Rethinking Membership Loyalty: Strategies for Scale with Steve Allmen, CAA

Paula: This show is brought to you by Phaedon and the Tally Platform, the power behind the world’s biggest and most beloved loyalty programs.

Paula: Formerly known as ICFnext, Phaedon works with many of the world’s leading brands to create standard customer experiences that drive emotional loyalty and lead to true bottom line impact.

Paula: Trust Phaedon to help you forge unbreakable bonds with your customers and future-proof your brand.

Paula: Phaedon, driving brand love is what they do.

Paula: To learn more, visit www.wearephaedon.com And to help with the spelling, you can find a direct link in the show notes for this episode.

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 part of the Wiser Loyalty series and is hosted by Bill Hanifin, Chief Executive Officer of The Wise Marketer Group.

Paula: The Wise Marketer Group is a media, education and advisory services company, providing resources for loyalty marketeers through the Wise Marketer Digital Publication and the Loyalty Academy Programme that offers the Certified Loyalty Marketing Professional or CLMP designation.

Paula: I hope you enjoyed this episode brought to you by Let’s Talk Loyalty and Loyalty TV in partnership with The Wise Marketeer Group.

Bill: Welcome everyone.

Bill: It’s Bill Hanifin.

Bill: I’m the Managing Editor of The Wise Marketer and I’m here for our Wiser Loyalty Podcast series with Steve Allman.

Bill: Steve, how are you today?

Steve: I’m great, Bill.

Steve: Fantastic.

Steve: Yourself?

Bill: Good.
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Bill: Really good.

Bill: Really good.

Bill: For those that haven’t joined us before, the Wiser Podcast Loyalty Series is a partnership between Let’s Talk Loyalty and The Wise Marketer.

Bill: Throughout 2024, we were with you every week and we went through a lot of different aspects of our Loyalty Academy curriculum.

Bill: We talked about nuts and bolts and we brought some ideas forward.

Bill: But this year, we moved it up a notch.

Bill: We moved it up to the C-suite.

Bill: We’re on a mission to talk to CMOs and talk to people that are in the know about customer marketing, customer data engagement, everything to do with that space.

Bill: And so we’re really fortunate to talk to Steve, who’s responsible for membership marketing.

Bill: I’ll let you tell you about himself a little bit in a minute, but partnership marketing and a lot more at the Canadian Automobile Association.

Bill: So Steve and I have known each other for a long time and I’m just privileged to have a few minutes of your time.

Bill: So again, thanks for being here.

Steve: Anytime, Bill.

Steve: Anytime.

Steve: As one of the first CLMPs, I’m super happy to support Wise Marketer and the Loyalty Academy.

Steve: I remember the early days sitting in a room with you and Mike Capizzi trying to figure it all out.

Steve: So here we are.

Bill: Yeah.

Bill: Trying to put courses on paper when there were none.

Steve: Yeah.

Steve: Thank God for Margaret because I think she’s the only one who had the course descriptions.

Bill: Yeah.

Bill: I think you’re right.

Bill: It’s absolutely right.

Bill: So let’s bring everybody up to date.

Bill: Just give them a foundation because you and I have known each other, but I don’t want to assume anything.

Bill: So talk about just if you can just summarize, you have an incredible history in the business, but just do that and then talk about what led you to the CAA and what you’re responsible for these days.

Steve: Yeah.

Steve: Happy to.

Steve: Thanks.

Steve: Listen, I’ve been in the loyalty business for a long time in Canada and I am Canadian, but I got my start really with AirMiles, late 90s.

Steve: Everybody who was anybody in the Canadian marketplace at some point spent time at AirMiles, and I’m a strategic alliance business development guy who found loyalty after a career in data.

Steve: I spent a little bit of time at AirMiles, at the peak of the business, late 90s, lots going on.

Steve: Coalition loyalty was still relatively new, but some really cool things were happening.

Steve: Left there, ended up at the Hudson’s Bay Company, so moved from coalition loyalty to proprietary loyalty with the Hudson’s Bay Rewards program.

Steve: 300-plus year retailer trying to figure out CRM data and loyalty on a card swipe linked to credit card.

Steve: Again, early days, but still really important use of data, CRM and communications.

Steve: After a couple other stints, I ended up at Aeroplan.

Steve: I’ve now gone from coalition loyalty to proprietary loyalty to frequent flyer.

Steve: Again, Aeroplan was in a very transitional time.

