#239: Hong Kong's Leading Loyalty & Lifestyle Platform - Yuu Rewards

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.

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PAULA: Whether you are in travel, financial services, retail or telecommunications, loyalty programs like yours are typically generating 70 million dollars per year in owned media value.

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PAULA: Hello, and welcome to this episode of Let’s Talk Loyalty.

PAULA: Featuring a market-leading loyalty program called Yuu, which is based in Hong Kong, and which has achieved extraordinary success since its launch in 2020.

PAULA: Created initially as a coalition program, Yuu Rewards was built and launched as a digital first program, perfect for the digitally savvy consumers that Asia is renowned for.

PAULA: Two years on, I’m joined again today by Chief Operating Officer Mark Sage, who explains how the program has continued to grow and thrive.

PAULA: Offering compelling new services and is now firmly established as a market-leading super app, with numerous new and exciting benefits to users, with industry-leading e-commerce capabilities at its core.

PAULA: In today’s conversation, we also discuss the power of collectibles as a tool to build consumer loyalty and engagement both online and offline.

PAULA: Please do enjoy today’s fascinating episode with Mark Sage from Yuu Hong Kong.

PAULA: So Mark Sage, welcome back to Let’s Talk Loyalty.

MARK: Thank you Paula, great to be back.

PAULA: Oh, it’s fantastic, Mark.

PAULA: I was looking back, it was November, 2020.

PAULA: You were on the show with me before.

PAULA: At the time, you were COO of Yuu Rewards.

PAULA: And obviously there’s been change in the branding, but an incredible journey that you’re on with this wonderful program and platform in the Hong Kong market.

PAULA: So before we get into talking all about Yuu, please tell me, first of all, what would you say right now in this kind of day and age?

PAULA: What would you say is your favorite loyalty program or proposition that you’re seeing?

MARK: Yeah, interesting question.

MARK: I think there’s obviously a lot of change going on generally in the market.

MARK: And we’ll talk about our change a little bit more, but I think, look at what, say, Woolies are doing down in Australia.

MARK: Their program has always been quite interesting.

MARK: They use a lot of personalization.

MARK: It has a lot of similarities, I guess, in terms of the market that Yuu is in, because we’re obviously a grocery-led program as well.

MARK: So it’s one I keep an eye on.

MARK: Sure.

MARK: I think their latest innovation around payments is quite interesting because we all want to try and link payments and loyalty more tightly.

MARK: We do it in the Yuu program as well, where you can use your credit card, in essence, as a loyalty token.

MARK: I think what Woolies have done though is quite interesting where they’ve managed to get almost a single tap or a single scan.

MARK: So it’s always a challenge when you’re doing loyalty at a point of sale to be able to get the loyalty ID and the payment details, because typically that comes at the end of a transaction and you’ve closed a basket and you can’t apply coupons and things to give it like member-based pricing or anything else.

MARK: What Woolies have done is moved it right to the front of the process.

MARK: So as a member, you scan that QR code and it knows who you are.

MARK: It knows it’s a linked payment.

MARK: It applies the loyalty ID, it applies the loyalty value to the basket.

MARK: And obviously at the end of it, it will automatically pay if that’s what you set up.

MARK: So I think it’s a really interesting proposition that they brought to market quite recently.

MARK: And certainly, you know, that we’re keeping a close eye on.

PAULA: Love that one, Mark.

PAULA: Yeah, I mean, that takes all the boxes in my mind in terms of, you know, really being customer led, you know, with the idea of simplification, being loyal to your member, your customer, like giving them the absolute every reason to give you, I guess, particularly sensitive data like payment details.

PAULA: So I haven’t looked at the Woolies one myself, Mark, but super interesting idea.

MARK: And as you say, I mean, it is about that customer experience.

MARK: That’s, you know, people are part of a loyalty program, not just because of the points, but also because it makes the customer experience easier.

MARK: And I think anything you can do to facilitate that is great.

PAULA: Yeah, yeah.

PAULA: I think it comes back to basics really, doesn’t it?

PAULA: You know, like make my life better in ways that I can actually understand, appreciate and actually kind of justify to myself.

