Baker’s Delight: The Recipe for Emotional Loyalty (#802)

What happens when a loyalty programme becomes deeply connected to the brand customers already love?

In this episode we are joined by Pascale McBain, Head of Digital Customer Experience at Baker’s Delight, to explore how Dough Getters is strengthening customer relationships across more than 500 bakeries in Australia.

Pascal shares how Baker’s Delight uses loyalty data to understand customer behaviour, why research revealed that awareness—not rewards—was the biggest opportunity, and how Dough Getters is driving emotional connection, advocacy and commercial value.

She also discusses the importance of simplicity and frictionless experiences, the role of personalisation, engaging franchisees across a complex network, and how customer data is shaping the future of the programme.

A fascinating conversation about building loyalty by combining brand love, customer insight, simplicity and meaningful rewards.

Hosted by Carly Neubauer

Show Notes:

1) Pascale McBai

2)Baker’s Delight

3) Dough Getters

4) The Chimp Paradox by Professor Steve Peters (Book Recommendation)

Audio Transcript

Paula: Hello and welcome to Let’s Talk Loyalty and Loyalty TV, a show for loyalty marketing professionals.

Paula: I’m Paula Thomas, the founder and CEO of Let’s Talk Loyalty and Loyalty TV, where we feature insightful conversations with loyalty professionals from the world’s leading brands.

Paula: If you work in loyalty marketing, join us every week to hear the latest ideas and insights for loyalty marketing specialists around the world.

Carly: Welcome to Let’s Talk Loyalty and Loyalty TV, a show for loyalty marketing professionals, where we feature insightful conversations with loyalty specialists from the world’s leading brands.

Carly: My name is Carly Neubauer.

Carly: I’m the Managing Director of Elevate Loyalty and Loyalty Economics.

Carly: My guest today is Pascale McBain, Head of Digital Customer Experience at Baker’s Delight.

Carly: Pascale is a strategic digital and customer experience leader, driving brand growth, customer engagement, and commercial performance across retail, e-commerce, media, and international markets.

Carly: If you work in loyalty marketing, join us every week to hear the latest ideas and insights from other loyalty experts around the world.

Carly: Hi, Pascale, and welcome to Let’s Talk Loyalty and Loyalty TV.

Carly: Great to see you.

Pascale: Thank you for having me, Carly.

Pascale: Excited to be here.

Carly: So before we can go off and discuss your career and fabulous loyalty program, we’re going to ask the two questions we ask everybody that joins the show.

Carly: Tell us about your favorite book.

Carly: What do you like to read?

Pascale: I mean, mostly, I don’t really like to read much loyalty or other reading, but one book that’s always stood out to me is actually a psychology book, not specifically loyalty or marketing related.

Pascale: It’s called The Chimp Paradox by Professor Steve Peters.

Pascale: What I love about it is the name, but also it explores this idea that we all have an emotional brain, which he calls the chimp, and then our rational brain, which is this human element, and that often our customers and people just respond more immediately with our emotional chimp brain before our rational brain catches up.

Pascale: I just find that really interesting.

Pascale: From a loyalty perspective, I think we always think customers are quite logical in the way that they decide and make decisions.

Pascale: But and then loyalty programs have this very rational view in how incentives and points and discounts and rewards are created.

Pascale: But yeah, I guess this book kind of reminds us that there’s this emotional place first, and there’s an emotional place that we need to think about when we design and leverage programs.

Pascale: Yeah, customers do.

Pascale: They stay loyal to brands that they trust, that they have this real emotional connection with.

Pascale: And maybe it’s because it came first or it’s animalistic at the end of the day that we have this desire to love a brand that speaks to us.

Pascale: So yeah, it’s kind of a nice reminder that maybe at the end, we’re all animals and that emotional connection is really important.

Pascale: So yeah.

Carly: That’s such a great recommendation.

Carly: And I think you’re definitely not the first guest to choose a book that has a psychology angle to it and that really understanding our behaviors, because it does play so well in the loyalty space and really understanding what drives people.

Carly: And I love this, especially based on, and we’ll get to it, a food product.

