Paula: Hello, and welcome to Let’s Talk Loyalty, an industry podcast for loyalty marketing professionals.
Paula: I’m Paula Thomas, the founder and CEO of Let’s Talk Loyalty and Loyalty TV.
Paula: If you love learning about loyalty marketing, we’ve now published more than 600 episodes of Let’s Talk Loyalty podcast.
Paula: Featuring loyalty managers from some of the world’s leading brands, for you to listen to.
Paula: Or tune in to watch our latest video interviews on www.loyalty.tv.
Paula: Today’s episode is hosted by Carly Neubauer, managing director of Elevate Loyalty, an Australian based company specializing in loyalty and incentive services, and managing director of One Tap Group, a UK based company providing loyalty payment services.
Paula: Enjoy.
Carly: Hello and welcome to today’s episode of Let’s Talk Loyalty.
Carly: My name is Carly Neubauer and I’m the managing director of Elevate Loyalty, an Australian based company specializing in loyalty and incentive services, and managing director of One Tap Group in the UK, specializing in loyalty payment technology.
Carly: Today I’m talking with Kristy Elsworth, executive manager of e-commerce and loyalty at Thermomix Australia.
Carly: With a background building loyalty programs in a range of industries in Australia, Kristy brings a wealth of knowledge on exactly how to create an effective program from the ground up.
Carly: Please enjoy my conversation with Kristy Elsworth.
Carly: Hi, Kristy, and welcome.
Kristy: Thanks, Carly.
Kristy: Thanks so much for having me.
Carly: Well, thank you so much for your time today.
Carly: I’m excited that we’re talking because so many people may have heard about the recent launch of your current loyalty program, MyMix Rewards.
Carly: But before this, you’ve worked with some pretty impressive programs.
Carly: We’re going to discuss the behind the scenes to launch a program, how to get it from concept, tested, approved, and then live.
Carly: Because as we all know, there is so much work that goes into the development of a program before we all get to see this finished product in market.
Carly: Now, as everybody knows, we always start with one very important question.
Carly: Which is your favorite loyalty program?
Kristy: Look, mine is a very common and very popular favorite, and that is Mecca Beauty Loop.
Kristy: It’s become my favorite, particularly the last couple of years, because I’ve got a 12-year-old daughter, and she’s recently taken an avid interest in her own skincare.
Kristy: So it’s become a really nice moment for us to connect and have fun seeing what’s in our Beauty Loop box and then trialing it together.
Kristy: So yeah, it’s a nice little emotional moment for us.
Carly: That’s fabulous.
Carly: So it’s the loyalty structure, but also that personal level for you, is it?
Kristy: Yeah, it is.
Kristy: It’s a real personal one for me.
Kristy: And I guess having that emotional aspect, it does definitely keep me engaged with the program, because my daughter now very much motivates me to keep spending so that we can maintain our tier status.
Carly: Good.
Carly: Family tier status.
Carly: Very nice.
Carly: So what I’d love to do is start with your background.
Carly: As I mentioned, you have quite an extensive experience in loyalty and with a range of different loyalty programs.
Carly: Can you take us back to sort of your first dabble in loyalty?
Kristy: Sure.
Kristy: So look, I’ve been working in loyalty now for about 15 years.
Kristy: And my first experience in loyalty was working at Sigma Pharmaceuticals on the AMCAL and Guardian Pharmacy loyalty programs.
Kristy: And I was brought into the business to help them relaunch their programs.
Kristy: And they were looking at it from all facets, from the skin of the program, so what the customers would see, as well as reviewing the proposition, the benefits, and the technology as well, so that we could move to being more integrated and start capturing unique customer data.
Kristy: And back in those days, it was special to also be able to capture what was in people’s baskets.
Kristy: And that was part of that transition.
Kristy: So we went through that process at Sigma Pharmaceuticals and successfully relaunched both of those programs.
Kristy: And then after that experience, I was very lucky to get the opportunity to move to Baker’s Delight and launch their new program known as Doe Getters.
Kristy: And that was a really wonderful experience to move to that business where they’d had a stamp card in place for some time, which had developed a lot of loyalty and love from a lot of customers over a long time.
Kristy: So it was a really fantastic opportunity to work on that, to create something new and fresh for customers while still nurturing what they loved about the stamp card.
Kristy: And then obviously within that deliver business benefits in that it was literally a stamp card.
Kristy: So we were moving away from something which we couldn’t track or measure performance of and certainly had no unique customer data around to something that could do those things while still offering added value to the customers.
