Best of the Back Catalogue | Rakuten Rewards — Affiliate Marketing, Cashback & Global Partnerships (#776)

PAULA: Welcome to Let’s Talk Loyalty, an industry podcast for loyalty marketing professionals.

PAULA: I’m your host, Paula Thomas, and if you work in loyalty marketing, join me every week to learn the latest ideas from loyalty specialists around the world.

PAULA: So welcome to episode 36 of Lets Talk Loyalty.

PAULA: And in today’s episode, I’m super excited to be interviewing the president of Rakuten Rewards for the USA and Canada, which is literally one of the world’s largest cashback programs, and incredibly popular in so many markets around the world.

PAULA: So if any of you haven’t heard of Rakuten Rewards, I will first of all explain that its parent company, Rakuten, is affectionately known as the Amazon of Japan.

PAULA: So without further ado, I’d like to welcome Kristen Gall, president of Rakuten Rewards to Let’s Talk Loyalty.

KRISTEN GALL: Hello Paula.

KRISTEN GALL: So nice to talk to you today.

PAULA: How are you doing?

KRISTEN GALL: I’m doing well.

KRISTEN GALL: I’m in a very unprecedented time, I think.

PAULA: I think we are.

PAULA: We’re definitely going to talk about all of that, Kristen.

PAULA: So first and foremost, Let’s Talk Loyalty, as you know, is all about educating loyalty managers around the world.

PAULA: And so we have listeners in lots of different markets.

PAULA: And we always like to start the show literally talking about our favorite loyalty statistics, so we can get straight into adding value for the listeners.

PAULA: So tell me first and foremost, what is your favorite loyalty statistic?

KRISTEN GALL: My favorite loyalty statistic is that Rakuten has nearly 15 million members, which as I joined the company was just a bit of a mind blowing experience for me to think about how many people are actually interacting with this program.

PAULA: That’s incredible, my goodness.

PAULA: And you’re in many markets around the world.

PAULA: So I know you’re in China, you’re obviously in Japan, and you head up the USA and Canada.

PAULA: So it is an incredible program.

PAULA: And I think there’s probably a lot of people listening, Kristen, who might not be familiar with the concept, particularly of just affiliate marketing in general.

PAULA: So before we get into anything too specific, would you mind just kind of talking through the whole business model for consumers?

KRISTEN GALL: Absolutely.

KRISTEN GALL: So Rakuten is the leading online shopping program, in the US and in Canada, for cash back deals and rewards.

KRISTEN GALL: It’s been in business for about 20 years.

KRISTEN GALL: It’s kind of the behemoth in the industry.

KRISTEN GALL: If you look at affiliate marketing within the US, Rakuten properties make up about 50% of the market share of affiliate marketing.

KRISTEN GALL: So it’s pretty giant in terms of scale.

KRISTEN GALL: The business model is this.

KRISTEN GALL: It’s a very simplistic and very effective and very powerful business model.

KRISTEN GALL: We have nearly 15 million members.

KRISTEN GALL: We send those members shopping at nearly 3,500 stores, online stores that exist in the US and Canada.

KRISTEN GALL: Those stores pay us a commission for any transactions that our members make.

KRISTEN GALL: And we share nearly half of that commission as cash back with our members.

KRISTEN GALL: It drives engagement, traffic and shopping for the stores.

KRISTEN GALL: Our members win in the form of cash back and our business model effectively collects commission for all of that action.

KRISTEN GALL: We’ve paid out in the course of our lifetime nearly $2 billion of cash back to our members.

KRISTEN GALL: So the scale is enormous.

KRISTEN GALL: I really like that it impacts people’s lives.

KRISTEN GALL: We’re giving people money that they spend on shopping, they spend on travel, they spend on things that they want to buy.

KRISTEN GALL: And that sort of improvement in our shoppers lives, it makes me really happy.

PAULA: Absolutely, and I often talk about Loyalty, Kristen.

PAULA: Particularly, I think the reason that I’ve been drawn to it is because there’s so much joy.

PAULA: You know, so companies, you know, that have that kind of mindset that you have to sit down and go, okay, you know, who are we delighting today?

PAULA: You know, it’s the real win, win, win.

PAULA: So it’s a fabulous business to be in.

KRISTEN GALL: Absolutely, yes.

KRISTEN GALL: I like to joke that I give out money for a living and it’s a fantastic job.

