Instant Loyalty: How Cashpoints is Revolutionizing Real-Time Rewards in 2026 (#734)

Carly: And that does lead us into the massive program that you’re leading today, and that’s Cashpoints.

Carly: So tell us about that for anyone who doesn’t necessarily know the program yet.

Carly: How does it work?

Ian: There are massive costs involved, there’s risks involved, there’s resource involved, and often it gets parked in the too hard basket.

Ian: So we identified an opportunity to go after that market with a proposition that was kind of designed with the partner at the forefront of it, as well as the consumer.

Ian: If we kind of take that, really what we said, well, if you’re going to run your own program, what are the key drivers?

Ian: Why are you looking to do it?

Ian: They were the drivers of how we’ve packaged up Cashpoints.

Ian: So Cashpoints is a points-based program.

Ian: One Cashpoint equals one cent.

Ian: So again, the math is reasonably straightforward.

Ian: And those Cashpoints, they’re issued in real time.

Ian: So they’re issued at time of transaction, and they can be used across all of our partners.

Ian: So you can collect points at one partner, immediately spend them at another partner.

Ian: So it’s like a closed ecosystem.

Ian: So as soon as you swipe on the app, you’ll see your points loaded straight away.

Ian: They’re ready to be able to go and redeem if you want to do it.

Ian: From a customer perspective, they were looking for simplicity.

Ian: I don’t need a master degree to work out what my balance is.

Ian: So kind of tell me what I’ve got.

Ian: I want to be able to use it when I want.

Ian: So actually, I could be dead tomorrow.

Ian: So why can’t I use this instantly?

Ian: Why do I have to save and wait up for, you know, however many months to be able to redeem?

Paula: Hello and welcome to Let’s Talk Loyalty & Loyalty TV, a show for loyalty marketing professionals.

Paula: I’m Paula Thomas, the founder and CEO of Let’s Talk Loyalty & Loyalty TV, where we feature insightful conversations with loyalty professionals from the world’s leading brands.

Paula: Today’s episode is hosted by Carly Neubauer, Managing Director of Elevate Loyalty, a loyalty experiences company specializing in designing, implementing and managing B2C and B2B loyalty programs.

Paula: She’s also the Managing Director of Loyalty Economics, a global community and content site focused on turning loyalty into profitability.

Paula: Enjoy.

Carly: Hi, I’m Carly Neubauer and today I’m speaking with Ian Sutcliffe, founder of Cashpoints in New Zealand.

Carly: This is a newly launched program designed to give members practical everyday savings by earning points across participating partners.

Carly: Ian has a long-standing career in consumer marketing and loyalty, as a General Manager of Marketing at Westpac, VP of Marketing at McDonald’s, and co-founder of AA Smartfuel.

Carly: Please enjoy our conversation.

Carly: Hi, Ian, and welcome to Let’s Talk Loyalty and Loyalty TV.

Carly: Fantastic to see you and have you on the show today.

Ian: Great to be here.

Ian: Thanks, Carly.

Ian: Thanks for the invitation.

Carly: That’s great.

Carly: As we do in all episodes, we start off with a couple of key questions.

Carly: The first one being, tell us a bit about what you like to read and your favorite loyalty or non-fiction business style book.

Ian: Well, certainly like a lot of fiction books just to relax, but in terms of where I can switch off.

Ian: But in terms of business books, there was a book called Grit by Angela Duckworth, psychologist.

Ian: So it was fascinating just trying to understand the correlations.

Ian: She did a lot of research, but correlation between, I guess, persistence, perseverance, and delivering achievement, and just comparing that to, I guess, talent and IQ and what gets you to the end goal.

Ian: There was actually a really, really enjoyable read and has helped to shape a lot of the stuff that we’re doing today just in terms of, I’m probably a bit stubborn, but certainly persistence in search of an end goal is really important.

Ian: And there was a fabulous kind of equation that she had, I forget, I’ll probably get this wrong, but essentially was saying talent times, I think it was talent times effort equals skills, skill times effort equals achievement.

Ian: And when she’s talking about talent, it’s not just IQ, it’s actually usually tenure and stickability and the kind of experiences you learn along the way that puts you in good stead to be able to deliver.

Ian: So yeah, so that’s been a pretty good read.

Carly: That’s a fabulous recommendation no matter which industry you’re working in, I imagine.

Carly: That’s awesome.

Carly: Thank you.

Carly: And we have such a great list of books that Let’s Talk Loyalty showcase now.

Carly: So that will definitely be going into that list.

Carly: Thank you.

Ian: Right.

Ian: No problem.

Carly: Now, very interesting, though.

Carly: I’d love to hear about your favourite loyalty program.

