#216: Everyday Loyalty - Connecting Customers, Members and Merchants

In this episode, James Berry, Commercial Director, Valuedynamx at Collinson shares game-changing concepts he believes are becoming pivotal for loyalty professionals.

James and his team work with brands to create loyalty programmes that are engaging, relevant and increasingly valuable to customers.

In this episode, we discuss the dramatic changes in consumer behaviour, and some of the innovative ways that Collinson have found to connect programs, consumers and merchants in order to ensure loyalty programmes become even more relevant in everyday lives.

We also talk about opportunities working with emerging technologies like NFTs and cryptocurrencies.

This episode will help you understand the latest innovative strategies for post-pandemic consumers.

This episode is sponsored by Valuedynamx ( Part of Collinson Group)

Show Notes:

1) James Berry, Commercial Director, Valuedynamx at Collinson on LinkedIn

2) Collinson

Audio Transcript

#216: Everyday Loyalty - Connecting Customers, Members and Merchants (36m)

Welcome to Let’s Talk Loyalty, an industry podcast for loyalty marketing professionals. I’m your host, Paula Thomas. And if you work in loyalty marketing, join me every week to learn the latest ideas from loyalty specialists around the world. This episode is brought to you by Collinson, worldwide leader in loyalty, creating and orchestrating loyalty initiatives and programs for some of the world’s biggest brands in travel retail and financial services. Doing it globally for over 30 years, want to know more, go to collinsongroup.com Hello, and welcome to episode 216 -of Let’s Talk Loyalty, a conversation with our friends in Collinson.

Paula Thomas

00:00:57

James Berry is the Commercial Director of the Valuedynamix business. And he joined me to share some of the game-changing concepts. They believe are becoming pivotal for loyalty professionals. We discuss the dramatic changes in consumer behaviour, and some of the ways that Collinson has found to connect programs, consumers, and merchants in order to ensure that our loyalty programs become even more relevant in our everyday lives. We also discuss some of the emerging technologies like blockchain, the metaverse and cryptocurrencies, really key tools and technologies that we as loyalty professionals need to understand.

Paula Thomas

00:01:45

And certainly at some point implement in response to the increasing expectations of our customers. So James Berry joining me from Valuedynamx at Collinson in the UK. Welcome to Let’s Talk Loyalty. Great, great. You’re looking very smart. I was very impressed to see you’re back in your office today, James.

James Berry

00:02:10

I am back in the office and it’s, it’s nice to be back amongst the real world and, and seeing familiar faces and new faces. There’s been a lot of changes as well, and that’s exciting.

Paula Thomas

00:02:20

And I know Collinson is actually growing a lot, James, aren’t you, in terms of people.

James Berry

00:02:24

It is, yeah. It’s a very forward-looking business. We’re, we’re excited by everyone’s come through a challenging period. We’re excited about a future and there’s lots going on as always across various parts of the business.

Paula Thomas

00:02:38

Wonderful. Well, we’ll get into all of that today. So before we do, please do tell me, James personally, now speaking, what would you say is your favorite loyalty program?

James Berry

00:02:47

Well, I’m probably slightly influenced by this from both a client relationship that we have, but also my personal experience and particularly over the last two years with that per share ways executive cloud and the IVs currency. So I was fortunate enough that my last travel before COVID impact hit was a ski trip to Whistler Vancouver. It was using a redemption flight companion voucher. So I would travel business class. My first flight after COVID was exactly the same repeat journey. So it’s a, it’s a great example of a program that was able to continue to offer value and engage with me as a member, even though I wasn’t traveling.

James Berry

00:03:34

So that’s a, that’s a really critical parts of as the value story then.

Paula Thomas

00:03:39

Yes. Yeah. And I mean, there has been so much dramatic change over the last two years, but just to credit you and the British Airways Executive Club to get you long haul business class on a super fun ski trip. I just think that that got approves, why we do what we do, I guess, you know

James Berry

00:03:58

Exactly. And I’d say also like some of the simplicity, the simpler programs that they will need to get a free coffee every, every eighth purchase the stilts still engage with them very regularly. So it’s nice to have the variants.