PAULA: And it’s $2 billion, as you’ve said.

PAULA: So my goodness, it’s a lot of money.

PAULA: And I want to, first of all, just go back to the origins of the company.

PAULA: So I think I confessed to you, Kristen, that I only heard about Rakuten literally about a year ago myself.

PAULA: And when somebody used that, I suppose, affectionate explanation of the scale of the business in Japan, I literally went and downloaded the book because I know your founder is a very accomplished author, Marketplace 3.0 by Hiroshi Mikitani, if anybody’s interested.

PAULA: And literally, I mean, what a true visionary to set up an e-commerce company, a cashback company in 1999, or sorry, pardon me, 1997 for the parent company and then you guys in 1999.

PAULA: And I know at the time, actually, you were called eBayts, if I’m correct, yeah?

KRISTEN GALL: Correct, yes.

PAULA: And then tell me about the story.

KRISTEN GALL: Yeah, so the story is actually a really interesting one.

KRISTEN GALL: eBayts was born in the first tech boom that existed in our world.

KRISTEN GALL: So that very first tech boom where all of those new companies and those e-commerce companies were being created, that’s when eBayts was born.

KRISTEN GALL: It was born in the Bay Area.

KRISTEN GALL: And effectively, the business model has been the same since launch.

KRISTEN GALL: And it’s been incredibly effective at driving a lot for a lot of companies.

KRISTEN GALL: What happened over time is that the business saw exponential growth, exponential growth in membership, exponential growth in participation of different retailers.

KRISTEN GALL: The cool thing about what I know of how it was built is that they didn’t really even have to go do a ton of business development in the market.

KRISTEN GALL: Because the scale grew so quickly, so fast, retailers were really excited to participate with this program because it was so impactful in the way that it was built, and it was such a win-win-win.

KRISTEN GALL: It continued, and even after that very first.com boom busted, which we know what was born in 1997 to 1999, really starting in 95, there was a huge bust in 2000, and a lot of these e-commerce companies that were created then went under because of the strength of this business model and because it made so much sense to the industry, and because it was focused on sort of nascent e-commerce players, this one lived and continued to thrive.

KRISTEN GALL: And it continued to grow exponentially, you know, 50, 70% every year, over the course of 20 years, to the point now that it’s nearly a billion dollar business.

KRISTEN GALL: But the amazing thing is that even though we are as big as we are, we’re still seeing double-digit increases in growth.

KRISTEN GALL: It’s still something that drives a lot of revenue for our merchant partners.

KRISTEN GALL: There are 3,500 people that interact with us on our platform, 3,500 different retailers, and we can go into the different categories that we’re in.

KRISTEN GALL: But so many members now who really rely on us and they start their shopping journeys with us.

KRISTEN GALL: And then what happened is that in 2014, Rakuten acquired eBay.

PAULA: Okay, got it.

PAULA: Yep.

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KRISTEN GALL: So as part of the journey, I know there was sort of this consideration of Dewego Public, and then I know Rakuten kind of swooped in and bought the company and basically left it intact.

KRISTEN GALL: The really nice thing is that loyalty is very important to the business model in Japan.

KRISTEN GALL: To your point, Rakuten is affectionately known as the Amazon of Japan, but it’s built around the idea of points.

KRISTEN GALL: You earn points for everything that you do in the ecosystem.

KRISTEN GALL: Because eBay was already built around the idea of cashback, we didn’t translate the points directly into the US because we already had a very strong cashback business.

KRISTEN GALL: But this idea that we reward you for everything you do on our platform is sort of the genesis of all of our strategy.

PAULA: Wow.

PAULA: What I’m hearing there actually is something that I’ve often kind of reflected on in terms of business models.

PAULA: I’ve often kind of thought, unless your business is something that people will tell their friends and family about unprompted, you’re kind of doomed.

KRISTEN GALL: So you are right.

PAULA: It’s just too expensive to market something consistently over time and keep telling people that you’re brilliant unless they tell each other.

PAULA: So I can hear if there’s exponential growth of that scale happening for Rakuten Rewards, that’s clearly where it’s coming from.

PAULA: And tell me then, why was it rebranded?

PAULA: Because obviously there’s a lot of money and there’s a lot of time and a lot of just massive brand awareness that eBay’s had.

PAULA: So why did you decide to adopt the parent brand?

KRISTEN GALL: I think when Rakuten acquired eBay in 2014, the goal for Rakuten was to use it to expand its reach in other markets.