Carly: Considering your extensive experience in the industry, what do you rate as your personal favourite program?

Ian: Yeah.

Ian: Look, there’s nothing scientific around this at all.

Ian: This is just probably me thinking back a few years as a consumer.

Ian: And certainly the NECTA program in the UK through Sainsbury’s.

Ian: I certainly kind of remember that or it’s it sticks in my mind.

Ian: And the main driver was easy to transact.

Ian: And the generosity of relevant reward was really strong.

Ian: And I just remember, and I don’t know how they pulled it off, but you used to be able to convert your NECTA points, I think about four times the value of anything else into kind of pub vouchers.

Ian: So from sort of alcohol and food, it was it was extremely good value.

Ian: So I just remember the simplicity of it.

Ian: It gave me something that I wanted, but it was it was also valuable.

Ian: Outside of that, I didn’t, you know, I haven’t really thought about it too kind of scientifically at all.

Carly: But I think that’s perfect, right?

Carly: When it’s simple, you remember it, you know, you’re getting great value.

Carly: And as you mentioned, the generosity, it feels good for the member.

Carly: That’s that’s perfect.

Ian: Yeah.

Ian: So I think consumers kind of front and center at that, you know, the way they built that program out.

Carly: Excellent.

Carly: And it’s such a well-known program globally, I think these days.

Ian: Yeah.

Ian: You might see some similarities with Cashpoints.

Carly: I can’t wait to talk about that one.

Carly: So before we do and discuss Cashpoints, we’ll go back because you have very, very extensive experience and history, but starting with consumer marketing.

Carly: Can you tell us about your background there before we move into your loyalty career?

Ian: Yeah.

Ian: So pre-loyalty, like you say, my consumer background, I spent 12 years at McDonald’s.

Ian: I was director of marketing there in New Zealand.

Ian: So from an FMCG point of view, that was pretty well in touch with consumers and a reasonable pace.

Ian: And then post that, I spent three years with Westpac, which is, as you know, Australian bank, as GM of marketing and kind of looking across or running the marketing for retail bank and business bank.

Ian: So from that perspective, quite a good customer lens, which has lent itself to loyalty, I guess, over time.

Ian: So that was the first 15 years.

Ian: And in the last 16 years, we built out a program, well, in 2010 called Smartfuel.

Ian: So my business partner and I and the team built out a fuel rewards program.

Ian: A year later, we joint ventured that with the AA, which is, for those of you kind of international audience there, that’s kind of the automotive organization of New Zealand.

Ian: And so we joint venture with them.

Ian: They had a good member base, a lot of trust, and we ran that for 14 years.

Ian: And we achieved some pretty good runs on the board in terms of, we grew it from a zero base to 3 million card holders.

Ian: And probably the thing that we’re most proud of, we had a million monthly actives.

Ian: So a third of the base was active on a monthly basis.

Ian: So pretty engaged program.

Ian: And if Adam’s looking at this at some stage, we became New Zealand’s, I think, number one loyalty program for two consecutive years on the trot with his For Love and Money survey.

Ian: So it was a few years ago now.

Ian: So I have called that out a couple of times, I know, because he tends to listen to this sort of thing.

Carly: Yes, absolutely, absolutely.

Carly: Well, I think even as you reference, you know, the level of active members and such a longstanding program throughout the country, tell us more about that, because obviously it’s a length of time.

Carly: It’s very well known that you’ve been referenced as the number one program.

Carly: So how did you get started and how did the partnership start with AA?

Ian: Yeah, really, we started in provincial New Zealand in terms of building out an idea.

Ian: And in those days, the big supermarkets had a fuel docket programs.

Ian: And so we were looking for an alternative.

Ian: My business partner had fuel stations.

Ian: And so he was missing out to those fuel dockets.

Ian: So the idea there was that how could we bring something to those oil companies that aren’t part of the supermarket programs?

Ian: And that’s really where this started.

Ian: So we started in, I’ll say, provincial New Zealand.

Ian: And grew that, just tested it.

Ian: And then we started making inroads at a national level.

Ian: And at that stage, the AA had a program in the market that had been around quite a long time.

Ian: So there’s only so many retailers to go around in New Zealand.

Ian: So the meeting of the mines kind of happened and we joined forces, which gave us a really, really strong leg up in terms of their member base was kind of large.

Ian: So that gave us a leap into the market.

Ian: And then from there, we kind of grew, we kind of tripled that customer base with non-members as well as some more additional members.

Ian: But at the time, no one else was really doing kind of the fuel program as we had, where you could stack the fuel discounts and earn significant kind of savings.

Ian: So you weren’t those fuel discounts.

