blessing and a curse, right?
Kelly: I love the fact that I’ve got the ability to engage 24 million clients potentially, but it is really expensive to do.
Kelly: And because they’re so diverse, and if you think about the South African context, we have got so many different cultures, level of income, and Capitec covers all of those bases.
Kelly: So how do you find something that talks to everyone?
Kelly: And I mentioned earlier, we had a couple of key partnerships, which are great and they’ve done fantastically well.
Kelly: But often, I would hear clients say to me, but you know, I don’t have a car, so the fuel benefit doesn’t make any difference to me, or I don’t go to the pharmacy that often, or there’s nothing near me that makes sense.
Kelly: So what we did is we said, okay, how do we make this program hyper-personalized so that every one of our 24 million clients feels like the program was specifically designed for them?
Kelly: That was my goal.
Kelly: How do I make every single one of my members feel like I know them intimately, and that the value proposition that I’m giving to them was designed just for them?
Kelly: And how do I do it in a way that makes them want to organically come into this world every day without me having to push them to come in?
Kelly: So those were the two things I had to try and achieve.
Kelly: It took me a good time.
Kelly: Like you say, we’ve been mentioning it for a while now.
Kelly: But what we’ve netted out with is it’s a fully digital experience.
Kelly: So we have made the call to only be available on the app.
Kelly: But as I mentioned earlier, now with 13 million clients and growing, we don’t believe that that’s a barrier to entry at all.
Kelly: So we’ve now got all of our clients enrolled on this new program, which is exciting.
Kelly: Wow.
Kelly: And it’s just a whole new experience.
Kelly: So we’ve now got the ability to onboard multiple partners at any given point in time.
Kelly: So we’re working with, I call it my smarty box.
Kelly: We’re working with the smarty box of partners because everybody likes a different color smarty, right?
Kelly: So if you like red, there’ll be something for you.
Kelly: There’ll be a red one for you.
Kelly: If you like blue, there’s a blue one for you.
Kelly: So we really have recognized that we have to work with a huge base of retail partnerships.
Kelly: So that’s been a key focus.
Kelly: And we are now introducing a couple of different value propositions.
Kelly: We’ve got our Always On, so we still have our cash back relationships with some of the key players in the industry.
Kelly: However, to keep it fresh and fun, we do a lot more campaign style rewards offerings.
Kelly: And it really, they are hyper targeted, so they’re only specific to certain parts of our audience.
Kelly: So not everybody sees the same deals on an ongoing basis.
Kelly: And they are so easy.
Kelly: There is no hurdles.
Kelly: There’s no other strings attached.
Kelly: Because we’ve done the data analysis to understand who the clients are and what the objective is that we’re trying to meet for each campaign, whether it be driving people into a different partner or trying to get a Capitec objective met, there’s no other hurdles.
Kelly: So when you receive a campaign notification to say that there’s a new deal waiting for you, it is literally as simple as just go get it.
Kelly: So it could be a 50% off at a partner store, but it could also be just a surprise and delight reward that we’ve decided to issue you for having done a certain behavior.
Kelly: So very real-time triggered, works for banking behaviors as well as shopping and transactional behaviors.
Kelly: And like I say, it’s fully gamified in a new digital platform, ad hoc campaigns, deal of the day, deal of the week, longer-term journeys, which are more like the traditional stamp card mechanic.
Kelly: So lots of different things that are relevant for different people.
Kelly: I know I’ve probably said a lot now, but I think it’s a fundamental shift of what we had before.
Kelly: So before it was very static, boring.
Kelly: I say boring, but static value proposition, whereas now it’s this ever-engaging, ever-changing.
Kelly: Every day you go in, there should be something new to find.
Kelly: And like I say, ultimately, I want the briar conversation, in the South African context, the barbecue conversation, to be, what did you get from Live Better today?
Kelly: And you say to me, should be fundamentally different from what I say to you, but you’re both getting the same level of value.
Kelly: So that’s still our principle, is that everybody gets access no matter whether you earn one rand a month or 100,000 rand a month, there’s something in it for you.