Steve: As we were moving from just Air Canada’s program, the parent company acquired the Nectar business, which meant we picked up a whole bunch of expertise from our friends in the UK, ultimately Carlson Marketing.

Steve: I had great people around me, great things happening, and I left pre them being reacquired by Air Canada.

Steve: I had a really good opportunity to learn from some great practitioners of loyalty at the air malls at Hudson’s Bay and at Aeroplan.

Steve: Then in 2015, with a phenomenal partner, Joanna Walker, I set up a company called Loyalty & Co.

Steve: We decided that instead of working for everybody else, we were going to work for ourselves.

Steve: We’ve got some great clients, and I’m still an advisor for Loyalty & Co.

Steve: Joanna’s running an incredible business.

Steve: She’s a great practitioner of loyalty and gift cards.

Steve: But one of our early clients was actually CAA, the Canadian Automobile Association.

Steve: So we came in really as Loyalty Whispers, did some presentations, did some consulting, and it started at one day a week, ended up being two days a week, three days a week, four days a week.

Steve: Loyalty & Co.

Steve: is still booking along, and I decided I was ready for just a different phase in my career, and I joined them as a fractional executive in 2020, and I joined them as a full-time executive in the fall of 2022.

Steve: I had worked with them through COVID and ended up setting up a shop, and here we are.

Steve: I’m EVP Strategy and Partnerships, and I’m essentially accountable for essentially the business line, so I run all partnerships, third party, which is our rewards program.

Steve: I run our membership and marketing team.

Steve: I run our travel business as well as automotive services.

Steve: And when I say run it, we at CAA National don’t actually own the member or the marketing that’s owned by the clubs, so we are essentially consultants to the stars, and we support all the clubs with all the things that they do, and we are essentially aligning how all the clubs work together.

Steve: So it’s a really interesting mix of running a business, but also consulting for internal clients, and we have some great clubs, great partners, great members, and it’s a lot of fun.

Steve: It’s a lot of fun to be there.

Bill: I bet it is.

Bill: So yeah, an interesting business model, isn’t it?

Bill: And I want to say from a consumer standpoint, who doesn’t know AAA?

Bill: If you live in the US like I do, you know AAA.

Bill: I mean, every one of us has been on the side of the road with a dead battery or a flat tire, and we’ve said, oh my gosh, I wish I belonged to AAA.

Bill: Yeah, exactly.

Bill: But I’m curious, you’ve got CAA, AAA, are they all part of one organization?

Bill: Is there an umbrella that sits over all of it?

Bill: How are you similar and how are you different?

Steve: Yeah, it’s complicated, but I’ll see if I can unpack it a little bit.

Steve: So the Canadian Automobile Association is a not for profit.

Steve: We have eight clubs in Canada, 7.4 million members.

Steve: We’re a very large mobility roadside emergency roadside assistance business, as is AAA.

Steve: AAA is 57 million members across nine clubs.

Steve: Their largest club is almost 19 million members.

Steve: Their smallest club is south of 100,000.

Steve: So there’s a real difference.

Steve: Same in Canada.

Steve: We’ve got one club of 150,000, another club of almost 2.5 million.

Steve: So we’ve got quite a variety.

Steve: We’re coast to coast, as is AAA.

Steve: CAA is its own independent federation.

Steve: We are affiliated with AAA through two things.

Steve: One is reciprocity.

Steve: All that simply means is that if you’re driving up from Florida, and you come into Canada and your car breaks down, you call AAA in Florida, and a CAA tow truck will show up.

Steve: If I’m in Florida visiting you, and my car breaks down, I call CAA, and a AAA truck shows up.

Steve: It’s reciprocity on roadside assistance.

Steve: That’s the easiest way to describe it.

Steve: We also have a lot of shared capabilities in technology and platforming, and I’ll talk a little bit about the data part.

Steve: CAA is also part of a large umbrella group called the FIA.

Steve: Pardon my French, it’s the Fédération Internationale de Automobiles.

Steve: There’s two branches to that.

Steve: One is the Sporting branch, and the second is Mobility.

Steve: So Sporting is Formula One.

Steve: So the FIA, when you watch a Formula One race, you’ll hear about the FIA stewards.

Steve: They’re the rules and governance of Formula One.

Steve: They have a second group, which is Mobility, and that is Roadside Assistance and Mobility Clubs around the world.

Steve: And I believe there’s north of 200.

