Supercheap Auto Club: Transforming Loyalty for 5 Million Members (#810)

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

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

Paula: If you work in loyalty marketing, join us every week to hear the latest ideas and insights for loyalty marketing specialists around the world.

Carly: Welcome to Let’s Talk Loyalty and Loyalty TV, a show for loyalty marketing professionals, where we feature insightful conversations with loyalty professionals from the world’s leading brands.

Carly: My name is Carly Neubauer.

Carly: I’m the Managing Director of Elevate Loyalty and Loyalty Economics.

Carly: My guest today is Fiona Clifford, Member Engagement and Marketing Manager for Supercheap Auto.

Carly: If you work in loyalty marketing, join us every week to hear the latest ideas and insights from other loyalty experts from around the world.

Carly: Enjoy.

Carly: Hi, Fiona.

Carly: Welcome to Let’s Talk Loyalty and Loyalty TV.

Carly: So great to have you joining us.

Fiona: Thank you so much for having me, Carly.

Fiona: Happy to be here.

Carly: So as you would know, there’s two key questions we ask all of our guests when we start off an episode.

Carly: And the first one is, if you could tell us about your favourite book or a book that really stands out to you that you’ve really enjoyed reading from a business or loyalty perspective.

Fiona: So Choosing a Favourite Book is quite challenging for me.

Fiona: I do feel like that changes depending on where I’m at in my life at the time.

Fiona: One that I have read quite recently, which I really enjoyed, was a book called Be the Unicorn by William Vandam Bloomin.

Fiona: And obviously it was the title that grabbed me in the first place.

Fiona: Great title.

Fiona: Unicorn, yeah, really great title.

Fiona: But it’s basically a self-development slash leadership book.

Fiona: It’s based on a lot of data and insights from thousands of executive and professional interviews that they’ve conducted in the past.

Fiona: And it talks to human traits that help high-performing people succeed and stand out in a professional environment.

Fiona: So it’s leaning into the concept that’s not just your technical expertise, that will help you be a high-performer.

Fiona: But those, they refer to them as soft skills.

Fiona: So those human traits that can be learnt and can be developed that can really help you succeed.

Fiona: Talks to qualities like being curious, being authentic, those kind of traits that you can really help develop within yourself personally, but also really good traits to look for if you’re standing up a team or hiring someone new.

Fiona: So I found that particularly interesting, that one.

Carly: That’s a great choice.

Carly: It sounds excellent and it will definitely go on the Let’s Talk Loyalty book list.

Carly: So thank you for your recommendation.

Carly: That’s perfect.

Carly: So the other question we always ask our guests is, your favorite loyalty program and you can’t choose your own, but what would it be if you’re a member and consumer?

Fiona: Well, yes, obviously the Supercheap Auto Club would be my first choice.

Fiona: But if I didn’t have to choose a close second.

Fiona: From a personal perspective, I’m a busy mom, I have a busy life.

Fiona: I really value loyalty programs, but I can really see the reward and I can easily use them and really easily see that value.

Fiona: I think a lot of consumers in general are the same at the moment.

Fiona: So probably the Fly Buyers program that Coles have, the Everyday Rewards program that Willys have, is something that I really use personally, and I can really see that tangible value.

Fiona: When I shop, I get rewarded, I can boost, I can do all of the things to gamify the experience and gain points that ultimately helps me save money.

Fiona: So I think it’s relevant to me, it’s easy for me to use, and I find that’s what consumers want.

Fiona: They want something that’s simple, they want something that’s really relevant, and something where they can really see that true value, and I think that’s what those programs do for me.

Fiona: So that’s on a personal level of what I use personally and find value from.

Fiona: There’s always the giants like Amazon and things like that, who have their subscription models, like they’re phenomenal, like the things that they can do and the broad reach that they have with Amazon, and their membership platform is phenomenal.

Fiona: So very aspirational, but yes, they are definitely giants in the field.

Carly: That’s good.

Carly: I love that you’ve touched on some really, really logical things that we all love as consumers.