PAULA: And hopefully, I suppose, tell other people as well, Mark, because I think as marketeers, we know it’s very expensive to go on an acquisition journey all of the time.

PAULA: So I guess if you’ve got that advocacy, that almost you’re guaranteed success.

PAULA: So that’s definitely a key success criteria.

PAULA: And one I see coming through in everything that you’re doing with you.

PAULA: So there’s been so much going on.

PAULA: I love following your LinkedIn posts, Mark.

PAULA: For people who haven’t heard our previous episode, I’ll make sure we do link to it, of course, in the show notes.

PAULA: It’s letstalkloyalty.com forward slash 61.

PAULA: Super easy.

PAULA: And that was just after you launched the Yuu Rewards Proposition there in Hong Kong.

PAULA: Now here we are in 2022, middle of summer.

PAULA: You’ve passed 4 million members and really made some dramatic enhancements, Mark.

PAULA: So I almost don’t know where to start in terms of asking you what the journey’s been like for the last 18 months.

PAULA: But where would you like to start?

PAULA: What do you think is the single biggest thing that has happened since we last spoke?

MARK: Yeah, I think, as you say, I mean, a lot has changed.

MARK: A lot has gone into the overall proposition.

MARK: But I think the biggest thing is that kind of shift from a pure play loyalty proposition to more of a services proposition.

MARK: So, you know, as we’ve done quite recently, you would have seen in the news, you know, we’ve launched our e-commerce within the Yuu app.

MARK: And that’s running alongside the loyalty proposition overall.

MARK: So it is that movement, I guess, of being a kind of, you know, traditional points is prizes program for want of a better term or, you know, classic coalition program to really start and extend out to be, you know, something that’s helping our members to just, you know, eat and live better.

MARK: You know, giving them, you know, more services, more capabilities, and getting closer to them as an overall brand, I guess.

MARK: So, you know, that shift has happened, like you say, in a very quick time.

MARK: I mean, we were, we actually launched the e-commerce in October last year.

MARK: So, you know, 12 months after we chatted that we’d essentially added in into the app, these e-commerce services.

MARK: As well as insurance, because I mean, insurance is in there as well.

MARK: We don’t talk about that much, but, you know, it’s also there as well as one of our key capabilities.

PAULA: Yeah.

MARK: And all of that kind of came through in the next 12 months.

MARK: So it’s been a busy year, so to speak, as we brought all that online.

PAULA: Absolutely.

PAULA: And that is hugely dramatic, Mark, as you’ve said.

PAULA: So it’s one thing to build a classic coalition program.

PAULA: And clearly, Yuu Rewards, you know, in its first iteration already had an extraordinary breadth of partnerships.

PAULA: You know, everything from Ikea to 7-Eleven to, I know, your huge pharmacy chain there, Mannings, which is the dominant player in Hong Kong as well.

PAULA: Saw some wonderful new partnerships being announced with Shell coming in recently.

PAULA: But I guess what I’m curious about is, would you say that that shift from the classic coalition through to this almost super app positioning and proposition, would that have been the intention all along, Mark?

PAULA: Or was that just the opportunity that emerged, I guess, because the loyalty was so successful?

MARK: I think it’s always been an opportunity to get, or an aim to get the brands kind of working closer together, you know, from an e-commerce perspective, et cetera.

MARK: The idea, I think, of, as you told me, kind of the super app piece was, you know, there around, you know, pre-launch and launch, you know, it was certainly something that was, you know, talked about.

MARK: You can see it in other markets, you would go check and grab and people like that.

MARK: But yeah, for us, it really became real in the sense of, you know, something that we were starting to pursue then, you know, early in the following year after launch.

MARK: So, you know, it made a lot of sense and it’s something we talked around, but then, you know, turning that into an actual, you know, strategy we’re going to execute on.

MARK: That then came through after seeing the overall success, I think, of the loyalty program and how well that was working.

MARK: It makes a lot of sense to kind of build on that because we get super high engagement, you know, through our mobile app, and it makes sense to add more value for our members in that respect.

PAULA: For sure, yeah.

PAULA: And I was looking at your post just describing it, Mark.