Kristy: So that was an amazing experience to work on on that program.
Kristy: And at that one went on to win the ALA best new program launched recently as well.
Kristy: So I was super excited to see that.
Kristy: It’s like the ultimate combo when you know it’s meeting customer needs and delivering on the business expectations.
Kristy: So that was fantastic.
Kristy: And then finally, my current role, as you mentioned, is at The Mix, which is home to Thermomix, The Mix Shop and Cobalt.
Kristy: And we only launched that program in August.
Kristy: And that’s a points based program.
Kristy: And without giving too much away, there’s a lot more to come in future phases with that program.
Kristy: But yeah, very excited to have been a part of all of those program design and implementations.
Carly: So before we go in to the new and latest program, I’d love to hear more about your experience with Baker’s Delight.
Carly: Because we have talked before around the fact that you originally had a stamp card.
Carly: What was the evolution like?
Carly: How did you approach that to get a new program into market?
Kristy: Yeah, so we very much, I mean, we started out with the basics of understanding, well, why do you want a loyalty program?
Kristy: Because while the stamp card would absolutely help build brand and customer loyalty, it’s not a loyalty program in that we couldn’t communicate to customers.
Kristy: So we couldn’t actively engage them, understand their behavior or change their behavior.
Kristy: So the first starting point for designing that program was aligning on why we wanted a loyalty program and what the objectives would be.
Kristy: And then the second component to it was then having a look at engaging the customer base to understand what’s important to that customer base.
Kristy: As I mentioned, they were super loyal and super passionate.
Kristy: A lot of customers were hesitant, if you like, about moving away from the stamp card but equally could see the value in doing so.
Kristy: So it was very much also about engaging customers as well as the business to understand, well, what benefits would be most desirable to you in the program.
Kristy: And then from there going about through the program design stage.
Kristy: And then the most important part, which is when you feel like you’ve got to a point where you’ve aligned on the objectives, you’ve engaged both the key stakeholders in the business as well as your customer base as to what they’d be seeking and what would be most desirable for them in a new loyalty program.
Kristy: It’s then taking that out to market and validating it.
Kristy: And so that’s where you get to the proof of concept.
Kristy: And for me, that’s a non-negotiable.
Kristy: If you’re looking at relaunching or launching a new loyalty program, is to validate that the program that you have designed is going to achieve the desired objectives and also meet customer expectations.
Kristy: It’s a wonderful learning opportunity before you go out to market with a loyalty program, which I use the analogy of a loyalty program being like a marriage, it’s a long-term commitment.
Kristy: And so you should probably test a few things out before you go down that path.
Carly: Fantastic analogy.
Carly: So tell us a bit about the objectives and the problems you were trying to solve.
Carly: So how did you take that to the business, test that out and then start to validate it with your customers?
Kristy: Yeah.
Kristy: So certainly when it came to Baker’s Delight, the analysis that we had done and the information we did have informed us that our greatest challenge was purchase frequency.
Kristy: So we were in a time and we still are in a time where people are seeking convenience.
Kristy: They are time poor.
Kristy: And this particular category, obviously the most convenient place for most people to shop for their bread is going to be while they’re already in the supermarket and they’re just walking down that aisle.
Kristy: So the challenge for us was how can we get them to make that trip, that extra could be 10 meters, 100 meters away from the supermarket to make that additional trip to buy their bread at Baker’s Delight.
Kristy: So what we were seeing as a result of that was a decline in purchase frequency which was a challenge, also a huge opportunity for the business to get that traffic back into the bakeries.
Kristy: So that was a good starting point for us and we all certainly aligned on that being a key objective of the program was driving an increase in purchase frequency.
Kristy: So from that, we were able to look at the various program designs and structures that we could build that would help influence behavior in that way.
Kristy: And we engaged customers through doing a survey to understand what would be desirable for them, what would be desirable enough to change that behavior.
Kristy: And then also we were able to take that program design and do some financial modeling on it to look at what would be optimum so that it was achievable and desirable for customers, but also was going to achieve the business benefit.
Carly: This is really cool.
Carly: I love the Genuine Loyalty with the 100-meter behavior change.
Carly: You’re trying to move them across the shopping center.
Carly: So from the surveys that you did as well, and what sort of things were coming back, and how did you start to roll them into the new plan?
Kristy: Yeah.
Kristy: So certainly people are price sensitive.
Kristy: When it comes to grocery shopping, at the end of the day, it’s a commodity item.
Kristy: So we knew that offering good value was going to be a component of it.