KRISTEN GALL: And rather than make inroads in building their own business in the US and scaling it, which is a very difficult thing to do and very time consuming, they bought an A player that already had inroads in the world that they wanted to be in.

KRISTEN GALL: And I think over time, obviously, if you spend enough money on a very large company, you want your name on it.

KRISTEN GALL: So they let us play for a while under their umbrella as eBay.

KRISTEN GALL: But there was always an understanding that this strategically was really part of building their portfolio globally and sort of contributing to the global strength of Rakuten.

KRISTEN GALL: And it to this day is one of the largest pieces of Rakuten’s portfolio outside of Japan.

PAULA: Wow.

PAULA: And I know you’ve been around, you joined as General Manager two years ago.

PAULA: So how did you end up joining the business?

PAULA: I know your background was always kind of retail and e-commerce, but tell us a bit about your own background and career.

KRISTEN GALL: Sure.

KRISTEN GALL: So I like to call myself a retail geek.

KRISTEN GALL: I have loved the retail industry since I was really young.

KRISTEN GALL: My very first job was working in a stock room at Nordstrom.

KRISTEN GALL: I sold posters at the mall.

KRISTEN GALL: I worked for Abercrombie and Fitch.

KRISTEN GALL: I did a lot of retail jobs as I was sort of growing into my teenage years and into college.

KRISTEN GALL: When I graduated from college, I studied business at Cornell.

KRISTEN GALL: And when I graduated, I knew that I wanted to go into retail.

KRISTEN GALL: I had just done an internship with Nike and marketing.

KRISTEN GALL: They’re kind of a behemoth in marketing.

KRISTEN GALL: I was fascinated by it.

KRISTEN GALL: And Gap was building an executive training program.

KRISTEN GALL: So I went into this program and I found the discipline that’s called merchandising within retail.

KRISTEN GALL: Merchandising is sort of, you’re the general manager of a small product line.

KRISTEN GALL: And when I say small, my first one was about a $30 million business.

KRISTEN GALL: So small is not necessarily small, but what it means is that you’re learning how to run a mini PNL and making the decisions around how product lines are built.

KRISTEN GALL: And also, the most important component of that job, which I think dovetails in the loyalty world is a maniacal focus on customers and a maniacal focus on what people buy, how they buy it, how they make decisions, why they do what they do, and how you can influence them to do different things.

KRISTEN GALL: So I grew up in different disciplines and merchandising for a long time.

KRISTEN GALL: I moved into e-commerce about 10 years ago when I found my new love.

PAULA: Okay.

KRISTEN GALL: It’s very data-driven, it’s instantaneous in what you can do and move and see the results of very quickly.

KRISTEN GALL: And I managed a number of large websites in an e-commerce capacity for a while.

KRISTEN GALL: When I was looking for my last job, I wanted to do something different.

KRISTEN GALL: I wanted to do something that had a tech bend to it because I’d been building websites and I loved the building.

KRISTEN GALL: And this job popped up and the beauty of this is that not only is it tech-focused, we get to build a website, we get to work with consumers and the consumer behavior here is fascinating and that was something I fell in love with immediately.

KRISTEN GALL: But because there is this retail bend and because we work with retail, the strategy of how retailers move their loyalty programs and the strategy of how they do affiliate marketing, it was an easy slide for me because I was on the other side before.

KRISTEN GALL: So I’m able to very quickly translate retailer strategies into strategies that work on our platform.

KRISTEN GALL: And at the same time, make sure that what the retailers are doing is the maximum amount of reward for our customers.

KRISTEN GALL: One of the numbers we like to look at maniacally is the amount of cash back that we pay our members each year and what they’re earning.

KRISTEN GALL: That should be going up if we do our jobs well.

PAULA: Absolutely.

PAULA: Absolutely.

PAULA: And there’s so many things I want to pick up on there, Kristen.

PAULA: But I think the first one is, well, actually the maniacal focus on customers.

PAULA: Because I also, it’s the one thing that I remember from reading the book and that I mentioned, I read from your founder.

PAULA: But not only on customers, but also on merchants.

PAULA: Because the big point that he made and I have, as I think I said to you, enjoyed, explored and dabbled with e-commerce for the same length of time as Rakuten has.

PAULA: Clearly not to the same extent, but it is something that I love.

PAULA: I have a real passion around that.