Steve: And I think in total, when you add all of our clubs together, there’s a very large club in Japan, 20 million.

Steve: There’s a very large club in Germany.

Steve: There’s smaller clubs.

Steve: There’s a club in Botswana.

Steve: There’s a club in the Grand Cayman Islands.

Steve: So there’s very small and very large clubs.

Steve: All of these groups are all aligned.

Steve: And I think it’s about 190 million members worldwide.

Steve: The one club or the one organization that’s not part of FIA is AAA.

Steve: But AAA and CA are also part of a group called the GMA, which is the Global Mobility Alliance.

Steve: And that’s a little bit of a separate group.

Steve: And that’s very much strategic, again, rules and operations.

Steve: But we have clubs in Asia PAC, Europe.

Steve: Some clubs belong to both groups.

Steve: So there’s some complications on a political side.

Steve: Being good Canadians, we’re right in the middle.

Steve: We like to play with both sides.

Steve: We work with AAA very closely.

Steve: We also work with the GMA and the FIA.

Steve: So essentially the same business models.

Steve: And I sit on some subcommittees out of AAA.

Steve: I’m at a AAA event next week.

Steve: So we have a lot of sharing of best practices and expertise and all that.

Steve: So that’s a great addition to my career path because it lets me work with some great folks in the States and all around the world.

Bill: Wow.

Bill: It’s fascinating.

Bill: And like you said, complex, but you explained it really well.

Bill: It’s clear.

Bill: Interesting thing to me is I had no idea there was this affiliation with the Formula One group.

Steve: Yeah.

Steve: I’m going to Monza in September, so I’m very excited about that.

Bill: Good for you.

Bill: Good for you.

Bill: Hey, leave it to the Americans to be the ones that aren’t connected with that.

Bill: So we’re just trying to figure out Formula One here in the US.

Steve: Yeah, it’s all good.

Steve: We don’t own NASCAR.

Steve: It’s Formula One.

Steve: Right.

Bill: Well, I can tell you that since I’m close to Miami, that the Formula One race last year was absolutely sold out and just covered up with people, interest and money.

Bill: So it’s catching on here pretty quickly.

Steve: Great experience.

Steve: Great experience.

Bill: It really is.

Bill: So the value proposition at CAA that I would be familiar with as well, AAA, is this whole package of services and benefits.

Bill: But as a membership group, I’m really intrigued with membership and loyalty because the two cross, and I’m just wondering, you even mentioned that you’re responsible for partnerships, but you said loyalty was part of that.

Bill: So can you clear up that on the map too?

Bill: What does loyalty really mean at the CAA and how does it relate to the overall value proposition that you have for members?

Paula: This show is brought to you by Phaedon and the Tally Platform, the power behind the world’s biggest and most beloved loyalty programs.

Paula: Formerly known as ICFnext, Phaedon works with many of the world’s leading brands to create standard customer experiences that drive emotional loyalty and lead to true bottom line impact.

Paula: Trust Phaedon to help you forage unbreakable bonds with your customers.

Paula: And future proof your brand.

Paula: Phaedon.

Paula: Driving brand love is what they do.

Paula: To learn more, visit www.wearephaedon.com.

Paula: And to help with the spelling, you can find a direct link in the show notes for this episode.

Steve: Yeah, it’s a question we get a lot.

Steve: And I think the easiest way to think about it is people join CAA or AAA really as an insurance policy against exactly what you said.

Steve: My car is going to break down.

Steve: I want my kids safe.

Steve: I want to make sure that they’ve got all the things that are there.

Steve: So they pay their money on an annual basis to join our membership.

Steve: Some people come in through our travel business.

Steve: Some people, because we run a very large travel business.

Steve: We’re also a very large insurance company, both in Canada and in the United States.

Steve: So people come into AAA or CAA for a reason.

Steve: They want some level of protection, trust, advocacy, whatever it could be.

Steve: They don’t join us as a loyalty program, but they become loyal to us.

Steve: And so loyalty without a currency is very important to all of our businesses.

Steve: So what are the things that we measure?

Steve: We measure acquisition rates.

Steve: So how do we acquire more members?

Steve: We measure engagement rates.

Steve: How do we make sure that people are doing more things with us?

Steve: Because those two things ultimately lead to one of the core metrics for us, which is renewals, because people are paying hard-earned money to join our program.

Steve: So we want to make sure that they’re getting good value.

