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: Welcome to episode 24 of Let’s Talk Loyalty.
Paula: And when I realized it was episode 24, I was super excited to realize that I’m nearly a half a year in broadcasting.
Paula: So it is very exciting to be podcasting about loyalty.
Paula: And I have to say, when I started this whole idea and started developing the concept, one of my really big goals was to work with some of the leaders in the industry.
Paula: And I am thrilled to announce that today, I am announcing a huge partnership from my perspective with a global organization that many of you may already be familiar with.
Paula: But if not today is the perfect chance to get to know them.
Paula: So I’ll talk you through all of the various different brands that we’re gonna talk about today.
Paula: But first and foremost, I want to welcome Bill Hanifin of Hanifin Loyalty to Let’s Talk Loyalty.
Bill: Hello Paula, how are you?
Bill: I’m delighted to be here.
Paula: Great Bill, great, great, great.
Paula: And I know you’re in the Loyalty and Awards Conference in Vancouver today, Bill.
Paula: So you’re up 12 hours behind me bright and early.
Paula: So I really appreciate you getting up at the crack of dawn.
Bill: World’s getting smaller.
Paula: It sure is.
Paula: It sure is.
Paula: Great stuff.
Paula: So I mentioned you have a number of different roles and responsibilities.
Paula: The two that I am most familiar with are, first of all, the Loyalty Academy.
Paula: Secondly, The Wise Marketer.
Paula: And actually, as I was preparing for this, I was noticing that in the United States, you guys pronounce it as The Wise Marketer.
Paula: And where I come from, I say The Wise Marketer.
Paula: But it’s certainly a hugely respected media publication.
Paula: Probably the biggest source of news for me and for everyone in this industry.
Paula: So I definitely want to spend a lot of time talking about those two particular things.
Paula: But before I do that, as you know, I open every show, and every show, asking all of my guests what is their favorite loyalty statistic.
Paula: So before we get into all of your various businesses, tell me what is your favorite statistic about loyalty?
Bill: All right, Paula.
Bill: Hey, well, what if I told you that 70% of all consumer loyalty is constantly up for grabs?
Paula: Oh my goodness.
Bill: That might surprise you, huh?
Paula: Wow, wow, that’s a huge number, Bill.
Paula: My goodness.
Bill: It is.
Bill: Well, it’s interesting.
Bill: We did, The Wise Marketer did a joint research project with Merits Motivation in 2019, and it’s published in on the website.
Bill: It’s titled The Wise Marketer Loyalty Landscape Study.
Bill: And we actually gave it a name of the split personality of loyalty because we found out that there were, through the research we found out, ultimately, there were two very distinctly defined groups.
Bill: And we gave them some names, which were interesting maybe from the, you’re a writer, so you can think about this from a…
Paula: Yes…
Bill: .
Bill: word selection.
Bill: But one we call the ephemerals.
Bill: So these are the people who are, who were acknowledging loyalty for brands.
Bill: They like their brands.
Bill: They’re evaluators, I guess.
Bill: And so they’re subject to influence by all sorts of things.
Bill: And it’s not just price and quality, but it’s clearly loyalty programs because they told us in the research that loyalty programs were highly valuable to them.
Bill: They did influence their purchase behavior.
Bill: I think 87% had said that they considered loyalty programs important in their purchase making decision.
Bill: So it was interesting.
Bill: You had this ephemeral group that was kind of the one up for grabs.
Bill: We had about 30% of those that we termed the unshakables.
Bill: So the unshakables were, if I had to sort of fill in the blank to make an easy example, you can imagine people that really like their Starbucks, their Red Bull fanatics, their Apple devotees.
Bill: You know, just fill in the blank of favorite brands that have a lot of power and magnetism like that.
Bill: So we saw these two groups and we saw they behaved differently.
Bill: And it was interesting to me mostly because oftentimes talking to clients and to people in the business, there’s this feeling like loyalty is kind of a maturing business.
Bill: So everyone has some sort of a loyalty program or strategy and we’re really just trying to hold on to what we have.
Bill: It’s very much a retention game.
Bill: And this research told us that no, how interesting.
Bill: There’s actually, if you execute well, if you apply some real thought power to this and try to change what you’re doing and think about all the other ways that you might blend loyalty into your customer experience and all those things, you can have an impact.
Bill: And there’s a big group of people out there.
Bill: So I have a finance background and I always think about 70%.
Bill: What if we could shift a few basis points to this brand or that brand?
Bill: That math turns out to be quite a big return on investment.
Bill: So anyway, that was a statistic that really grabbed me of late.
Paula: I love it, Bill.
Paula: No, and I think that’s very impressive.
Paula: And I know from my own experience, just on a very human level, when I see a company or a person, it doesn’t really matter.
Paula: When I see someone making the effort to earn my loyalty, I really do appreciate that because I know they’ve gone the extra mile.
Paula: So I’m actually not that surprised to hear that there is so much up for grabs.
Paula: And it comes back to a point that we’ve often talked about on this show.
Paula: What is the intention of your loyalty program?
Paula: Is it a box ticking exercise to keep up with the competition?
Paula: Or is there a genuine intention to wow your customers?
Paula: Because I think customers feel that.
Paula: And I think it comes through with the field of customer experience and lots of the kind of things we’re going to talk about today.
Paula: So thanks for making that super clear, Bill.
Paula: I think that’s a really good opener.
Bill: Absolutely, absolutely.
Paula: So tell us then, as I said, you’ve got lots of different areas within the loyalty business we’re going to talk about.
Paula: So how did you first and foremost get into loyalty in the first place?
Bill: It was very interesting.
Bill: So I think I mentioned I have a finance background.
Bill: And I’m still asking myself how a quote finance guy got into a marketing business.
Bill: But when you think about what loyalty marketing is really all about, how it’s so quantitatively driven, it’s data driven.
Bill: We build financial models around these programs.