PAULA: So what I loved as a founder was that he allowed the merchants, for example, on the platform in Japan to communicate with his customers or her customers, which is not something you can do on most of the big e-commerce platforms these days.

PAULA: And it really stuck with me that again, it’s a mindset of somebody that really values what’s important in terms of building business.

PAULA: So the insights you must get must absolutely keep you awake with excitement every night.

PAULA: But of course, given the current situation, tell us what are you seeing with consumer behavior right now?

PAULA: So literally in the middle of this pandemic, tell us what’s going on.

KRISTEN GALL: It has been truly fascinating as a retail professional and as someone who understands the rhythm of shopping well, how much things have changed over the last few months.

KRISTEN GALL: We were at a point where we had a pretty consistent business that had a pretty consistent breakout in terms of categories people were interacting with.

KRISTEN GALL: We were very apparel focused, very beauty focused, very department store focused.

KRISTEN GALL: And as soon as this pandemic hit, consumer behavior shifted dramatically.

KRISTEN GALL: Immediately, and I know that we all know this because our own behavior sort of reflected this, people were focused completely on essentials.

KRISTEN GALL: We saw discretionary spending fall off a cliff when it comes to sort of the apparel merchants that we have on our site, the department stores, they were immediately very challenged and they were also very challenged because they closed down their stores.

KRISTEN GALL: And a lot of the stores drive the online traffic as well.

KRISTEN GALL: So when you close stores, you don’t really inspire people to go shopping.

KRISTEN GALL: It shifted to marketplace immediately.

KRISTEN GALL: It shifted to people like Amazon and people like Walmart and people like eBay.

KRISTEN GALL: You were buying essentials, you were buying food, you were buying toilet paper, you were buying hand sanitizer, you were not buying dresses, you were not buying lipstick.

KRISTEN GALL: And that continued for a good long time.

KRISTEN GALL: One of the things that we did to react very quickly is we knew that a lot of our smaller merchants on our platform were hurting really badly because they don’t necessarily have the cash flow to survive something like this.

KRISTEN GALL: And they don’t necessarily have the strength to put out a lot of marketing dollars into the world when they’re challenged from a sales perspective.

KRISTEN GALL: So we actually gave back our commission at over 200 of our stores that were more essentials focused so that our members could…

KRISTEN GALL: Wow, wow.

KRISTEN GALL: We basically doubled the cash back for those stores so that our members could get more cash back on their essentials.

KRISTEN GALL: And those smaller merchants could float in the face of competition from Amazon, Walmart, et cetera.

KRISTEN GALL: We really just wanted to make sure that they were well taken care of and that our members felt that we were taking care of them during this unprecedented time.

PAULA: Wow.

PAULA: And honestly, I mean, that’s an extraordinary gesture and again reflects both what the consumer genuinely needs, even if they don’t know it.

PAULA: But also what the merchant needs, which is a demonstration of loyalty from Rakuten Rewards back to them.

PAULA: So again, I always love this idea of, when I’m talking to clients about building loyalty programs and they’re asking, how can we get more loyalty from our customers?

PAULA: And I really love to go back and say, well, how loyal are you being to them?

PAULA: And I love to hear that coming through and in terms of how you’re reacting.

PAULA: So has it evolved in any way?

PAULA: So I think for me, I said to you before, I think most people went in to kind of literally hold and stop everything for a couple of weeks.

PAULA: Then there’s the sending out the obvious messages of reassurance as best you can, but there’s a limit to how much we can do that as well.

PAULA: Now the people probably have their essentials.

PAULA: I’m guessing they’re probably not back to buying lipstick and apparel just yet, but have they moved into, I don’t know, fitness equipment or home office equipment?

PAULA: I’m guessing there’s trends like that that you’re seeing.

KRISTEN GALL: Well, that was the other interesting thing, because it started with marketplaces, and then to your point, it 100% went to taking care of things at home.

KRISTEN GALL: And taking care of things at home involves keeping myself sane.

KRISTEN GALL: Fitness definitely was a category that went up.

KRISTEN GALL: And we have a lot of online fitness resources.

KRISTEN GALL: Home office had triple to quadruple digit increases because people were getting their work from home set up.

KRISTEN GALL: After, you know, after we all realized that we weren’t actually going back to the office for the discernible future, we had kids’ educational companies.

KRISTEN GALL: So educating your child at home.

KRISTEN GALL: And then people needed to take care of their pets.