Kelly: And just super easy to achieve.
Amanda: I think it’s super the way you explain that.
Amanda: I love, thank you for clarifying what a braai is.
Amanda: So for the global audience, braai is a very South African word.
Amanda: We can die by braai.
Amanda: It’s a barbecue.
Amanda: And it’s very much the cultural place where conversations take place in this market.
Amanda: But I think what you said is around, you mentioned the words hyper personalization, which obviously I think every loyalty professional talks about, but actually can every loyalty professional say they deliver against.
Amanda: And as you were talking there, Kelly, I could hear your engineering process come out, which I actually thought that’s exactly what this needs.
Amanda: This doesn’t, this isn’t just a data play.
Amanda: This is like a re-engineering of the thought process to achieve that.
Amanda: So, you know, it’s wonderful to hear, and it’s wonderful to hear you at the helm of driving that change.
Amanda: So, I mean, before we start to talk about KPIs and so on, which I’ll move to now, just my last question on the sort of live better value proposition.
Amanda: What would you say is the key point of differentiation of your program versus your competitors?
Kelly: So, our latest tagline is rewards just better.
Kelly: But I think it’s because we really do not have any unnecessary hurdles or barriers to entry, and there really is something for everybody.
Kelly: That, for me, is what differentiates us from the rest of the financial services sector in particular.
Kelly: We know that behavior change is a key driver for having these programs in place, but they can be overly complicated.
Kelly: And clients tend to not understand why they’re receiving value or how they have to get to the end goal.
Kelly: And our program is so clear, so simple, singular behaviors at any given point in time, targeted to the right audience at the right moment.
Kelly: And I think that is what makes us unique.
Kelly: And because we are leveraging the partner ecosystem quite aggressively, there’s significant value on the table for every one of our clients.
Kelly: So I think, yeah, like I say, in the financial services space, I think that’s a game changer.
Kelly: Yeah.
Kelly: And I’m really excited to see how it’s going to play out over the remainder of the year, because, yeah, clients are already loving it.
Amanda: I’ve heard you say a few times, and I started off referencing against the word disrupt.
Amanda: And, you know, as you’ve said now and what you’ve just confirmed is your process for change is disrupting the bank, not the customer.
Amanda: So the customer is always feeling the ultimate benefit.
Amanda: But internally, you might be like a swan on a lake, beautifully calm on the top, but pretty chaotic maybe underneath.
Amanda: But that’s okay.
Kelly: Our legs are paddling faster than you can imagine.
Kelly: You don’t even imagine.
Amanda: Yeah, I can imagine.
Amanda: But keep paddling because obviously this one is coming of age and delivering great value to your customers.
Amanda: Okay.
Amanda: So one of my favorite conversations with every loyalty professional is around KPIs.
Amanda: So if you could name a few of your major KPIs that you live and die by, what are those?
Amanda: And share with us generously any stats that you can against them.
Kelly: So as I mentioned earlier, we struggled with engagement prior to the changes.
Kelly: So right now, our key focus and our number one KPI is how many of our now new active Live Better members are engaging with our program on a daily basis.
Kelly: So that’s number one.
Kelly: And it is probably the reason it’s so important for us right now is to build up that brand understanding, make sure that the clients are recognizing the value proposition.
Kelly: And it’s exciting, all right?
Kelly: We’ve only had the program in market for a couple of months and it was a very staggered rollout.
Kelly: So we, I say we started small, we started with 500,000 clients and we’ve ramped up now to the full base over a period of a couple of months.
Kelly: What’s exciting to see is that even in our first, call it two months, when we had about 8 million of our members enrolled, we were getting four and a half million distinct engagements over a monthly basis.
Kelly: Now, that’s people, and just to clarify what that means for me, that’s not just somebody going into the platform to go and explore their offering, those are clients actively taking up one of our campaigns.
Kelly: So they are getting value out of the program.
Kelly: And that for me is the ultimate, right?
Kelly: So key one is how many times are they coming in, and are they coming in and actively taking something up?
Kelly: Second to that is how much value are we actually delivering to these clients on a daily basis?
