Charlie: Hello and welcome to Let’s Talk Loyalty. I’m Charlie Hills, the Chief Strategy Officer for MandoConnect, WPP’s Loyalty Specialist Partnerships and Rewards Agency. We have created a white paper in partnership with YouGov that explores loyalty membership, appeal and impact across 24 European markets. And I’m delighted to be hosting a series of podcasts featuring European loyalty experts to help our listeners better understand what loyalty looks like across Europe.
Today, I’m absolutely delighted to welcome Rachel Mercer, the Loyalty Operations Manager at Benefit Cosmetics for the UK and Ireland. Benefit Love is Benefit’s brilliant loyalty app, your new beauty best friend. Members can book treatments, earn hearts for rewards and discover new products first.
Rachel is a customer-centric loyalty manager with a deep passion for CX. She’s experienced in designing and implementing loyalty programs that drive customer satisfaction and loyalty. And she’s been at Benefit for two and a half years. She worked on launching the program and is now managing it and the strategy going forwards. Today, we’re going to be learning about Rachel’s favorite loyalty programs, how Benefit Loves is building real customer engagement and all about their plans for the future. I hope you enjoy our conversation today.
So hello, Rachel. I’m absolutely thrilled to have you on the podcast today. Welcome to Let’s Talk Loyalty.
Rachel: Thank you so much for having me.
Charlie: Oh, it’s so exciting. This is going to be such a great one for all our beauty fans out there. It’s got that lovely duality of awesome kind of beauty news and awesome kind of loyalty thinking as well.
Rachel: Yes.
Charlie: So it’s going to be a brilliant episode. But before we get into the details of your gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous program, we always start with Paula’s favorite question. So without further ado, please tell us what your favorite loyalty program is.
Rachel: It’s really apt that we’ve got that you’ve asked me this question because I got an email from them today. But my favorite loyalty program is Pizza Express. I love the Pizza Express loyalty program. It’s my birthday next month and I got an email literally this morning being like, your special day is coming up. And I was like, oh my goodness, it is, it is, it’s coming up. Which is just another way of reminding me I’m getting older. But also it’s exciting. I love birthdays.
But Pizza Express have a really lovely app as well. And obviously as someone who works with loyalty, that is also an app. It’s really a great, it’s a great one. It plays with gamification and it really has like an element of feeling like you’re achieving things. And I think, I think they’ve really hit the nail on the head with their, with their program.
Charlie: Oh, that’s great to hear. Yeah, I’m a huge fan of their dough balls as well, which I think is great. And I think it’s lovely how they’ve integrated their quite, quite iconic things that they’re famous for into the loyalty program.
Rachel: A hundred percent.
Rachel: They’re almost the heroes, aren’t they? Within the experience of it. So, oh, that’s great to hear. Although it is making me hungry now, and it’s made me think about pizza rather than makeup. So, back to beauty. Tell us a little bit more about your background and what you’re enjoying about working in loyalty marketing.
Rachel: There are so many things I love about loyalty. I mean, my background is retail. So I’ve worked in retail for the last 10 years, I think. I worked with skincare brand and I’ve also worked mainly at M&S. So I came from the Sparks program, working at M&S and the job that I had there was about really rewarding members for their behavior. So I did events and experiences and I got to take them on these amazing trips to Hampton Court and it was like a select amount of people they had to enter to win, but they were like top customers. And I just loved it. I love, I always say that it sounds so cheesy, but I always say that I was put on this earth to make people happy. That’s like kind of something that I really enjoy doing.
And I think that came from when I was at university, I did a Disney college program where I worked at Disney World in Florida.
Charlie: Oh wow.
Rachel: And your whole job, your whole job is to make people feel special. And you can go above and beyond to make that happen, and actually they challenge you to do that. And I’ve just taken that with me in my career and being able to do that in M&S, to add special little moments for people. I remember we did an event with 42nd Street where we did a class of teaching them one of the dance routines. And I said to the class, I said, can you come down secretly in the back, we’ll record it and it will look great. And it was an amazing moment because they was doing this routine. And then from behind they had this whole group of people come down on stairs and the lights came on. And they were all so surprised. It was just a beautiful moment.