PAULA: So again, particularly because we’ve got this global audience, I suppose in, let’s call it phase one, I suppose, Yuu Rewards achieved mass market acceptance, amazingly high digital engagement, market-leading loyalty penetration, and now two years on, it’s almost supercharged with the addition of your e-commerce.

PAULA: You’ve got the hot food delivery and quick commerce as well.

PAULA: I’m not sure if that’s also the same as e-commerce, but a huge amount of, I guess, technical evolution, as well as, I guess, consumers bringing them on the journey.

PAULA: So how would you say that’s gone down with customers?

PAULA: Because I know we talked about, you know, the importance of transitioning the customer’s understanding of, yeah, okay, great, it’s an earn and burn program.

PAULA: I understand loyalty.

PAULA: So that’s what Yuu Rewards is and was.

PAULA: But now actually, it’s an e-commerce proposition.

PAULA: So I’d love just to hear like how that journey has been from your perspective and how you think that the members are finding it.

MARK: Yeah, I think it’s exactly that, a journey.

MARK: You know, in one sense, as you say, you know, we launched as a loyalty program, and that’s how a lot of people would see us.

MARK: That’s what they’re using us on a daily basis for.

MARK: In a sense, you know, we’re almost also a kind of media platform, I guess.

MARK: You know, we get a lot of people browsing our offers and looking through.

MARK: And so the opportunity to convert people from a browse behavior to a buy behavior is something that we can build upon.

MARK: But it is almost no different to, you know, advertising on Facebook.

MARK: You know, just because somebody’s in your app for a particular reason and, you know, collecting points or redeeming doesn’t automatically mean that they’re also going to be your e-commerce customer.

MARK: You know, you need to work like you would in any other platform.

MARK: So, you know, you have to have great deals.

MARK: You have to have a great customer proposition.

MARK: You have to, you know, make it attractive to people to kind of join up.

MARK: You have to do the marketing.

MARK: You know, you have to do the heavy lifting to do it.

MARK: So it isn’t that kind of slam dunk.

MARK: You put a button on there and people start buying.

MARK: But equally, you know, creating a great customer experience and having, you know, really good marketing behind it is crucial to convert in that behavior.

MARK: And as I say, it is our journey.

MARK: You know, every day, every week, we get more and more people coming in, having a look around, and then coming in and converting and buying, and then starting to build that behavior.

MARK: But it’s not an automatic thing.

MARK: And I think, you know, that’s, as I say, I mean, we launched e-commerce October last year.

MARK: We then did a bit of online promotion of it to kind of shout about it a little bit.

MARK: But then this, you know, the big promotion, the big bang campaign really for us last month in May.

MARK: You know, that was when it needed to become a household name.

MARK: Because like most people, you go in and out of, you say an app, you don’t necessarily notice things.

MARK: You know, you can become a bit snow blind to messages that you see on different platforms.

MARK: And so, you know, you really need to cut through that.

MARK: And that’s what the campaign was all about, was creating that cut through.

MARK: So that people really understood that, you know, this exists, this e-commerce is now in there.

MARK: It’s a thing, this you to me proposition.

MARK: You know, and then that’s really helped them to kind of supercharge both the engagement, but also, you know, as you’d expect, the kind of uplifting in actual sales coming through from an e-commerce perspective.

PAULA: And I do love the creative for you to me, Mark.

PAULA: As much as I do miss the super cheesy, but incredibly compelling launch music that you had, which I remember somebody described as almost like a Cliff Richard style lead brand, obviously a huge personality there in the Hong Kong market.

PAULA: And you’ve updated and refreshed all of that with, you know, a whole new song and the positioning around it as well.

PAULA: And I’ll make sure to link to it in the show notes.

PAULA: But even though I don’t obviously speak the language, Mark, it was really clear that, you know, there’s a wonderful family in Hong Kong.

PAULA: They’re using you to me and everything is being delivered immediately.

PAULA: So I was very impressed actually that in a very short piece of creative, I think it was only a 30 second kind of ad.

PAULA: As I said, I don’t speak the language that you were able to communicate that you to me proposition.

PAULA: And I think you said to me last time we spoke as well, Mark, that the level of investment above the line for this launch was actually as big as your original launch for the entire loyalty program.