Kelly: So whether it be through a specific product or targeted behavioral campaign, or whether it be through a partnership, it doesn’t matter.
Kelly: We look at it collectively and we say, are our clients getting value?
Kelly: So that’s a second critical KPI for us, and I get held very accountable by our ex-co for that.
Kelly: And then what is still critical though is, are we seeing changes in behavior?
Kelly: So but we do it at a campaign level.
Kelly: So we don’t have a global metric for that at the moment, but when we do run behavioral initiatives on our internal Capitec products, we then monitor full conversion rate through the journey.
Kelly: So I think those are sort of three levels, if you want to call it that.
Kelly: Like I said, we, early days, but getting great engagement rates on the platform, our aim is to have 80% of our client base engaging with our platform regularly.
Kelly: That is my target for the next year, quite aggressive.
Kelly: But the indicators are there, so maybe some nice stats which I don’t mind sharing.
Kelly: In addition to this new app experience that we launched, we also launched our own WhatsApp channel.
Kelly: So all of our communication now goes via WhatsApp.
Kelly: And as I mentioned earlier, it’s hyper-targeted and personalized.
Kelly: And I think that’s the key difference, because we know it’s going to the right audience, you get great conversion rates.
Kelly: So we’re getting about a 70% read rate on all of the messages that go out, which is unheard of in any other channel, right?
Kelly: I mean, you think about emails like disastrous, even in app messaging, to be honest, people tend to forget about the inbox on the app.
Kelly: So 70% read rates, 40% click-through rates, which is just amazing.
Kelly: And then depending on the campaign, the conversion, the ultimate conversion, it ranges.
Kelly: But anything from 20% to 40% conversion, now it’s just mind-blowing.
Amanda: That’s amazing.
Amanda: What a great stuff for sharing.
Amanda: I’m so happy you’re so generous with what you wanted to share there.
Amanda: And also, I talk often about WhatsApp as a channel in loyalty.
Amanda: And I think it’s specific to certain markets.
Amanda: There’s definitely other markets around the world that benefit from a WhatsApp engagement channel.
Amanda: But South Africa, I know, is a driving force in this, and we see it across multiple brands.
Amanda: But you’ve just shared some phenomenal stats, not just about how to sign up to the program, but actually how to drive that engagement.
Amanda: And I know a lot of markets around the world aren’t even using WhatsApp at all in the loyalty space.
Amanda: So I hope this is triggering some nice thought processes for the audience of Let’s Talk Loyalty and Loyalty TV, because I’ve been a big advocate that it’s an amazing channel.
Amanda: And you’ve just knocked it out the park in terms of results.
Amanda: So, wow, Kelly, thank you for sharing those.
Amanda: I also am very interested in, I think we’ll chat again in maybe a year or so around the changes the bank is starting to see in terms of banking behavioral change, which is obviously at the end of the day going to be a critical assessment.
Amanda: So just on that, how is the internal culture at Capitec around Live Better?
Amanda: So, you know, often you hear loyalty professionals talking about that struggle.
Amanda: In fact, I listened to one of Charlie Hills’ interviews this morning with one of the brands she interviewed from her European study on Let’s Talk Loyalty, which the brand in particular was talking about.
Amanda: It’s a struggle to get the board to take us seriously, but we’re getting there slowly.
Amanda: How is that for you in Capitec?
Kelly: Very interesting journey because when we started, it really was completely endorsed and bought into by the executive board at the time.
Kelly: So that three and a half years ago, I mean, it was a no brainer.
Kelly: Everybody said we have to do this.
Kelly: So we had fantastic buy-in.
Kelly: However, when we started to recognize that it wasn’t being as effective as we needed it to be, the sentiment did change.
Kelly: So I had a year and a half of complete struggle and not to try and validate why the program needed to exist.
Kelly: I think the nice part was, is that everyone bought in and understood that this had to be there.
Kelly: But we were struggling with what we needed to do to change it up.
Kelly: So that was a tough year for me.
Kelly: I’m not going to lie, I went very gray.
Kelly: The blond is there for a reason, not my natural color.