Bill: And so between all those elements, maybe it wasn’t as big a leap as I thought it was.
Bill: So this was actually my third career.
Bill: I was thinking that maybe I’m more millennial than it might appear.
Paula: Wow, that’s well done, you.
Bill: There you go.
Bill: So no, I spent a few years as a banker.
Bill: I was a corporate banker.
Bill: I was a CFO at an aviation services firm for a while.
Bill: And then through a story that we certainly don’t have time for here, I found myself working for Visa.
Bill: And it was really interesting because in Visa, they said, write your product manager for this software that will help us launch a co-branded rewards program on a credit card.
Bill: And all the banks in Latin America were just getting started in that business.
Bill: I mean, maybe that does date us a little bit, if you think that there were banks that actually thought that was a new idea.
Bill: So anyway, one thing led to another, and we got involved in launching a coalition program with Shell in Peru, with that same software as the backbone.
Bill: And then that led me to Alliance Data Systems, which is at the time was the owner of the Air Miles and Epsilon and a number of different companies.
Bill: And so, yeah, it was quite an interesting path, but I’m happy I found the business.
Bill: I’m ultimately passionate about the business, really enjoy it.
Bill: I feel like it’s…
Bill: If you can put your heart and soul into something where you feel like you can do something good for customers, you can help a client make some money and then you can earn a reasonable living, that’s just a winner for everybody involved.
Bill: And so actually, I know you’re gonna ask me, but that’s what led a little bit to our involvement with The Wise Marketer.
Paula: Amazing, absolutely.
Paula: And I like that as well because it’s actually the exact same point that we just touched on.
Paula: You know, what’s your own intention for your career?
Paula: And for me, there’s always been that lovely piece around, actually, I feel like everybody’s winning in this industry.
Paula: Like before I was, you know, classically a loyalty marketeer, you know, you were in finance, you know, I just always said I was a commercial marketeer, which you’re right, I think the science now of what we’re doing, and I think the Loyalty Academy is a very good example of that.
Paula: It does, I think, make us very accountable to the CFOs of the world to basically say, yeah, we’re trying to make customers feel good, but there is a genuine business reason behind it.
Paula: So yeah, I don’t think your accounting career is as far as away as you might have thought at the time.
Paula: So lots of years, I think we said about 20 years overall in Loyalty, and the first, I suppose, big business and the partnership that we’re announcing today is actually The Wise Marketer and Let’s Talk Loyalty.
Paula: And I suppose from my perspective, for listeners, I suppose I should just explain why it was just such a big and exciting idea from my side.
Paula: Clearly my idea and objective is around staying up to date myself on what’s happening in the industry and sharing that knowledge as widely as possible.
Paula: Because what I find is living in Dubai or living in Dublin, wherever I am, it’s just too difficult to get to the conferences, to do all the online reading.
Paula: So I really find that this type of format of listening to learn is super interesting.
Paula: And of course, I want to get as wide an audience as possible.
Paula: And I know for The Wise Marketer, you guys are very keen to get, I suppose, the global voice of loyalty, which is your own tagline.
Paula: So this is obviously going out now, February 27th.
Paula: We’re announcing our partnership and the Let’s Talk Loyalty podcast is gonna be front and center on The Wise Marketer website.
Paula: So super exciting.
Paula: So tell us some of the numbers around The Wise Marketer, Bill, because you’ve got an incredible audience.
Paula: And I think if anybody’s listening and not subscribed, for example, to your newsletter, it would be super interesting to do that now.
Bill: Yeah, absolutely.
Bill: And you won’t get away quite so easily, you know, with your humble description of Let’s Talk Loyalty.
Bill: But we’ll get to that in a minute.
Bill: But Wise Marketer has been Wise Marketer.
Bill: By the way, one of your previous guests, Mike Atkin.
Bill: He was one of my earliest and deepest connections in the business from the very beginning.
Bill: I met him and worked with him for a number of years.
Bill: And he has got a sense of humor.
Bill: And he told me one time, he’s talking about Americans and the English, the Brits.
Bill: He said, we’re common people separated by…
Bill: I’m sorry, we’re different people separated by a common language.
Bill: I used to routinely send him written documents that he’d say, it’s all good, except I need to put it in proper English.
Paula: That’s a thing.
Paula: Yeah, we just have to live with that.
Paula: That’s okay.
Bill: Yeah.
Bill: So, The Wise Marketer is really interesting to me.
Bill: We acquired the property three years ago.
Bill: And we owe a lot to what was built by Robin and Peter Clark.
Bill: They’re two outstanding people that had a vision and had a vision probably 15 years ago.
Bill: And I remember in my early days working with the Colloquy Group, which now is sort of earlier property that people would read quite a lot.
Bill: We always had people ask us, what do you read?
Bill: Where do you go to get more information about this business?
Bill: And 10 or 15 years ago, there wasn’t the abundance of information and sources of information that there is today.
Bill: So we would say, well, Colloquy really has a lot of depth, a lot of analysis and points of view and everything.
Bill: But if you just want to get an idea of what’s happening all around the world, you really should read The Wise Marketer, especially if you have an interest in international markets, because Colloquy was wholly focused in North America and Wise Marketer, much more on a global scale.
Bill: So as we went along, you know, the way we love this business, we thought, how is it that we had just done a market study?
Bill: That’s really what kind of prompted some of the thinking.
Bill: We did a market study for one of the big payment systems in the world, and they wanted to know what’s the size of this annual revenue value of the loyalty business, including rewards without rewards.
Bill: We went through different calculations, and the number is not important, but let’s just say it was, you know, 150 billion or larger.
Bill: And we paused and thought, how could an industry that has global stature and has this much impact and has this many CMOs and business people giving it attention, how could we not have a central source of information for that business?
Bill: Because every industry has it, whether it’s adage for the agency business or others.
Bill: So we had talked to the clerks, and it was very interesting, but we were just so delighted to take what I think is like an honored brand, I value the brand and value what the clerks did and build on it and kind of bring it up to today.