Ian: That was the currency that you entered our retail partners, but you could only redeem it on fuel.

Ian: And as an expensive commodity in New Zealand, it was quite valuable.

Carly: Yeah, absolutely.

Carly: Sure, sure.

Carly: And then obviously, moving into the partnership side, how did you extend the business?

Carly: You’ve kicked off, but your full extension into AA and the journey there, 16 years, it’s a length of time.

Ian: Yeah, and we started, I mean, we were fortunate.

Ian: We had some good anchor, really good anchor partners in terms of oil.

Ian: So the frequency of visitation was there.

Ian: And then over time, we kind of just grew the, we’re persistent and grew in the partner village and probably five years in, we landed Woolworths or Countdown as it was in those days.

Ian: So that was a big step up, which then, you know, momentum kind of breathes momentum, I suppose.

Ian: And so once they were on board, then, you know, we managed to secure more retailers.

Ian: But, you know, over time, that currency started getting copied.

Ian: So, you know, it lost its uniqueness.

Ian: So we kind of started to convert those points into other currencies.

Ian: So we partnered with Qantas and we burnt points into Qantas and Uber and a couple of other partners as well, just to make the kind of points more relevant.

Ian: So that was kind of probably the 16 years sitting in there and that finished January 24.

Carly: Wow, wow.

Carly: And I think outside of obviously the research and being number one listed in the country, it is a very well-known program, even outside of New Zealand.

Carly: I mean, it is extremely well-known.

Carly: Anything particular that you would have, any call-outs that you would take from that program, any key learnings?

Ian: No, I think that it’s like anything.

Ian: The main thing is think about the customer, the customers are not silly.

Ian: So they’ll recognize good value and poor value.

Ian: So really important to get the proposition right.

Ian: And I think, again, like any program, that they are not silver bullets.

Ian: So making sure that they are a strategic kind of initiative and are embedded in an organization.

Ian: So getting buying through the businesses is probably the number one priority.

Ian: Otherwise, it’ll fail if it’s just seen as a sort of glossy marketing initiative.

Ian: It’s probably doomed to fail.

Carly: Fully ingrained and proper partnership probably.

Ian: Yeah, absolutely.

Ian: And then everybody wins.

Ian: If they’re activating it, working it pretty strongly, customer wins, they see the positive uplift and the program keeps growing.

Ian: So yeah, so that’s probably the biggest outtake, I think.

Carly: And that does lead us into the massive program that you’re leading today, and that’s Cashpoints.

Carly: So tell us about that for anyone who doesn’t necessarily know the program yet.

Carly: How does it work?

Ian: Yeah, well, if I go back a step, probably taking those years of being in the market, certainly, I guess, anywhere really, there’s kind of two types of programs, either coalition or proprietary.

Ian: And typically, the coalition scheme, certainly in this country, they’re kind of driven by, you know, supermarket oil company.

Ian: And there’s one or two of them now since AA Smartfuel finished and Flybuys finished in New Zealand.

Ian: So there’s a couple of them left.

Ian: But there’s an awful lot of businesses in New Zealand, and ranging from kind of, you know, five, 10, 50 million dollar businesses, right through to multi-billion dollar businesses, who for whatever reason aren’t part of those coalition schemes.

Ian: And typically, when you talk to them, it’s been…

Ian: The reason we don’t want to do it is that we’re big enough to do our own program.

Ian: And kind of what happens over time, that as soon as they get under the hood, start looking at it, there are massive costs involved, there’s risks involved, there’s resource involved.

Ian: And often it gets parked in the too hard basket.

Ian: So we identified an opportunity to go after that market with a proposition that was kind of designed with the partner at the forefront of it as well as the consumer.

Ian: And so if we kind of take that, really what we said, well, if you’re going to run your own program, what are the key drivers?

Ian: Why are you looking to do it?

Ian: I want to understand my customer, I want to own Inverted Commerce, but I want the data, I want to be able to access the data for you, so I can give customers kind of the experience that they’re after.

Ian: And the other driver has been, I also want to, if it’s a rewards program, I want to be able to bounce it back into my own ecosystem, spend a lot of time talking to customers, getting them on a program, and then they go off somewhere else to redeem.

Ian: So, they would be the drivers for kind of why you’d run your own program, plus kind of controlling the costs, which is, you know, as you talk to these businesses, kind of.

Carly: Balancing is important.

Ian: Yeah, and kind of no one likes surprises.

Ian: So, from that point of view, we kind of developed out a platform, which I’ll talk about later.

Ian: And then from a customer perspective, you know, again, it’s, they were looking for simplicity.

Ian: I don’t need a master degree to work out what my balance is.