Paula Thomas

00:04:13

Totally. Yes. Yes. Well, I’m a big fan of free coffee as well. So, so listen to me, there’s a lot to talk about today. And as we said, it’s been a massive time of transition for all of us. And certainly the travel industry, I suppose, is where Collinson historically has been extremely strong. And I’ve certainly enjoyed using various lounges, for example, on my own travels and always kind of, you know, think of you guys when I do, but I think there’s a lot more that you’re doing now and particularly through this time. So I’d love to understand, you know, value dynamics as a division of the Collins group. Maybe just as a starting point for anyone not familiar,

James Berry

00:04:54

Of course Valuedynamx, as you said, it’s been an important part of Collinson for a number of years, what we’ve discovered and, and, and, and understood. There’s a real opportunity to drive particular focus of propositions that we have. And that’s predominantly been around adding retail and network partnerships into the loyalty programs that we’ve worked with over the years. As you say, we’ve got a real heritage in, in, in, in a travel industry, but we’ve worked very much alongside that to bring the right type of offers and partners into the travel programs that we work with over a number of years, but also broadening that into financial services sector.

James Berry

00:05:37

And again, understanding it’s, it’s always been a core part of our business as well, and understanding how that, that, that comes together to really offer the every day value into the programs and relationships that our clients have with that and customers and how we can supplement and support that. So Valuedynamx has created, has been created to, to really drive that value through that network of partnerships that we have.

Paula Thomas

00:06:06

Okay. Okay. And it sounds like, you know, of course that was particularly relevant, useful and compelling throughout the last couple of years when to be honest, most of us wearing getting on planes and wearing, going off on nice ski trips, but clearly, unfortunately, but it sounds like that thinking and that understanding was already something you guys had identified as the market needing.

James Berry

00:06:32

It was a, and to be honest, it was a trend that we’d seen emerging pre-COVID. A lot of the relationships we developed over many years with the travel loyalty programs in particular, they had an ambition and a, and a strategy to be more relevant every day. They wanted to become everyday lifestyle and relevant programs to people’s everyday lives. So we’d already seen that. And I think all really that we saw through the COVID period was that that was accelerated. And obviously those that were able to then fast track some, some, some strategies and some thinking around that and capitalize on it at the end of the day, if you’re a travel program and you can’t talk about travel, you have to talk about something else.

James Berry

00:07:16

And we were able to really, really help with that. And we saw lots of changing trends over that period of being able to pivot and move quickly. And it was critical to how we work with the partners.

Paula Thomas

00:07:28

Yeah. Yeah. And, and I’ve certainly heard a James coming through and as you know, I’ve interviewed Emirates on the show and IAG flying blue. And part of that is actually through, through you guys and to have those wonderful conversations. And, but even beyond that, you know, I’ve been super impressed with that vision of becoming more relevant every day, because, you know, we don’t all have the blessing of jumping out of bed every Monday morning with the trip on the horizon. So the everyday relevance piece is obviously something that’s giving them a whole new way to engage with their members.

James Berry

00:08:02

Exactly. That, and, and, you know, there’s been a lot of industry buzzwords around personalization and driving offers that people really want to engage with. Ultimately it is about simplifying and saying, how are we relevant at how can we add value to the every day? And I think if you distill it down to that, but then all of the thinking behind how do you really understand that? How do you use data? How do you engage with the audience in a way that enables them importantly, to share that information into you so that you can really drive the right level of engagement. And that’s a big part of how we work with the clients you mentioned there, and many more that we work with globally.

Paula Thomas

00:08:45

Yeah, yeah. And my own background, James in loyalty actually began well, first of all, in Emirates, 20 years ago on the digital side, which I know is a key passion point for you. And, but I do love this idea that you said it’s simplified. And because partnerships was a core part of what I did, what I was never able to do as, you know, Paula Thomas, the one-woman show was to scale up to, to a devil that a program needs. So, so I’d love you just to explain what you do between the various stakeholders. Because, you know, as I said, I had my own simplistic understanding of it has to work for the program. It has to work for the partner and it has to work for the member because ultimately it is incredibly time-consuming to get a compelling proposition that everybody’s comfortable with.