Bill: So our commitment was truly to create a resource that would be valuable to everybody in our industry.
Bill: And this is not people too, and I’d say that are just building, quote, loyalty programs, but anyone who’s interested in customer marketing.
Bill: So think of it as data driven customer marketing, which means people want to hear about what are people doing with data and analytics, what are they doing about the financial management aspects of the program, liability management and fraud management, things like that, but also trends in customer experience and customer engagement, some branding articles.
Bill: So we try to be holistic, I guess, in our approach as much as we can.
Bill: We reach out to a lot of people, but we’re on the journey and we’ve made a lot of progress.
Bill: So today, it’s wonderful to see, I think we have a subscriber base.
Bill: I think you know we have a newsletter and this is something that we carried forward from the clerks.
Bill: Every Thursday we have a newsletter that goes out and the readership is in 128 countries.
Bill: So we’re happy to see that it’s much more than a North American centric publication.
Bill: I think we have about 30% of our subscribers within US and Canada.
Bill: So, we have a great representation outside the US and that is vitally important to me.
Bill: That’s one of the reasons that we wanted to link up with you on the podcast because your vision is outside the US, you talk to so many people, you have a fantastic network and so we thought what a great way to just have access to people with different points of view all around the world.
Paula: Wonderful, so I think the content on the wisemarketer.com goes back, I think, is it over 15 years, Bill?
Bill: It does.
Bill: It does.
Bill: I think we have over 5 or 6,000 articles on the site.
Bill: It does go back.
Bill: We did a little bit of curation when we migrated it forward into a new web theme, but there’s a tremendous amount of content.
Bill: It’s really a history of loyalty marketing if you wanted it to be so.
Bill: And it’s a great resource as a tool for somebody that wants to learn, let’s say, everything I wanted to know about a particular vertical industry or geography or the history of coalitions, you could go back and find all sorts of information there.
Paula: Yeah, amazing.
Paula: And I do, Bill, as you know, I write about loyalty a lot.
Paula: We have a shared industry, particularly in terms of convenience retail.
Paula: And anytime I’m talking about something or writing about something, I will always go to The Wise Marketer for, you know, just to kind of see what your thoughts and commentary have been and then add my own interpretation on it.
Paula: And just, I suppose, one thing I love, and I think we’re all, you know, at the stage where we don’t want to have to do too many registrations or logins anymore.
Paula: So your website is completely open with the full search functionality.
Paula: So I definitely would say to anyone listening, you know, if you’re ever looking for case studies on Loyalty or any insights, it’s definitely the ultimate repository, I would say.
Paula: Yeah, no, for sure.
Paula: And then I know you’ve mentioned you have about 11,000 subscribers, and it’s a twice-weekly email newsletter that you send, isn’t that right?
Bill: Yes, typically you’ll see we have something we call the Newswire that goes out on Monday.
Bill: So that’s a compilation of latest news and so on.
Bill: And we’ll have an email that goes out to our group on Tuesday and also on Thursday, they’re kind of differently positioned.
Bill: But Thursday is our newsletter.
Bill: Tuesday is usually something that’s a little more focused on a topic or a vertical or something like that.
Paula: Sure.
Paula: And I suppose the next piece I was going to comment on, and again, because you’ve got so much experience in content marketing, and as you know, I’m only, I suppose now, just over two years, whether it’s writing or as, you know, obviously broadcasting now, but in terms of loyalty programs, that’s, you know, predominantly B2C, I guess.
Paula: Is there, you know, do you believe in content marketing from a B2B or from a loyalty program perspective?
Paula: Just given your expertise on the B2B side.
Paula: I’d just love to get your thoughts on that one.
Bill: I know I’m a big believer.
Bill: I really, I had experience when I had left Alliance Data, started Hanifin Loyalty, which is, you know, my strategic marketing firm.
Bill: One of the things that I carried forward was a lesson from a previous boss that I had who didn’t like to advertise.
Bill: He didn’t like us to go.
Bill: He would let us go to, to shows, if you will, in quotes, but wasn’t one to sponsor, advertise, to spend money in that manner, but he was the one who had the colloquy publication.
Bill: And so at the time, and think about this as being 20 years ago or more, that he was able to establish the premise that if you could, if you could make your voice worthy of listening to, I guess, then you could create some inbound inquiries, you know, you create some brand awareness and so on.
Bill: So one of the things I did at Hanifin Loyalty is I created a blog I called Loyalty Truth, and I had decided to give that its own URL, I decided instead of making it, you know, Bill Hanifin’s blog, which of course, everybody’s going to be suspicious that I’m self serving and just writing things to generate leads for sales and things like that, I thought I’m going to put it out here by itself.
Bill: And, and it actually worked very well.
Bill: And so it was at the time on a very small scale, I call it a mini wise marketer, it was doing its job, let’s say, and so we see that here with The Wise Marketer as well, because we do quite a bit of content marketing for clients, we’ll help them with brand awareness and strategic plans and so on.
Bill: And that’s one of the reasons you mentioned it, we decided not to put a paywall on The Wise Marketer.
Bill: And it’s hard to do anyway, let’s admit that.
Bill: If you’re The Wall Street Journal or The Financial Times, then okay.
Bill: But we thought, let’s not put any obstacles in front of everyone.
Bill: Let’s put the information out there, be true to our word that we put the value proposition in our loyalty lingo, right?
Bill: There’s great content covering the world and it’s available to you.
Bill: Now that we hope creates some affinity, get some return visits, some regular visits and so on and so forth.
Bill: And it’ll be some brands of all sorts that we work with to help get their message out.
Bill: But I absolutely do.
Bill: I mean, let me ask you the question because I know you’re a great writer.
Bill: It’s one of my passions too is to write but I feel like we’ve got certain choices.
Bill: We can do Google AdWords, we can do Facebook ads, we can invest in all sorts of online advertising.