Carly: It’s the simplicity, the value, but getting something back quickly and understanding and receiving it on the day, in the moment, and knowing that it’s there, it really does make a difference.

Fiona: Yeah, it really does.

Fiona: Yeah, life’s expensive.

Fiona: So I think that value and change is more important than ever for a really broad group of consumers.

Carly: Definitely.

Carly: So now we can talk about your actual favourite programme, which is the Supercheap Auto Club.

Carly: For our listeners who may not know the brand and or the programme, would you like to just give us a bit of an overview?

Fiona: So yeah, Supercheap Auto is an Australian and New Zealand automotive retailer.

Fiona: So we sell anything to do with your car or vehicle and everything in between.

Fiona: We have it in our retail stores.

Fiona: So Retail Network, we have about 360 stores across Australia and New Zealand.

Fiona: So lots of stuff, lots of visible stores, which is really great, lots of exposure.

Fiona: Within the Supercheap Auto brand, we have what we call the Supercheap Auto Club.

Fiona: So that’s our loyalty program.

Fiona: We have just over five million active members within that program.

Fiona: So we have lots and lots of loyal people that have followed us along a really big journey.

Fiona: So over 10 years, very close to 15 years, our program’s been going, the loyalty program.

Fiona: So we have lots of people that love our brand, love our club, really enthusiastic.

Fiona: In terms of the club offerings and what we have as a base, so we have Spend and Get is probably the biggest base program that we talk to.

Fiona: It’s an initiative that we’ve recently transformed to where customers will get $5 credit for every $100 they spend in store or online with us.

Fiona: So it’s cumulative, that can be spent over a calendar year, and that credit just continues to roll for them.

Fiona: So that’s been a really big change that we’ve recently done in FY26.

Fiona: So we previously had a different program structure.

Fiona: So the ultimate program for us, we’ve got the Spend and Get, we’ve got personalized offers that we send to our customers, we price match, receipt free warranty, lots of little things that go to provide value for our members.

Carly: It’s a really impressive program and I love where you’ve come from, especially the fact that you mentioned it’s 15 years in.

Carly: And we’ve got a shout out, you’ve recently won a really fantastic award.

Fiona: We did, yes.

Fiona: So we took home OREO Award for Best Loyalty Program, which was really exciting.

Fiona: So that was about a month ago, I think, at Time Flies.

Fiona: But just a really great recognition for the business.

Fiona: It was very much a team effort, as I said, with almost 15 years worth of time going into the loyalty program.

Fiona: We’ve had lots of really talented people involved with building that program to get it where it is today.

Fiona: So fantastic recognition for a lot of work done over many years.

Fiona: But particularly in the last 12 months, we have had a really big transformation of the program.

Fiona: So this was a great recognition of all that hard work in the last 12 months.

Fiona: So we did change our base model.

Fiona: We previously had what we called best price credit.

Fiona: Construct of that was that if a customer purchased something and it went on sale within a two-week window after their purchase, we would credit them the difference back.

Fiona: So it’s essentially a goodwill gesture is sort of how we sold it.

Fiona: So customers never felt like they got ripped off if something went on special.

Fiona: It was a really nice, generous thing to give customers and they did really enjoy that, that it was a nice, generous reward.

Fiona: The downside of it, it’s not something they were ever able to predict.

Fiona: So without knowing our promotional planning, they didn’t know if they were ever going to get anything.

Fiona: And it was a bit more of a lucky dip star reward than actual reward for spending across our whole range of products.

Fiona: So that brought us to changing the model.

Fiona: And we ultimately landed on spend and get, which as I said, $5 credit for every $100 that the customer spends with us.

Fiona: So that can be on anything.

Fiona: It’s not product specific.

Fiona: Sorry, there are very small amount of exclusions, such as gift cards and things like that.

Paula: Yeah, that makes sense.

Fiona: But broadly, anything you buy accumulates, and every time you hit $100 threshold, you get a $5 credit back onto your account.

Fiona: So yeah, it’s been a lot of work.

Carly: I can imagine.

Carly: I can imagine.

Fiona: I’m curating the lead up to that change, but it’s been really exciting.