Paula Thomas

00:09:32

So once you get to that stage, you actually wanted to continue forever. So,

James Berry

00:09:36

Yeah, absolutely. And it’s exactly that. And again, it’s, it’s, it’s quite simple to, to describe it in that way, but it’s quite complex to find the right balance between there’s different objectives and it, and it is sometimes being able to step back and understand and align to the objectives of all of the audience and participants within it. So that Valuedynamx without being, being too obvious about the naming, we are created to deliver a dynamic value exchange between exactly those three parties that you’ve just described in the programs that the clients who have the marketable audience of the end customer, the members, and then ensuring that we get the right level of engagement and understanding in terms of the merchants and advertisers who want to reach that audience, but also really understand the value that can, can come through that, that highly targeted marketing opportunity and, and, and buy into that long-term vision.

James Berry

00:10:38

And, and that’s everything that is really important to us. This isn’t about a short-term tactical solution. This is about forging and developing long-term partnerships again, to use some of the phrase obligation from yourself. That’s really important. People need to see that ongoing return and an attributable success and return on investment to really continue to drive that, that, that level of engagement. And we, we work with multiple programs and multiple partners and contribute to the collective value that that ecosystem brings. And that that’s really important to us that, that we can clearly demonstrate the value and the return that they can, they can get from it from, from, from all parts of the audience members.

Paula Thomas

00:11:20

And, and given, I suppose, how mature, I would say the UK loyalty market is James and my, in my view. And, and I know Collinson is very strong in Europe. You’re very strong here in the middle east. And of course, you know, huge aspirations and some great stories I know of case studies elsewhere, but how would your, or an educated, would you say the merchant community is about that opportunity? Because my, you know, my, my experiences is 10 years old now in terms of doing this, as I said, as a one-woman show. And, but it’s fascinating to see it grow, and I love that you’re actually doing it at scale, but I’d love to hear what response you’re getting.

James Berry

00:12:01

So it’s actually been, been a part of the business I’ve worked in for, for many years as well. I’d probably slightly longer than 10 years. If I’m honest, we started the, I, my background is digital performance marketing, affiliate marketing. So that’s always been at the crux of how we’ve understood and got into some of the early partnership models. So actually first launched the program in Australia, 14 years or so ago, it was still a client stay Virgin Australia last year awards. So that was our first online e-store that we launched and I’ve launched in most, pretty much every market since we actually started Australia Asia, and then came back into the UK us.

James Berry

00:12:43

And I think, I think the background and where we came from in the early days using the affiliate marketing proposition and the principles of the performance marketing model, I think it’s fair to say that many of them were initially formed as fairly passive relationships. So sometimes the brands and the retailers wouldn’t even necessarily know that they were parts of the program or the dynamics of how the program worked. And I think that’s the big evolution that we’ve seen over time. We’ve seen the brands really start to understand how it’s a potentially very relevant, marketable channel and affiliate Martin performance marketing evolved and matured very quickly.

James Berry

00:13:25

But also this is a specific aspect of performance marketing became a really well understood model and, and we’ve been able to hopefully help influence and build that. And as you say, that’s where you can get, can get the scale. We work very closely then with the appetizers to understand their own campaign objectives, their own marketing performance and our own marketing budgets to drive real value. And that has gone from a very passive relationship to one that’s much more strategic and engaged, and that’s really important.

Paula Thomas

00:13:57

And I’m just guessing off the cuff here, James Bush, knowing what I do about loyalty and a little bit about affiliate marketing, nothing at the scale of yourselves. But what I would guess is that advertisers will find higher conversion rates, a higher quality audience, and purely by, by virtue of the fact that you’re already a member of a program and you trust them, the partner that comes in through that affiliate much more than if it was my local newspaper, for example,

James Berry

00:14:25

Exactly that. And I think, I think that’s a really important part of the dynamic as, as we’re evolving as well, that, that there are a number of KPIs and performance measures that we’ll put around this and this, you say it could be a conversion. We see some very, very high conversion rates based on some of the marketing execution that, that, that the programs will do is highly targeted and again, very relevant. Yeah, but also it couldn’t be some of the other metrics around it. It could be average order value, the basket size, the type of audience that we’re typically giving access to, perhaps those that will spend more or all will be very responsive to special offers and, and, and, and increased earn rate periods.