And I think loyalty is so much about creating engagement with a brand, but also it’s memories and it can be so much. And I think in a world where we really love creating communities, loyalty can be a really powerful way of doing that.
Charlie: I think that’s a really inspiring way to think about loyalty programs actually. And personally, it’s something I’ve been really passionate about for the last few years. When I started out in the industry, it was all about transaction and function and value. And actually, you know, what’s the business case behind the program? And those things still really matter. And they’re still the kind of fundamentals of why we’re all in loyalty programs and what we’re trying to achieve.
But actually, that focus on the emotional experiences is brilliant. And what, you know, what gorgeous story and, you know, personally, it’s been a massive ambition of mine to spend enough in Marks and Spencer’s that I get into that frontier because I’ve heard magical things about those events. But despite having two teenage boys who were growing, like, weeds, I never actually quite seem to buy enough stuff at M&S to get into the top tier. So I’m going to keep trying. But those events sound absolutely amazing. And how special for those people. And, you know, they’re going to be bonded to that brand for life, right? And that program, because of that magical memory that you’ve shared for them.
Rachel: I mean, I think the beauty of M&S is that it is very community. Like, there are, you know, the people that shop at M&S, especially, like, heritage kind of customers, they do have the kind of ability to be able to meet up and do those things. So I did have events where people would meet outside, like, they’d meet at the event or at the experience, then they’d meet outside and hang out. And it was just so, so lovely. So that’s definitely what set my love of Loyalty on Fire for sure.
Charlie: Oh, that’s awesome. Love of Loyalty on Fire. What a great catchphrase. That’s awesome. We’ll definitely use that in the podcast.
Rachel: I used that in my LinkedIn profile.
Charlie: I know. That’s great, right? So how does that then translate to the programme? You know, you’ve obviously, you’ve been working on and, and you’ve almost built, you know, you’ve been part of the team that have created Benefit Loves. So tell everybody about Benefit Loves, because not everybody who’s listening will know. And critically, what sort of, what sets it apart from all the other programmes that are out there?
Rachel: Yeah. So Benefit Loves has been around for about a year and a half now. It’s the Benefit Cosmetics Loyalty programme. It’s an app as well. So it’s a loyalty app. It is just, so it’s essentially a points-based programme. So you earn points with your shops and you earn points with your treatments. So if you didn’t know, Benefit also does treatments in stores. So we do brow waxes and all sorts of things, which is amazing as a part in itself.
But what we really wanted to do was hone into that and create a programme that encouraged both interaction with our brand, but also where you can have the experience of coming into a benefit and having your brows done and being in that experience. So it is a points-based programme, but that’s just the core of it.
What we also have within the app is we have content, that is behind-the-scenes content for benefit as well, that we work with our digital teams on and our influencer teams on. We also have challenges where we ask you to interact in the app to achieve certain goals. Yeah, there’s loads of different things. We have lots of things coming up as well, which is really exciting.
But essentially, what we really wanted to do was create a bond between our customers and our brand because with Benefit, Benefit is so much fun. The brand is so much fun. We are such a joyful brand, and something that we were really mindful of doing was creating an app that also showed that and encouraged that. I explain it as Benefit in your pocket, but I also say when we look at building it out, I want it to feel like hearts coming out of your screen. Actually, the points are hearts, so you earn a heart per pound. It all plays into each other.
Charlie: I think it’s absolutely fantastic example for all our listeners. Go check it out, download the app, and have a look at it because I think it’s one of the best at bringing the joy of the brand. I remember when Benefit launched, I was working in the beauty industry with boots over 20 years ago, and Benefit was just such a disruptor to the industry, and everybody else was premium, sensible, edgy, the max, and then in came Benefit. It’s just this gorgeously playful fun makeup brand with products I still use today like Dandelion. I just think it was just such a disruptor, and I think you’ve really brought that to life in the loyalty program as well. You know, the experience of it, the language, and I also love the playability of it.