Carly: The fact that we’re not necessarily choosing the most rational and logical.

Carly: We want something yum and tasty and it’s great, right?

Carly: So that’s awesome.

Pascale: So true.

Pascale: And it is a mix.

Pascale: It’s a mix between a very habitual purchase of bread and then these incredible new products and interesting new flavors that we bring to market.

Pascale: So yeah, the mix of both and how they play together, for sure.

Carly: I’m thinking the amazing chocolate scones when I’m saying this.

Carly: So that’s why I think.

Pascale: We all have our favorite naughty naughty treat.

Pascale: Awesome.

Carly: Awesome.

Carly: So on that note, tell us about your favorite loyalty program when you’re the member of the consumer.

Pascale: Yes.

Pascale: Well, I had to think about trying not to pick one that maybe others have gone with in the past.

Pascale: But then I landed on one that probably I haven’t considered as a program as much, which is just obviously the light bulb moment when you think it’s so integrated in the way that I live my life that well done to it.

Pascale: Cotton On Perks.

Pascale: Now, the reason I love it is that it is super simple and really easy to understand and ticks those boxes with avoiding friction for a customer to be a part of it.

Pascale: It’s integrated into their app and it’s really clear and obvious what you’re getting.

Pascale: But I think my favorite thing and maybe as a mom and going into this phase is really how it’s been able to connect all of the brands under that cotton on umbrella within the program and keep a customer connected with them along the way.

Pascale: So I think they’ve done a really good job to keep every single shopping mission through them.

Pascale: So whether it’s, yeah, you’re starting with fashion as a young kid or as an adult, early adult, then you have your children and you’re shopping for your kids with cotton on kids, then you’re gifting with typo and so on and so forth.

Pascale: So yeah, I think they’ve evolved that with a customer, which is a really powerful thing when you think about keeping someone loyal with you for as long as you can.

Pascale: Often people will shop out of a brand, often people can only transact so many times, but they’ve actually been able to kind of capture that.

Pascale: So for me, I think that’s a really good program.

Pascale: And yeah, great perks.

Pascale: And you lose off every time you basically buy.

Pascale: So I love it.

Carly: Absolutely.

Carly: And a great shout out to the team there because it is such a great program in Australia, particularly very, very popular here.

Carly: And like you said, simple to engage with, cross brands and moves with you through different life cycles or, you know, gifting and personal purchasing.

Carly: So great, great choice.

Carly: So next, we’d love to chat to you.

Carly: Tell us a bit about your background.

Carly: How did you land in the world of loyalty?

Pascale: Yeah, I’ve always been in marketing my whole career, really, and predominantly in retail.

Pascale: And I guess I’ve always seen loyalty as being connected to how we think about brands and that appeal in market.

Pascale: You know, it’s cool.

Pascale: It’s a reason for customers to keep choosing you repeatedly.

Pascale: And ultimately, that’s what good marketing is kind of trying to achieve in a way.

Pascale: And then being able to shift it into a program, I was really fortunate in my career.

Pascale: I had the opportunity to create and launch a program when I was working for Blockdance in Europe, and the program was also across the US.

Pascale: I think it really opened my eyes to the power of loyalty.

Pascale: Already a really beautifully loved brand with a really loyal customer base, and I guess it’s because of, once you pick up a dance shoe, you’re kind of stuck with it a little bit.

Pascale: It sort of is how your foot molds and how you sort of dance and move.

Pascale: It’s really personal choice that you make, but then there was so many other elements within the range that we wanted to connect in with customers and sort of start to give them the opportunity to be rewarded for purchasing.

Pascale: So I got to build that, the mechanism, sort of the structure, how we launched it.

Pascale: And yeah, I guess that kind of opened my eyes to the sort of more formal space of loyalty as a program.

Pascale: And since then, yeah, I guess I’ve continued to sort of find roles that really have that as a big part of it, because I really see the power of it, not only in kind of cementing that continuous relationship with the customer and obviously the commercial outcomes of it.