James Berry

00:15:11

And now they’ll go and spend more as a result of that. So that’s really important to work that back as well. It’s not just a one-way dynamic relationship. We will go back in and make sure that the retailers are seeing value from that both in terms of the particular campaign they’re driving, but also the long-term return on investment. They get from their advertising spend, which of course is critical for everyone.

Paula Thomas

00:15:33

Of course, of course. And, and I think, you know, James, that the audience of this show is certainly, you know, a lot of yes, travel loyalty people and, but, but a huge amount beyond travel. So how is the model evolving, I suppose, in other sectors, in your experience?

James Berry

00:15:51

So you’re right. We’ve had a big focus on, on the travel side, predominantly driven by the, the principles of the law to currency and that, that, that being at the heart of, of travel programs, particularly frequent flyer programs historically. But I think if you, if you transpose that mechanic or, or, or, or the concept of, of drawing value from an ecosystem, you can apply that into many different areas and industries as well. So we’ve seen a lot of movement and a lot of focus for us has been in the financial services space where it may not be a point space. We still work with some points based banking programs, but also delivering straight into a cashback proposition and, and delivering value in a different way.

James Berry

00:16:38

But the challenge has been the same, and there’s a lot of consistency with trying to drive value through a relationship beyond just the core product or the core proposition that maybe you’re your most engaged with that audience with. So even some of the banking apps, I may use my banking app every day, but it’s a quite mechanical, transactional relationship in terms of how I manage my daily money. Yeah. Supplementing that with other reasons to engage. Another value I can get from that relationship, I think is really important. And we’re seeing that as a, as a, as a rapidly changing trends as well.

Paula Thomas

00:17:17

So I love to hear about that. As I said, James, I saw so much research about how consumers really do rate that particular. And I just suppose their perception of the effort that goes into building additional propositions once I’m in that program, because we all know we don’t want to join 20 loyalty programs. We just want to join one that makes life easier and more worthwhile, but you also used a word earlier, James, which I love, and it was just this idea of evolving. And I think we all know that, you know, if we didn’t know it before, obviously we certainly know it now. And I loved what I saw Collinson doing with everything and anything that has to do with the dreaded pandemic that we won’t linger on, because I think we are all a bit bored with this, but nonetheless, I think you guys stepped up and really created solutions and testing facilities, eh, you are lobbying for travel restrictions to be eased.

Paula Thomas

00:18:14

So I just wanted to acknowledge that James, and just kind of say to me, that was a huge gesture and signal of, you know, I suppose the family values that I know drive the company anyway, but how was that for you guys? Was it, was it chaotic or, or how was it to build something so new so quickly?

James Berry

00:18:33

Well, I have to say, so someone, someone has worked constant for a number of years. It doesn’t surprise me that the approach there was to pivot and find a way to support an industry. Obviously we’ve been very close to and it’s critical for us as a business. So yes, of course there’s interest from our side to help get people traveling long-term, but it’s much deeper than that. It’s wider than that. It’s, it’s a, it’s an opportunity to leverage relationships and value and trust that we have and help support an industry that ultimately is critical to how people live their lives and long-term wellbeing. And everyone is very, very focused on, on, on travel and being able to travel, whether that’s for work, whether it’s seeing friends, family, or just, just, just for some, some, some downtime.

James Berry

00:19:23

So there was always a view that we needed to, to, to return and being able to play a pivotal role in that as a business was, was, was, was a moment of pride for everyone involved in Collinson. And, and it’s, it’s, it’s been a very challenging time, but it’s, it’s very rewarding to see the engagement and the, and the amount of value we can add through that as well.

