In this episode of “Let’s Talk Loyalty”, I summarise the great conversation I had in 2020 with Phil Hawkins, Operations Director for Flybuys – Australia’s most popular loyalty programme.
Phil has spent much of his career supporting its incredible success and he shared the 5 top lessons he has learned about loyalty marketing along the way.
Listen to this short episode to learn Phil’s lessons on truly building loyalty, and how Flybuys Australia is evolving for the future.
1) Phil Hawkins – Chief Operations Officer at flybuys
PAULA: Welcome to Let’s Talk Loyalty, an industry podcast for Loyalty Marketing Professionals.
PAULA: I’m your host, Paula Thomas, and if you work in Loyalty Marketing, join me every week to learn the latest ideas from loyalty specialists around the world.
PAULA: This episode is brought to you by Epsilon and their award-winning People Cloud Loyalty Solution.
PAULA: Today, I’m delighted to announce that I’m taking part in Epsilon’s Persona Live event this June.
PAULA: Persona Live is a series of online events designed to inspire marketeers with thought leadership, best practices, as well as interactive discussions around identity and personalizing our customers’ experiences.
PAULA: If you’d like to register for this free event and hear from Epsilon clients such as Marriott, Inspire Brands, GM Financial and FedEx, just go ahead and visit epsilon.com forward slash Let’s Talk Loyalty.
PAULA: In 1994, Flybuys Australia was set up to satisfy an interesting consumer need, which they called Freak and Flyer Envy.
PAULA: To help more Australian consumers fly for free, they created a Freak and Flyer programme, where members earn Flybuys points across everyday spend, a concept which was so innovative at the time of launch that over a million households joined in the first week alone.
PAULA: This is the first thing I learned from Phil Hawkins, Chief Commercial Officer of Flybuys, which is still to this day Australia’s most popular loyalty programme, with 6.6 million households as members, two-thirds of the whole country enrolled and active with the Flybuys programme.
PAULA: Phil shared with me some of the key success factors for the immediate and ongoing success of the programme.
PAULA: Initially, because so many of the leading retail brands in the country joined as partners for members to earn from.
PAULA: So the breadth of the proposition was and is something that their members truly value.
PAULA: At the time we chatted in early March 2020, Flybuys included a total of 23 retail partners for members to earn from, across all everyday shopping categories, including a leading supermarket chain called Coles, as well as fuel purchases, liquor stores, credit cards, and insurance and travel partners, as well as other leading brands like eBay, Target and Kmart.
PAULA: With such a broad partner portfolio, another key success factor is how many of the partners’ sales staff ask customers whether they have a Flybuys account at the time of sale, driving ongoing reminders and engagement for the programme on a daily basis.
PAULA: With this background and context, Phil, who describes himself as a loyalty veteran, shared five key lessons that he learned from the creation, operation, and ongoing success of Flybuys that he believes will be useful for any loyalty managers listening around the world.
PAULA: My brief summary of these five key success factors are as follows.
PAULA: Firstly, to question whether you actually need a loyalty program at all.
PAULA: A badly run program can actually be damaging to a brand.
PAULA: So it would definitely be better not to launch one if you’re not going to support it with sufficient resources and appropriate levels of investment.
PAULA: Secondly, loyalty is a two-way street.
PAULA: The best programs are for brands to be loyal to their customers before expecting them to be loyal to you.
PAULA: Phil also emphasized how important it is to be straightforward with no complexity or hidden catches.
PAULA: Thirdly, it’s not just about the points.
PAULA: Sometimes our role is just to be helpful.
PAULA: The example Phil shared is letting regular shoppers know when their favorite products are on special, so members can enjoy a great deal instead of maybe shopping with competitors.
PAULA: The fourth point is around the security and privacy of data, which Phil said is the biggest shift that he has seen in recent years.
PAULA: Trust can literally disappear overnight if there is a data breach, and if you lose customers’ trust, it would actually be a mortal blow to most loyalty programs.
PAULA: Finally, the range and relevance of rewards.
PAULA: Phil said that for some of their members, claiming a free toaster can be not just transactional, it can in fact be both emotional and aspirational.
PAULA: And for some demographics, Flybuys is not simply a lifestyle perk or brand.
PAULA: It makes a real financial difference to members every year.
PAULA: Finally, with those five lessons shared, as this show was recorded in March 2020, it was the first time that I mentioned coronavirus.
PAULA: And Phil shared how Australian consumers were panic buying toilet rolls and other long life products.
PAULA: So Flybuys really had an important and useful role to play advising members of policy changes, when supermarkets, including Coles, had to ration certain product categories due to the pandemic.
PAULA: In closing, Phil Hawkins is certainly a loyalty veteran who lives and breeds loyalty.
PAULA: So if you’d like to hear him sharing these great learnings, the full episode is about 40 minutes long and it’s episode number 26 on Let’s Talk Loyalty.
PAULA: This show is sponsored by The Wise Marketeer, the world’s most popular source of loyalty marketing news, insights and research.
PAULA: The Wise Marketeer also offers loyalty marketing training through its Loyalty Academy, which has already certified over 170 executives in 20 countries as certified loyalty marketing professionals.
PAULA: For more information, check out thewisemarketeer.com and loyaltyacademy.org.
PAULA: Thanks so much for listening to this episode of Let’s Talk Loyalty.
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