Pascale: But yeah, I guess just the power in that data that you get to from a customer, really connecting how they shop with who they are and using it to make better product decisions and better brand decisions, knowing what they prefer.

Pascale: So yeah, always loved it, I think, in a way, and really happy to finally be somewhere where the program is an even more important part of the business than even two years ago when I started at Baker’s Delight.

Pascale: So an exciting space to be in.

Carly: Definitely.

Carly: And from there, it was Wittner.

Carly: So a different style, but retail based program that you worked across.

Pascale: Yeah.

Pascale: So Wittner, I mean, Wittner sort of talked to themselves as being older than Gucci, and they technically are, they’ve been around for a really long time.

Pascale: So the Loyalty, I know a little claim, claim to fame there.

Pascale: The Loyalty program has been around for a long time as well.

Pascale: And it’s a slightly different one.

Pascale: It was tier based and, yeah, definitely rewarding customers who shopped in different tiers and different frequencies, knowing that a shoe purchase is probably nowhere near as frequent as bread or some other categories.

Pascale: But yeah, then on to Whitner and yeah, a beautiful program there.

Pascale: And again, a very loyal customer base of people across a whole range of ages and styles.

Pascale: And yeah, which led me then on to here, Baker’s Delight.

Carly: So you need to tell us about the program itself, Baker’s Delight being a national bakery in Australia.

Carly: But tell us about your program.

Carly: And then how did you fall in love with bread?

Pascale: I’ve always fallen in love with bread.

Carly: Awesome.

Pascale: And that’s a funny thing because Baker’s Delight, I mean, before I joined, I probably didn’t realize the love that is out there for our brand.

Pascale: And more and more, I think as you sort of delve deeper and the more people that you speak to, you can’t help but just meet someone and already work Baker’s Delight and you hear this experience of either they grew up working in a local bakery or they’re friended or they knew the local franchisee, their favorite product.

Pascale: Like people have such a joyous memory or kind of nostalgic connection with our brand, which is really special.

Pascale: And yeah, bread kind of has that.

Pascale: Like even if you go back into the, you know, olden days or medieval days, like cultures actually were all formed around the making and eating of bread.

Pascale: A lot of the time that was sort of spent.

Pascale: And it’s something me and the CMO often talk about.

Pascale: Like it’s just so fascinating how powerful bread is and that it’s still such a, such a long ago crafted product that is still consumed today.

Pascale: So it is a really special product, but yes, Dough Getters is the loyalty program for Baker’s Delight.

Pascale: It’s live across all of our bakeries, all 520 bakeries in Australia.

Pascale: And it’s been around for about five years.

Pascale: We launched it initially really to kind of focus on transactions, which is a big focus for us as a bakery.

Pascale: If you think about the frequency and number of transactions we have to drive across all those bakeries.

Pascale: We really wanted to make sure that we could really understand our customers and really help to understand their purchasing behaviour, which is obviously what the programme has been able to do.

Pascale: But for a customer, the programme is amazing.

Pascale: You sign up and you get a free welcome loaf, so a really nice welcome gift into our programme.

Pascale: You also enter your birthday, so that means you get a free birthday scone every year, which is really special.

Pascale: We often get customers emailing in purely about that moment being one of the most joyful moments of the year when they get their free scone.

Pascale: So yeah, a real lovely little treat there.

Pascale: And then the always on piece of the programme is that every $55 that you spend, you get a $5 voucher to use in our bakeries.

Pascale: So as I mentioned, the programme is there designed to support transactions, but ultimately it helps us understand our customers.

Pascale: When we have them scanning their transaction in bakery, we understand who they are, we understand how often they show up, their frequency, what’s in their basket.

Pascale: And that ultimately tells us so much about them, but also what else we could do, what products are really working, what’s missing, what are people buying in different areas, and how can we better support our franchisees with more exciting product or innovation to help evolving the brand with customers’ tastes and preferences.

Pascale: So it’s a really powerful program for customers, but obviously for franchisees, it has so much value in driving customers back into their bakeries.

Pascale: And for us as a larger brand, it gives us all that data to also help make better decisions.

Pascale: So win, win, win.

