#109: Let's Talk Loyalty Partners with The Wise Marketer

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: Thank you.

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: Hello and welcome to episode 109 of Let’s Talk Loyalty.

PAULA: In this short show, I’m summarizing my interview with Bill Hanifin, an episode from February 2020 when I was thrilled to announce a partnership with these great friends and leading personalities in the global loyalty industry.

PAULA: The Wise Marketer group includes the Wise Marketer website, the Loyalty Academy training courses, and some other amazing industry assets, such as the loyalty guide.

PAULA: For the announcement of my partnership with the group, I was joined by Bill Hanifin, who is the CEO and managing editor of The Wise Marketer, as well as the founder of his own consulting firm, Hanifin Loyalty, based out of Florida.

PAULA: Bill has an incredibly varied background, including initially some corporate banking, and as a chief financial officer, before he ended up joining Visa, and helped create some co-branded credit cards.

PAULA: And it was that work which led him to dedicate his whole career to this loyalty industry.

PAULA: Bill told me some of the reasons that he loves it.

PAULA: It’s a discipline that you can put your heart and soul into.

PAULA: You can also drive incremental business, and at the same time, delight your customers.

PAULA: So everyone really is a winner.

PAULA: He told me how much he respected the original founders of The Wise Marketer business, and his goal to add intelligent strategic insights for industry professionals.

PAULA: The result is a website boasting an incredible archive of professional content.

PAULA: Over 6,000 loyalty articles from the last 15 years, all of which are freely available for anyone to read at any time.

PAULA: Bill also told me the origins of The Loyalty Academy, the first course created by and for industry professionals and practitioners who want to achieve a professional certification in our industry.

PAULA: Really inspired by the size and scope and potential for the impact on business when loyalty marketing is done well.

PAULA: Before COVID-19, The Loyalty Academy workshops were due to take place at least twice in 2020 in Florida and Toronto.

PAULA: And they also had plans to run courses in Dublin, South America and India.

PAULA: For now, of course, those courses in those locations are on hold, but plenty of loyalty professionals like myself are continuing to take the program online and really add to our professional profile.

PAULA: Bill and I then discussed some shared values and beliefs such as the power of content marketing to build your business if it’s done well.

PAULA: And we talked through some of the new terminology in our industry.

PAULA: So whether your goal is to understand the principles of loyalty marketing or drive business performance, or indeed focus on the whole field of customer experience.

PAULA: Whatever your interest, I can definitely say that The Wise Marketer is truly the most extraordinary resource for loyalty industry professionals.

PAULA: And as my partner and a home for my podcast, the partnership between The Wise Marketer and Let’s Talk Loyalty is still one of the great highlights of my podcast career so far.

PAULA: In closing, Bill Hanifin really is an incredible loyalty personality, full of integrity, insights and years of knowledge that he shares online on The Wise Marketer.

PAULA: So if you’re not already subscribing to their free newsletter that they send out each week, I do highly recommend it.

PAULA: Just head on over to thewisemarketeer.com and sign up.

PAULA: And as always, if you want to listen to the full interview, it’s episode 24 on letstalkloyalty.com.

PAULA: This show is sponsored by The Wise Marketer, the world’s most popular source of loyalty marketing news, insights and research.

PAULA: The Wise Marketer 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 thewisemarketer.com and loyaltyacademy.org.

PAULA: Thanks so much for listening to this episode of Let’s Talk Loyalty.

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