MARK: Yeah, I mean, it was a big investment.

MARK: I think, from a marketing point of view, Ronald and the team kind of lead the marketing side have done an amazing job with it because it’s a very hard proposition to talk to.

MARK: We have a lot of different e-commerce options.

MARK: As you mentioned, we’ve got hot food from like KFC.

MARK: We’ve got quick commerce, which is kind of under 60 minute delivery for groceries.

MARK: We’ve got e-commerce, which is scheduled next day, et cetera.

MARK: And trying to communicate that all of that is available and is all available in an app is a big set of messages to try and get across.

MARK: And so, I think the way that they’ve done the creative to bring that together, the choice of song, like you say, a cut through.

MARK: It’s interesting that these are essentially additional rather than the new, I guess, because the Yuu Rewards piece is still there.

MARK: We still have Yuu Rewards, the kind of the original Yuu song and that side of it is still a very important part of the overall proposition.

MARK: But Yuu to me is a separate thing in that sense.

MARK: We want people to realize that it exists as a brand almost.

MARK: So having different talents and a different song allows us to kind of have that message and get that cut through.

MARK: And yeah, it’s a big budget launch because as I say, you need to hit the market so that people will have that kind of brand recognition so that when they now see the logo in the app, they actually understand what it is.

MARK: And so if they are in the market for e-commerce, they can understand that U2Me button because again, it’s hard to communicate in the app or the proposition in a button.

MARK: Totally.

MARK: So you need to get that out into the kind of understanding of the general consumer base so that when they see the logo, they now have a meaning behind the logo.

MARK: And so that’s the work that the team have done.

MARK: And it’s ongoing.

MARK: I mean, you may have seen some of the smaller videos that they’ve done, but they’ve got some kind of famous talent within Hong Kong that they’ve mocked up as almost little puppets.

MARK: It’s like a stop motion style superhero mini films.

MARK: It’s using just different methods to create that interest and hopefully some virality to the content.

MARK: But just to make it stand out and be noticed, that’s running.

MARK: But it is a different campaign.

MARK: When we launched Yuu Rewards, we were coming into a market with nothing, essentially.

MARK: So you’re starting from ground zero.

MARK: You’ve got no members, essentially, in your program.

MARK: You really need to get your brand known.

MARK: And so it was big above the line campaigns.

MARK: It was big jumbo screens in central areas.

MARK: It was like the Cross Harbor Tunnel, which is one of the main thoroughfares through Hong Kong.

MARK: You couldn’t miss the big brand.

MARK: It was on trams and buses and everything.

MARK: Now it’s slightly different shape of campaign.

MARK: So we still have a U2Me tram running up and down, which is always quite interesting to see.

MARK: But it’s more, you know, it’s on the side of minibuses, which are going off into slightly more outlying areas, because ultimately, you know, the customers are going to be using e-commerce whilst they may live in the center.

MARK: They’re also going to be living in some of the villages and some of the, you know, the different areas of residential areas, where it makes actually a lot of sense because, you know, they may not have a grocery store right next door to them.

MARK: And it’s a bigger trip.

MARK: So how do you get the message out there?

MARK: And the same for the online piece.

MARK: You know, there’s a lot more that’s gone online now from an advertising, social media, etc.

MARK: To really get that kind of ongoing reach into the customer base, because, you know, that’s who we’re walking to.

MARK: It’s people who are comfortable online, comfortable shopping online.

MARK: You know, we’re trying to bring that audience through.

MARK: So it’s much more about where our audience sits.

MARK: It’s where the investment, I guess, is going in it.

MARK: But it still has a big above the line element to it to make sure that it’s still got that kind of brand recognition.

MARK: So, you know, I’ll go on the MTR, I’ll see it playing on a video wall.

MARK: When we launched, we were on the front of, you know, all the newspapers.

MARK: So, you know, we’ve done the kind of classic piece to do the big bang in terms of the brand itself.

MARK: But now the ongoing campaign is really to make sure we’re reaching all the different areas where it’s, you know, the main audiences.

PAULA: Yeah, yeah.