Bill: We can also sponsor conferences and various things.
Bill: But to me, there’s a big pool.
Bill: It’s like the 70% and the 30% I was talking about before.
Bill: So there’s a very big pool of people that are doing all the advertising and it’s to me very undifferentiated.
Bill: There’s a very small pool of people that create really smart content that’s actually worth reading.
Bill: And now you could even differentiate content marketing.
Bill: There’s a lot of product that comes out of that discipline of content marketing.
Bill: A lot of it’s not so great, is it?
Bill: It’s especially if you just outsource to people that maybe don’t know who they’re talking to, they don’t understand the business or the industry.
Bill: And so it’ll come out to be a generic and you can almost instantly identify the sorts of articles.
Bill: So we felt like content marketing done from a strategic point of view.
Bill: So we take our consulting backgrounds and our knowledge of the industry because everyone, all the principles of The Wise Marketer and there are four of us at this point are practitioners in the business.
Bill: So maybe that’s important to know as well that we haven’t mentioned, but we’re all practitioners.
Bill: We all know the industry, we think pretty well and are very passionate about it.
Bill: But that allows us to write in a certain way that can really express a viewpoint.
Bill: And I think that’s what people want to read because there’s no lack of content out there, but we certainly have lack of time.
Bill: And so I think that you and I and probably everybody listening to the podcast would be the same way, like write all you want.
Bill: But if it’s not good in the first few paragraphs, you know, I’m going to click out.
Bill: So you have to be legitimate about it, serious about it.
Bill: You can’t…
Bill: I often…
Bill: One of the editorial filters is, does this look like anybody waved their hand over it and just mailed it in?
Bill: Anything of that nature?
Bill: No, no.
Bill: You can’t get published.
Paula: Well, fair play, Bill, because I know in the media industry, it’s typically revenue is directly related to the size of your audience.
Paula: But certainly one of the principles when I started podcasting was I’d rather 20 of the right listeners who are really serious people that I want to hear my thoughts rather than a thousand people who, again, you cannot build databases for using clickbait or any of these techniques that you’re referring to.
Paula: But at the end of the day, yeah, I think we’re all about quality over quantity.
Paula: So yeah, another shared intention.
Paula: Yeah, fantastic.
Bill: Also, too, I think that is an interesting point because like you mentioned, I was here in Vancouver for this Loyalty Awards Conference.
Bill: The airline business draws so much attention, and if you put up a consumer-oriented site talking about frequent flyer programs, you could amass a big audience in a hurry, right?
Bill: Maybe we could do that if we put a consumer-facing site for loyalty programs, I don’t know.
Bill: But certainly from the B2B side, we have globally a more finite audience than some other industries.
Bill: So it is quality over quantity in terms of the content we put out, but I think also, and that’s one of the things that we talk to any of our partners about is that the number may not be 200,000, it may never be, but we have a very high percentage of all the people that are active in this business and the people in the C-suites that are making decisions around the business.
Bill: And I think as long as we’re connected with all of those people and they’re reading and they’re giving us good feedback, then we’re doing the right thing.
Paula: Absolutely.
Paula: And again, I mean, part of our partnership is your own intention to diversify the formats.
Paula: So again, I know there are an increasing number of webinars and video interviews and all of that kind of stuff that you’re doing on the site as well.
Paula: So yeah, as time goes forward, I think we’ll be doing lots of fun stuff in that space.
Bill: Absolutely.
Bill: So let’s talk about that for a minute because traditionally with this kind of colloquy legacy was in our minds, and you know, Mike Capizzi, he was heading up our Loyalty Academy for us, our educational arm.
Paula: Yes.
Bill: He was actually the director of the colloquy property so many years ago, and I worked with him at that time.
Bill: So we remember those days and the form of content reflected the day.
Bill: So they were these longer form pieces.
Bill: There are a couple thousand words and they were pretty heady and sometimes satire, sarcastic.
Bill: I mean, all sorts of it was like reading these mini novels about what somebody was doing about something.
Bill: And who would read that today?
Bill: It was excellent content.
Bill: But we realized, even when we first started three years ago, we had mostly longer form written articles.
Bill: And then we realized, wait a minute, we need to put some punchy stuff in here.
Bill: We need to have news, which is the legacy of The Wise Marketer.
Bill: And then we woke up and said, oh, audio and visual, right?
Bill: And so we’ve done some podcast.
Bill: And this is it.
Bill: So we have found that people, we could really talk about the same, the Shell Go Plus program, let’s say the launch or something like that.
Bill: You can write an article, you can do a little video interview with someone, you can talk about it in a podcast, and they’ll each get their certain level of traffic because people, just like Loyalty, right, we want to give people choice and control.
Bill: And that’s what we’re trying to do with the content.
Bill: So you know, about Let’s Talk Loyalty, I just, first of all, truly, I had so much respect for your writing because I first became aware of reading some of the things you were writing about the convenience industry.
Bill: It was really great.
Bill: And it was covering a lot of international programs that I wasn’t familiar with.
Bill: So I was learning a lot.
Bill: It’s good writing.
Bill: And then when I saw you were doing this podcast, and we talked all the way back last summer, I was really excited about this.
Bill: And I was just wondering, you know, what do you do with this?
Bill: Paula’s on the run here, you know, and I saw you getting started.
Bill: And I’m just very, very pleased that we can be your home, let’s just say, your kind of your launch pad, if you will, your home, your place where we can host this principally, because it’s, it’s well done.
Bill: I think you’ve already created so much momentum in a very short period of time.
Bill: And there’s an incredible future, I think, ahead for Let’s Talk Loyalty.
Bill: So yeah, I’m glad.
Bill: And I think that I’m sure we’ll work together on a number of things, right?
Bill: To consider different types of guests from different places with a combined list.
Bill: And yeah, all of that should be very interesting.
Bill: But yeah, I’m grateful that we’re doing this.