There’s so many different ways to interact with it when you’re in the app, you know, as you say, from the behind the scenes to earning hearts, to the booking function. I think it’s, yeah, I think it’s a really great example of bringing the brand to life. There’s a big trend everyone talks about at the moment called joyality and actually bringing pleasure to loyalty. And I think you’re really nailing it, which with, you know, as you’ve said, the fundamentals of a points program, isn’t always the easiest thing to do. So I think you’re an absolutely stellar example of that. And I really encourage everyone to look at it.
And you’ve been on such a journey, right? You know, often we’ve got our guests who are coming into a program that’s well established and actually they’re evolving it. But you built this one from scratch, you know. So how did you go about that? How did you launch the program? And, you know, and how did you build the team to make it happen? All the different sorts of companies and suppliers that you needed? How did that process work?
Rachel: It was a really long journey. I mean, we really knew what we wanted to do, which was exactly what you’re saying, kind of that joyality of loyalty. We knew that loyalty was what we wanted to do. So we had like, we put a task force together. We have still got an incredible team that we work with in terms of running the program from a development perspective.
And in terms of actually building the app and the UI and the UX, we work with an incredible team called Mobi Cats. And when it comes to like the creative and like the customer journey and the user journey, they are incredible at doing that. And we’ve really been able to kind of really improve the customer experience as we’ve gone on. Cause we’ve moved very, very quickly. We’ve only been live for a year and a half and we’ve actually had, I think, four iterations of the app so far. So we’re constantly evolving according to what we think customers are wanting and needing.
And then we work with Antavo in terms of building the platform. So they host the Headless Loyalty Scheme. So we build the rewards within that, the challenges and the relationship between Moby Cats and Antavo is very strong as well. So it’s an incredible team effort where we’re all working towards the same purpose.
And I think one of the things that makes it so powerful is that we all have the customer at heart. We all really, really want the customer to love the app and enjoy using it. I think, loyalty can sometimes be just in the background. It’s like attached to your card and you just scan it. And it’s kind of like there’s not any involvement, whereas what we really wanted to do is get our customers, our members involved in the brand itself. And we’re constantly working on trying to do that. But it’s a massive, it is a massive team effort. And we come together on a regular basis to plan out what the next phase looks like. We’re always in the weeds at the same time. So it’s a lot of moving parts for sure.
Charlie: Yeah, and it’s been quite fast. I think that’s one of my observations of it since you launched. I keep a very close eye on these things and you can see those evolutions and those changes in the experience of it. How did you get from sort of, we want a loyalty program to the phase you’re at now, where actually it feels like you’ve got quite an optimized experience quite quickly? You know, a lot of brands might spend two and a half years, you know, just working on the business case for the loyalty program. How did you get from sort of day dot to where you are now?
Rachel: Yeah, so, I mean, there was a lot of business case conversations before I joined. So there was like kind of the business case that was put together, that my head of department kind of worked towards and kind of brought me into towards the end. And then what happened was, is we kind of met and everyone was put was already on board. So we had Antavo, we had Mobi Cats on board. And then it was kind of a case of building out how that would look like. So how are we going to project manage this into fruition and kind of manage all of those elements.
And we had an amazing kind of, like almost a head of loyalty at the time, she came in and she pioneered kind of bringing us all together because none of us had worked together before. So we had Louise Hutchins, who was from the loyalty people at the time. And she kind of managed all of those moving parts. And then I kind of took it over from there. So it’s been an incredible and I, I actually had previous experience working with Louise. So we had a great, great relationship and she was absolutely phenomenal, phenomenal and is a phenomenal loyalty lead.
So she really, really took charge of that and kind of kept us true to what we were trying to do, brought it into fruition and we got live in the end. I think obviously what the difficulty is, is you have a plan in place and then things move around and there’s a lot of things that need to be signed off. And so the timeline kind of gets longer and longer. But in the end, it ends up being about a year and a half worth of work and then we actually ended up being able to launch in the February of 2023. So it all worked out in the end, but it constantly is a move. It is constantly a work in progress. Like we’re always looking at ways to improve it. Absolutely.