PAULA: No, it’s an important distinction, Mark.

PAULA: I do like that because we all know, of course, the use case about loyalty.

PAULA: And that was your starting point.

PAULA: But the e-commerce use case is actually important to distinguish as a separate, compelling benefit, because I think that’s an entirely different mass market proposition that, as you said, your creative team have done a phenomenal job in terms of being super clear about that.

PAULA: So actually bringing people in for that reason, perhaps they may get involved with the rewards piece, but actually maybe they’ll just be e-commerce customers.

PAULA: So I really love the scale of what you’re doing.

PAULA: And even that piece about getting more into residential and rural areas, as you said, it’s a whole other audience and a whole other opportunity to continue what I think already is.

PAULA: You’re the number one app, if I’m right, in Hong Kong already, aren’t you?

MARK: We were, obviously it chops and changes depending on, depending what’s going on.

MARK: But I think from a, certainly from a little gap, yes.

MARK: I mean, over 4 million people, we’re one of the biggest kind of mobile properties, I guess, in Hong Kong.

MARK: So from an installation point of view, yes.

MARK: We’re kind of almost on everybody’s phone.

PAULA: Oh my God.

PAULA: Amazing, amazing.

PAULA: The other really fun thing that I saw you doing, Mark, and I think I said to you, I haven’t seen done anywhere else, although I’m sure it does exist, but it’s the whole idea around, I think WhatsApp stickers.

PAULA: And I just want to get a sense of exactly what you’ve been doing with that.

PAULA: And I think what you explained to me is that this taps into a mentality around collectibles, which certainly in Hong Kong, and I think in lots of countries around the world, whether it’s a family or just even a restaurant proposition, the idea of collectibles is something that drives loyalty in a completely different way.

PAULA: So I think you have the benefit of both the physical experience with that, which you can maybe tell us a bit about, and also trialing it in digital format with these message stickers.

PAULA: So love to just get a sense of the collectibles piece so far.

PAULA: I know it’s early in your journey with this piece at the moment.

MARK: Yeah, I mean, it’s a really interesting space.

MARK: I mean, as you say, I mean, it’s not unique to Hong Kong, but I think it’s certainly strong in Hong Kong in the sense of, you know, people do really like the kind of character-based collectibles.

MARK: So, you know, a kind of convenience ban of 7-Eleven does a lot of rewards, you know, like stamp-collecting-type rewards that they would have done in store for quite a long time.

MARK: And it’s generally branded goods.

MARK: So it might be Sanrio characters, and it could be anything.

MARK: It might be plates or cups or, you know, anything of that nature.

MARK: And people love it.

MARK: They love the characters that they have on there.

MARK: They like the products.

MARK: It could be like mini bags and all sorts of stuff.

MARK: And so what we’ve done is, you know, working with 7-Eleven, I’ve tapped into some of that.

MARK: So at a physical level, you know, you can use your, you can use your uPoints to redeem for those collectibles.

MARK: And they’re always super popular.

MARK: Because what’s clever about them is the randomness to them.

MARK: So generally, you don’t know what you’re getting.

MARK: So, you know, you’ll redeem for it and you’ll get a box.

MARK: And it could be one of four or five characters, say.

MARK: You know, you look at something like Sanrio, you know, you could get a Hello Kitty if you really like Hello Kitty, but you could also get a melody or one of the other characters.

MARK: And so because of that randomness, it makes it fun.

MARK: But also, if you’re after a particular character, you’re going to have to come again.

MARK: You have to try and redeem again.

MARK: So there’s an element of kind of, you know, loose gamification, but, you know, in the sense of randomness, it adds fun to it.

MARK: Okay.

MARK: I like that.

MARK: So we can do it at Points Redemption as well, which works really, really well.

MARK: It’s a really strong proposition.

MARK: And so we’ve just dabbled a little bit so far with the sticker side of it.

MARK: But, you know, we did for Christmas and for Chinese New Year, we did sticker packs for WhatsApp.

MARK: We’ve got the capability in the app to kind of issue those directly from the app.

MARK: And they work, you know, they work really well.

MARK: I mean, when we had those running, you know, we were the number one sticker in Hong Kong for that kind of week or whatever that we kind of launched them.