Bill: And I think there’s a lot to look forward to here.
Paula: Oh, well, thank you for those kind words, Bill.
Paula: So definitely mutual appreciation.
Paula: And I’m sure all of our listeners will look forward to consuming all of our content on all of our platforms.
Paula: So really do appreciate the kind words.
Paula: And just on the point, actually, about taking content.
Paula: And I do believe this is very relevant, even for listeners running consumer programs.
Paula: There’s a very famous marketeer that I follow.
Paula: I don’t know if you’re a fan of his.
Paula: But have you heard of Gary Vaynerchuk, Bill?
Bill: Oh, sure.
Paula: So he’s been to Dubai now a few times and talking about content, content, content.
Paula: And again, he’s not talking about loyalty directly, but certainly indirectly, I believe he is.
Paula: And if I’m not mistaken, the number that he quoted the last time he was speaking here was that all of his content is published across 17 different platforms.
Paula: So now that’s with an army behind him, obviously.
Paula: And, you know, for example, he talks about LinkedIn as being the best value for money at the moment in terms of underpriced attention, I think, is the term he used.
Paula: And I thought that was genius because again, I know you do a lot of LinkedIn.
Paula: I do a lot on LinkedIn.
Paula: So I think for anybody listening who’s talking about loyalty or just wants to build their own career, yes, I believe in content.
Paula: So again, there’s a lot of shared excitement there.
Paula: And then, yeah, the other two big properties, I might ask you first of all about the Loyalty Guide.
Paula: And many people will be familiar with the Loyalty Guide.
Paula: Now, I know it’s four or five years since the last edition was published, but to me, it’s very much the Bible of the industry.
Paula: So maybe just tell listeners about the Loyalty Guide and maybe some of your plans for it.
Bill: Absolutely.
Bill: The Loyalty Guide was one of those things.
Bill: Remember when I said that people would ask, what should I read?
Bill: So it was not only go to The Wise Marketer, we’d say, well, you should pick up the Loyalty Guide if you want to get up to speed quickly on the industry.
Bill: So it was published every two years.
Bill: And then the last edition was the year before we acquired Wise Marketer.
Bill: So now it’s been four years.
Bill: So the material in there is great.
Bill: It needs to be updated, of course.
Bill: So what we’re thinking about, one of the things we’ve been thinking about is, is how would it be best consumed?
Bill: Because the format was that people would buy it as a book, essentially.
Bill: You could get a physical book, you could get a download of a gigantic PDF.
Bill: I think it was 1,100 pages or something like that.
Paula: Yeah, it’s extraordinary.
Bill: So what we’re doing now, and we’ve already got quite a bit of this in the kind of prepared and ready to go.
Bill: But we’re thinking about, as we go through and touch on different industries, let’s say we do a complete update of the convenience and fuel retailer, we do want in payments, or we end up getting to understand the Indian market really well, something like that, or the Irish market, because you know, we’ll be doing some things there in Ireland, we’ll take that opportunity to document it.
Bill: And so what we’ll, you know, not speaking too far ahead, but I believe what all of our subscribers and visitors will see is a relaunch at some point, probably much towards the end of this year.
Bill: We don’t want to rush it too much, but we’ll start to release chapters, if you will.
Bill: So it’ll be geographically based, subject matter based, and we’ll gradually refresh the entire property that way.
Bill: And so, you know, it could be, we’re not sure about the, you know, the commercial model for it.
Bill: You know, it might be a subscription, it might be an ability to buy the chapters that are interesting to you.
Bill: Maybe it’s an opportunity to buy the entire thing.
Bill: So we might, maybe we’ll pull all our listeners here and see what they’d most want to do.
Bill: But I think it’s in that process of being naturally refreshed as we go through and get really updated.
Bill: So we’re, we’re excited about it.
Bill: But it’s, it’s again, it’s great if you, you know, Paula, we, we walked into a conference, a big loyalty event, a little in the last 12 months and looked around the room.
Bill: And I said, I know a lot of people here, but they’re also more than 50% that are probably under 35 years old.
Bill: I thought how interesting this is, right?
Bill: So it won’t take too much longer for people to say, you know, if you just walk in with a fresh slate and you say, what’s loyalty marketing?
Bill: What should I know?
Bill: Where should I go?
Bill: What should I believe?
Bill: How do I start to build my own point of view, my personal point of view?
Bill: Then we need to have these kind of resources refreshed and up to date.
Bill: Yeah, because it’s, because it’s, you know, in the world today, people will evaluate you on that content, for sure.
Bill: If it’s useful to them, then they’ll pick it up.
Bill: But so that’s what we’re in the process of doing.
Paula: And I love that.
Paula: I do think it’s funny that so many, as you noticed, are under the age of 35.
Paula: So I don’t know how many, you know, under 35s read 1100 pages, especially in PDF format.
Paula: So with the best will in the world for me, something of that scale that I really want to digest, I definitely prefer in physical format.
Paula: So I think there is lots of opportunities to do it, as we said, in so many different ways.
Paula: And for me, in fact, I’ve always used it if I was going into, for example, a consulting contract in a new vertical that I wasn’t familiar with, because even as a consultant, you know, my decade of experience, your whatever number of years of experience, there’s still plenty of things we don’t know.
Paula: So you might just want to say, actually, I’m changing careers, and I need to know what’s happening in hotels or whatever the sector might be.
Paula: So definitely, the Loyalty Guide still is the Bible for that.
Paula: So I definitely recommend and be excited to see what you do with that towards the end of the year.
Bill: Yes.
Bill: And maybe it’ll be available in different channels, Gary V-style, right?
Paula: Gary V-style.
Paula: There you go.
Paula: 17 platforms, Bill.
Paula: No pressure.
Bill: Well, at least we might be doing a podcast per chapter.
Bill: I don’t know.
Bill: Maybe it’s in our future.
Paula: There you go.
Paula: Plenty of potential.