Charlie: Yeah. I think that’s a common thing I hear from my guests actually, that loyalty touches so many areas of the business, so many areas of the customer experience that one of the key skills you need as a loyalty marketer is the ability to change and pivot and be agile to what the business needs, and what the Canada looks like, and what the tech stack is doing, and what’s happening in IT, and what’s happening in customer services, and what’s happening in the stores. I think that’s a really common trend actually that we see. How does that all fit together? How does your platform actually work? How do you operate that side of things? I think that’s a key question we often get asked.
Rachel: Yeah. Again, there are a lot of moving parts because we’re not currently linked to the website. What we link is through a username, and essentially when you check out at the website, if you use the correct email address, that gets assigned to your loyalty program. So essentially, that’s your key unique identifier that is right there.
We have obviously Antavo, which is our rewards platform, and that communicates to Bloomreach, which is our CDP. All of that comes together and we get this really rich set of data, which is something that we’ve never had before. That’s how that works. The app communicates directly to Antavo as well.
There’s lots of different parts coming in that have to come together, which means that whenever we do a launch, there are lots of things to be testing when we’re working through all of the new elements because we need to make sure it’s coming through this area, this area, and this area to create the whole story.
But we have great relationships with everyone, so it’s great that everyone works together and it’s fantastic. We shouldn’t just sit back and be like, so guys, this needs to be sorted. How are we going to do it? Then it comes together. We have a very solidified group now. We’ve gone through it all. So we’re like, we know where the challenges are, we know what we need to do in order to get things done. So it all fits together quite well.
Charlie: I think you can really see that actually, when you see that as a cultural team as well. People that have built programs together and been through that process, culturally it bonds you, right? Because you’ve had so many moments where you’re like, well, how the hell are we going to do this? And then you will pull together to deliver it. So that’s really great to hear actually.
And I think that integration and that cross-functional team working together is probably another one of the things that our guests talk about a lot actually, the essentialness of that such an important trend, you’ve got to have consistent, you’ve got to have a single client driving it through, but then actually everyone really pulling together, I think is a really interesting trend we’ve seen rather than the old days, it was sort of handed off and then handed back, whereas actually everyone’s now in it. What other sorts of trends are you seeing in the industry at the moment? What other sort of things stand out to you?
Rachel: I mean, hugely gamification is something that I’m seeing everywhere. And I think there are a lot of ways that it’s being done really well and a lot of ways that it’s kind of being done just to make a sale. And I think it’s quite obvious to customers which is which. But I love gamification. I think if you can make things more fun, absolutely do it. It’s like the way to go.
Obviously, AI is such a buzzword as well. And I think within loyalty, AI could be really quite powerful as a personalization tool. I know from a CX perspective for me, for 25, that’s like a really key goal that I have for next year. And I think what I’m hearing a lot of all this first party data, a lot of people are looking into the idea of, how do we know what our customer is doing? Are we just making an assumption that because they’re buying this, they’re gonna buy that. If we’re buying this, they’re gonna buy that. These things, we need to kind of ask people what they’re wanting rather than making assumptions.
Charlie: Absolutely, I think that’s really key actually. And the importance of actually finding out what people really want really matters even more now. I think, yeah, I think those are really nice kind of summary of key things actually, I think, on a lot of people’s plan for next year. What about the importance of the program to Benefit, you know, how important is Benefit Loves to Benefit?
Rachel: I mean, it’s really important. Like I think we, I think with a new loyalty program, it’s always quite difficult if people don’t know what loyalty does. I think it can be quite difficult within teams to feel like they’re not taking anything away. So I think from my perspective, like the business knows how important loyalty is. So I’m so lucky in that respect. Like I think, you know, I work with the digital team to be able to create really special content.
And I work with the influencer team to kind of get invites to certain things for members that are things that we wouldn’t have been able to get before. And we can really see our core customers now. We can really see who’s really interacting because we’re not necessarily just looking at what they’re shopping. We’re looking at what are they engaging with? Are they reading the content? Are they going into the app on a monthly basis? Like, what are people doing? And are they redeeming the rewards? You know, all of those things are things that we can look at as a brand and be like, OK, great, like, let’s do more of that. And I think, yeah, and it’s really exciting, actually, how important the loyalty program is to the business. It’s a lot of pressure, but it’s incredible. It’s incredible how quickly it’s moved over the last year.