Kristy: And without doubt, customers expressed a desire for a points-based program where they would reach a certain level of points and be issued some sort of reward.
Kristy: And we could look at what the average order value was as well from the data and understand from that approximately how many transactions or trips, if you like, it would take for a customer to reach that threshold.
Kristy: And then also look at the average frequency.
Kristy: So we were very much for average frequency.
Kristy: We were relying on customers’ quantitative feedback through a survey.
Kristy: So you do take into account the say-do gap, as in people say they come every so often.
Kristy: But that was why we knew we had to do a POC as well to validate that.
Kristy: So yeah, we were able to identify, okay, what’s a good stretch for people in terms of if they’re coming, say on average every three weeks, or they’re saying they’re coming every three weeks, is it realistic to expect them to come every two weeks?
Kristy: And that was where we could figure out what the expiration period was going to be on that voucher reward as well.
Kristy: And yeah, that was what we took to market to trial in the proof of concept.
Carly: And that’s really great.
Carly: The fact that you’ve identified that say-do gap, because I think a lot of people in loyalty would have experienced that, where it’s easy to run a survey, get some feedback.
Carly: But is it real?
Carly: And do people really know their own behaviour?
Carly: I think it comes down to.
Kristy: Absolutely.
Kristy: Yeah.
Kristy: I think it’s very easy for people to lose the context, especially if it’s a time-based question.
Kristy: It’s sometimes hard for you to think back and go, well, how often do I actually visit?
Kristy: And you kind of take a bit of a guess.
Kristy: And so what I would tend to find in all the programmes that I’ve worked on is you have what people say they do, and then you get the actual behaviour.
Kristy: And it’s somewhere in the middle is about usually where your land is as to what the actual is.
Carly: Definitely.
Carly: So the proof of concept, and this is such a great topic and really glad we can discuss this because this is so valid for getting a programme sold internally and then off the ground externally, of course.
Carly: Can you tell us about the proof of concept that you ran for this programme?
Kristy: Yes, sure.
Kristy: So we chose Tasmania because we had eight bakeries.
Kristy: The important thing with the proof of concept is you need to be able to ring fence the group of customers that you’re talking to because you’re going to use everyone else as a baseline to be confident that the behaviour change you’re seeing is as a result of the proof of concept.
Kristy: So another important facet to that is with that customer group that you’re ring fencing, you need to be disciplined enough to strip away all other aspects that could possibly influence customer behaviour for the period of the proof of concept.
Kristy: Maybe not all, but even 90 percent is a good start.
Kristy: Because you are obviously trying to measure change and you want to be able to directly attribute that back to the proof of concept that you’re implementing.
Kristy: So for us, we chose Tasmania with the eight bakeries.
Kristy: We knew that was enough for us to validate and get enough data to feel that the results we get were valid and applicable to a larger audience.
Kristy: And we were able to then compare those results to the rest of Australia.
Kristy: We ran the proof of concept in Tasmania for a period of 12 weeks.
Kristy: And again, that was based on having a little bit of insight into the average frequency.
Kristy: The customers had told us they were visiting to know, okay, in that time, we should be able to see at least more than one visit from most customers, enough to then know whether or not the proposition was changing the behaviour.
Kristy: And it was a points-based proposition.
Kristy: We just used plastic cards at that time because with a proof of concept, you really want to do it, I guess, as most cost-effective as you can.
Kristy: And in most businesses, they want it as quickly as possible as well.
Kristy: So it was for us about tapping into our existing technology.
Kristy: So we had point of sale and we were able to do what I would call our minimum viable product proposition in that proof of concept through the point of sale.
Kristy: The only thing that we had to install was scanners, so we could scan the barcode of the plastic cards we were using for the proof of concept.
Kristy: And yeah, so then we went down to Tasmania and worked very closely with the franchisees there to make sure that they had all of the training they needed to feel confident to help sign people up to what we called from a customer perspective, a promotion, because you want to be clear that this is a short term thing.
Kristy: It’s not a forever thing.
Kristy: So don’t call it a program.
Kristy: And yeah, that was in market for 12 weeks.
Kristy: And we were tracking the data every day.
Kristy: If we needed to, we would make small tweaks to the program.
Kristy: We also trialed some tactical activity during that time.
Kristy: Again, it’s a great learning ground for proof of concept.
Kristy: It is your opportunity to test and learn.
Kristy: So you can run some tactical offers during the proof of concept to see the results you get.
Kristy: You can compare that to how your base proposition is going.
Kristy: And we had some emails as well.