Steve: So where the partnerships start to come in is as a member of CAA, I get benefits just for being a member.

Steve: I get better rates on my insurance, subject to all the underwriting rules and regulations, and that was for the underwriters at the clubs.

Steve: I get better rates on travel bookings.

Steve: I get better rates when I stay at a Marriott hotel or a choice hotel or a Hyatt.

Steve: I get better rates when I book a cruise.

Steve: I get better rates when I fly on Air Canada.

Steve: I get those because I’m a CAA member.

Steve: I also get more value from things that are touching everyday life.

Steve: So again, slightly different in Canada and the US, but we both have rewards or a discount program that we have in place.

Steve: In Canada, we have dining partners.

Steve: We have a partner called Recipe, which is Harvey’s, Swiss Chalet, Eastside Mario’s, Montana.

Steve: So burgers, rotisserie chicken, casual dining ribs.

Steve: They also have a couple of other brands out west.

Steve: We have Dulux Paints, which is a paint retailer.

Steve: We have a company called RW & Co, which is fashion retail.

Steve: Then we have bigger partners that drive a lot more transactions.

Steve: Our largest partner is Shell.

Steve: If you’ve heard any of my podcast before, we talk an awful lot about Shell.

Steve: We have a national partnership with Shell.

Steve: Swipe your card, get three cents off a liter, not a gallon, but three cents off a liter at the pump, instant rollback.

Steve: What’s interesting about it is it’s stackable.

Steve: I mean stackable because you can swipe your CAA card, you can swipe your air miles card, and you can pay with your payment vehicle of choice.

Steve: In essence, you’d begin to triple debt, CAA discount, air miles currency, and the loyalty program of the credit card that you choose.

Steve: Because of the BMO, the Bank of Montreal relationship with air miles, there’s an accelerator from the Bank of Montreal.

Steve: That drives incredible frequency, as we all know, Bill, gas, grocery, pharmacy, telco, the stables of every loyalty program.

Steve: Our partnership with Shell drives incredible transactions, incredible value.

Steve: We also get 10% off at C-Store in some of the provinces at Car Wash.

Steve: And it just creates that frequency touch point that our members, easy to do.

Steve: Sign up for their app, for the Shell app.

Steve: It’s even easier.

Steve: So to me, loyalty is about building loyalty to the brand, loyalty to the trust.

Steve: And knowing that if you need us, CAA is there.

Steve: It could be a flat tire.

Steve: It could be, I want to travel.

Steve: It could be, I need gas.

Steve: We’re always there in your journey.

Steve: And we continue to look for more partners.

Steve: The US has a partnership with Shell.

Steve: They’ve also got a partnership with T-Mobile.

Steve: They’ve got a credit card, two credit cards actually, one with Bread Financial.

Steve: And then they’ve got another one in another market.

Steve: So we don’t have a credit card partner yet.

Steve: So it’s all about those touch points and the frequency.

Steve: And all the ways that we can build value for you as a CAA so that you will renew.

Steve: And what does it mean for us?

Steve: We’re tracking two plus percent growth year over year.

Steve: We’re at a 90% renewal rate on average with an 85 average net promoter score.

Steve: That’s true loyalty.

Steve: Those are numbers that people would kill for.

Steve: We’re very proud of those numbers.

Bill: And you did all that?

Steve: Well, I’m not going to take credit for everything.

Steve: We have incredible leaders at our clubs.

Steve: We have our BCAA Club, which is in British Columbia, Alberta Motor Association, and then all the CAA branded.

Steve: They’re incredible, passionate people, very community-oriented, very much about making sure that they’re embedded in the communities that they sit within.

Steve: They are constantly about building that advocacy for the business.

Steve: That takes a lot of time.

Steve: We’re 110 years old, so we’ve been doing it for a while.

Bill: Yeah, absolutely.

Bill: This really hits a nerve in a good way for me because we’ve been having this conversation lately about if the consumers and the research we’ve seen are more, they’re telling us they’re interested in brand loyalty, much more than programmatic loyalty.

Bill: I heard a CEO recently say, he said, I think customers are loyal to experiences, not just the brands.

Bill: It’s the experience and they’re certainly more loyal to the brand than a program per se.

Bill: It sounds like that’s exactly where you are.

Bill: That’s the way you’ve been building your value proposition.

Bill: But I’m wondering how, for you, for CAA, where does the experience come in?