Charlie: Yeah, and I think the power of that insight and actually that understanding of how consumers are engaging with the brand. I mean, what a brand would like Benefit do with that information is quite extraordinary, both at a macro level, but also an individual customer relationship. I’m now worried, I think, oh my goodness, we’re gonna be looking at what I’ve been looking at. I’m like, oh no, you’re gonna spot my brow obsession.
Rachel: We love a brow obsession. We love a brow obsession.
Charlie: I know, I bet. Nobody cared about eyebrows when I was younger, but now it’s like, you know, that contouring, I’m nearly 50, I’m trying to figure it out. I’m like, it’s like a whole new thing. It’s very exciting, but I love Benefit’s products, highly recommend both for brows and for contouring. It’s great.
Rachel: I love that.
Charlie: What about the challenges that you’ve faced? You know, what’s the kind of the biggest challenge that you faced in building a whole program from scratch, you know, and how are you addressing that?
Rachel: I mean, there are always challenges. I think when you’ve got so many moving parts, sometimes it can be very difficult to keep track of everything. So you have to build an incredibly diligent team around you who are able to also keep track of those things because sometimes you’re just one person. And as difficult as it is for me to admit that to myself, you can’t do everything. I really, really do try. But you can’t, you can’t.
Especially with something where there are so many different pieces that are involved in trying to make it success and most importantly, trying to do what’s best for the customer. So I think that’s one of the things. I think one of the things is admitting that sometimes we’re asking to build a team where you can all get together on a regular basis and chat things through and work through feedback and things like that is important. I think having those elements of communication are so important to be able to talk things through.
And I also think that the challenge is also how quickly technology is moving. So how quickly people are expecting things to move and how it’s prioritizing what you think is going to be best for the customer, not necessarily what is best for what other people are suggesting and things like that. So it’s kind of like making sure that you’re trying to attach your goals to things that are going to be beneficial for the customer.
Charlie: Yeah, I think that’s really key actually because there’s a lot, right? There’s so many different priorities and so many different pressures that come in from all angles. Having that single customer focus at least acts as a guardrail to go, is this the right thing for our members and for our customers? What about the most important lessons that you’ve learned? I mean, I think that’s a really great important lesson actually for loyalty marketers everywhere, which is customer first, everything else second. But what are the other sorts of lessons that you’ve picked out? What’s something that stands out?
Rachel: I think one of the most important lessons for me is don’t be afraid to test. Don’t be afraid to just take a little bit of risks here and there. To see how you could improve the program, ask people the question. We did a poll, we did a questionnaire to ask what people are thinking about the program. That was quite risky because the fear is, oh God, what are they going to say? Actually, having that feedback is so important because it makes you better at what you’re doing and it makes the program better.
I think testing is always a bit of a risky thing to do, but actually if you do small tests here and there, and you’re able to really look at it from a lens of, we’re learning here, especially at the beginning, we’re learning here, we’re trying to really create a special thing for our customers. How do we do that? We need to ask them, what they want and we need to respond when we’re seeing them not respond to something, okay, great. That’s obviously not working. Let’s move that out. Let’s try something else. Let’s try something new.
Charlie: Yeah. No, I think that’s really nice as well, that testing and experimentation. I think what you’re talking there as well is about a bravery to fail or bravery to ask a hard question and actually kind of learn. I always love to learn from the question we tell, it’s like, actually, we tried this, it didn’t work.
But sometimes that’s where the best innovations come from, I think, in loyalty. It’s where somebody has tried something and it’s flopped and then actually they’re going, actually, I’m going to try something new and different and then that’s great to see that innovation cycle.
What does success look like for Benefit Loves? What are you aiming for?
Rachel: We are aiming for really happy customers. We want you to love shopping at Benefit. We want to reward you for that. We want to reward you for loving Benefit. Success for me is that people are engaging with the rewards, and engaging with the program, and enjoying using it.
But in terms of KPIs that we look at from a business level is, we look at repeat purchase rate, conversion rate especially, because as an app, we’re not actually shoppable. Are you converting from push notifications? Are you converting from articles? Are you converting from emails into the app and things like that? So we look at conversion as a really high factor for a KPI.