Kristy: We were collecting emails and mobile numbers as part of the proof of concept.
Kristy: And email was our main form of communication.
Kristy: And the important role it played was reminding customers or communicating to customers when they had a voucher and reminding them throughout that period before it was going to expire.
Kristy: Again, great opportunity.
Kristy: You’ve got your emails there.
Kristy: You can test and learn as much as you can so that you can take those learnings into the life cycle communications you might build out for the launch of your program.
Kristy: And so we certainly did that as well for the duration of the proof of concept.
Carly: Oh, congratulations.
Carly: And you did touch on something that I will go back to the franchisees.
Carly: So this is the second large loyalty program you’ve worked in, Sigma, and now obviously, like it’s delight, where you’re working with franchisees.
Carly: How did you approach that?
Carly: Because they’re also extremely important key stakeholders in the rollout.
Kristy: Yeah, absolutely.
Kristy: I mean, I view it as having two customer groups.
Kristy: We have the end consumer and then we have the franchisees being another customer group.
Kristy: And it was the same at Sigma.
Kristy: It’s really good because it holds you super accountable to understanding that you have their small businesses at heart.
Kristy: And so you really have to demonstrate the extra value that they’re going to get from having the loyalty program in their bakery.
Kristy: And to do that, in my experience, the best approach is to distill it down to what will it mean for me and my bakery.
Kristy: And it’s not just the financials.
Kristy: Obviously, they’re interested in understanding what incremental revenue they might get, how many new customers they might get, for example.
Kristy: But it’s also demonstrating the other extraordinary value that comes from having a loyalty program.
Kristy: That’s in the form of understanding your customers better.
Kristy: You know, in the case of Baker’s Delight, they obviously have a very large range of products.
Kristy: And getting insights from your loyalty program as to what products are purchased most on what days and what products are being accompanied with other products so that they could optimize their production is another valuable insight for the bakeries.
Kristy: And there’s a lot of examples like that where it can really facilitate greater efficiencies, but also a greater level of personalization for the franchisees in how they’re going about communicating to their customers.
Kristy: There’s local area marketing opportunities that open up.
Kristy: So there’s a whole range of other benefits beyond just, I guess, the financials that you really work hard to communicate and educate the franchisees on and work with them.
Kristy: And yeah, see how you can enhance their business.
Carly: You also mentioned that you worked with plastic cards and your recommendation was use what you have available in that proof of concept stage.
Carly: From there, how did you then decide and what was your decision-making around the technology implementation to roll it out?
Kristy: So, one of the things we did ask customers in the survey when we were designing the program was how they would like to interact with the program.
Kristy: And you have to keep in mind in this specific example, they are moving away from paper stamp cards.
Kristy: And so for a large portion of our very loyal customer base, it would be a big leap to expect them to go from there to say using an app.
Kristy: So we certainly had a reasonable split of people who still wanted plastic cards.
Kristy: And obviously a lot of those customers have been with the brand for a very long time and are very loyal.
Kristy: So we want to honor that request.
Kristy: But equally, we had a portion of customers and we knew new customers coming through that would respond well to an app.
Kristy: So in terms of method of interaction, we wanted to offer both at launch.
Kristy: But as far as selecting a technology, like a backend technology to support loyalty in the longer term, it was very much about going through the process of starting with documenting all of the requirements that you have for your loyalty program in terms of what you want the customer experience to be like, writing out all of the user stories.
Kristy: And you have to sit in all persona seats, I guess, when you’re writing out those user stories.
Kristy: So you’ll end up with probably hundreds and hundreds of user stories.
Kristy: I know we did, because you have to sit yourself in the role of being a customer.
Kristy: You have to sit yourself in the role of being a franchisee.
Kristy: You have to sit yourself in the role of being a loyalty manager versus an analyst versus working in marketing.
Kristy: So, it’s very much a long and detailed process writing out those user requirements.
Kristy: And then it’s about going out to market and doing an RFP to look at what vendors are going to be best suited to meet those requirements within the context of whatever budgetary constraints you’re working within, which you will have determined partly through doing your financial modeling.
Kristy: Because you’ll have an idea of the forecasted incremental gain that you’ll get from your what I’d call minimum viable product launch of your loyalty program.
Kristy: You’ll also have an idea of the margins you’re working on in your business.
Kristy: You’ll have an indication from the business as to where they’d like to land in terms of maybe net profit.
Kristy: And then you’re kind of left with a slither.
Kristy: And so you’re working within the slither to determine how much you can afford to spend on technology and resources to get your loyalty program running.