Carly: I love this.

Carly: We definitely need to talk a bit more about your data piece as well.

Carly: But one thing we discussed previously, you and I, is that you’re still one of the few, let’s say loyalty programs in our region anyway, that does give a legit free product on their birthday.

Carly: So big shout out to that because there’s a lot of discussion around the hurdles and hoops you jump through for a birthday gift.

Carly: And I’m personally a big fan.

Carly: I love the fact that it is literally just a free gift, which is lovely.

Pascale: And you obviously got your chocolate scone because we did talk about it.

Carly: I love my chocolate scone.

Carly: So that’s a big shout out for me as well.

Carly: Thank you very much, Baker’s Delight and Dough Getters.

Carly: So firstly, I also want to just chat with you more franchise model.

Carly: You’ve mentioned the number of stores, we have 500 stores in Australia and a franchise model.

Carly: Now, that’s so great that you’ve got these owners across the country, but there’s some complexity that comes with that around rolling out an entire loyalty program that all stores are behind and all these franchises are behind and engaged with.

Carly: So do you want to just chat a bit more about that side of the business before we talk about customers and members?

Pascale: Absolutely.

Pascale: Yeah.

Pascale: So our network is wide, as you said, 520 bakeries, that’s almost that many individual business owners in local communities.

Pascale: And they know their customers better than us.

Pascale: They’re the ones that are at the daily dealing with them, interacting with them.

Pascale: And so yeah, that is a challenge for us to get the balance right, where we’re obviously looking at the data and seeing the trends and really trying to drive the business at the top level, but having to consider exactly that, what franchisees, what they think.

Pascale: So really important part of the way that we always operate is we’re always testing and learning first, before we roll anything out in a significant way, a real kind of focus for us as a brand is we’re always testing and trialing, whether it’s with a few bakeries or a region, anything significant usually kind of goes through something like that, which really helps us get the learnings and really help us to ultimately sell it into franchisees or at a national level to say we’ve tested it, we’ve learned maybe this didn’t work, this worked really well, and we know that it is going to drive the incrementality or the retention or whatever it is that we’re trying to achieve with whether it’s an offer or an initiative or something specific for Dough Getters.

Pascale: But as you touched on, they’re all individual and yeah, we’re often having to really think at a local level and a national level at the same time.

Pascale: And naturally, I guess the difference between the way we look at the program is we can’t just look at it as an overarching performance.

Pascale: It has to be grouped into not only our regions, but the way different bakeries do engage with the Dough Getters program.

Pascale: You know, we have a certain number of active members, but that is different in every individual bakery.

Pascale: So it’s always about making sure that the sort of lowest common engaged, you know, engaged bakery is still actually going to be benefiting.

Pascale: And equally, the one that is super engaged with Dough Getters and has a lot of member shopping with them, making sure that we’re sort of balancing that.

Pascale: So, yeah, a huge part is making sure we not only obviously trial new initiatives, but we also hear from franchisees.

Pascale: So we have regular meetings with, we call it a roundtable, where we speak to sort of representative franchisees and pitch different ideas or changes to them to get them on board or to sort of understand, what we might have to think about before we go to launch our different things.

Pascale: And it is always about, again, continuing to serve the value of the program to our franchisees, making sure that they’re sort of seeing it at their local level.

Pascale: You know, what value the program brought in for their bakeries, how many members they have, what mix of type of member is that, to empower them with the data so that they actually can kind of see that there are that many people coming in and, you know, some changes that we do, that it does actually help their bottom line.

Pascale: And that’s ultimately what we’re here to support as a business is for our franchisees to have really successful businesses.

Carly: Did you have many challenges around designing a program like this when you have so many stakeholders?

Pascale: Yeah.

Pascale: Look, I’m sure they did.

Pascale: That was before my time and bless the soul of whoever was involved in really doing that.

Pascale: But yes, absolutely, there’s a lot to balance up.

Pascale: But we did a proof of concept.

Pascale: We picked a region and we actually ran it just solely in a region for a period of time, and there was a validation that the program was going to work, and that’s what we needed to roll it out.