KRISTEN GALL: So people like Chewy and Petco had massive increases in their sales as well.

KRISTEN GALL: And those were really the four categories initially that kind of carried us for I would say a good month, month and a half of this.

KRISTEN GALL: And we continued to our messaging during that time, you know, at the very beginning, to your point, it was please, like, you know, we’re here to help.

KRISTEN GALL: We’re all in this together as everyone’s kind of was.

KRISTEN GALL: We started trying to surface as many of those merchants as possible on our platform so that our members knew what they had to choose from and the breadth that we had to offer in each of those categories that was trending.

KRISTEN GALL: You know, rather than I know this is the pet food company I’m going to go buy from, we wanted to make sure that they understood that we really have a broader range of array of selection in all of those categories that they can buy from, because a lot of them, the good ones, who were trending up had inventory issues and you would go to their sites and you would not find what you needed.

KRISTEN GALL: So we wanted to make sure that people had choice if they didn’t find what they needed at one that they could go to others.

PAULA: Yeah.

PAULA: And I guess it is also, you know, just yet that change of behavior of, oh my God, I don’t want to go to the pet food store anymore for the next foreseeable future.

PAULA: They may never have gone to you guys to buy that in the past.

PAULA: So it again, it presents an amazing opportunity, this particular shift for the brands that are in the right space.

PAULA: So incredible that again, you’ve got that flexibility that you can literally be agile and surface up exactly what people need at any particular moment in time.

KRISTEN GALL: Absolutely.

KRISTEN GALL: I think what’s the interesting thing that’s happening now is that discretionary spending is actually starting to come back a little bit.

PAULA: Oh, that’s great to hear.

KRISTEN GALL: Wow.

KRISTEN GALL: It’s fascinating to see.

KRISTEN GALL: People are starting to make a bit of a shift where they’ve been home for a long time.

KRISTEN GALL: They’re getting a little frustrated and they do want to buy clothing and they do want to buy lipstick.

KRISTEN GALL: Yeah, it’s not happening at the rate that it was happening before, but we are starting to see consumers dip their toe in the water of coming back to that.

KRISTEN GALL: And then retailers who are starting to open up their stores again, in-store cash back is actually a component of what we do, too.

KRISTEN GALL: So we do have a physical in-store cash back program that we are starting to see inquiries from some of our retailers who are starting to open their stores that they want to incentivize customers to come in and get back to their normal pattern.

KRISTEN GALL: So we are, I’d say we are being very circumspect about how we do that.

KRISTEN GALL: There is a line that I want to draw in how much we encourage people to go out into the world.

KRISTEN GALL: I think we have a responsibility as a company to take care of our members and make sure that we are giving them the information and the option, but allowing them to make the decision and then still driving our online platforms significantly more than we ever have before.

PAULA: Absolutely.

PAULA: Well, you’re right.

PAULA: You’re balancing the needs of members and retailers.

PAULA: So it’s important to get that fine line.

PAULA: And I can imagine the difficulties in keeping it right.

PAULA: But even actually just from a local perspective here, as you know and listeners know, I live in Dubai.

PAULA: And again, I think it’s very reassuring that there’s been a little glimmer, literally since yesterday.

PAULA: And today is the 13th of May.

PAULA: So this episode will be going out in a week’s time.

PAULA: But literally now what the retailers, the offline retailers are doing is they’re allowed to accept returns for the first time.

PAULA: They’re allowed to open up their changing rooms for the first time.

PAULA: So again, for me, just from a consumer perspective, it is very reassuring.

PAULA: And again, to hear the right retailers going, this is how we’re going to deal with that situation.

PAULA: Again, no pressure, but they’re there when I’m ready.

PAULA: So absolutely amazing to hear that.

PAULA: And I did want to pick up on the in-store piece, Kristen, as well.

PAULA: You mentioned to me before that you’re also doing dining experiences.

PAULA: So tell me a bit about your whole dining proposition.

KRISTEN GALL: We have a lot of interesting ways that our members can interact with dining.

KRISTEN GALL: We did a partnership, actually, with a company that allows us to give cash back on dining at 10,000 different restaurants all over the country.

KRISTEN GALL: So we allow people to kind of explore this experience of what cash back is available near me from a dining perspective.