Carly: A lot of people to consider, a lot of stakeholders there with a minute budget at the end there.
Carly: So, well done.
Paula: Absolutely.
Carly: Very good.
Carly: Yeah.
Carly: So from here, you moved into a new role.
Carly: Can you tell us a little bit about the new role and the current program that you’re working in?
Kristy: Sure.
Kristy: So currently, I’m Executive Manager for E-Commerce and Loyalty at the Mix.
Kristy: So as I mentioned earlier, that includes the brands Thermomix, Cobalt and the Mix Shop.
Kristy: And the new program that Sony launched in August is called My Mix Rewards.
Kristy: So we went through a very similar process to what I went through at Baker’s Delight in terms of coming into the business, making sure we are aligned on the objectives, slash the business problems and opportunities you want to take advantage of.
Kristy: And then we went about designing the program.
Kristy: And so the program we have designed is a points based program.
Kristy: Again, it is designed around taking into account customer feedback.
Kristy: So we went through a similar process in terms of engaging customers in a survey to understand which benefits, which type of benefits they would value the most.
Kristy: And that certainly helped guide our decision making in our program design.
Kristy: And they told us financial benefits, which is no surprise, to be honest, it’s probably almost consistently the number one in most programs I’ve worked on.
Kristy: Customers are seeking value.
Kristy: And equally, we knew as a business, we could see certainly on the mix shop, which is the e-commerce component of the business, we could see that the opportunity for us was to again increase purchase frequency.
Kristy: So we very much designed a minimum viable product, if you like, for our launch proposition with a points-based program.
Kristy: Again, the threshold, the earned threshold is designed around what we know is desirable and achievable for customers based on their current average order value, but also beneficial for the business.
Kristy: And then they receive a voucher when they hit that earned threshold.
Kristy: And that voucher is obviously designed to get the customers back within a time frame.
Carly: So one thing you just mentioned as well is the value.
Carly: And I think no one can really argue that in loyalty.
Carly: And so many people would be experiencing wanting to provide value to the customers and the members in the program.
Carly: But on the flip side, demonstrating it.
Carly: Can you tell us how you’ve overcome that?
Carly: Because someone’s perception of value versus somebody else’s, how do you demonstrate that to your member base?
Kristy: Yeah, well, I mean, it does definitely very brand specific.
Kristy: I think so.
Kristy: And it is a little bit about knowing your customers.
Kristy: Hopefully, if you’re designing a loyalty program, it’s because you’ve done some analysis and you can see the opportunity there both to enhance the experience for your customers and for your business.
Kristy: So I think there’s a lot of different ways of defining value and it can be something that you can actually get clarity on from your customers.
Kristy: I always kind of say, if you’re not sure and you’ve got a customer base, just ask them.
Kristy: I think a lot of businesses kind of hold back.
Kristy: It doesn’t have to be a big complicated survey either.
Kristy: Sometimes just a 10 question one is the quick way forward, but you will get clarity as to what value means to your customers from that survey.
Kristy: But the other ways of looking at it are packaging it up through personalization.
Kristy: So if you can understand and segment your customers using any different attributes really, but for example, if I understand that there’s a portion of my customer base that just loves bakeware and that this is relevant for the mix, then I’ll know how to represent value to them by saying, this is the value of a voucher and you can put it towards this particular item.
Kristy: So it’s about personalizing it.
Kristy: So it’s not always talking to it from a dollar value, but you’re talking about it as something you know is of value to that customer.
Kristy: And that comes through personalization.
Carly: And do you have an opinion between vouchers versus discounts?
Carly: How do you approach that?
Kristy: I do have a view on that.
Kristy: I think that there’s different perceptions, customer perceptions around a discount and there’s different value placed on a discount versus a voucher.
Kristy: And in my experience, a voucher is perceived as being more valuable because it’s kind of like, let’s say you’ve got a $10 voucher, it’s like giving someone $10 versus offering someone a discount.
Kristy: It’s less tangible.
Kristy: And I think the other thing with discounts, like be their percentage off for spend and save style offers, is that they are quite prolific in the Australian retail environment, certainly.
Kristy: And so you see them more often.
Kristy: So they kind of come and go.
Kristy: You feel like you’ll see a discount during the big sale periods, like the seasonal period we’re about to go into with Black Friday, Cyber Monday.
Kristy: You’ll probably see a lot of percentage discounts.
Kristy: So seeing that as a loyalty member, albeit that you might have earned it or it might be unique to you, I think there’s a different expectation that there could be another one of those types of discounts just around the corner.