Ian: So kind of tell me what I’ve got.

Ian: I want to be able to use it when I want.

Ian: So actually, you know, I could be dead tomorrow.

Ian: So why can’t I use this instantly?

Ian: Why do I have to save and wait up for, you know, half a many months to be able to redeem?

Ian: And they want to be, and they want choice around where they’re redeemed.

Ian: So they were the drivers of how we’ve packaged up Cashpoints.

Ian: And interestingly, there was some work done, you know, Ben Gooddell, I’m sure, but Quantum Jump and Yable kind of have done this, an annual survey, State of the Nation survey in New Zealand.

Ian: This is the second year it’s come out, looking at loyalty.

Ian: And a couple of drivers, a couple of slides that kind of stand out for us and probably help shape a couple of things.

Ian: But one is four out of five Kiwis still prefer coalition programs.

Ian: And the main driver for that is frequency and speed to kind of earn a decent balance to be able to redeem.

Ian: And then the other slide, the other point that came out quite strongly is, with this move to digital, a lot of programs in the market kind of digital first or digital only.

Ian: There is a risk of alienating the 45 plus.

Ian: So yes, they’re still reasonably digitally savvy, but they still like to transact in traditional ways.

Ian: So plastic cards, dare I say it, and let them choose.

Ian: So it ends up, it needs to be a kind of, it’s not an either or it’s an and, in terms of when you’re building out these programs, certainly that’s our learning.

Ian: So that’s sort of the background.

Ian: And then essentially what we’ve built out is a program that hopefully addresses those needs of the retailer and of the consumer.

Ian: So Cashpoints is a points-based program.

Ian: One Cashpoint equals one cent.

Ian: So again, the math is reasonably straightforward.

Ian: And those Cashpoints, they’re issued in real time.

Ian: So they’re issued at time of transaction, and they can be used across all of our partners.

Ian: So you can collect points at one partner, immediately spend them at another partner.

Ian: So it’s like a closed ecosystem.

Ian: So as soon as you swipe on the app, you’ll see your points loaded straight away.

Ian: They’re ready to be able to go and redeem if you want to do it.

Ian: So when we talk about customers don’t like saving up, we’ve made no minimum requirement for redemption.

Ian: So if you’ve got one cent on there, you can go and redeem it if you want to do, off the price of your purchase.

Ian: So it’s like cash, essentially.

Carly: That’s fantastic.

Carly: And it is quite unique because that is not common across a lot of loyalty programs that obviously increase the frequency, speed to market or speed to redeem and the ability to do it.

Carly: So it’s such a low threshold.

Carly: Yeah.

Ian: And we have a we have quite a unique revenue model, I think, compared to anything else in the market from what I can see.

Ian: So the idea again, in terms of transparency.

Ian: So we, you know, we talked about affordability of other programs.

Ian: So we’ve essentially charged a license fee, which gives which gives our partners unlimited transactions.

Ian: So they know what they’re up for.

Ian: As they grow the program, they’re not up for incremental costs, so they can they can activate it that way.

Ian: Just lost my train of thought there.

Ian: Sorry.

Ian: In terms of being able to activate it.

Ian: We also, with some of the other programs, essentially the revenue driven is a margin on the point.

Ian: So it’s really hard to be transparent.

Ian: Whereas with our program, one cash bond equals one cent.

Ian: So if a retailer issue is a cent, the customer gets a cent.

Ian: When they go to redeem, they redeem a cent, and we pay the merchant a cent.

Ian: So there’s absolutely no margin in that reward, hence the reason that we charge a license fee.

Ian: And then our other models of value add.

Ian: So if you don’t need them, don’t use them.

Ian: But if you do need them, they’re there.

Ian: So user pays.

Ian: So in terms of building out communications channels and first-party audiences.

Ian: And then we also have an insights division as well.

Ian: So we kind of, there’s some dashboards that partners get as part of their license fee.

Ian: But there’s another add-on there which delivers far more insightful information to the businesses.

Ian: And again, another insight that we got out of this is a lot of these businesses, they might have some data.

Ian: It could be in disarray.

Ian: They don’t have any data.

Ian: So just the ability to get a dashboard that they can see, it’s updated daily so they can see what’s going on, gives them a snapshot and be able to kind of really understand what’s happening in their business.

Carly: When you started presenting that commercial model to some of your partners, what was your response like?

Carly: Because obviously it is a new approach to that commercial model with the partners themselves.

Ian: Yeah, look, it landed pretty well and I think especially, you know, whilst we say it’s a tough climate to be kind of firing up a new business, but I think from a business perspective, yes, but they’re still kind of watching the penny.

Ian: So if they’re interested in loyalty stroke rewards, they’re already on that journey.