Carly: And I think this is fantastic, and I really love to talk to you more about this because loyalty programs making a change after so many years, and when you’ve got such a large and engaged base, there are tricky areas to this.

Carly: There could be challenges.

Carly: So let’s talk a bit about this.

Carly: There was a decision to make the change.

Carly: What was the catalyst?

Fiona: So I think, you know, Best Price Credit served really well for a really long time.

Fiona: So I think 13 years, as I said.

Fiona: But as I said, that lucky dip component kind of made it challenging for members to really engage in it fully.

Fiona: It was also a commercial piece behind it that kind of made things at times difficult for us to be able to do promotional activity wrapped around that kind of credit structure that we had built already.

Fiona: So in terms of how we did it and how we got to that point and what the change was, I think it probably gets broken down into two parts.

Fiona: So first part was the decision to change it.

Fiona: And then the second part was how we actually did it.

Fiona: But the decision to change it really was a credit to the leadership and the business, like being prepared to challenge that long standing, long established loyalty model.

Fiona: So it’s pretty scary thing to do when it’s been going for so long.

Fiona: So it really was a credit to the leadership, leaning into that and acknowledging that we needed a program that better served the members and better serve the business.

Fiona: And there are two things that we’re really looking for, that member value and the commercial value as well.

Fiona: So yeah, that’s where we landed on Spend and Get.

Fiona: So there was lots of stuff involved in that, lots of research, customer research, lots of data analysis.

Fiona: Testing, we did some tests and learn.

Fiona: So there were campaign pulses of the trial structure.

Fiona: So we could put it out into market for a period of time to test it, take some data away and get some analysis and see how it performed from an engagement perspective and a commercial perspective.

Fiona: And yeah, ultimately, everybody was quite happy with that construct.

Fiona: And Spend and Get was born, which was really exciting.

Fiona: Then it came time to execute it.

Fiona: So that was probably the biggest challenge.

Fiona: I think ultimately, we ended up with a fairly short window to be able to do that change.

Fiona: We wanted to have the change wrap around a financial year change, which makes sense.

Fiona: It can have some nice clean reporting lines.

Fiona: But what that meant was we had about eight weeks to transition a major program.

Carly: Wow.

Carly: That’s an intense time frame.

Fiona: It is an intense timeline.

Fiona: And I think as a business, as a brand, we’ve done such a fantastic job at screaming from the rooftops, what our loyalty program and the value proposition was.

Fiona: Like literally, we had roof signage, we had front facades on buildings, we had internal signage in the retail stores.

Fiona: So, so many touch points where we had communicated that value exchange to customers, and all of those pieces had to change.

Carly: That’s enormous because as you said, it’s obviously so many touch points.

Carly: And I think you mentioned at one point, literally building covers and in collateral across so many.

Fiona: On the roof, we had roof signage.

Fiona: Yeah, it was, it was lots.

Fiona: So there was lots of taglines that we had that referred to that best price model, give the difference back, that kind of wording that we had to change.

Fiona: So huge, huge undertaking by a really broad range of teams within the business.

Fiona: So quite hectic, but quite fun too.

Fiona: Like, you know, we turned it around.

Fiona: You know, it seems like a really big project that maybe we’re never going to get there, but we did, we made it, we hit the deadline.

Fiona: So yeah, super proud of everybody involved for us to be able to get that change done.

Carly: Absolutely, that’s a huge progress program to change over in such a short time frame.

Carly: And that store staff, how did they go?

Carly: Because obviously you’ve had a lot of people to train on the new parameters of this program.

Fiona: Yeah, that was definitely a big consideration.

Fiona: And I think stakeholder management was really important to us.

Fiona: And that communication was critical.

Fiona: So we established really early on, we needed to explain to everybody why we were changing it and what needed to change.

Fiona: So we set up working groups that kind of were the change management pieces, retail team were involved with that.

Fiona: So the leaders in the retail space, that message was communicated down to the store teams who did a really fantastic job at leaning into it.

Fiona: There was a lot of things in stores that had to be updated.

Fiona: It had built our previous model, had built part of their monologue basically when they greeted and welcomed members.