Kristy: Whereas when you’ve earned a dollar based voucher, I feel there’s a higher perceived value around that voucher.
Carly: Yeah, I could totally agree with that.
Carly: One thing I’d love to talk more to you about is the proof of concept.
Carly: So this is something you’ve done in depth now for a couple of really big programs.
Carly: What are some of your non-negotiables or tips?
Carly: How would you recommend someone approach this if they’re doing it for the first time or about to launch into this with their own program and in their business?
Kristy: Yeah, I’ve got kind of 10 critical steps or factors, if you like, that I make sure we tick through with every program.
Kristy: So the first one, I’m sorry, I feel like I’ve broken record.
Kristy: I’ve said it a few times, but it’s just being super clear on the objectives.
Kristy: Don’t ever assume you need to be very, very aligned and I would challenge you to go beyond surface level of objectives.
Kristy: So for example, earlier, you asked me about value and if that’s one of your objectives, you really need to get clear on how you define value because it can be defined in so many different ways and the same can apply from a lot of what I call commonly seen objectives in loyalty programs.
Kristy: So be clear on your objectives and make sure you define what some of the key words in those objectives mean.
Kristy: That’s your starting point.
Kristy: The second point is consider who your audience is going to be.
Kristy: So I mentioned earlier that at Baker’s Delight, we chose Tasmania because it was geographically isolated, not confusing for customers and would allow us to ring fence that group of customers and then use the rest of Australia as our benchmark.
Kristy: So you need to really think about how you’re going to go about that.
Kristy: Because you’re obviously looking for accurate, reliable, valid data outputs from the proof of concept.
Kristy: And so you absolutely need to make sure that you’re very mindful in terms of how you go about choosing your audience to ensure that it can meet that criteria.
Kristy: The third step is measurement.
Kristy: So obviously you’re not doing the proof of concept for nothing.
Kristy: So by this point, the good thing is if you’ve fulfilled step one and you’ve defined your objectives and you’ve really gone into the nitty gritty of defining some keywords in those objectives, you should have some metrics fall out of that pretty easily, but you want to be really, really clear on that upfront.
Kristy: So how we go and actually measure the impact that our proposition that we’re testing in the proof of concept is having on customer behavior and therefore also what are the outputs we’re expecting to see from that and being able to measure those.
Kristy: Equally, you want to make sure that you’re able to measure those in your control group or your benchmark group.
Kristy: So knowing what you’re going to measure and how you’re going to measure it is really, really important.
Kristy: Again, it doesn’t mean that you need really sophisticated tools.
Kristy: Like I spent a lot of time in Excel and data extracting during proof of concepts.
Kristy: As long as you can get the data, that’s the important thing.
Kristy: Step number four is make sure you stick to your minimum viable product proposition and just avoid scope creep.
Kristy: So there’ll be a temptation at all times.
Kristy: And scope creeps common throughout the whole project.
Kristy: It just will be.
Kristy: Businesses get excited, which is great.
Kristy: But there’s value in just sticking to your minimal viable product, because you can always add more.
Kristy: But what you will struggle to do is take things away.
Kristy: You have to keep in mind that the purpose of the proof of concept is to measure the impact of behavior change.
Kristy: If you add too much to it, you might find it difficult to identify the root cause of the behavior change as well.
Kristy: So you want to really look at your core proposition and only focus on testing that.
Kristy: The fifth point is don’t be afraid to iterate.
Kristy: When you are in that proof of concept environment, you’ve done the work to get yourself there, and hopefully you’ve got an engaged customer base participating in that proof of concept, or what I would call a promotion for terms of this.
Kristy: And if you’re not seeing the results you expected to, that doesn’t mean it’s a fail.
Kristy: It’s actually a great learning opportunity.
Kristy: That’s where success comes from, is from those moments of going, well, this hasn’t worked.
Kristy: And that’s when you actually pat yourself on the back and go, thank goodness we did a proof of concept.
Kristy: And you look and try to evaluate and understand why.
Kristy: And if you’ve invested in really understanding what’s desirable and valuable for your customers, and you’ve done your data analysis before coming up with your MVP proposition, you should be able to identify some other things that you could try during your proof of concept that could potentially achieve the outcome that you’re expecting or desiring as a business.
Carly: That’s a really great point you make there that if it isn’t working, that’s still a success because you’ve run the POC for a certain reason, and you’ve identified that.
Carly: So that’s still a great outcome because you’ve prevented yourself going down the wrong path.