Pascale: So that model still exists to this day, and that’s how we were able to land it.

Pascale: So yeah.

Carly: That makes a lot of sense doing the proof of concept early to then showcase and hopefully sell in the idea to other key stakeholders.

Pascale: Yeah, it makes a lot of sense.

Pascale: Yeah.

Carly: Yeah, good.

Carly: Any particular challenges as you’re going through?

Carly: Any regions that perform better than others due to the engagement that way, or is it relatively fair and even these days?

Pascale: I think we definitely have region-wise, I would say it’s relatively similar.

Pascale: I think within each region, there’s just different pockets of franchisees that have just engaged with it differently.

Pascale: And that’s just because they’re all so different.

Pascale: But yeah, absolutely, my team and our focus is on continuing to engage more with franchisees and really start to explain the program more and more to them.

Pascale: So yeah, we have a conference later this year where all of our franchisees will be getting together.

Pascale: And it’s just another opportunity for us to meet with them face to face and have those conversations and understand where they may not be understanding certain areas or not really clear on the benefit to them.

Pascale: But yeah, I think the program’s proven itself.

Pascale: It’s just about making sure that everyone is really sold in on the idea and ultimately see the value for themselves.

Pascale: So yes, that is always going to be a challenge.

Pascale: But I guess if everyone was on board, we wouldn’t be able to grow any further.

Pascale: So.

Carly: That’s a great, great perspective.

Pascale: Yeah, it always means there’s new people to engage more with and we’re always wanting to bring new customers into the brand.

Pascale: So we’ll always have this challenge.

Pascale: We’ll always have to continue to convince people why loyalty, why dough getters.

Pascale: So and every month, every week that we continue to launch new offers or kind of get more value from the program, it’s more proof points for us to keep telling.

Pascale: So it’s just the cycle of loyalty, I think.

Carly: Absolutely.

Carly: And look, even loyalty aside, different regions will have different spend patterns and thresholds anyway.

Carly: So, you know, loyalty is part of it, but that would be happening irrespective.

Carly: So I know you guys are doing such a great job.

Pascale: 100%.

Carly: Now there was a catalyst along the way to conduct some research.

Carly: Do you want to talk a little bit about that?

Carly: That’s been exciting recently.

Pascale: It has been exciting.

Pascale: Yeah.

Pascale: I think to sort of backdate the program and maybe some challenges that sort of sat outside of the challenge of a franchisee network, we have definitely been on a journey from a tech perspective to improve our overall marketing ecosystem and our stack.

Pascale: That’s something we’ve been focused on for some time.

Pascale: And I guess within that, we have potentially in some ways brought some friction into our customers and franchisees lives because of what we’ve had to do to make those changes.

Pascale: So we’re kind of at a point where we thought, well, do we need to review the program?

Pascale: Is it hitting at the mark everywhere?

Pascale: What could we potentially do differently?

Pascale: Do we need to look at a different structure?

Pascale: Is the proposition right?

Pascale: So we had all these kinds of questions.

Pascale: So we felt like, well, we probably should ask our customers what they think.

Pascale: And you know, that’s that.

Pascale: That’s always a good place to start.

Pascale: I think we often try and conjure up all the solutions, but at the end of the day, I think your customers tend will tell you exactly what they want.

Pascale: So we did, we commissioned a really big piece of research.

Pascale: It was late last year.

Pascale: So around November time in 2025.

Pascale: And we asked a thousand customers a whole range of questions really to unlock, you know, whether there was a change, the proposition that we needed, what they felt value in, what was missing.

Pascale: It was a very sort of wide piece of work.

Pascale: And yeah, it was really fascinating what came out of it.

Pascale: I think we really went in there thinking we would have some sort of commercial solutions, like, I don’t know, 60% or 70% of customers would want one extra reward or offer, or, you know, they want to reduce the spend threshold because they want vouchers quicker.

Pascale: And whilst, you know, there’s always a little bit of that, because customers are customers.

Pascale: What did shock us is that it wasn’t our proposition or our offers or our rewards that the customers had an issue with.

Pascale: It was actually awareness.