Bill: Is that delivering on the aspects of like, you can trust us, we can help you in that moment of need, making sure that operationally those things go smooth?

Bill: Is that the reinforcing CX that you deliver?

Bill: Or is it something else?

Steve: Yeah, I think so.

Steve: And I’ll be perfectly honest.

Steve: There are some consumers that sign up for CAA and never talk to us, and yet they continue to renew.

Steve: So it’s in their back pocket because they know that we’re there.

Steve: And that could be because they’ve got an older vehicle, they’ve got kids, they’ve got parents who are always driving.

Steve: Sure.

Steve: There are other members that we know that when they engage with us and when we deliver the right amount of value to them, and that value could be three cents a liter.

Steve: It’s not a huge amount, but in today’s economy and with consumer spending and all the other things that are going on, the pressures, every penny helps in your pocket.

Steve: So if we make it a very simple process and it’s a simple swipe, just swipe your card, it rolls back right at the pump.

Steve: Then the consumer knows that I got that because I’m a CAA member.

Steve: They walk into a hotel and when you say AAA or CAA, the oval on a hotel, it’s been inspected, it’s been supported, and so there’s a guidance to it.

Steve: We just did something in Canada recently, like three weeks ago, we did a winter EV test.

Steve: What do I mean by that?

Steve: You’re in Florida, so the mileage that you get or the charge rate that you get on an EV is very different than somebody who lives in Vermont or Ottawa or Montreal.

Steve: We actually took 14 vehicles and tested them from Ottawa, Canada, Ontario, to Montreux-Bas, beautiful ski resort in Quebec, and actually drained them 100 percent of their charge.

Steve: How long do they take to drain?

Steve: How long do they take to recharge?

Steve: We did that because the Canadian consumer trusts us to tell them the real story about the vehicles.

Steve: We weren’t trying to throw any vehicles under the bus.

Steve: We were just trying to simply say, the EPA ratings for California, fantastic.

Steve: Not the same when you get winter conditions.

Steve: We may do another one for summer testing.

Steve: So for us, it is about delivering member value.

Steve: It’s about delivering trust that we’re not going to mess with your data.

Steve: We’ve got a lot of data that we leverage and we’re constantly marketing to it.

Steve: But it really is about that trust metric that’s so important to us.

Steve: And it’s why our partners love us.

Steve: Because they know that they’re dealing with a reputable firm, very strict on privacy rules and regulations, always about delivering value and always delivering excellent level of service.

Steve: Otherwise, we’re not in business.

Steve: Yeah.

Bill: Well, there are a bunch of questions I want to ask you.

Bill: But since you just mentioned about data, zero-party data, everybody’s talking about it.

Bill: I think it’s interesting this revelation that zero-party data, suddenly it has a name, but we’ve been talking about this in the loyalty business for a long time, trying to build out our knowledge of customer profiles with data that they’re willing to give us.

Steve: Yeah.

Bill: What are you doing at CAA to so-called build out those profiles that might inform the kind of partnerships that you’re developing, et cetera?

Steve: Yeah.

Steve: Again, it’s a complicated question.

Steve: Again, the reason I would say that is because every CAA member has a membership number.

Steve: We essentially know who you are based on that number.

Steve: Again, different levels of data, different levels depending on when you joined.

Steve: If you joined 30 years ago, I may not have an email address for you.

Steve: We’ve got some different things.

Steve: The Canadian privacy rules are very strict on what you can and can’t do.

Steve: Our province of Quebec has probably some of the most stringent rules.

Steve: I believe it was Bill 25.

Steve: There’s rules and regs as to what we can and cannot do with that data.

Steve: We do capture information on you.

Steve: Again, remember, we’ve got transactional data, you bought at Shell.

Steve: We’ve also got other data because we resell life insurance, we have property and casualty insurance, we have travel insurance.

Steve: We may have data on a member and we have to be very careful about how we manage that.

Steve: But most of that data is actually owned by the club itself, not by my area, we’re an aggregator.

Steve: Again, very strict rules and regulations on how we communicate, what we do, always looking for consent, always following guidelines of opt-in and opt-out, etc.

Steve: But it’s a concern for us because with great data comes great responsibility.

Steve: That’s the thing else.

Steve: We’re very, very careful about it and very careful.

Steve: We do not sell our list.

Steve: We work very stringently with our partners to make sure that we’ve got good management.