Carly: So I think that’s a really key one.
Kristy: Absolutely.
Kristy: It’s critical.
Kristy: I think it’s a critical message across most things to do with loyalty.
Kristy: We live in this wonderful environment of test and learn.
Kristy: So I don’t even really like using the term failure because I just don’t think it is a real thing.
Kristy: I don’t think it’s possible.
Kristy: Then the sixth point is, think about the time frame.
Kristy: How long do you need it to be in market to get valid data that gives you confidence moving forward?
Kristy: That will really vary a lot depending on your business, the proposition, and what you’re trying to test and evaluate.
Kristy: Most businesses will want a proof of concept done as quickly as possible.
Kristy: But when you’re in it, it’s important to stay in it until you feel like you’ve got enough information.
Kristy: So in the case of frequency, if you’re trying to evaluate effectiveness of changing behavior, sometimes there is no quick route to that.
Kristy: Depending on the average frequency that you’re benchmarking against before you were testing your proposition, you might have to be in market for four to six months, even longer.
Kristy: But it’s worth taking the time because again, I look at loyalty programs, a lifetime commitment, that’s just a small window of time and it’s an investment.
Kristy: It’s not an expense, it’s an investment and you have to get your mind around that.
Kristy: Number seven is the technology to support it.
Kristy: I touched on this earlier.
Kristy: You don’t have to invest in technology.
Kristy: You are just trying to test out a proposition here.
Kristy: I would urge you to look at what you have available or use something that is kind of an off-the-shelf solution so that it’s quick and easy.
Kristy: It doesn’t have to be perfect.
Kristy: As I said, even if it means you need to do some kind of manual tweaking to it to make it work, it’s worthwhile.
Kristy: The important thing is that you don’t let the technology or the cost or time of technology get in the way of you doing a proof of concept because it can become a blocker and you don’t want to skip this step, basically.
Kristy: Number eight is business alignment and engagement.
Kristy: Up to this point, hopefully, you’ve taken your team and relevant stakeholders in your team on that journey of designing the program and understanding why you’re looking at investing in a loyalty program and making sure that they’re clear on what the objectives of the program are.
Kristy: You really want to keep them engaged throughout the process of the proof of concept as well.
Kristy: You want the business to be really seeing the value that they’re getting from having the proof of concept.
Kristy: They’ve supported you, they’ve invested in taking the time to do this proof of concept, so making sure you keep them engaged throughout is important, especially you’ve got to think about it in context.
Kristy: If you’re going to need something additional during it, be it you might need more time, you might need to iterate something.
Kristy: If they’re engaged, you’ll just feel like an organic part of the journey if you’re sharing results and learnings as you’re going along.
Kristy: Number nine is make sure you get customer feedback.
Kristy: I’ve said this a few times, if you’re not sure, just ask, well, there’s a great time to do that and that is throughout the proof of concept and certainly after it.
Kristy: Get that customer feedback, understand what did they like about that proof of concept promotion that you ran?
Kristy: What didn’t they like?
Kristy: What do they think could be improved?
Kristy: There will be some golden nuggets that you will get out of that that you might never have seen coming and they’ll be invaluable to help inform or validate, you know, your decision making moving forward.
Kristy: And number 10 is the business case.
Kristy: So everything in your POC will ladder up to the business case.
Kristy: It’s everything will come to a head in that business case.
Kristy: So the POC will form the foundation of that and it will help you get board approval or whatever, depending on the structure of your business.
Kristy: So make sure you’re always preparing for that business case.
Kristy: So all of the steps before that should be helping lead to a really, really strong business case that you can feel confident in presenting to get approval to actually go ahead with your loyalty program.
Carly: Thank you so much for sharing.
Carly: I feel like we’ve now got this very structured and clear guide exactly how to do it.
Carly: This is the how to of proof of concepts in loyalty.
Carly: That’s absolutely fabulous.
Carly: And especially with your experience running these into really different industries as well, but the principles and the structure stays the same, irrespective of the type of program, let’s say.
Carly: So that’s absolutely amazing guide.
Carly: Thank you.
Kristy: Thank you.
Carly: I’d like to ask a little bit about where you’re going and what you’re doing next as well.
Carly: And a good friend of yours has sent me a message and asked me to ask you, what are you trying to achieve?
Carly: Where are you going next?
Kristy: This question has to come from Adam Posner.
Kristy: I know that without question, this is one of our favorite questions to ask each other.
Kristy: Well, look, I mean, I am always, the thing I love about loyalty is, is the learnings and the insights that we get.