Paula: And then the big one, obviously, that I really want listeners to understand, because it was my first, I suppose, big box ticking exercise for my own peace of mind is the Loyalty Academy and to become a certified Loyalty Marketing Professional.
Paula: So within The Wise Marketer group, I know Mike Capizzi is the Dean of the Loyalty Academy.
Paula: So maybe just tell listeners how that whole educational program came about and who should maybe consider doing it.
Bill: Yeah.
Bill: Loyalty Academy is really the first opportunity to have a professional certification in this business.
Bill: And we, for the reasons I talked about before, the size and scope of the business, and then also that fresh group of people coming into the industry.
Bill: Think about that, right?
Bill: We thought that there’s so many new ideas that have validity, but there’s really a need to document to capture the fundamentals of the business.
Bill: And so having a foundation and all the best practices and the mechanics of how we develop these strategies and programs is really important.
Bill: So a lot of people had talked about creating some educational program for the industry for a long time.
Bill: And I think it’s a little bit like writing a book, and you’ve written a book, so you understand this, but it’s sitting down and doing it.
Bill: So we sat down and documented, we put together 15 core courses, which are available online.
Bill: And you can pursue the Certified Loyalty Marketing Professional degree, if you will, as a whole, or you could pick off individual courses.
Bill: And you could pursue the areas of interest that are of interest to you.
Bill: Eventually, you could take all 15 and gain the certification.
Bill: But we built the curriculum with that in mind.
Bill: And we’ve gone beyond, as you know, we have the 15 core that make up the certification program, and then we’ve built some level two and level three courses in different areas to do with finance and data, liability management, things like that.
Bill: So we’re very mindful of having a core curriculum that addresses a need for a lot of new influx of people into the industry that need to kind of get up to speed, but also challenging those that have been in the industry for a while with some of the level two and three courses.
Bill: So really very much like what’s new.
Bill: You know the basics, but you’re really curious about what GDPR and CCPA mean to the way you manage your data, that sort of thing.
Paula: So yeah, some of those, I just have to go, do you know what?
Paula: I need an expert, a specialist in that field, but you’re absolutely right.
Paula: Some people really do get into those niche within the niche.
Paula: So as you’re talking about those level two and three modules, Bill, I’m conscious that it’s been, I think, 18 months since I did my CLMP, so I might need to go and update myself.
Bill: That’s right.
Paula: But hey, we love ongoing learning.
Paula: Always learning.
Paula: And particularly, I think what’s exciting is I know you’re rolling out and the in-classroom training, so running to training events or maybe more, actually.
Paula: The two I’m familiar with is one, I believe in India, happening later in this year, and my friend’s in Ireland, so the Irish Loyalty Awards are also going to be rolling out the Loyalty Academy training, I think it’s also later in the year.
Paula: So do you want to maybe just touch on any details for people who might prefer the kind of classroom training?
Bill: I would, absolutely.
Bill: So classroom training, traditionally so far, we’ve had an annual certification workshop that’s been in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
Bill: So we usually have that in October.
Bill: We now also have a similar public workshop available in Toronto, which will be in May this year.
Bill: So twice a year, it’s usually the Florida and Toronto in those two months.
Bill: Those are public workshops that people can go.
Bill: It’s a two and a half day program and we go through all the material, do a case study as a group.
Bill: We split the class into groups and typically the attendance at those is between 15 and 20 persons.
Bill: So it’s enough where you get a really great diversity of experience in vertical industry and those sort of things.
Bill: But when we put those people together into groups to do the case study, it makes it a lot of fun and you get a lot of different perspectives.
Bill: So those are the two public workshops.
Bill: And then we are taking that idea of the public workshop to different countries.
Bill: So Mike Capizzi has done an incredible job with the Academy and not only just the curriculum development, but the expansion of the reach here.
Bill: But we had a combination, kind of an alliance with the Brazilian Loyalty Marketing Association.
Bill: And so he went down and trained over 90 people in Sao Paulo last fall, which was amazing to see the turnout and the interest in a market like that for this material.
Bill: As you said, we’ve got coming up in June, which I’m going to be there in June in Mumbai for a workshop in India with our partner there, we’re very excited about.
Bill: And then of course, we’ll be attending the Irish Loyalty Awards in March in just a couple of weeks and then planning, we’ve announced already, but planning to have an educational workshop in Ireland in the fall.
Bill: So putting a number of countries on the calendar, which is pretty exciting, and there are several more.
Bill: We’re just, we’ve got partners in Southeast Asia, from Malaysia, Singapore, that area, one in South Africa and Russia, you know, some of these people as well.
Bill: And so we’re sure to have some more on the calendar.
Bill: So, yeah, so anyone that wants to visit loyaltyacademy.org can find the certification workshops and hopefully find one near to them geographically, whether it’s US, Canada, or one of these India, Ireland, Brazil, one of those other countries.
Bill: But the other thing we do, which I don’t know if you know, but we are doing quite a bit of corporate training as well.
Bill: So we’ll take the material and we’ll put together a little bit of customization, depending on the company.
Bill: But we’ll go in and do, you know, on-site workshops.
Paula: Tailored to that particular industry, obviously.
Bill: Right, for companies that want to equip their team with the knowledge and have the ability to maybe talk through some specifics about how it applies to their business and what they’re trying to achieve.
Bill: So that’s another opportunity for people to know that it is available from The Wise Marketer Loyalty Academy.
Paula: And if it’s okay with you, Bill, I’ll just give them give listeners a sense of the investment, because I think it’s certainly the best money I’ve spent for my kind of loyalty career.
Paula: So I think with the membership, once you do become a member on the loyaltyacademy.org website, I think the entire certification came in in about $2,000.
Paula: And again, most senior people in this industry, their companies are more than happy to make sure they have that level of them of investment.
Paula: So certainly super affordable, I think, for the level of investment and study that comes out of it.
Bill: Oh, I think so too.
Bill: Thanks for mentioning that.
