Reimagining Cinema Loyalty: Polly Jones on Digital, Data & the Future of ODEON (#739)

Polly: I’m at ODEON Cinemas Group, responsible for digital and loyalty across our nine markets throughout Europe.

Polly: We have six brands and around 270 cinemas, and we have a loyalty program in every one of our nine countries, and they’re all very successful.

Polly: We have a segmented approach to loyalty at ODEON Cinemas Group across all the markets.

Polly: There is something for everybody.

Polly: If you haven’t been to the cinema recently, I feel like you should come, because there’s some really, really good stuff coming up soon.

Polly: Personally, I’m really excited to see Hamnet with Paul Meskell.

Polly: That will be great.

Polly: There’s a new screen film coming out for those who like horror.

Polly: And there’s this really great new film coming out in Q1 next year called Project Hail Mary with Ryan Gosling.

Polly: I think it’s going to be huge.

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: Today’s episode is hosted by Charlie Hills, Chief Strategy Officer of Mando, a UK-based agency that uses smart data to create brilliant partnerships and rewards that really work.

Paula: Enjoy.

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

Charlie: As Paula mentioned, I’m Charlie Hills, the Chief Strategy Officer for Mando Connect.

Charlie: In this episode, I’m delighted to interview Polly Jones, the Group Head of Digital for ODEON.

Charlie: Polly is a digital and loyalty leader with a track record of delivering successful programs for brands including ODEON Cinemas Group, EON, O2, Virgin Media, Rolls Royce Motor Cars, Costa and Dishoom.

Charlie: Today, we’re going to be learning all about her favorite books, highlights and key learnings from the program she’s worked on, and all about what loyalty looks like now and in the future for ODEON.

Charlie: I really hope you enjoy our conversation today.

Charlie: Hello, Polly.

Charlie: I’m delighted to have you on today.

Charlie: Welcome to the podcast.

Polly: Lovely to see you, Charlie.

Charlie: It’s such a great program.

Charlie: I think our listeners are going to really enjoy this one today.

Charlie: Who doesn’t like learning all about cinema and loyalty and brilliant pan-European initiatives?

Charlie: It should be a really good episode.

Charlie: But before we get into the world of loyalty, I wanted to ask you the same question we ask all our guests when they join us, which is to ask about one of your favorite books.

Charlie: It might be about life, it might be about loyalty, it might be about leadership.

Charlie: What’s your favorite book and why?

Polly: Well, I am going to be honest, I’m much more of a podcast person than a book person.

Polly: I haven’t really got a favorite loyalty book.

Polly: You’re in the right place.

Polly: Well, exactly.

Polly: So not a day goes by when I don’t listen to one, and one I do always recommend to people who want to develop their career in marketing or loyalty is The Places We’ll Go Marketing Show, which is hosted by Mark Evans, the Marketing Guru and Richie Mehta, who’s the CEO of the School of Marketing, and it’s sponsored by the Marketing Skills Trust.

Polly: They have a fantastic bank of episodes, loads and loads of them.

Polly: I think they drop one about once a week, and they talk to inspirational leaders in the marketing and loyalty space.

Polly: The recent ones I really liked are Nishma Patel-Robb, who talks about why your personal brand matters more than ever, Tamara Strauss of Premier Inn, which is all about how brands win customer loyalty, and there’s a really good one from Pete Markey about how to future proof your career.

Polly: And a really recent one, I think a couple of weeks ago, was Nick Myers talking about how agencies are evolving in the age of AI.

Polly: So that’s a podcast I would really recommend to everyone who’s in the loyalty marketing space.

Charlie: Oh, that’s brilliant.

Charlie: I love that you’re recommending a podcast rather than a book on a podcast.

Charlie: How perfect.

Charlie: I’ll definitely check that one out actually.

Charlie: And it’s a really nice blend of sort of the personal and the professional, isn’t it as well?

Charlie: That’s a real theme that’s coming through from a lot of our guests, actually.

Charlie: I think I expected when we first started asking that question, that they would all be like loyalty books, you know, kind of like old school theory.