Kristy: So I’m always looking for opportunities for growth and progression.
Kristy: As I alluded to earlier, certainly in MyMix Rewards, the program that I’m currently working on, there’s just a wealth of opportunity ahead of us.
Kristy: And the thing that we’re working through at the moment is, what do we prioritize as part of what those next phases look like?
Kristy: So that’s certainly the opportunity for us there.
Kristy: And the other part of it is the customer data part, which is just invaluable.
Kristy: And as with any new program, we’re certainly working through, how can we get the most out of the customer data that we now have coming in?
Kristy: You know, so when you launch a new program, you’ll find that you get a lot of questions across the business and you have to figure out how you’re going to prioritize answering those questions.
Kristy: And so we’re just working through that.
Kristy: It’s a good problem to have that one, but just working through the priorities is the important thing.
Carly: Absolutely true.
Carly: Absolutely true.
Carly: In loyalty and in life.
Kristy: Yeah.
Carly: You did say you love the industry.
Carly: If we talk a bit more broadly around future of loyalty, where we’re going as an industry, what are some of your opinions around what we should look out for next year, coming to 2025 or what’s on the horizon?
Kristy: Yeah.
Kristy: I, without doubt, everyone’s talking about AI, aren’t they?
Kristy: It’s a hot topic.
Kristy: It’s probably almost an old topic now, but I can certainly see us heading towards hyper-personalization without question.
Kristy: I think that’ll be the greatest leap that we should see in the next couple of years as a result of AI.
Kristy: It’s a common challenge, the personalization, and I think that’s where we’ll really see AI fuel significant change in that area.
Kristy: Equally, I’m seeing more done with card linking, which is an interesting space.
Kristy: Almost a little bit controversial in my opinion.
Kristy: Grant, great from a customer data point of view.
Kristy: We’re getting exceptional value from getting that depth of data, but the thing that will come into play is privacy concerns and security concerns, no doubt.
Kristy: So I’ll be, I’m kind of just watching that space to see what happens.
Kristy: And I’m seeing more happen in terms of partnerships, more strategic partnerships being leveraged to reach new customers and develop brand affinity with relevant brands to grow customer bases.
Kristy: And I think that’s an interesting space as well.
Kristy: So just kind of, they’re the main things that I’m watching on and trying to also educate myself on more and more.
Carly: I love it.
Carly: Watch this space.
Carly: Let’s see what happens in 2025.
Kristy: That’s right.
Carly: And before we wrap up, can I ask you, what are you most proud of?
Kristy: So look, definitely very proud of the programs that I’ve been a part of designing and implementing.
Kristy: It’s been an amazing experience.
Kristy: Like I’m always learning and I love data, like a massive data nerd.
Kristy: So for me, living in that space means you’re all into the data and all into learning and analysis, which is fantastic.
Kristy: But I think overall, most of all, probably just the coaching, like the loyalty coaching that I’ve been lucky enough to be able to impart on team members around me over my journey.
Kristy: Like I’ve really loved that part of my role.
Kristy: I know, speaking of Adam Posner, the cheeky menace who popped in that question, he actually started and really fueled my love of loyalty.
Kristy: So 15 years ago, when I started working at Sigma, that was the first time I met Adam and he was so passionate.
Kristy: And for someone who was new to the loyalty world, that passion was very contagious.
Kristy: And for me, it was probably the first time I’d been able to sit down and felt like I was talking the same language as someone when it came to stuff to do with data, like customer data and the passion for it, which is what got me into loyalty in the first place was that wanting clarity, I wanted black and white.
Kristy: I didn’t want to be in the gray world where I couldn’t quantify the impact of the marketing activity I was doing.
Kristy: So loyalty was the space for it.
Kristy: So for me, having been around that and knowing what I guess a career defining moment it was for me to meet Adam, I’ve really enjoyed being able to impart some of that passion on my team members and coach them and guide them.
Kristy: And, you know, it’s been wonderful to, you know, guide and mentor team members through their first program design, through their first POC experience.
Kristy: And yeah, taking people on that journey has been really satisfying.
Carly: That’s absolutely something you should be proud of.
Carly: So amazing work.
Carly: I’m sure they all really appreciate it as well.
Carly: No doubt.
Kristy: Thank you.
Carly: No doubt at all.
Carly: Well, a very big thank you for joining me today.
Carly: It’s been so fantastic to talk with you and really, really appreciate your time.
Kristy: Thanks so much for having me.
Kristy: I really appreciate it.
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