Fiona: So those kind of things needed to change.

Fiona: But what we found ultimately was the retail team were really supportive.

Fiona: This new initiative, so much easier to explain to customers than the previous one.

Fiona: They were able to really explain that value to them really easily and allow a customer to help earn their rewards by upselling and things like that.

Fiona: So there’s two benefits there.

Fiona: If customer was just spending under the $100 mark, they could help upsell with something to get them over.

Fiona: So that it was quite a positive thing for the retail team and they were really great.

Carly: It’s so important that store staff can articulate it and it not become a chore or too hard in their general conversation while at the transaction point.

Carly: So that’s a really big win in itself.

Fiona: Yeah.

Fiona: We think the message is simple.

Fiona: It’s very straightforward for customers to understand.

Fiona: There’s no need to calculate anything.

Fiona: You don’t need to carry the one and make the zero.

Fiona: So it’s pretty simple.

Fiona: We spend 100 bucks, you get $5 back.

Fiona: So that’s nice and easy.

Carly: That’s great.

Carly: As you said, the upsell ability, if someone is close to the $100, it kind of makes sense to have that conversation and say, hey, would you like to add something on?

Carly: So you can see the immediate value.

Fiona: And that’s where that commercial piece comes into it for us as well.

Fiona: So member value, commercial value was really what we were trying to achieve.

Carly: That’s great.

Carly: How did you go with any early feedback?

Carly: And did you have any people, whether it’s members, staff or internal and external stakeholders, that weren’t happy about the change?

Fiona: Look, that was something that we were a little bit nervous about to begin with.

Fiona: Not necessarily from a team member perspective, but more from a customer perspective.

Fiona: As I said, we’ve had lots of our customers that have been on the journey with us within our loyalty program for a really long time.

Fiona: Those that did use the best price credit model did seem to really love it, and it was quite generous.

Fiona: Sometimes a customer would get up to $40 credit back, sometimes more depending on how discounted the product was that they’d purchased.

Fiona: So giving somebody a fairly significant lump sum is quite a great thing and they really enjoyed that.

Fiona: So we were a little bit nervous.

Fiona: We did prepare for the worst.

Fiona: We had lots of kind of support mechanisms built into the back end, how long we were going to continue to honor the best price credit for those customers who queried it, how we were going to support anybody who felt disappointed, that kind of thing.

Fiona: So we really did prepare for the worst.

Fiona: But to be honest, it was really minimal.

Fiona: The negative feedback was really minimal, which was fantastic.

Fiona: I think, ultimately, customers understood that they have a bit more control over their rewards now, whereas previously they didn’t.

Fiona: And it is more simple.

Fiona: Previously, they would buy a product, not knowing if it was going to go on sale, and it’s just a bit of a bonus if they got it.

Fiona: Whereas now they can calculate out in their head, oh, if I buy this, I know that I’m going to get rewarded.

Fiona: So I think they really do enjoy that control and that predictability over their rewards, which they didn’t have before.

Fiona: So yeah, it’s been really positive.

Fiona: We’ve very, very minimal negative feedback, which is really, really great.

Carly: That’s fantastic.

Carly: And as you said, they can play an active role in acquiring, redeeming the actual rewards versus being a bit more…

Fiona: Luck.

Fiona: Yeah, exactly right.

Carly: So that’s really good.

Carly: That’s really, really good.

Carly: So from here, what does the landscape look like?

Carly: Obviously, Supercheap Auto is part of a larger retail group in itself.

Carly: Any thoughts of an overarching program for the whole business?

Carly: Or is that too much at this stage, too soon?

Fiona: Look, really interesting question.

Fiona: And it is something that we do get asked from time to time.

Fiona: So yes, you’re correct.

Fiona: Supercheap Auto falls under the umbrella of Superretail Group.

Fiona: And within that group, we have ourselves, BCF, Rebel Sport and MACPAC.

Fiona: So there are a variety of brands that have a variety of loyalty programs within there.

Fiona: So yes, very interesting question.

Fiona: But currently, it’s not on the roadmap at the moment.