Pascale: So a lot of them didn’t know about the program.

Pascale: In fact, when we asked those customers who didn’t know about the program, if, you know, this is the program, what do you think?

Pascale: 80% said they would sign up instantly on the spot had they known about it.

Pascale: So that was kind of our first interest.

Pascale: Oh, wow.

Pascale: Okay.

Pascale: So we don’t have a problem with the program.

Pascale: We just, no one knows about us or I mean, if you of the opportunity group, they just don’t know who we are.

Pascale: So that’s very different.

Pascale: And I guess a very different solution that we then had to come up with for that.

Pascale: And so that was one interesting insight, but the other one wasn’t necessarily in relation to changing the program, but out of the research, we kind of were surprised how much customers loved Dough Getters.

Pascale: You know, and as a program, we’re like, kind of get that you have love because you have these beautiful moments of like, you get your rewards.

Pascale: So there’s that, you know, that sort of beautiful like excitement you get when you, yeah, I got my $5 voucher, let’s use it.

Pascale: But it was actually that 60% of our Dough Getters said that they would recommend Baker’s Delight because of the loyalty program.

Pascale: So we started thinking, oh wow, like there’s actually power in advocacy with our program.

Pascale: There’s actually power in people feeling emotionally connected to Dough Getters and the connection then it had in with the brand and that kind of the two of them working together were creating this, I don’t know, emotional multiplier, we kind of called it, where it was not only that they like loved the program and obviously the rewards, but it was the feeling that they got from being connected in with it, that meant that they were so much more likely to be an advocate of the program.

Pascale: And so yeah, I suppose that emotional piece that I talked about earlier when with The Chimp Paradox and this kind of emotional brain that we have, we were finding that our customers were actually speaking more to loving Baker’s Delight, loving the Dough Getters program, making it feel like it sort of reflected who they were or they felt really connected in with it.

Pascale: So that was a really interesting finding from our research.

Pascale: And kind of made us, yeah, I guess stop in our tracks a little bit and go, wow, okay.

Pascale: We kind of thought we’d be landing in this very kind of commercial answer where we’d be tossing everything up.

Pascale: Okay, well, which one, which, you know, how much can we squeeze the value out of?

Pascale: But it wasn’t at all.

Pascale: It was actually that there was a lot of love out there, which was fantastic and advocacy, as I kind of said.

Pascale: And then, yeah, I think commercially it had, yeah, a lot, it had a lot of impact too, because members weren’t just saying, we love you.

Pascale: They were saying, well, yeah, it actually influences how often I shop and how much I spend and whether I would recommend the brand and whether or not I would continue to keep purchasing from Baker’s Delight.

Pascale: If the program disappeared, what would our customers do?

Pascale: And that was the question that we kind of were left with, the price that we got an answer from.

Pascale: And they said that, yeah, it would actually make them consider shopping elsewhere because it was so intrinsically connected with how they thought of our brand, which is really powerful.

Pascale: And then from a franchisee perspective, and I probably didn’t mention this, but the research wasn’t just our customers.

Pascale: We actually wanted to ask our franchisees.

Pascale: So we kind of did a deep dig into their feelings of the program.

Pascale: And that was also what was interesting.

Pascale: I think overall, there’s obviously franchisees who have opinions and feedback and obviously value that’s being driven away with rewards and vouchers.

Pascale: Franchisees will have a commercial view of that.

Pascale: But they also realized and were able to articulate that they felt the customers also loved the program.

Pascale: Maybe not as much as customer said, but they could see that.

Pascale: And they also completely understood that their businesses would be impacted, had the program, if it was to somehow disappear one day.

Pascale: Of course, it’s not going anywhere.

Pascale: Don’t scare everybody.

Pascale: Yeah, no, no, I’m just kidding.

Pascale: But that just shows you the power of the program, which was just such a beautiful insight for us overall.

Carly: What do you think makes your customers love the program?

Carly: Because I think that that’s absolutely brilliant.

Carly: So firstly, congratulations.

Carly: And you’re absolutely right.

Carly: Also, the more they love it, the more they spend.