KRISTEN GALL: The other things that we’re doing is partnering with people like Uber Eats, Postmates, so that people can earn cash back on ordering dining delivered to them right now, which has become actually a really important part of our portfolio during this time is just the ability to service our members in that way and allow them to earn rewards on things that they are doing a lot of right now.

KRISTEN GALL: So that more direct to consumer digital play in all of those companies, I think it’s a really, really important category for us to be in.

PAULA: And you mentioned partnerships as well, Kristen.

PAULA: I know Rakuten globally has some of the most extraordinary partnerships from American Express, which I’d love you to tell listeners about and through to sponsoring FC Barcelona.

PAULA: My fiance is a big fan of that particular decision.

PAULA: So and Live Nation, which again, I’m very familiar with.

PAULA: Tell us about some of the global partnerships you guys are involved in.

KRISTEN GALL: I think Rakuten has been on the forefront of global sports partnerships for many years.

KRISTEN GALL: It’s something that Hiroshi Mikitani, our founder, is very passionate about.

KRISTEN GALL: FC Barcelona was one of the first and is one of the strongest, and obviously is the premier football league across the globe.

KRISTEN GALL: I got to go to a game last year where they won La Liga.

PAULA: Oh my God.

KRISTEN GALL: It was quite the experience.

KRISTEN GALL: And just to see the power of Rakuten in that stadium was really inspiring and incredible.

KRISTEN GALL: We took a lot of our clients there to show them the power of the global Rakuten brand.

KRISTEN GALL: And that was a really, really fun exercise.

KRISTEN GALL: Another thing that we have been really closely aligned with is the National Basketball Association in the US.

KRISTEN GALL: Rakuten sponsored the Golden State Warriors.

KRISTEN GALL: I believe this is the third year of the sponsorship.

KRISTEN GALL: They sponsored them the year that they won the championship for the NBA.

KRISTEN GALL: So it was perfectly timed.

KRISTEN GALL: It was really amazing.

KRISTEN GALL: And we are the jersey sponsor for the Golden State Warriors, which means that our name is on the left-hand side of the jerseys of the players.

KRISTEN GALL: And we have a really prominent position in the New Chase Center, which is the Warriors Arena in San Francisco.

KRISTEN GALL: So that’s been a close partnership for us.

KRISTEN GALL: And during a time when the NBA has been on an incredible upswing, a lot more interested in sports and a lot more interested in that team in particular, because that team’s been really golden, although their record was a little tough this year.

KRISTEN GALL: That’s been a fun one for us to work on.

KRISTEN GALL: In terms of non-sports partnerships, the Amex one has been pretty incredible.

KRISTEN GALL: What our Amex partnership looks like is we allow our members to convert their cash back to membership rewards points.

KRISTEN GALL: And anyone who knows Amex knows that they have maniacal loyalty themselves and people are incredibly loyal to membership rewards points, earning them, redeeming them, hoarding them.

KRISTEN GALL: And the fact that we could allow our members to engage in that way in what was important to them, maybe cash is important, but maybe membership rewards points are important.

KRISTEN GALL: I mean, Amex is probably another one of the foremost loyalty programs in the world.

KRISTEN GALL: It was lovely to be able to create that type of linkage for our members.

PAULA: Incredible.

PAULA: And you’ve reminded me of something else from the book, actually.

PAULA: And as I said, I rarely remember specific points.

PAULA: You know, you read something and you’re impressed and then you move on.

PAULA: But I remember reading actually that the points program in Japan, those points were available to use, I believe in 600,000 stores in Japan.

PAULA: So that blew my mind because I couldn’t even imagine the ecosystem that would create something of that scale.

PAULA: But I’m hearing it coming through in your partnership with Amex, you know, that whole mindset of flexibility and doing something that the consumer and the member really wants to do rather than just get stuck in a particular way of working that suits you guys.

KRISTEN GALL: That’s exactly right.

KRISTEN GALL: And the goal is really twofold.

KRISTEN GALL: The goal is to allow our members to earn in the way that is relevant to them.

KRISTEN GALL: But also our goal there is to introduce far more members to Rakuten.

KRISTEN GALL: Amex has an enormous portfolio of people and the idea that they would earn with us is very attractive to them.

KRISTEN GALL: So Amex has actually been great about building the partnership where this is kind of a mutually beneficial relationship and we can gain more members from them.

KRISTEN GALL: And vice versa, they can gain more engagement via membership rewards points.

PAULA: Wow.

PAULA: Yeah.

PAULA: I love when it is mutually beneficial like that.