Bill: But it’s, yeah, I think it is more than more than fair sort of value for price, for the level.
Paula: Yeah.
Paula: Because I think it’s the first thing people, you know, they’re kind of going on, wonder how expensive that is.
Paula: Can I afford it?
Paula: I must do the research.
Paula: And of course, then they get bogged down in everyday life.
Paula: So I like to answer these questions up front.
Paula: So great.
Paula: So loads going on, literally the four corners of the world in terms of Loyalty Academy.
Paula: We’ve talked extensively, obviously, about The Wise Marketer.
Paula: And then I suppose just the final area we wanted to talk about, Bill, was really about the various different, I suppose, terminology that comes up in terms of loyalty programs, loyalty marketing.
Paula: And you mentioned this is something that you’re hearing an increasing amount of, dare I say, confusion or just overlap in terms of how the industry is being referenced.
Paula: So we thought it might be useful for listeners just to kind of talk through your latest thinking in terms of the best way to refer to, I suppose, our practice.
Bill: I think it’s an important discussion.
Bill: And I’ll tell you why.
Bill: One of our goals with The Wise Marketer is to create advocacy for our industry.
Bill: So when you realize there are, and maybe you’ve experienced this, but there’s a certain level of distribution of information.
Bill: So the information about loyalty marketing has been widely distributed for a long time.
Bill: And so a lot of people will start to say, oh, gosh, there’s so many programs in the market.
Bill: And we all have been to a course, a seminar.
Bill: We’ve heard so many speakers.
Bill: How hard could it be?
Bill: So they’re thinking, when people get together, say, inside a brand and they’re talking about launching a program, they start talking about, oh, the goal is we’d like to become more customer-centric, we’d like to create customer loyalty.
Bill: And then right away, they’re thinking about, and so our program is going to do A, B, and C.
Bill: So there were these three terms that I had thought about that when I read these articles on LinkedIn that say points are dead, that say loyalty programs are not effective.
Bill: There’s so much…
Bill: So it’s always the competition for the headline, I guess.
Bill: But it is the kind of world, I think, that if you let too much go by that you don’t agree with and you don’t comment or have some kind of a point of view that the wrong information or inaccurate information can become perceived as truth, right?
Bill: So you have to take a stand a little bit.
Bill: So I was thinking about this.
Bill: Customer loyalty is the big goal, right?
Bill: It’s a state of mind.
Bill: It’s kind of a pinnacle goal.
Bill: It involves a lot of emotion and it can create a significant financial advantage for any company.
Bill: So it also, I tell some people, it could be out of reach because loyalty in the real sense of the word, the way it’s defined in the dictionary, it’s really much more about, yeah, it’s a heartfelt emotion.
Bill: Maybe it’s your country, your family, your faith, all those sort of things.
Bill: So we have to keep that in perspective, like what are we really trying to achieve?
Bill: The loyalty marketing, which is the other term, is the marketing discipline that helps us create an organizational commitment to our key stakeholders.
Bill: So that’s internal, the C-suite and all others, and then also our customers and shareholders and so on.
Bill: So this is a discipline that we’re talking about.
Bill: This is the one that we’ve created, the Curriculum and Loyalty Academy, to help people become really proficient and to understand how to create customer strategy that can impact behavior and add incrementality and profitability to a business.
Bill: But the third term is that loyalty program word, and that to me, it’s a means to an end when you think about your program.
Bill: It’s a vehicle to enable a value proposition to be put into the market.
Bill: It gives you a little framework for measurement, to be sure, and it’s also very importantly a path for customers to opt into your program.
Bill: So what we found is that many, many people are aspiring to, if you can imagine, you know, sort of a progressive line, aspiring to what’s in the upper right hand corner, which is customer loyalty, this big pinnacle goal.
Bill: Yet, they’re focusing on the loyalty program and not necessarily practicing the discipline of loyalty marketing.
Bill: And so I just always like to read when people are talking about what are you trying to achieve.
Bill: I like to sometimes dial back and say, granted customer loyalty is a good all inclusive word, but what are you really trying to achieve?
Bill: Well, every business will determine its own objectives and they’ll be seeking some form of incrementality or more efficient use of their marketing resources.
Bill: If that’s what comes under the umbrella of customer loyalty, then that’s okay.
Bill: But it’s, I think, much too much focus in some of the things I read where they’re really talking about the loyalty program, maybe the shortcomings of a program or what could be done better or is there a different way and they’re trying to go straight from that to achieving this big goal.
Bill: I just don’t think you can do it unless you expand your knowledge and abilities to create customer marketing strategies through loyalty marketing.
Paula: Yeah.
Bill: The other thing, and I’ll give it back to you here, but I just, I feel like we all of us in the industry, we need to be thinking much more holistically because there are most brands that I’ve been talking to lately are thinking maybe my loyalty program could be more training of my employees and a better customer experience in the store.
Bill: I might not need anything else, or there could be all sorts of different ways to go to market.
Bill: But I think it’s incumbent upon all of us here to be thinking about loyalty marketing as a discipline to include not just what we’ve always done, but to be thinking and be very cognizant of what brands want.
Bill: And they’re thinking about first engagement, you know, engagement always has to come before any sort of loyalty, the experience has to be great.
Bill: All these considerations go along with getting us ultimately to that goal of a larger group of more loyal, valuable customers.
Bill: So I think the business, and this is our advocacy aspect here, I guess, is going to expand.
Bill: I think we’ll capture a greater part of this value chain that happens within the organization and be able to really help companies along the way.
Bill: It’s in our DNA, if you look at the curriculum that’s in the Loyalty Academy.
Bill: And so I think we just need to maybe apply it to a greater number of areas within the enterprise to get the impact that we’re looking for.
Paula: Love it, love it, Bill.
Paula: And yeah, and I suppose just as, you know, in closing, actually, from my side, I have, you know, started with very much a clear intention to talk about structured loyalty programs.