Steve: We’re lucky that we’ve got best practices from around the world to share.

Steve: I think from our standpoint, data is core to us, but we’re also very respectful of the power of data and what we can and can’t do with it.

Bill: That’s absolutely the right perspective that just underscores your wisdom in this business.

Bill: I’ve got to ask you about AI.

Bill: I think somebody was tapping me on the shoulder to ask about AI, but it’s irresistible these days.

Bill: It’s just out of a sense of wanting to really understand the overall impact.

Bill: We see how it’s applied in some businesses, but is it part of your strategy right now, or is it something you’re just allowing to develop at a pace, but it’s not necessarily core to some big initiatives that you have underway?

Steve: Yeah, it’s a great question and I know that everybody’s asking about it.

Steve: We have an AI committee that we’ve struck at at CAA to look at the impact.

Steve: A couple of the clubs have gone a little bit deeper and actually have embedded AI strategy within, but I’ll give you three case studies on how I look at AI in our business.

Steve: AI to me is just smarter learning.

Steve: That’s the way that I always think about it.

Steve: We’ve been doing AI for years.

Steve: We’re just doing it faster now and there’s some scary stuff.

Steve: I’m not expecting the Terminator to show up at my house in the next little bit, but one area of AI that’s really interesting for us, we know exactly, historically, where cars are broken down.

Steve: Imagine using AI to better support the delivery of the tow truck into areas that have higher than average rates of breakdown.

Steve: It could be because of bad roads, more flats.

Steve: It could be because of cold weather, more battery discharges.

Steve: It could be any number of different things.

Steve: So if we could use AI to help predict, and we’ve been doing this through a couple of different areas, to set up our route management for our fleet and contractor tow trucks, that means we’re going to get better service for our consumer.

Steve: Why?

Steve: Because it’s going to take less time to get a tow truck there.

Steve: Now there’s the anomaly that’s going to happen.

Steve: Bill, you happen to be in an area and you broke down and we didn’t predict it, but that’s okay.

Steve: The second area that I would look at would be in travel.

Steve: We are very much an experiential travel business with live agents, physical agents, and online booking.

Steve: But imagine a world where you’re now leveraging AI to do itinerary planning and creating some linkages within your travel booking engines.

Steve: Again, future state, but it’s certainly there.

Steve: Then the other area of AI that I get really interested in is in behavioral marketing.

Steve: How can we predict your behavior based on what you’re doing today versus what you might do in the future?

Steve: We have our marketing teams looking at AI, we’ve got our operational teams looking at AI, travel.

Steve: We haven’t figured it out.

Steve: We’re a long way, but we’ve done readiness studies.

Steve: We’ve done some great work with the Canadian Marketing Association on AI.

Steve: We’ve got a bunch of consultants that we’ve used.

Steve: It is front and center on every conversation, but I’m not going to sit here and tell you that we figured out what the secret sauce is, not a hope.

Bill: Yeah, reasonable.

Bill: If you step back from this conversation, some of the trendy topics are party data, AI, etc.

Bill: In the time that you’ve been there, are you starting to gather a list of best practices for growing value across big membership groups?

Steve: 100 percent.

Bill: You’re willing to share any of it?

Steve: Well, I think the best practices are really the following.

Steve: Again, we are a membership group that’s not for profit.

Steve: That’s probably the most important thing because we are not there to make money off of our members.

Steve: We are there to make sure that we’re delivering value and get them to renew.

Steve: I think the second best practice is to create a value proposition that is relevant to them.

Steve: And I mean relevant in a couple areas.

Steve: We’ve created a new product at CAA, which is called Non-Roadside Assistance, Non-Roadside Membership.

Steve: It’s called Everyday, it’s called Go, it’s called Community.

Steve: I pay money to get all the value of CAA with Non-Roadside.

Steve: So if my car breaks down, we’re out there.

Steve: But I get the discount at Shell, I get the discount at Marriott, I get Enterprise Rent-A-Car, I get insurance, I get all these benefits.

Steve: And so we’ve created a new sub-segment.

Steve: So the other part of a good membership program is Innovate.

Steve: Don’t sit back on your laurels and say, aren’t we great?

Steve: We’re doing fantastic.

Steve: Costco is really good at it too.

Steve: They do some great things.

Steve: And I think the last part of it is if you have the network of like-minded companies, which we do, for the love of Pete, please go and share with each other.

Steve: We’re not competitive with AAA, we’re supportive of AAA.