Kelly: But no, it really, it was a tough one.
Kelly: And I had to do a lot of navigating through trying to illustrate why this new strategy was going to be different, and how it would impact our clients and the business at the end of the day.
Kelly: Even to the point where just before I was supposed to launch, my, it got pulled, I wasn’t allowed to go live.
Kelly: Because they weren’t certain that it was the right thing to do.
Kelly: I managed to navigate it and got them to allow me to go to a smaller audience at the time.
Kelly: But what’s been fantastic to see since then is that because the program has delivered the value that I promised it would, the sentiment has completely changed.
Kelly: And I had the privilege of presenting to the full board not so long ago.
Kelly: And it was just, I cannot even begin to tell you the level of commitment and backing that we had.
Kelly: I mean, to the point as a chairman saying to me, she wants to sit with me now on a regular basis to understand how the program is going, what’s happening, how it’s working.
Kelly: So complete and utter faith and buy into everything that we need to do.
Kelly: And that for me, I mean, I’ve got the backing of them, we can only fly from here.
Kelly: So yes, a journey and a half, like a lot of people know, and painful.
Kelly: I’ve got the scars.
Kelly: But now that we’ve shown that we really do understand how this needs to work, and it is working, without a doubt, they back us completely.
Amanda: Amazing.
Amanda: Congratulations.
Amanda: That’s a really fabulous story.
Amanda: I think when we all get together at conferences or catch-ups, we all show our little scars across our bodies and our brains.
Amanda: But congratulations, it’s not an easy feat.
Amanda: I’ve been there as an executive myself before I moved out to do Truth.
Amanda: But when you do get that turning point, because I had a similar experience in my retail days, when you get that turning point, the energy and the commitment, as soon as you got the chairman or the CEO’s commitment, you fly because everyone follows.
Amanda: And so I feel the pain, but I feel the victory with you.
Amanda: So congratulations.
Amanda: It’s wonderful.
Kelly: Thank you.
Amanda: So Kelly, you’ve talked us through how you started.
Amanda: You’ve talked us through how you’ve changed.
Amanda: You’re talking through these initial response rates, which are just phenomenal, and digital transformation.
Amanda: Is it too early to share anything about what’s next?
Amanda: Are we in that place or are you in a holding pattern?
Amanda: Because you’ve just done this major change for the program.
Kelly: Capitec is never in a holding pattern.
Amanda: I get that, yeah.
Kelly: I don’t quite know how we survive every day.
Kelly: We run non-stop, but that is what makes us successful, right?
Kelly: So not just in the reward space.
Kelly: As an organization, we’ve got a highly innovative culture and this constant drive for making ourselves better.
Kelly: We’re never a little bit rough.
Kelly: We’re never easy on ourselves.
Kelly: So we’re constantly saying we can be better.
Kelly: We can do it better.
Kelly: What else is next?
Kelly: So no, we are not in a holding pattern.
Kelly: Yes, I do need to solidify the program through the course of the next year.
Kelly: However, we’ve actually restructured our teams now to ensure that we’ve got a business operations team who will now run that for me so that I can focus on the strategy going forward.
Kelly: So that’s exciting.
Kelly: We’re very lean, Capitec, just to be clear.
Kelly: Even though we’ve got this monstrous client base, we run a very tight ship.
Kelly: So my team is tiny.
Kelly: But we have recognized that there’s a job to be done to solidify and just ensure that we anchor this program with what it is.
Amanda: Just on that, I know every professional, loyalty professional, is always interested in the size of loyalty teams.
Amanda: So you said you’re very lean.
Amanda: Share with us what that means.
Kelly: We’re a team of six.
Kelly: So that’s business.
Kelly: So that’s from rewards management partnerships, commercials, campaign generation, the whole deal.
Kelly: And then we’ve got a technology, an in-house technology team.
Kelly: So we obviously do, because it’s such a big program with a lot of transactional stuff in the background, working through all the data, etc.
Kelly: We’ve got a team of 28 technology professionals.
Kelly: So that’s devs, solution architects, product managers, etc.
Kelly: But I still think in the context of financial services and loyalty, we are tiny.