PAULA: It’s fantastic.

PAULA: And tell me about Live Nation because from Ireland, where I come from, as I think you know, Live Nation would have operated the biggest stadium in Dublin city.

PAULA: And so I’m guessing it’s the same throughout North America and Canada in your territory.

PAULA: Is that the kind of relationship or what do you do with Live Nation?

KRISTEN GALL: So Live Nation is, to your point, incredibly strong in the world of tickets and in the world of arenas and artists.

KRISTEN GALL: And what we’ve partnered with them on, we’ve got a long term.

KRISTEN GALL: It’s a bit of an acquisition play from a customer perspective, but what we’re doing with Live Nation is allowing customers to earn what we call ticket cash.

KRISTEN GALL: So when they go and purchase tickets from Live Nation, they get a code for ticket cash that is effectively cash back on their next ticket purchase with Live Nation, where they get anywhere between $20 to $50, depending on who we are working with and kind of what we’re working on at the time.

KRISTEN GALL: But that they would basically be able to earn a significant reward for a second transaction and a second purchase.

KRISTEN GALL: And we’re advertising that on the Live Nation site.

KRISTEN GALL: There are greater goals with that relationship.

KRISTEN GALL: The idea that we would use some of our in-store cash back technology to fuel some of the commerce that they’re doing in some of their arenas is something that we’re really interested in working with them on.

KRISTEN GALL: Obviously, that’s been put on pause for a little while as we weather all of this.

KRISTEN GALL: But as we do get back to live performances and as we do get back to the opportunity to be in person, that’s a place where we could potentially build out that relationship.

PAULA: Wow, well, I’ll definitely be watching that with lots of excitement, Kristen.

PAULA: There’s just two more things I wanted to ask coming towards the end of the show now.

PAULA: One is about your conference that I know we’re hoping will be happening later in the year.

KRISTEN GALL: We’re hoping.

PAULA: Tell the listeners about Rakuten Optimism and what you do with that whole idea.

KRISTEN GALL: Rakuten Optimism is actually something that started two years ago in the US.

KRISTEN GALL: The interesting thing about the genesis of Optimism is that in Japan, the Rakuten brand in Japan has a conference and they invite 200,000 people to it in Japan.

KRISTEN GALL: So it is a massive conference in Japan that we have every year also called Optimism.

KRISTEN GALL: That has been postponed because that was supposed to be in August of this year.

KRISTEN GALL: But for us, we are building the capability of Rakuten to drive things from a B2B perspective in the US.

KRISTEN GALL: We have a number of different subsidiaries outside of the cashback business that are on the smaller side but that we work with as well.

KRISTEN GALL: We have an online messaging platform.

KRISTEN GALL: We do ebooks.

KRISTEN GALL: There are about seven different Rakuten businesses.

KRISTEN GALL: The goal there is really to show the strength of Rakuten globally, allow people to understand this story of if you have not been to Japan and if you haven’t been exposed to the Rakuten brand in Japan, you don’t really know the enormity of it.

KRISTEN GALL: How do you expose a group of our merchants and our partners to the enormity of the brand?

KRISTEN GALL: But then how also are you inspiring these brands, these merchants about all of the different product capabilities that we have, ways that we’re going to interact with our members, and how we are strategically building the business?

KRISTEN GALL: So the goal there is really to bring everyone together and to tell the story of what this is going to look like over the next year or two, and bring them along for the ride.

KRISTEN GALL: We have so many plans over the next few years to really grow the breadth of categories that we work in, grow our membership base, get a lot more aggressive in online and offline retail, and then even plays outside of retail.

KRISTEN GALL: I think the dining and food delivery has been an interesting expansion of our services, and there are limitless opportunities where people spend money for us to play.

PAULA: Amazing.

KRISTEN GALL: The goal there is just to bring our people together to have a really good time.

KRISTEN GALL: We have a lot of surprises at each of the Optimism Conferences that we have a good time.

KRISTEN GALL: But yes, it’s really about brand strength.

PAULA: For sure.

PAULA: Well, I think I said to you, I’ve already signed up for the e-mail newsletter just to keep myself posted.

PAULA: So if it does go ahead and please God, if I can get on a plane, I will certainly be planning.

KRISTEN GALL: We look forward to hosting you and I am crossing my fingers that we can.

PAULA: Brilliant.