Steve: How do we help each other?

Steve: How do we help RACB in Australia or TCS in Switzerland, to do the right things for their business and leverage each other?

Steve: So, I think we could certainly share best practices.

Steve: I just don’t want to sell it short by just trying to pick out one thing.

Bill: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

Bill: So, hey, it’s traditional in these Let’s Talk Loyalty podcasts that Paula Thomas has a question she always likes to ask people.

Bill: And I may have previewed it on this.

Bill: I’m fascinated to see what you think.

Bill: But we always like to know from our guests what your favorite nonfiction book is and why.

Steve: My favorite nonfiction book, and I’m going to say this, I’m right in the middle of the Barack Obama book right now, it’s on my Kobo.

Steve: But my favorite book was actually the biography of Keith Richards.

Steve: Which unbelievable story.

Steve: First of all, how is that guy still alive?

Steve: That’s number one.

Bill: Everybody wants to know, yeah.

Steve: Right.

Steve: But how he created, and he’s the brains behind, I don’t care what anybody says, he’s the, you know, how he wrote, thought, came up with, lived his life, who he influenced.

Steve: Fascinating book.

Steve: Absolutely fascinating book.

Steve: Okay.

Steve: And I read it about four years ago, and it’s one of those books I would go back to and read again because I’m sure I missed something.

Bill: That’s great.

Bill: Hey, you know, actually, I wouldn’t have thought about that.

Bill: You never know what kind of a, a tale the famous rock star has to tell with that.

Bill: I’m going to have to go pick that one up.

Steve: Yeah.

Steve: I think it’s called Life.

Steve: I can’t remember what it is, but Life.

Steve: The Barack Obama book is interesting, but it’s a, it’s a, it’s a heavier read.

Steve: Keith Richards was a little more interesting.

Steve: So, but I don’t know how he’s alive.

Steve: I have no idea.

Bill: Amazing.

Bill: So I have one other question that we came up with ourselves between Aaron and myself.

Bill: And we really are curious to know if you’ve ever had an epiphany moment.

Bill: If there’s ever, was there ever a time in your career, which is long and storied to think about where maybe early on you had doubts or you were just doing your job, quote unquote, but all of a sudden you observed something that made you think, you know, I think this really works.

Steve: It’s a great question.

Steve: And I’ll actually equate it back to one of our early, early, early days in my career.

Steve: And I stayed at a Delta Hotel, which is now part of Marriott.

Steve: And I got an upgrade.

Steve: And I asked them why I got an upgrade.

Steve: And they said, because you stay here a lot.

Steve: And I hadn’t really thought about it.

Steve: I wasn’t in the loyalty business at the time.

Steve: I was in the data business.

Steve: And I thought, wow.

Steve: So because I stay here, I get an upgrade.

Steve: I mean, I don’t know whether I got a bottle of water or something.

Steve: I don’t know what it was, but it was that first moment of, how did you know, obviously, the data part?

Steve: What else can I get?

Steve: And is there more that I need to be thinking about?

Steve: So it was my first memory of, I’m still a Marriott guy, by the way, a Bonvoy guy.

Steve: But it was the first time that it was one of those, it actually worked.

Steve: I’ve had a lot of those, it didn’t work.

Steve: But that I remember clearly is one of the first times it really did work where I was loyal to a brand, and I got rewarded for it.

Steve: Very simple concept.

Bill: It’s fantastic.

Bill: I love it.

Bill: So you’ve been listening to Steve Allman, EVP of Strategy and Partnerships at the Canadian Automobile Association, and this is part of the Wiser Loyalty podcast series, collaboration between Let’s Talk Loyalty and The Wise Marketer.

Bill: Steve, we don’t spend enough time together for as long as we’ve known each other.

Bill: I wish I could do that.

Bill: We’ll have to find a way to make it happen.

Bill: So, but just for now, this has been fantastic, and I really appreciate you time doing this.

Steve: Anytime, my friend.

Steve: I’m always happy to support Wise Marketer, Loyalty Academy, Loyalty TV, between you and Aaron and everybody else.

Steve: It’s my pleasure.

Bill: Great.

Bill: Thanks so much.

Bill: All right.

Bill: Thanks, everyone.

Paula: This show is sponsored by Wise Marketer Group, publisher of The Wise Marketer, the premier digital customer loyalty marketing resource for industry relevant news, insights, and research.

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