Carly: So it’s a beautiful hand in hand scenario, commercial and emotional, working very well for your business overall.

Carly: What do you think makes them love Baker’s Delight?

Pascale: Yes.

Pascale: Well, it is Baker’s Delight, as you’ve said.

Pascale: It’s like, it’s, it’s, and that was what was interesting.

Pascale: We were kind of trying to unpack the two and go, well, we know that there’s love for our brand out there and we completely appreciate that.

Pascale: But the more we study the responses, we knew that the emotional loyalty wasn’t purely being created by the program.

Pascale: The brand was playing a critical role, but the program was too.

Pascale: So this, our brand and all those beautiful experiences in bakery, which, you know, we’re very fortunate to be able to have so much interaction, physical interaction with customers as a part of our offering.

Pascale: But that was really creating that trust and connection, that foundation.

Pascale: But then what the program was doing is it was reinforcing it, it was deepening it, and then it was rewarding the relationship over time.

Pascale: So the brand is building the relationship at the start, but then the program is like it’s strengthening it, and then together they’re creating loyalty.

Pascale: So that’s kind of how the two work together.

Carly: That’s such a great way to describe it, because I do think that to really love the program, you must be engaging the brand also, and they need to work together.

Carly: But that’s a beautiful way of positioning it, that it’s loving the brand but deepening the relationship through the loyalty reinforcement.

Carly: Brilliant work.

Carly: And you’re right, that’s a touch point in real life.

Pascale: Yeah, that’s an emotional multiplier of like, there’s a ready there, I’m not denying, Baker’s Delight, iconic brand, nostalgic, sort of all those things I talked about earlier.

Pascale: But then the program is just amplifying it, right?

Pascale: It’s giving you more reasons to engage with us beyond the bakery experience.

Pascale: You’re getting your awards in your app, you’re getting your emails directly to you that are personalized exactly what you like.

Pascale: You’re finding out about all these other things.

Pascale: You’re first in to see the new flavor that’s dropping.

Pascale: There are all those extra bits that round out that experience for the love of the brand and, like I said, multiply it.

Carly: Absolutely.

Carly: If you’ve seen as a synonymous brand and program, that’s got to be a success point, right?

Pascale: Absolutely.

Pascale: Yeah, it’s very exciting.

Pascale: So yeah, we’re in a beautiful place and I guess we do have another, we have some other hit list items on there that the research advocacy, as I mentioned, we kind of under measured that.

Pascale: And so that’s something now that we’re definitely looking at.

Pascale: All right, well, we can’t just look at all of our commercial metrics anymore.

Pascale: We do need to start weaving in other things.

Pascale: Yeah, what do we look like on social?

Pascale: What’s that sort of, what’s that impact there?

Pascale: What’s our NPS score?

Pascale: We measure all of those, but perhaps we need to integrate them in that sort of overall success of the program.

Pascale: It can’t just be commercial.

Pascale: It should be very much commercial, but what are some other things we can bring in?

Pascale: Awareness, as I mentioned, you know, there is so much opportunity for people that are just already in love with the brand and, oh my goodness, had they known about Dough Getters.

Pascale: What more love could we, and continuous relationship could we build with those people?

Pascale: And then I think the final one, and I guess I look at Cotton On and what they’ve been able to nail with simplicity, is that simplicity beats complexity.

Pascale: And I guess another thing when we went into the research was like, oh, what else can we add?

Pascale: What else should we have been putting in there?

Pascale: Like, surely there’s something out there that the customer need.

Pascale: And it was like, no, no, no, no, like, just do it well and make it really simple for a customer and make it frictionless.

Pascale: And so the frictionless part is absolutely a huge focus for us going forward as we kind of look towards leveraging a lot of that marketing stack that we’ve been working on.

Pascale: We wanna make sure that, yeah, that app experience for customers continues to be as simple and easy to use as, you know, and as we include extra bits and pieces like personalization and yeah, like location-based activity, which again is all just making sure it’s more relevant to them.

Pascale: The more we can do that, the more we just need to make sure we’re not, we’re not over-complicating it.