Paula: And with every conversation, the subject of loyalty is an emotion comes up.
Paula: So very much I have had, you know, conversations and interviews which are talking about loyalty as an emotion.
Paula: So I completely agree with you that has to be very clearly understood from a business’s perspective is, you know, what are we talking about when we’re talking about loyalty?
Paula: And the final piece is as well to emphasize and echo what you’re saying, and the whole field of customer experience and CX is something that I believe that loyalty practitioners naturally should own within the business.
Paula: So you know, if we could wave a magic wand, I would literally say we should all be owning the entire customer experience in the companies that we work for.
Paula: So I think CX is something that we’re all equally passionate about.
Paula: And as you said, we’ve got the right mindset, we’ve got the right measurements, and maybe the loyalty program is just one tool in our arsenal.
Bill: Yeah, I know, I think you’re right and somebody asked me, I think I told you beforehand that I had presented at a conference last week and somebody asked me right at the end, they said, Hey, is there one thing that you could leave us with?
Bill: And so this is within the context of what I had already been speaking about.
Bill: But I said, yeah, we had been talking about the importance of what I call enterprise ownership of the customer marketing strategy.
Bill: So how important it is to have C-level support.
Bill: And you know that it’s really critical to success if leadership really supports the idea that customers come first, they’re important, we’re willing to invest in them, usually have much greater level of success.
Bill: So I said, you know what I would do?
Bill: I would…
Bill: If you’re talking about being more customer centric, and you’re hearing that from the C-suite, why don’t you go and validate the opinion of he or she who’s CEO?
Bill: Ask them what they think about your efforts in the area of customer loyalty.
Bill: Ask them if they support it, how they would change it.
Bill: Get some opinions.
Bill: And I said, if you take that step of validation, you’ll know where you stand.
Bill: Because if you’re fighting against something that where you don’t really have the support from the top, okay, you know, you have a certain situation, you have some challenges.
Bill: But if you have wholehearted support from the top, you also have some advantages.
Bill: So I said, go, go talk to the CEO and find out what their real opinion is on the business.
Bill: And it’ll tell you a lot about probably your where you’re headed in the prospects for success.
Paula: Wow, I love that Bill, because I think over my own career, probably what I’ve been guilty of is, you know, not going far enough up the chain, you know, to make myself visible, to make the discipline visible.
Paula: And it takes, I think, quite a lot of courage, which I might have now, obviously, dealing at C-suite level a lot of the time, but, you know, maybe people earlier in their career wouldn’t have initially thought, I should go and talk to the chief executive, but you’re completely right.
Paula: Why not?
Paula: Why not go and have that conversation, you know, with the levels of permission and buy in up the chain as well?
Paula: Well, just to really see, you know, are they committed to it?
Paula: Or is it just, you know, another couple of sentences to do a bit of inspiration from a, you know, on a sporadic point of view, which is never going to work.
Paula: So I love that.
Paula: That’s really good advice.
Paula: Fantastic.
Paula: Fantastic, Bill.
Paula: So, listen, that was all I suppose I wanted to talk about from my perspective.
Paula: I know, again, with Hanifin Loyalty, you’re consulting all over the world, lots of different countries.
Paula: And we’ve talked about The Wise Marketer, the Loyalty Academy.
Paula: Is there any other points you wanted to touch on before we wrapped up?
Bill: I just wanted to make sure that people really knew what the substance of our agreement was that you’re publishing a podcast weekly, for the most part.
Paula: Yes.
Bill: Every Thursday.
Bill: Unless something intervenes.
Bill: Every Thursday.
Bill: So, the podcast will be published on The Wise Marketer every Thursday.
Bill: You can find it right from the very top navigation bar.
Bill: There’ll be an obvious place where you can find the podcast.
Bill: It’ll probably indicate clearly where you can find it.
Bill: It should be clearly visible, right?
Bill: We found a nice place right in the middle of the page where it has a home.
Bill: And we’re going to have all the episodes there.
Bill: So, first one be published this Thursday.
Bill: So we’re excited about that.
Bill: And I just wanted to make sure that everybody knew that the episodes will be there and fully supporting what you’re doing.
Bill: And I think this is really a case for me of when you when you encounter someone like yourself who has the idea, has made an investment and is doing a great job, why not partner with that person rather than to say, you know, let’s see if we could go our own way.
Bill: And so to me, it’s a much more productive way to go about it.
Bill: And I’m just really happy that we’re able to do this.
Bill: So I’m looking forward to it.
Bill: I’ve listened to a lot of your episodes and they’re really great.
Bill: And so I’d encourage people to tune in and go back even.
Bill: It’s been six months already, hasn’t it?
Paula: Coming up to that now.
Paula: Yes, we’re episode 24 today.
Paula: And that’s when I suddenly realized that we’re nearly halfway there.
Paula: So, yeah, as I said from my side, Bill, it was very much one of my goals from the outset was to work with you guys.
Paula: I do have, I believe, you know, a real shared vision with what you have been doing for so many years.
Paula: You’ve established yourselves as the thought leaders in the industry.
Paula: And I’ve no doubt that everyone listening to this podcast should absolutely be consuming all of your newsletters, as I do every week when the email comes in.
Paula: So, yeah, from my side, delighted we’re launching the partnership with this interview.
Paula: And as you said, it’ll be live this Thursday, February 27.
Paula: And with that, I would just like to say thanks a million from me and Let’s Talk Loyalty.
Bill: Thanks for having me, Paula.
Paula: Thanks so much for listening to this episode of Let’s Talk Loyalty.
Paula: If you’d like me to send you the latest show each week, simply sign up for the show newsletter on letstalkloyalty.com, and I’ll send you the latest episode to your inbox every Thursday.
Paula: Or just head to your favorite podcast platform.
Paula: Find Let’s Talk Loyalty and subscribe.
Paula: Of course, I’d love your feedback and reviews, and thanks again for supporting the show.
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