MARK: And they are very popular because, again, it’s fun.

MARK: You can trade it with your friends.

MARK: You can send it, you know, as a sticker to your friends to play with.

MARK: And they generally kind of run alongside the campaign.

MARK: So they’ve got characters from the campaign that we’re running, whether, you know, like Christmas, et cetera, and have, you know, messages on them.

MARK: So it could be, you know, Merry Christmas, you know, that you send to your friends or thank you or whatever for a gift.

MARK: So it kind of ties into whatever the big campaign is that the marketing team are running.

MARK: But again, you know, very, very popular.

MARK: So I think, you know, you can kind of see from a journey point of view that actually it’s quite an interesting space to start to play in more.

MARK: So I think, you know, that it’s certainly something that we’d look to do more with.

MARK: And it helps because you’ve got this kind of mobile app as your primary way of communicating with the members.

MARK: You can bring these kind of things in very easily within the program because we’ve got that kind of level of engagement.

MARK: So yeah, the whole kind of correctable space, but also kind of sticker type space is an area that I think will kind of work through more.

PAULA: Yeah, no, I really find it exciting and I know it’s not in every country or even everybody listening who will use WhatsApp as their dominant messaging platform.

PAULA: Clearly, it varies hugely across the world.

PAULA: I think Facebook Messenger, for example, in the US, might be the dominant one.

PAULA: But just so I understand the journey, Mark, you know, just from my own understanding.

PAULA: So essentially, your member within the Yuu program would either redeem or claim a sticker, which is branded.

PAULA: And then I would take that outside into my WhatsApp communication and send, as you said, maybe a happy Christmas.

PAULA: Is that what it is?

PAULA: Almost like an emoji that wouldn’t be available if I wasn’t a member of the Yuu Rewards program.

MARK: Yeah, exactly.

MARK: So the way we did it for, say, the Christmas campaign or the Chinese New Year campaign, is it appears in our app essentially as an ad.

MARK: So when you’re scrolling through your offer feed, you’ll see an advert for the sticker pack.

MARK: We can also promote it, obviously, through other channels like push or email, et cetera.

MARK: But if you’re in the app, you’ll see an ad for the stickers.

MARK: When you click on it, it will take you to a page in the app to say, download the sticker pack, show the stickers that you’re going to get.

MARK: You click on it, it automatically opens up WhatsApp and automatically drops the stickers into WhatsApp for you.

MARK: And at that point, then you can just use them as you would use any other stickers in WhatsApp.

MARK: So, you have to go in, you have to be a member to get them, clearly, and you have to go into the app to get them.

MARK: But after that, they’re in your WhatsApp, and then you can kind of send them, obviously, to friends.

MARK: But obviously, the way that WhatsApp works is your friends can also save that sticker themselves.

MARK: And so they can then reuse it if they want to elsewhere.

MARK: So it’s just something that adds that kind of viral element again to doing it.

MARK: But as you say, the opportunity, I guess, is to move it from being something that’s just campaign led to something that could ultimately be redemption led, et cetera.

MARK: So, you know, see it ultimately moving into some form of reward and recognition around that as a fun asset to utilize.

PAULA: Yeah, yeah.

PAULA: And just my final, again, personal curiosity, Mark, is that something that any brand can do with, I suppose, full control?

PAULA: Or is it something that you need to connect with WhatsApp, you know, in terms of getting their permission to publish?

PAULA: Like, I just don’t understand the interface.

PAULA: And the reason I’m asking this one, Mark, is, you know, I really love WhatsApp as my, you know, my personal messaging platform.

PAULA: My whole life is there.

PAULA: And I see the business potential of it.

PAULA: But yet I haven’t found many ways to either see how loyalty propositions can leverage it.

PAULA: And only recently, for example, I saw WhatsApp themselves launching, you know, actual the opportunity to like or have an emoji, for example, on a particular message.

PAULA: So to me, it feels like WhatsApp is behind the curve, certainly in terms of what you’re doing.

PAULA: So just curious as to what your experience was as building that, was it all done internally or did you need to connect with the people in WhatsApp?