Ian: Here’s a potential solution that allows you to kind of almost lift and shift a program that you can badge as your own essentially with Cashpoints.

Ian: We provide the currency, we provide the app, we provide the cars, all the infrastructure that drives it.

Ian: So for them, they still have some brand ownership, but it’s all, it’s a step beyond white labeling.

Ian: They don’t have to worry about that.

Ian: So that landed pretty well from a cost perspective.

Ian: They go, actually, it’s going to save a lot of money.

Ian: And I think they certainly understood the relevance of it.

Ian: They liked the idea of not having to commit upfront to X amount of points, whether the customer gets them or not.

Ian: So the fact that they’re issued at time of transaction was really important.

Ian: So it landed pretty well.

Ian: And then from a customer perspective, times are pretty tough.

Ian: So just being able to save a few, Bob, here and there is quite useful.

Carly: Have there been any key learnings around when members are redeeming?

Carly: What is their speed?

Carly: Because it’s great they’ve got the option.

Carly: Anything you can tell us around the speed that they are actually redeeming?

Ian: Well, bear in mind, we spent 18 months building this out and we’ve only been in market six weeks with a limited number of partners.

Ian: So, but again, because of its real time nature, I mean, on day one, we saw customer kind of earn and earn and collect and spend in the same day to set two separate transactions.

Ian: So for them, that was it was a small saving sense.

Ian: But actually, they had the they had that kind of engagement with the with the partner to be able to redeem.

Carly: And that also shows that the users and members are understanding it quick enough to do the action as well and redeem.

Carly: So it’s not complicated by any stretch if they’re redeeming that quickly.

Ian: Yeah.

Ian: And again, operationalizing this in-store is really important.

Ian: You know, we don’t control those channels with our partners.

Ian: But, you know, the partners have done a really good job with the partners that we’ve got on.

Ian: So, you know, a lot of training videos, a lot of set up.

Ian: So they’re our most powerful marketing channel, to be honest.

Carly: That’s a really great point, actually.

Carly: And we’ve talked about this in a range of different programs where staff is so important or people at the retail front are so, so important to the effectiveness and any success of some programs.

Carly: How did you approach that?

Carly: And how are the partners approaching that?

Ian: Yeah.

Ian: And really, the partners have been instrumental in it.

Ian: So going back to that point I made earlier, they brought into this at a strategic level.

Ian: So kind of knowing that they’ve got to activate it and do it well has been the forefront of their minds.

Ian: So they’re running incentive programs, they’re running competitions for staff, registration numbers.

Ian: So there’s tracking and there’s prizes to be won.

Ian: So that certainly motivates some of the frontline staff.

Ian: And that seems to have worked really well.

Ian: And we’ve got, you know, the plastic card there, I said on a backer is probably the most powerful marketing piece of gear that we have.

Ian: So all the physical bricks and mortar store have got those.

Ian: And essentially the ability to kind of just rip the card off, scan it, go, hey, you’ve got Cashpoints on here, go and register and then you can come back and redeem them.

Ian: So it’s a really strong acquisition tool.

Carly: I think that’s an interesting one because I think, especially because we have a global audience here with Let’s Talk Loyalty, there’d be so many markets that would be digital only or very much digital first.

Carly: I like, and I find it quite interesting the fact that you’ve definitely looked at the market, understood the research and the demographic and said, no, we’re still going with Plastic Card.

Carly: How has that worked?

Carly: And obviously you’re seeing effectiveness in the first six weeks.

Ian: Yeah, it’s certainly been a big driver for us.

Ian: So our numbers are tiny compared to the global audience, but six weeks in, so we’ve got 100,000 card holders with a positive Cashpoints balance on their card.

Ian: And that’s been predominantly driven by the store owners or the frontline staff being able to do that.

Ian: And you and I know now we’ve all got plenty of apps on our phones.

Ian: So a new program unheard of, the likelihood of someone rocking into a store and downloading the app straight off, probably slim.

Ian: But the ability to kind of actually touch, feel something, take something home.

Ian: Actually that was easy.

Ian: I might download the app.

Ian: So it’s certainly kind of works pretty strongly, pretty well for us.

Ian: Increases, you know, increases the cost significantly, but well worth it.

Carly: Yes, obviously creating that stickiness.

Carly: And that’s why I find it so interesting because it’s almost second nature now that digital is first, but you’re actually looking at it from a whole other point of view, that at that point in time in the store and in the retail environment, that they’re taking the cart and going.

Ian: Yeah.

Ian: And we’ve got card holders that have got both.

Ian: They’ve got the app and they’ve got a physical card.