PAULA: Just before I go to my final question, Kristen, I did see some lovely research before our chat today, which said that people are increasingly looking for positivity as a direct result of this pandemic.

PAULA: So I think you guys have a role to play in that.

PAULA: So I’m going to make sure that we link to the Optimism Conference in the show notes and whatever we can do to inspire that positivity together, we should definitely do.

PAULA: So my final question for you, Kristen, is really just thinking about the listeners.

PAULA: Most people listening to this show, I mean, there are countries all over the world, predominantly running loyalty programs, which I think can be actually quite a lonely business.

PAULA: You know, if you have a loyalty program and, you know, maybe you’re the top of the business doing that.

PAULA: Are there any ways that my listeners can reach out to Rakuten?

PAULA: Are there opportunities to partner with Rakuten around the world or is that something that is even on the radar for you guys?

KRISTEN GALL: I mean, there are always ways that the interesting thing about the Rakuten ecosystem globally is that there are so many different businesses and so many different touch points that people can get involved with.

KRISTEN GALL: I encourage listeners to go to our website because it will give you a much larger understanding of what the ecosystem looks like.

KRISTEN GALL: We are in Japan, we are in 70 different businesses.

KRISTEN GALL: If that gives you an idea of the scale.

KRISTEN GALL: So when I say that there are opportunities to interact, there are.

KRISTEN GALL: We’ve got a really well built out business in Europe that does a lot of different things across Asia.

KRISTEN GALL: And then the US has a number of different subsidiaries that can help, you know, it can help partners move things in different ways.

PAULA: Sure.

KRISTEN GALL: So yes, we are, I think we are very comprehensive in our coverage of different industries and also different consumer plays.

KRISTEN GALL: And there are always ways that people can interact with us.

PAULA: Okay, wonderful.

PAULA: And with your permission, Kristen, and we didn’t talk about this before, but if people want to reach out even to me so that I can forward them on to the appropriate Rakuten department, is that okay with you if we manage it that way?

PAULA: Great.

PAULA: Again, I’m a huge fan of the brand.

PAULA: As you can tell, I’ve drunk the Kool-Aid, so I want to just facilitate that wherever possible.

PAULA: So as we finish up then, Kristen, the last thing I literally wanted to ask you about was your brand awareness.

PAULA: So we talked about it earlier in the show, and I know you had a huge job on your hands.

PAULA: So tell us, how’s the brand awareness now for Rakuten Rewards?

KRISTEN GALL: I think that’s been the most interesting part of our journey, is our ability to move the needle on that metric.

KRISTEN GALL: We started with a brand awareness of seven.

KRISTEN GALL: This is aided brand awareness in the US was seven percent.

KRISTEN GALL: No one knew Rakuten and no one knew the business and no one knew the company.

KRISTEN GALL: We had seven percent only because we had a Golden State Warriors partnership, and people had seen the name for about a year on jerseys.

KRISTEN GALL: Over the course of the year, as we created new commercials, we taught people how to say the name Rakuten.

KRISTEN GALL: We built the business, we brought our members over to the new website.

KRISTEN GALL: We are now at 65 percent aided brand awareness.

PAULA: Wow.

KRISTEN GALL: The fact that it is that high is really a testament to the strategic might of the team and the great strategies that they put into place to really engage our members along the way.

KRISTEN GALL: Ebates was at 73 percent.

KRISTEN GALL: So it’s a pretty staggering accomplishment, I think, to see things reach the height that they did, at the speed that they did.

KRISTEN GALL: I’m really, really proud of all of the hard working people on my team.

PAULA: Yeah.

KRISTEN GALL: Really created an environment that allowed us to tell the right story and bring our members along for the ride.

PAULA: Well, that is the perfect note to close on Kristen.

PAULA: Incredible brand awareness.

PAULA: I know you’ve won some incredibly prestigious awards as well for that rebrand.

PAULA: I want to congratulate you on that.

PAULA: Overall, I think Rakuten Rewards is just an extraordinary story and I think you’ve told the story incredibly well.

PAULA: There is a fantastic YouTube video I know on your LinkedIn profile, which I’m going to make sure that we link to in the show notes as well so people can get a better sense of exactly the work that you do.

PAULA: And literally want to close by saying thank you so much for joining Let’s Talk Loyalty and best of luck with everything from Rakuten Rewards.

KRISTEN GALL: Thank you so much for having me, Paula.

KRISTEN GALL: I really appreciate it.