Fiona: Each of the brands at this stage do have quite different loyalty constructs.

Fiona: If you looked at Rebel versus Supercheap, one’s got a different points kind of structure.

Fiona: Ours is a little bit different.

Fiona: It’s a threshold base, so they are quite different in their base offerings at the moment.

Fiona: If we were to combine them, it would be quite a significant undertaking from an individual brand, but also the business and from an operational perspective as well.

Fiona: So for now, it’s never a no.

Carly: And you’ve just had major undertakings, so probably let this one go for a little bit longer, hey?

Fiona: And look, I think it’s always important to remain open-minded about what the customer expectation is and what business priorities may come down the pipeline.

Fiona: So nothing’s ever out of the question, but it’s definitely not on the current roadmap.

Carly: Absolutely.

Carly: Now, I loved your comment when we first met around the fact that sometimes we call this the men’s mecca.

Carly: Would that be still correct?

Carly: Is that the style?

Carly: Because we know how popular in Australia the Mecca Beauty Loop program is.

Carly: And sometimes that can be overlaid for you guys, but more from a male perspective.

Fiona: Yeah, look, we would absolutely love to be called the Mecca for men and women, to be honest.

Fiona: We do have lots of female shoppers as well.

Fiona: But no, we interestingly see some fun things on socials, TikTok in particular of a wife filming her husband going through the aisles of Supercheap Auto.

Fiona: And the caption is like, I’m not going to interrupt him because this is his Mecca.

Fiona: And I was like, it’s a very, it’s a very cute simulation and we would love to be recognised as that.

Fiona: So yeah, I’m more than happy to lean into that.

Carly: Sample boxes here we come.

Fiona: Yeah, maybe.

Fiona: Watch this space.

Carly: What else do you think might be included in future?

Carly: Are you thinking, what’s the next sort of phases and stages on your roadmap for the current program?

Fiona: Yeah.

Fiona: So next for us, the next big exciting thing that’s probably coming down the pipeline for us in the loyalty space.

Fiona: We’ve got a lot of work being done in what we’re calling our customer space at the moment, and it’s about the digital customer experience and the introduction of a new CDP by Salesforce.

Fiona: So we do currently work with Salesforce, but getting some more toys to play with from Salesforce, which is really going to give us a more holistic view of our customer.

Fiona: So we currently do have lots of data points that we use for personalization and targeted offers and things like that.

Fiona: But the hope is that this will give us even more information to be able to serve them and to be able to offer those relevant experiences for them.

Fiona: So I think that’s the exciting thing that I’m looking forward to and how we can enhance our loyalty program via that.

Fiona: We do already do, as I said, lots of personalized offers and targeted promotions and things like that.

Fiona: But I really think this will just help us take that to the next level.

Fiona: So that’s really exciting.

Carly: That’s huge.

Carly: And especially the fact that you’ve just undertaken a major overhaul and a major change.

Carly: I love that you’ve still got a really strong roadmap ahead with new things coming.

Fiona: And that’s group wide.

Fiona: So those enhancements are coming group wide.

Fiona: So it’s going to be something that’s going to benefit all of our brands as well.

Fiona: So yeah, very exciting for the business in general.

Carly: Great stuff.

Carly: Well, thank you so much for your time, Fiona.

Carly: And such a big congratulations on such a big year.

Carly: You’ve had a major award, Best Loyalty Program in the country.

Carly: Fantastic.

Carly: And also an eight week overhaul of a program and implementation including stores, buildings, the whole lot.

Carly: So huge congrats on all of the above.

Fiona: Thank you.

Fiona: Thank you.

Fiona: As I said, very much a team effort.

Fiona: So from loyalty to retail to everyone in between, it’s been super proud to take home the award.

Fiona: And we were really honored to represent Supercheap to collect that.

Fiona: But definitely, it’s just a really lovely accolade for a lot of work done by a lot of people within the organization.

Carly: Absolutely, Brian.

Fiona: Thank you so much for having me.

Carly: Thanks, Fiona.

Paula: Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Let’s Talk Loyalty.

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