Ian: Even though they might be active on the app, they actually transects a point of sale with a physical card.

Ian: You know, the pressure of a queue, someone behind you in the queue kind of opening the app and going, you know, just easy to get a plastic card out.

Ian: And there’s that.

Ian: And I think there’s a bunch of work done in the UK around this.

Ian: Actually that kind of that tangible hearing a bleep or handing something over and that interaction just feels, I don’t know, there’s certainly some connection.

Carly: Definitely.

Carly: So six weeks, you’ve got some great partners on board.

Carly: Any that you’d love to call out or any that you feel are the strongest so far?

Ian: Guys, we’ve got a small group and I think that, you know, we’ll talk about challenges, but one of the biggest challenges, 18 months building out everything we’ve done, you know, you can have the best program in the world.

Ian: You’ve got no partners.

Ian: It’s not a whole lot of use.

Ian: And so I really shout out the partners that came on board on day one because they’re brought into a vision, you know, we were showing them line drawings and talking about a vision.

Ian: So to commit to signing up and being with us on day one is pretty amazing for us.

Ian: So that’s, you know, so our liquor partner, Super Liquor, we’ve got out there, so they’ve got 190 stores, so they’re very active in the market.

Ian: We’ve got a travel partner mix and match.

Ian: We’ve got vehicle rental, hire ace.

Ian: We’ve got a kind of a tile business that kind of are working at consumer level and B2B.

Ian: And then we’ve got kind of PET coming on and a couple of others.

Ian: So but we’re out in the market in this time of year in New Zealand.

Ian: It’s kind of hard to engage, hard to engage retailers of, you know, three or four weeks out from Christmas.

Ian: So the next the next tranches will be will be in the New Year.

Ian: So it’s just a it’s just a matter of persistence.

Ian: Again, back to that book, Grit.

Ian: You just got you just got to grind it out.

Carly: I love it.

Carly: Anything you can tell us about the key challenges?

Carly: I mean, you did say obviously it’s been 18 months.

Carly: There’s a lot of work in that.

Carly: And you’re selling into partners who are believing in a vision.

Carly: Any big challenges you could share that you would call out from from your experiences either previous or currently with Cashpoints?

Ian: No, I mean, we talked about the retailer challenge.

Ian: That would be for everybody if you’re looking at a coalition program.

Ian: I think, you know, the pros and cons, we started from the ground up.

Ian: So we started with nothing.

Ian: We started with an idea.

Ian: So no system, no database, no clients.

Ian: And so on one hand, you kind of you take all the learnings you’ve had and hopefully kind of improve what you’ve got, which is positive.

Ian: But it does kind of, you know, timelines and timeframes kind of shift.

Ian: Even though we think we build a more robust kind of solution and do what we want to do.

Ian: There’s no legacy hangovers.

Ian: It just takes time.

Ian: You know, if you’re a retailer, you’re going, well, what am I offering you?

Ian: Well, how big is your database?

Ian: You know, how many people can you talk?

Ian: How many people can you bring in?

Ian: Well, actually we’re starting at ground zero.

Ian: So, you know, we have 100,000 today after six weeks.

Ian: But we’ll kind of keep moving, moving forwards.

Ian: So that’s probably one.

Ian: And I think the other thing actually, it’s not so much a challenge, but an interesting point was we have, you know, we’re independent.

Ian: We have no big kind of mother brand behind us.

Ian: And so what it’s made us do is look a whole lot closer at how we go about some things.

Ian: So it’s easy to be, oh, not flippant.

Ian: You know, there’s a lot of big businesses.

Ian: There’s a lot of departments look after different areas.

Ian: We’re, you know, our business, we kind of all hands to the pump.

Ian: So we took a philosophy of making sure we kind of built on really strong foundations.

Ian: So the investment and the time that went into system testing.

Ian: So we used all our partners have been absolutely amazing in terms of our tech partners, our legal partners.

Ian: But, you know, we are testing partner that we use, sort of they do kind of top end of town and government departments.

Ian: So really robust cyber security guys, you’d be familiar with CyberFort in Australia.

Ian: So they’re kind of doing all our cyber security and security around data.

Ian: And so all those things we just, you know, and the discovery process, you know, we just for when we built out the app, big investment, but actually if you get that wrong, you’ve only got one bite at the cherry because there’s nothing sitting in behind you.

Ian: If it doesn’t work when you turn it on.

Ian: And I think that’s, you know, from what I gather, there’s big organizations that probably kind of don’t necessarily drive, you know, drive that hard enough in terms of that risk mitigation side of things.

Ian: Everyone’s eager to get to market.

Ian: But doing that, I think that stood us in pretty good stead.