Obviously, acquisition is very key. We’re still very young. We’re still in the early days, so acquisition is still very key. We’re looking at that as we go along. And we just want to make, for me, successes to make people think, if I’m shopping Benefit, I should have the app. This would be beneficial for me. I feel like I should be able, I should communicate with Benefit like this. And I’d love to create a community. That’s kind of also what I’d love to be able to do, ultimately.
Charlie: I think you will. I think you will. It’s a brilliant experience. And I love that, that almost your ambition is to get people to want the app. I think that’s lovely. And there’s some really interesting ways of measuring that as well as, you know, there’s kind of those behavioral metrics. So, really nice to see the two things in there, that combination of behavior and attitude in the sort of success factors that you’re thinking about.
What about internally? How on earth do you communicate? You know, and I always ask this question because I’m fascinated. We have some brands who have, you know, really strict structures for how they communicate internally, and some it’s a little bit more ad hoc. Where do you sit in Benefit? How do you communicate internally about what you’re up to and what you need?
Rachel: So it’s a mixture of both. I work very closely with a couple of teams within our business. I work incredibly closely with our design team who are responsible for a lot of that gorgeous creative that we have within the app, and I meet up with them on a regular basis. I meet up with them bi-weekly.
I have a loyalty task force where I bring everyone who touches the app in on a monthly basis, and we talk about what’s coming up, what’s moving, what’s developing, and all those things, but also what’s happening in their area. Because I see it as a two-way conversation. I really want to be able to support things that they’re doing. So from a digital perspective, I’d love to be able to have content that they create on our app. I’d love to be able to push our information content on our app. And all of those things, I’d love to, and if we’re doing a special offer on the website, I want to be part of that. I want to be able to kind of build all of that in. So it’s kind of like creating a space for everyone to kind of talk about what’s going on with a loyalty kind of pin in it, I guess.
But also a lot of it comes down to just trying, you know, I also reach out to people on a regular basis. I’m like, hey, I’ve got this idea. What do you think? Like, does this work for you? Like, I think this could be really great.
And because in our business, there’s so much going on, you know, we’ve got boutiques, we’ve got pure plays, we’ve got, you know, our online platform, we’ve got all of these different things that we can play in. So I want to make sure that we’re kind of embracing that as much as possible. So communicating with everyone is probably the most important part of my job, actually. Like that’s probably the most important thing, is being able to talk to these people and make sure that like, I’m talking to them about what’s going on and how can I help? How can we get involved?
Charlie: Yeah, I think that’s so nice as well. And quite unusual to be at that point, this early in the life cycle of the loyalty program, actually to recognize, you know, often it’s you’re asking for stuff when you’re building it, you know, you’re like, give me, give me, give me, but it’s brilliant, actually at Benefit, you’re already recognizing the value that the loyalty program can then support back to the brand and back to the business and back to the influencing teams.
It’s really nice to see that sort of two way push and pull this early in a kind of program life cycle. What about outside of Benefit, you know, because there’s so much happening, as you’ve already said, in technology, there’s so much changing for customers. What, you know, what resources do you rely on for your updates on what’s going on in the industry and what’s going on outside that world?
Rachel: I go to a lot of like master classes. I go to a lot of conferences. I go to, I really, I go to webinars. I always say like, I do miss school. I miss school. I love learning. And so those kinds of things are so so great for that because you can sit and listen and take it in and be like, oh gosh, that would work really well for that. Oh, that’s a great idea. Maybe we can sort of implement that in the next couple of months. Okay, that could be something really easy. You can switch on. We could do it that way. And it opens your mind out to opportunities that don’t necessarily cost any more money. Because I think that’s also a real problem with everything moving on so quickly. All technology is moving on really quickly. That’s always often a price tag to that.
And so going to like conferences and things where you can just almost like learn what other people are doing and be like, actually, we have the resource to do that already. So how do we implement that in our team? I think that’s probably my biggest resource. I like talk to people. I network with others. I think the loyalty industry is a really kind industry in terms of what people are willing to share. I’ve really noticed that in going to these conferences and masterclasses is a great way of one, being able to talk to people, but also learning about what’s going on in the industry.