Pascale: We’re at the end of the day, they just want simple.

Pascale: And realistically, our interactions in bakery have to be very quick, fast.

Pascale: You know, someone’s in there, they want to get what they need and they need to go and do, you know, go to butcher next door or whatever.

Pascale: So absolutely, we need to keep it simple.

Pascale: So that was another really big learning for us from the research, which we are taking all on board.

Carly: But that would be so tempting when you’re doing such a great job, the temptation to say, yes, let’s add something more, let’s do more with this.

Carly: You are doing more, there’s no question around that.

Carly: But maintaining the simplicity is so important, not just in your category, in so many programs, I believe.

Pascale: 100 percent.

Carly: Any key things for the future that you do want to share?

Pascale: Well, yes, probably continuing on that.

Pascale: I think, like I said, when we started the project, we were very focused on quite a commercial view of what else needed to be added.

Pascale: So I think for us, that emotional one is something, that emotional super power, maybe, or competitive advantage that we have.

Pascale: How else do we continue to flex that?

Pascale: And how do we keep linking it back into the brand as well?

Pascale: So absolutely that personalization, simplicity, as I mentioned, making sure that awareness for the program is up there.

Pascale: But at the end of the day, what we’ll continue to do is look into data.

Pascale: And I know we sort of really briefly touched on data earlier, but that’s a really powerful part of the program.

Pascale: And it’s just really being able to understand the way customers are shifting and what customers are ultimately wanting.

Pascale: If they’re a really frequent shopper, or if it’s just every now and then, yeah, really kind of uncovering that piece to not only inform better product creation going forward, store locations, opening hours, different initiatives that we can look to launch outside of loyalty just generally as a brand.

Pascale: Obviously, we can use that data to help make more informed decisions.

Pascale: But also, how do we continue to evolve with our customers and stay relevant with them?

Pascale: What do they need and how can we help make their lives easier?

Pascale: And there is so much in, if you think of our core customer, the family of Australia with primary school age kids, time is just not something they have a lot of.

Pascale: So, what are some hints and tips and tricks that we can continue to serve them to keep them engaging with us outside of purely that in bakery experience?

Pascale: So, that will be the future of Dough Getters.

Pascale: There’s so much growth still out there for us when I think about some of the franchisees who have really engaged Dough Getter customers to those that don’t.

Pascale: There’s a lot of opportunity still in the table.

Pascale: So, yeah, we’re really excited to keep leveraging the tools we have, and we’ve put a lot of effort into bringing in to create more personalization and better value for customers and ultimately franchisees.

Pascale: So, that’s definitely part of the future plan for sure.

Carly: Well, a huge congratulations.

Carly: You are one of the most loved programs in the country.

Carly: So, this is very, very cool for you and congrats.

Carly: And one bit of customer feedback, please don’t remove the chocolate scone at any point in the future.

Carly: Please keep that.

Pascale: She shall remain mandatory, I believe.

Pascale: She’s also loved by many others.

Pascale: So, don’t you worry about that.

Carly: Excellent.

Carly: Excellent.

Carly: We’ve got the customer surveys in.

Carly: Fantastic.

Pascale: Yeah.

Carly: Thank you so much for your time, Pascale.

Carly: It’s so great to talk to you and congrats again on the Fabulous program.

Pascale: Thank you so much, Carly.

Pascale: Chat soon.

Paula: This show is sponsored by Wise Marketeer Group, operating the Wise Marketeer and Loyalty Academy.

Paula: For nearly 25 years, the Wise Marketer is the industry’s longest-serving publication and source for news, information and insights, which now includes its own branded industry research, insights and advice.

Paula: For global coverage of customer engagement and loyalty, check out thewisemarketer.com and become a Wise Marketer member or subscriber.

Paula: The Loyalty Academy sets a global industry standard for loyalty education with its Certified Loyalty Marketing Professional or CLMP designation, which has created a community of more than 1200 marketing executives and professionals across more than 50 countries.

Paula: Learn more about global loyalty education for individuals or corporate training at loyaltyacademy.org.

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