Paula Thomas

00:19:47

Well, I can’t top your ski trip that you mentioned at the start James but. I did go on my first city break last week. So that actually felt like, again, a dose of normality again, when I used one of your lounges and Bush, where I wasn’t just traveling for, for reasons back to friends and family, for example, it was something that I could choose to do and do in relative comfort. So yes, it is a relief all around to be getting into a sense of normality. Again,

James Berry

00:20:13

It is, and we’re seeing that as well through lots of the programs and clients that we work with. We’ve been through a very different and dynamic environment where the focus on the type of transactions that were going on changed dramatically over a period of time. So again, it’s been absolutely critical to us how we can really pivot and react quickly. Again, that’s, as in your example of how, how we supported the testing apple testing process, that’s the culture we have as a business, but it’s also something we live and breathe every day, being able to react and see the air during a lockdown period. People aren’t obviously spending in high street and an offline much more to an online proposition, being able to react to that and understand what type of retailers people were transacting with during a lockdown period, helping the retailers understand how they can get quick access to the right audience, but also manage that against their own restrictions, budgetary restraints, logistics of delivery.

James Berry

00:21:14

We had to, we had to be very flexible for that whole period. And it is now feeling that we’re getting back to we’re seeing travel pick up again. And we do a lot of work in the travel space. It’s up 257% so far this year, today compared to last year, but we’re also seeing that as a, as a continuum change, it wasn’t just a spike back it’s it stayed at high water level again. So I think perhaps the early days we saw travel recovery was people who absolutely desperate to get back out again, again, either because of business, route business pressure, and reality of needing to travel, to say, going back to see friends, family, and actually can see family.

James Berry

00:21:56

You may not have seen for years or even new family members you’d never met. And I think we’re now seeing that much more leisure-based travel coming back, and people having that confidence to travel. And I think that that’s critical to the long-term survival of the industry.

Paula Thomas

00:22:11

And tell me then, just with the fact that, you know, as we talked about, everything was accelerated in terms of online spend throughout the last couple of years, what do you think will happen as we do return to normality the high streets reopen, and people are back maybe in the office like you are, and, you know, like what, what kind of patterns do you think will happen for em, you know, these kinds of propositions as we, as we do return to normality?

James Berry

00:22:40

I think, first of all, I think, I think it’s a, it’s a, it’s a really key point what’s happened in this period. There has been an acceleration of things. So as you said, a move to digital and move to online was happening anyway, and this has just accelerated some of that. So I don’t necessarily think it will go all back. Even if you look at how people pay for things, nowadays is very, very different. It’s kind of contactless payment is just, again, accelerated and to reverse that you probably don’t need to, and it won’t happen. I think we will see more of those types of trends coming through, but of course, getting back to the high street and getting back to physical retail and food and beverage type type type transactions is, is going to be a, a big movement back.

James Berry

00:23:28

And we’ve, we’ve spent a lot of this time actually working with card-linked capabilities and card linking offers, and, and we’re seeing that across multiple channels. So yeah, there’s a big movement to digital as well. And that, and that’s great. And you can touch on, on, on some of the opportunities that, that later, but in terms of driving people back to the high stream, but back to an offline environment, I think there’s a really key role at that complaint as well.

Paula Thomas

00:23:55

Yeah. And I’ve said it before on the show, James and card linking is my single favorite evolution, and I’m going to call it a fairly dramatic evolution. And in the whatever 10 years that I’ve been in the loyalty industry, there are so many trends and propositions and things that I see and talk about, but card linking is my favorite. So just maybe for anyone who’s not familiar with the concept, would you mind just kind of explaining, I suppose, the consumer proposition. So everybody has a clear understanding of how it benefits the members and then ultimately of course, for their own programs, how it applies.

James Berry

00:24:30

So at a very simple level, a consumer, a customer can register their payment cards, and sometimes that would be pre-enrolled for them. If it’s part of a, of a banking proposition, or it could be an open program enrollment where you can add as many cards as you’d like, then, then you’re working again, back into retailer or advertising network who wants to get access to those registered cardholders. And we’re going to offer merchant funded rewards to help drive that engagement. So when those customers who have linked their cards, then go and transact with those retailers that the mechanism allows us to understand, and then reward for that, for that engagement or that transaction or whatever, whatever the action is.