Charlie: And you just need to walk away with one idea. I think that’s what’s so fantastic is that you can go to a conference the whole day and you can walk away with one or maybe two ideas that you never would have had before and then implement them. And those can make the big step change, right? Yeah, I’m the same. I’m a total super nerd. I’d love to be, you know, I now teach as well, which I find really funny. But every time I teach, I always learn so much more from my students than I actually feel I bring to the table. So I think that’s awesome.
What are some of those ideas or innovations that you’ve seen? Like, what are some of the recent stuff that’s really stood out for you?
Rachel: I mean, there’s a lot that’s just in the back end around personalisation, around really like and like what I was saying about zero-party data, about polling, asking people the question within an email even, like what are you shopping for?
And then having the options of what you’re shopping for and then being able to target based on that. It’s really inspiring to see what other people are doing actually, because you’re like, wow, that’s really smart, it’s really clever. Like, I love that idea. And I think it can only make us better as loyalty specialists because it’s really focusing in on what the customer wants to tell us.
So I think like, that’s probably the biggest recently because last week I went to a conference and that was like my biggest takeaway was that kind of like ability to ask customers the question across loads of landscapes. So yeah, I’d say that’s like probably the biggest innovation I’ve…
Charlie: And then what I love in what I’m hearing from you is then acting on it as well.
Rachel: Oh yeah.
Charlie: Asking that they want. And then actually doing something differently is a consequence of that.I think lots of programs ask, but then perhaps don’t actually follow up with the action. So I think that’s really lovely that you’re then, you’re actually delivering against what they’ve told you that they want, which is kind of loyalty gold standard. I think it’s brilliant.
So as we move to the end, I mean, I could talk about Benefit Loves all day and Benefit Cosmetics and eyebrows all day, but as we move to the end, is there anything else you’d like to share with our listeners at this point?
Rachel: I mean, I think the main thing is that focus on what the customer wants, focus on what the brand is trying to say. I feel very lucky because I work for a brand that has such a joyful tone of voice that I knew the goal. As soon as I came in, I was like, okay, this is gold standard. This is what we need to do. That is the foundation of everything that we do, is the joy, it’s the sprinkle of joy. I feel very lucky that that has been the case.
I think there are a lot of brands that it could be much more involved. Involve customers in what you’re doing, involve people in your strategies and in your plans. What would they want out of where your future is going? I think that’s certainly what I’m trying to do.
Charlie: I think that’s a lovely key takeout for all our listeners today, and that importance, as you say, of asking what people want and then actually doing the things to give it to them.I think that’s a lovely roundout. I’m sure everyone has loved learning all about Benefit Loves, but we might have the odd listener who’s got some extra questions for you. What’s the best way for people to reach out to you, if there’s something else they want to find out about?
Rachel: You can just reach out to me on LinkedIn. I’m just Rachel Mercer on LinkedIn. Please feel free to reach out. I love questions.
Charlie: Thank you. That’s really generous of you. I’m sure there’s going to be people who want to get in touch. We’ll pop the link in the show notes for everybody as well, so they can find you easily. That brings us to our end. All that’s left for me to say is thank you, thank you, thank you for building such a brilliant program, but also thank you, thank you, thank you for being such a brilliant guest. And that’s it from us at Let’s Talk Loyalty.
Rachel: Thank you so much for having me. It was a real pleasure.
Paula: This show is brought to you by the Australian Loyalty Association, the leading organization for loyalty networking and education in the Asia-Pacific region. Their Asia-Pacific Loyalty Conference will take place on the 7th and 8th of August this year at the Gold Coast Australia. With over 350 guests in attendance, including yours truly from Let’s Talk Loyalty. I can’t wait to meet so many loyalty experts from the Asia-Pacific region in person. Register now to hear global experts discuss current trends in loyalty marketing. There will be fantastic networking opportunities, hosted drinks and dinners, appointment bookings, competitions and great prizes to be won.
Visit australianloyaltyassociation.com to find out more.
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