Ian: I certainly felt far more comfortable having gone through that process in a really robust way.

Ian: So, you do start looking at a whole lot of detail that perhaps, you know, I couldn’t have looked at before.

Ian: I think I drive the staff mental, but.

Carly: And how did you make your decisions around technology, in-house, external?

Carly: What was your decision making around selecting that?

Carly: Because obviously, that’s a huge decision in any business.

Ian: Yeah.

Ian: So, I think that the biggest strength that we had and we wouldn’t have started this business if it hadn’t been for bringing the staff across from Smartfuel.

Ian: So, all the guys, all the people that we wanted, brought into the vision and said, yes, we want to come along.

Ian: Some had other jobs.

Ian: The dev guys were already in a new job.

Ian: And I think, I apologize to whoever they’re working for, but eight weeks and pulled them out and they came along for the journey.

Ian: So, having a whole lot of experience in here has just made this so much easier.

Ian: So, from an idea to in-market, it’s taken us 18 months to scope, build out the platform test and deliver and bring on partners and go live with customers, which in a bigger organization, probably a bit harder to do.

Ian: And so, look, we’ve taken those learnings.

Ian: So, we’ve built a proprietary engine that enables real-time issuance and redemption of Cashpoints.

Ian: It also offers a lot of flexibility to retailers.

Ian: So, retailers can append Cashpoints any which way they want by SKU, time of day, day of the week, spend threshold, card holder.

Ian: So, you name it, they can do it.

Ian: It also has our billing engine in there.

Ian: So, everything’s automated.

Ian: So, our system generates biocredit invoices and credit notes, directs, debits and credits.

Ian: And all those points are held in escrow with the public trust.

Ian: And then we have kind of all our connecting portals that sit outside those interfaces.

Ian: So, we’ve got call center interface.

Ian: We’ve got retailer dashboards.

Ian: And then the customer-facing interfaces in terms of app, web and POS integration, all in real time.

Ian: So that’s kind of the proprietary engine.

Ian: And then we’ve really, we’re taking the approach of kind of, we have SaaS tools.

Ian: So our customer engagement platform that we use is Braze.

Ian: And so we’ve got real-time APIs out of our platform into Braze.

Ian: And the learnings with that have just been immense.

Ian: I mean, the guys that are running it have been doing it for a little while.

Ian: And so, you know, from a marketing perspective, they’re able to build audiences pretty much on the fly, be able to turn around campaigns.

Ian: So our speed to market is really quick.

Ian: And it helps when we talk to partners.

Ian: And our data warehousing solution Snowflake.

Ian: And again, kind of feed into that out of our system into Snowflake.

Ian: And then our data insights guys tap into the Snowflake environment to pull out all the dashboards and real-time reporting.

Ian: So it’s a fairly, you know, it works.

Ian: And I think another learning is there’s some pretty great SAS tools around.

Carly: Yes, absolutely.

Ian: Yeah.

Ian: That are affordable and scalable and kind of work.

Carly: So it can be good, but tricky in these days because there’s so many different options around navigating which ones and which are the right fit for your particular business.

Ian: Yeah.

Ian: And having had experience with them before, it makes it a whole lot easier.

Ian: So I think that’s the big piece for us.

Ian: We’ve been very fortunate.

Ian: There’s no way we could have done this without having kind of the experience we’ve got.

Carly: Fantastic.

Carly: So we’re six weeks in.

Carly: How does the next 12 months or six months, should I even ask next quarter look from your point of view?

Carly: What are we looking for?

Ian: So again, just continually kind of engaging our partners.

Ian: So working with them closely, our account service team work with them closely to be able to kind of look at what their businesses are trying to do and help deliver campaigns at our end.

Ian: So we provide assets.

Ian: If they’ve got their own databases, we provide assets so they can use their own database around communication channels.

Ian: But for audiences that they don’t have that they might want to reach, then we will do that.

Ian: And as we grow, we’ll be doing more and more of that for them.

Ian: So it’s making sure we’re looking after our kind of foundation partners in these early days and being flexible because we haven’t got everything right.

Ian: Some of the reporting stuff, we’re fine tuning for them to make sure it’s fit for purpose for what they’re after.

Ian: And that’s a benefit of having in-house dev team.

Ian: We can do a whole bunch of that stuff pretty quickly.

Ian: And then really, it’s growth.

Ian: It’s out there talking to retailers and it’s really trying to provide value back.

Ian: So our insights dashboards and those sorts of things, making sure partners are getting what they’ve signed up for, essentially.

Ian: And then if we get the partners engaged really well and we get breadth of partners, everything else will take care of itself pretty much.

Ian: Customers, if they’re activating it, customers will be transacting, getting the benefit and then the program should just grow.