James Berry

00:25:15

That’s been, that’s been taken place and there’s various mechanisms and facilities that sit behind that to help drive and demonstrate that, that, that, that attributes action, the simplistic pieces, you register a payment card and then you can go and spend it with retailers and be rewarded for doing so in the, in the program that’s relevant to you.

Paula Thomas

00:25:38

Yeah. Yeah. And you don’t have to whip out another piece of plastic. You don’t have to open an app, you don’t have to do anything.

James Berry

00:25:45

It’s exactly that. And, and that’s, that’s the key part of the proposition. There’s, there’s, there’s no training of the staff at the point of sale. There’s no other cop needed, not necessarily needed needing a, an app, but obviously it supports pay by phone as well. So yeah, they’re very flexible way of driving down engagement, but again, then also being able to demonstrate the value off the back of that, and that’s critical to the retailers as well.

Paula Thomas

00:26:13

Okay. Okay. So then, you know, moving forward, I suppose, James, you know, we’re all getting, you know, all sorts of messages about metaverses and crypto and NFTs and all sorts of things. And most of which, you know, I haven’t really haired a lot of case studies around. I think I’ve only had one so far and that’s being talked about, but what are you guys thinking about in terms of, you know, the whole world of crypto? You know, I guess, you know, it is a different form of currency. It probably has value. Is it overrated or where are we at?

James Berry

00:26:48

I, I certainly don’t think it’s overrated. I think like anything that’s new, there’s both excitement and opportunity, but also a certain amount of skepticism that is it going to be the great new thing that everyone thinks it could be. W w we’ve all been there before with a number of things, and maybe that didn’t always happen at the pace you’d expect them to. Yeah, I guess from, from our position, it’s, it’s less about this whole new world. It’s more about, again, being part of an evolutionary change to the way the level of digital engagement and how digital engagement is is happening. I think that that’s where the opportunity is, and we’ve obviously seen a big evolution of that over time.

James Berry

00:27:33

And to me, it’s more about offering another opportunity through another mechanic to achieve that same end goal, which is being able to demonstrate and add value through people’s engagement. I saw an article yesterday and it was, it was on the Collinson group website. So is it, there’s a good article on there? So I won’t, I won’t take credit for it, but it was a very simplistic definition that said, cryptocurrencies are effectively the concept of digital money and FTS or the concept of digital property. And the metaverse is the concept of digital spaces. So they’re all the same things we’ve done before, but it’s just different mechanisms that sit around it.

James Berry

00:28:14

So ultimately it is still unsent. It’s the base principle of money. It’s the base principle of ownership of property. It’s the base principle of being in the space in which you are operating or functioning. So I think again, taking it down to that, that’s interesting, then the huge amounts of opportunity that can come off the back of that. And then just say, that’s not always the use cases out there today. And it’s about how us collectively, as marketers can then drive those mechanisms to understand that opportunity and be able to drive, drive those levels of levels of engagement in, in the, in these new new technologies. You know, we, we’ve spent a lot of time on, on the other side, we’ve spoken quite a lot about how our earning capabilities and how we use called LinkedIn and their financials to try the merchant funded rewards in.

James Berry

00:29:04

We listened to a lot of work on the redemption side, and it works in the redemption stores, traditionally commerce world, but we’ve also spent a lot of time with programs like Accor to develop event-based activities. So these, the kind of money can’t buy, not limited number of tickets or limited number of signed football shirts, whatever it may be, and really that we deceive the NFL NFTs and, and the evolution of that as a, as another part is that type of event-based activity and being able to attribute value against that obviously goes further because NFT you, by being the nature of it is smart contracts.

James Berry

00:29:47

It’s programmable for once you have that engagement, you can do more with it, and you can recognize more new, you can reward more off the back of it, and you almost create these subgroups of, of, of specialist or, or very tailored communities that you can, you can interact with beyond a, a, an initial transaction. And that, and that’s really exciting for any program.