MARK: So WhatsApp is quite open in that sense.

MARK: So I think the first campaign we ran, we worked through a third party, but anybody can essentially create WhatsApp stickers.

MARK: So I’ve done my own using a photo of my kids.

MARK: You can go on the website and just upload a photo and turn it into a WhatsApp sticker.

MARK: What we then did is essentially used the SDK, that WhatsApp provide, to enable us to actually build it directly into the app.

MARK: So we’ve now embedded it inside the app.

MARK: But yeah, it’s all free to use essentially, and WhatsApp is quite open to enable it.

MARK: Nothing special directly, I guess.

MARK: It’s building in that capability to enable it and then using that as a channel.

MARK: And we’ve also added it in as a customer service channel now.

MARK: We launched Facebook Messenger, but we now have WhatsApp as well, because it is increasingly a key channel for working through.

PAULA: OK, and just learnings on that off the top of your head.

PAULA: Is it something that, like, are you using AI, for example, or is it human led customer service?

MARK: Yeah, for the moment, our chat is human led.

MARK: So, yeah, if you go into like a WhatsApp chat or a Facebook Messenger chat, you will go straight through to one of our chat agents to manage that.

MARK: But as you say, I mean, it’s definitely an area to look at how we do automation, more around that as we start to extend those capabilities.

MARK: But it is one of the major channels for us.

MARK: It’s probably bigger than voice in terms of volumes going through it.

PAULA: Another super interesting insight, Mark.

PAULA: And I had seen actually on your LinkedIn profile that you’ve done a lot, I think, with them, with AI in your career already.

PAULA: So clearly a personal interest for you as well.

MARK: Yeah, I mean, like all these things, personalization and I guess, you know, AI is one of the things that underpins it is critical in this space.

MARK: But like everything, you know, it’s dependent upon the maturity of the data and of the processes.

MARK: So, you know, for us, it’s looking at, you know, where you put personalization into the process based upon the data that you’ve got.

MARK: Yeah, I mean, as you say, you know, it’s part of the process of a loyalty program, I guess, across everything, whether it’s rewards or offers or messages.

MARK: You know, all of them need to have, you know, increasing relevance to the member.

PAULA: Totally, totally.

PAULA: So, listen, I think we’ve talked through all of your big ideas, Mark, in terms of obviously you to me, the incredible e-commerce proposition that you’ve built.

PAULA: And just for clarity as well, that has a full earn opportunity for you rewards, I guess, for people shopping within the app.

PAULA: Am I right?

MARK: Yeah, exactly.

MARK: I mean, that’s the beauty of it, I guess, is it’s seamless in terms of the integration.

MARK: So when you click through in the app to buy groceries or even to shop at IKEA, it’s a seamless in-app experience.

MARK: I think if I contrast it to where we were maybe 10, 15 years ago, a lot of loyalty programs globally would have an affiliate mall.

MARK: We obviously had one in Nectar back in the day where you could obviously click through and buy from third parties and earn points on it.

MARK: The challenge, I think, with the way that the affiliate mall model works is you kind of give up the customer experience because at the point that somebody clicks out to that brand, they’ve left you.

MARK: They’re now on the brand’s website.

MARK: But also you lose a connection to the customer experience in terms of the points coming back to the member.

MARK: Sometimes it can take weeks, if not months, for those points to come back through through the affiliate networks.

MARK: And so it’s not a great customer experience because you don’t know when you’re going to get your points.

MARK: You don’t get rewarded at the point that you made the purchase.

MARK: And it feels quite disconnected as a customer experience.

MARK: I think what we’ve done with you to me is really, for me, is really just energized the whole Coalition model.

MARK: I love the e-commerce piece, but I think what’s really exciting as a loyalty marketeer is how we’ve brought the Coalition model forward.

MARK: Because that Super App model, for me, is the modern day Coalition in terms of doing that.

MARK: And so being able to click through to a brand seamlessly, and when you click through, they know exactly who you are.

MARK: They can personalize the experience around you.

MARK: You know, you shop.

MARK: You click through, your addresses appear, and everything appears straight away in the banner that you’ve clicked into.

MARK: And then you shop, your points come through.