Carly: Building a fantastic ecosystem, right?

Carly: And win-win for partners, business and members and customers.

Ian: Yeah, hopefully.

Carly: How would you describe your culture?

Carly: How do you run the business?

Ian: Well, we’re a small team, which again, technology takes care of a lot of what we do.

Ian: We’re all customer first in terms of A, partners and consumers.

Ian: We’ve got an in-house call center in here.

Ian: So again, our philosophy was I want people to ring up and talk to a human being that’s in the office.

Ian: So kind of being connected to the customer, our weekly work in progress meetings we have on Monday morning, call centers involved, the dev team are involved.

Ian: So everybody’s plugged in to kind of where we’re going.

Ian: I’m sure we could do a better job, but it’s a very close knit team, good skills.

Ian: They all know what they’re doing.

Ian: They’ve all bought into the vision.

Ian: And some of the initial staff members, they’ve got some shareholding in there, which again kind of links them to kind of being able to deliver.

Ian: So yeah, look, it’s kind of a close knit family.

Ian: And we’ve worked together for a long time.

Ian: So I’ve got kind of operations ladies being, she was at Smartfuel with us.

Ian: So she’s been with us 15, 16 years.

Ian: Marketing guys, 11 years and 7 years.

Ian: You know, so we’ve kind of got a, the relationship’s almost intuitive.

Ian: And I’m sure we kind of, you know, piss each other off from time to time, but actually it works really well.

Ian: Excuse my language.

Carly: That sounds fantastic.

Carly: And I think it’s so interesting to hear around how people run the business and what they, how they treat and manage staff and bring everybody on the journey, especially when it’s earlier days, because it can be such a challenging time.

Ian: Yeah, and everyone’s, you know, everyone’s probably doing more than, you know, more than in an ideal world, but it’s hands on.

Ian: But they all know, they all know their roles, they all know what they’ve got to do, and they just get on with it.

Ian: But as I say, probably more so in this environment, you know, probably, you know, looking at looking over a lot more stuff only because the buck stops, you know, kind of here.

Ian: So and they’ve said to say, Oh, you were never this hard work before.

Ian: So, you know, we kind of have that relationship, which is which is just awesome.

Ian: And I think the other thing is, you know, even even our suppliers that we talked about and we call them partners.

Ian: But, you know, our lawyers, we’ve they have been all have bought into this journey.

Ian: So even though we’ve, you know, we’ve started from scratch, these guys are again dealing with kind of a lot of the big corporates.

Ian: But they’ve we haven’t felt anything like inferior.

Ian: I mean, they’ve felt like they’ve treated us with the same kudos as everybody else.

Ian: They’ve been amazing.

Ian: So pretty much all those partners.

Ian: Again, we couldn’t have done it without them.

Ian: So no, we’ve been very lucky actually.

Carly: Beautiful network by the sounds of it.

Carly: And a big congratulations to you and the whole team because it’s a lot of hard work in the early days.

Carly: Well, it’s still early, but still a lot of hard work.

Ian: Well, very early.

Carly: Yes, you did.

Carly: Any key advice you’d give someone if they were starting out in the loyalty and or consumer marketing industry?

Ian: I think the only thing I’d say is it’s never as simple as it looks.

Ian: Even if they’re trying to make a simple program, it’s trying to get those user experiences are really important.

Ian: I think the investment up front to get user journeys done or customer journeys, getting those nailed down is really important.

Ian: We were worried around what it would be when we turn the thing on.

Ian: And I think the most calls we got were 10 in a day through the call center.

Ian: So that would suggest that the onboarding experience has been pretty good.

Ian: So now I think it’s just thinking through the my new tie.

Ian: But it will, it will, you know, it’s not as simple as it seems.

Ian: And it’ll probably take a bit longer than you expect.

Ian: It’s like building a house, you know, twice the price and twice as long.

Carly: Fantastic.

Carly: Well, thank you so much for joining us, especially when it’s such a hectic time and you are pretty much just launched in market.

Carly: So really exciting to see a huge thanks, Ian.

Ian: No pleasure.

Ian: Thanks very much indeed, Carly.

Carly: Thank you.

Ian: All right.

Ian: Take care.

Paula: Bye bye.

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

Paula: Wise Marketeer Group also offers loyalty education and training globally through its Loyalty Academy, which has certified nearly 900 marketeers and executives in 49 countries as certified loyalty marketing professionals.

Paula: For global coverage of customer engagement and loyalty, check out thewisemarketeer.com and become a wiser marketeer or subscriber.

Paula: Learn more about global loyalty education for individuals or corporate training programs at loyaltyacademy.org.

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.