Paula Thomas

00:30:08

Yeah, yeah. It’s definitely the early adopters, of course, that are the ones that are, I guess, pushing for it. And I guess, yeah, none of us wants to risk being left behind. So this is exactly the point where, you know, we work with our trusted partners and we look to you guys and say, you know, can you give us a hand here? And as you said, everybody’s ready then to give it a go, because there’s enough brains around the table, you know, to, to try something and see what, what the customer actually likes.

James Berry

00:30:35

It’s exactly that. And I think that’s, that’s an important role that, that will play in this as well. Your example of how common, some pivoted during the COVID pandemic and got into that full testing, et cetera, that, that ability to invest and, and create an opportunity and to understand how a changing world can, can, can deliver that opportunity to do something different. It is at the heart of what we do, and it’s not always possible for everyone to invest in and do that. So we can play a role and help people through that process, then that then there’s obviously going to be real interest in it. And I think if I give an example of airline clients who we worked with or had continued to work with what I remember about five years or so ago, we’re in a, in a session with them.

James Berry

00:31:25

And we were there to play the role of, of bringing some retail partners in, into how we would engage their customers and bring offers into that into their member audience. And the statement was, you guys sat around the table because we don’t have to put people on airplanes. We don’t know how to do retail e-commerce, but our role is to help, help bring that forward and help it nowadays, they are very comfortable doing that. That’s passive parts of their core proposition is how you drive engagement instead of retail, commerce environment. Yeah. However, what they’d probably say now say, what we don’t know is how to realize the value of NFTs and blockchain and some of the other things that are coming through.

James Berry

00:32:08

So we need to continue to evolve and continue to look forward to what is coming next, as well as deliver that the reality of what we’re doing today. And that’s hopefully what we achieve.

Paula Thomas

00:32:19

Yeah. Yeah. Well, listen, on that note, James, I’ve asked all of my questions. I’m really interested to hear what Valuedynamx is doing. And as I said, I’m a huge fan of affiliate marketing for actually even longer than you guys, would you believe I did experiment with it way back in my own days with Emirates 20 years ago. And yeah, so it’s, it’s a very exciting time. Any other key points that you think are important for the audience to understand James, before we wrap up?

James Berry

00:32:49

I think we’ve mentioned affiliate marketing as well, quite a few times throughout this, and that is another good example where there’s been quite considerable change and market change coming through. So obviously there’s a lot of press and news around the cookie, the cookie tracking and how that’s going to change again. I just want to, I just want to get across, you know, from our perspective, we, we see, we understand that change coming through, but ultimately where we have been focused on working with our retail network and our partners for a number of years, is to understand that that change is coming cookies. Third-party cookies, no longer being supported, does not mean the end of their Phillip marketing channel, per se.

James Berry

00:33:31

There’s a number of things that we’ve put in place to support and drive that. And ultimately this is about being able to demonstrate and prove that you are driving the right consent and the right use of people’s data to achieve a common end goal. And I think that’s exactly the heart of what we do. So I just want one of the last messages to be that affiliate marketing is it’s certainly not dead. The concept of performance marketing and the changing mechanisms that we see through many of the things we’ve discussed today, that that’s where the future is. And that’s what we’re very excited by.

Paula Thomas

00:34:11

Well, exciting times ahead as we’ve already seen. So listen, I just want to say huge. Thank you for all of your insights, James Berry Commercial Director. Valuedynamx at Collinson. Thank you so much from Let’s Talk Loyalty. This show is sponsored by The Wise Marketer, the world’s most popular source of loyalty marketing using insights and research. The Wise Marketer also offers loyalty marketing training through its loyalty academy, which has already certified over 245 executives in 27 countries, a certified loyalty marketing professionals for more information, check out thewisemarketer.com and loyaltyacademy.org.

Paula Thomas

00:35:07

Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Let’s Talk Loyalty. If you’d like us to send you the latest shows each week, simply sign up for the Let’s Talk Loyalty newsletter on Let’s Talk Loyalty.com. We’ll send our best episodes straight to your inbox. And don’t forget that you can follow Let’s Talk Loyalty on any of your favorite podcast platforms. And of course we’d love for you to share your feedback and reviews. Thanks again for supporting the show.

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