MARK: It’s a very, very seamless experience.

MARK: And I think that’s the beauty of the model that we’re building on.

MARK: It’s one seamless experience for the customer now, which you can only do because of the way that the technology has moved forward.

MARK: We’re really trying to benefit from that technology and give the best customer experience we can.

PAULA: Yeah, yeah.

PAULA: My goodness, I haven’t quite realized you have that depth of integration, Mark.

PAULA: And as you said, I mean, affiliates in the past sometimes can feel disconnected or clunky or just super late, as you said, in terms of closing the loop on the rewards side.

PAULA: So I can hear how proud you are of managing to pull, as you said, the whole industry forward with that customer experience.

MARK: Yeah, it’s been a really exciting prospect, I think, in terms of doing it.

MARK: There’s a lot of players out there.

MARK: I mean, we learned a lot by looking across the market.

MARK: You look at what people like, the big guys like Gojek and Grab, who everyone knows of.

MARK: But equally, like Rappi in South America are doing some great things on their super app, and Tata has just launched one in India.

MARK: There’s a lot of people doing it.

MARK: AirAsia pivoted their loyalty program into a super app.

MARK: There’s so many people that you can look at and get some great learnings from that have already plowed the field, so to speak, and have good ways of working that we can look at and build on and personalize for our own market, which is great.

PAULA: Yeah.

PAULA: And I think it’s a good reminder, Mark, as well, that we all, I suppose, ideally, need to keep that global perspective, because Grab and Gojek are very much based, of course, in Asia and certainly Indonesia, is my understanding, where they’re both based.

PAULA: And you mentioned South America.

PAULA: So the level of innovation that’s happening in other markets that doesn’t always get the recognition, dare I say, or the respect, you know?

PAULA: I think we have this traditional idea that certain markets might be more mature.

PAULA: But I love hearing what’s going on in Asia, and particularly the stuff that you’re doing.

PAULA: So thank you for bringing all of that to our attention.

PAULA: So I guess my final question is, you know, can you say what’s coming next?

PAULA: Is there anything that you think, I suppose, loyalty marketeers around the world should be thinking about in terms of, you know, we’re here in the middle of 2022.

PAULA: Might be another 18 months before we get to sit down together again.

PAULA: So just any thoughts about the future, either directly for you, as in you, the program, or yeah, just, I suppose, industry trends you wanted to mention.

MARK: Yeah, I mean, obviously, I can’t talk about what we might be planning.

MARK: I can say that we have a full roadmap.

MARK: So you can imagine there’s lots more coming.

MARK: But I think at a high level, it is really just about how do we just create an amazing customer experience.

MARK: So it’s not hard to look in the app and work out what other areas we might be looking at and thinking about.

MARK: But it’s all focused on just making the lives easier for our members, essentially, so that we are a kind of one-stop shop.

MARK: If you want to do something, you get rewarded for it.

MARK: But actually, we also help you to do it.

MARK: That’s really what we’re looking to do.

MARK: So just becoming more and more useful, but also just refining our processes more and more.

MARK: There’s so much to learn and to do that you just never stop at that level.

MARK: So we’re constantly going back and looking at what we’ve built and how do we make that better.

MARK: But we were constantly looking at where we think we can help more.

MARK: So there’s a lot more of that to come, I guess, over the next 12 months in different areas to see how do we add more value.

PAULA: Yes, yeah.

PAULA: Well, super exciting, as I said, Mark, I’ll be following everything very closely on LinkedIn.

PAULA: And yes, as and when the roadmap starts to unfold again, we’ll be sure to reach out and make sure to get you back on the show.

PAULA: So that was it from my side.

PAULA: Is there anything else that you want to mention before we wrap up?

MARK: No, I think that was great.

MARK: And thank you for the opportunity, Paula.

MARK: It’s been fun as it was last time.

PAULA: Wonderful.

PAULA: Well, listen, Mark Sage, Chief Operating Officer at Yuu.

PAULA: Thank you so much from Let’s Talk Loyalty.

PAULA: This show is brought to you by the Australian Loyalty Association, the leading organisation for loyalty networking and education in Asia Pacific.

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