Kelly: I know that some of my fellow competitors have significantly larger teams.
Kelly: So no, we are very lean.
Amanda: Great.
Amanda: Thank you for sharing.
Amanda: It is amazing how the different brands are structured and how, I guess, over time they’ve evolved.
Amanda: So thank you for sharing the 6 plus 28.
Amanda: And it’s good to see the focus on the technology side to be able to deliver your engineering dream of that hyper-personalization.
Kelly: Exactly.
Kelly: So I was going to just end off on some of the future stuff for context.
Kelly: But it’s an exciting space in the fact that because we’ve got 24 million clients, and we recently launched our business banking proposition, which is aimed at the SME landscape in particular.
Kelly: So the power that we have as an organization to potentially create an ecosystem that connects our retail clients to our merchants at scale, is where the actual money shot is.
Kelly: And not from a financial perspective, just in terms of the strategy going forward.
Kelly: So what we’ve recognized is that Live Better is at the heart of everything we do as Capitec.
Kelly: Non-banking services are the future of where we need to focus.
Kelly: And we have a collective group strategy now with what I’m doing at the helm of it.
Kelly: And in about a year from now, we’re going to see some very interesting developments coming through in how we start connecting local merchants and behavioral campaigns for our small businesses into our larger retail base, up to a million.
Amanda: Amazing.
Amanda: Absolutely amazing.
Amanda: That is magic.
Amanda: I mean, I can hear in your voice and here in this sort of strategy, that’s where the magic is going to be unlocked for customers, merchants, partners, and Capitec.
Amanda: So it’s super.
Amanda: Like we’ll have a date in about 12 months, Kelly, and we’ll unpack that with you.
Amanda: Incredible.
Amanda: Okay.
Amanda: Well, we could obviously chat for much, much longer because this is a remarkable story and still so much still to be said.
Amanda: But from your point of view, what would you like to leave us with?
Amanda: I mean, if you had one piece of advice to someone starting out on a journey like this, what would you say to them?
Kelly: Don’t be scared.
Kelly: Don’t be scared to be duped.
Kelly: I think that is, for me, what’s made us successful and will continue to do it.
Kelly: So just because people have an expectation of the likes of the loyalty program or rewards to work in a certain way, doesn’t mean you have to do it that way.
Kelly: And really challenge what is right for the client.
Kelly: If there’s one thing that I think Capitec does exceptionally well, is we put the client at the heart of everything.
Kelly: We constantly are asking, is this the right thing for the client?
Kelly: What is the client experience going to be?
Kelly: And are we doing the right thing for them?
Kelly: If you do the right thing for your clients, the rest all sorts itself out.
Kelly: You don’t have to worry about the rest.
Kelly: So that’s really my biggest piece of advice.
Kelly: Be brutally honest, don’t be scared, and challenge what you understand as the norm.
Amanda: That’s customer centricity in a sentence.
Amanda: Absolutely fantastic.
Amanda: So I think anyone’s embarking on this journey of loyalty and customer centricity, there’s nothing more we can say, right?
Amanda: Just keep the client at the center, disrupt yourselves internally, and drive the right response, and do the right thing.
Amanda: So Kelly, thank you from everyone at Let’s Talk Loyalty and Loyalty TV.
Amanda: As I said, we could have chatted for so much longer, and thank you for your insights.
Amanda: You’ve been super generous, which everybody always wants on this program.
Amanda: Amazing story, congratulations from everybody.
Kelly: Thank you, really appreciate it.
Kelly: It’s been fantastic chatting.
Kelly: I love sharing the story, to be honest.
Paula: Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Let’s Talk Loyalty.
Paula: If you’d like us to send you the latest shows each week, simply sign up for the Let’s Talk Loyalty newsletter on letstalkloyalty.com.
Paula: And we’ll send our best episodes straight to your inbox.
Paula: And don’t forget that you can follow Let’s Talk Loyalty on any of your favorite podcast platforms.
Paula: And of course, we’d love for you to share your feedback and reviews.
Paula: Thanks again for supporting the show.