Charlie: And actually, we’re getting a really, really rich and broad range of recommendations through.

Charlie: So thank you for that.

Charlie: Which leads me nicely on to a segue about loyalty programs.

Charlie: Now, I know you’re as much of a loyalty nerd as I am, but what’s your favorite program and why?

Polly: Well, I think as a customer myself, the one I’ve been using for years and years and absolutely love and go back to is the Space NK Indulge program.

Polly: I mean, as you know, the beauty space is so crowded, but this one just really works for me.

Polly: I love the brand, Space NK is fantastic.

Polly: But the stores are beautiful and the products are great.

Polly: But my basket size and frequency to Space NK is almost certainly dictated by the rewards I get.

Polly: So it’s a classic points-based loyalty scheme that rewards you with points to get money off so reliably that every time I go, I get about five pounds off.

Polly: So that delights me.

Polly: But also lots of experience-based rewards and trials and gifts.

Polly: I like the way they position the rewards.

Polly: It’s always gifts, that wording, rather than money off, which makes it feel a little bit more premium.

Polly: So you feel chosen and part of something a little bit elevated.

Polly: They always give you a birthday reward and that’s something genuinely valuable.

Polly: They do have tiers and this is the downside, I think, of it.

Polly: The top tier is if you spend a thousand pounds a year or more, you get this deluxe status.

Polly: I know, right?

Polly: I’ve never made it.

Polly: I mean, I would be a bit ashamed if I made it in a way.

Polly: Maybe it’s a bit too exclusive, though I do try and reach it, but obviously never got anywhere close.

Polly: But yeah, I think the risk with a very high tier is that you’d stop trying if you can’t see the progress.

Polly: But having said that, that’s the bit of a downside.

Polly: I think the best thing about it is how easy they make it to use.

Polly: So I’ve got a card in my e-wallet with my points on it.

Polly: Staff always ask about it at the counter and it’s got a great app and digital experience which is close to my heart, and really clear communications about the rewards balances.

Polly: So that’s why I like it particularly.

Charlie: I think that’s a brilliant program.

Charlie: I love that one.

Charlie: I recently had my birthday actually, and I had this lovely loyalty walk down my local high street where I went to Gales and I got my birthday cinnamon bun, and then I went to Space NK and bought some stuff because I’d been given a gift voucher that I got all my rewards as well.

Charlie: Then I did a couple of other shops along the way as well.

Charlie: It’s a really lovely program, I think, and I really like the simplicity of it as well, I think, versus some of the others.

Charlie: They’ve really nailed their role in the lives and then they keep it really focused on the product.

Charlie: Like you say, every time you go in, the staff is so good with it as well.

Charlie: I think they’re real ambassadors for the program.

Charlie: What about your background in loyalty marketing?

Charlie: I mean, you’ve worked for a lot of programs in a lot of different sectors.

Charlie: I’m sure our listeners would love to hear a little bit about how you got into loyalty marketing and perhaps what you like about working in it.

Polly: Yeah, I’ve worked in loyalty for a long time.

Polly: First, on the agency side, working on O2 Priority, which is the loyalty scheme in the 2000s and the 10s.

Polly: They really changed the market.

Polly: All the telecoms brands were all about acquisition offers.

Polly: O2 said, we’re about loyalty, we’re about the customer, and they did it so well.

Polly: The program, it tapped into the behavioral and emotional levers around exclusivity and scarcity.

Polly: It’s all about priority tickets to gigs and events, and VIP experiences at the football and the rugby, they were only available to O2 customers just for showing your phone most of the time.

Polly: For example, if you went to Twickenham for the rugby, O2 customers got to go into a VIP tent before the game, and you got a free pie and a pint.

Polly: It’s hard to remember how pioneering it was at the time, given how many people have copied it, although not so well, but it did make O2 the country’s number one telecoms provider.

Polly: I was really proud to have been part of that and working on that, and that really motivated me in loyalty and how well loyalty can work.

Polly: Then later, I worked on the Global Loyalty Program for Shell Retail, which was across 30 global markets.

Polly: Shell Retail is actually the biggest retailer in the world, which I always thought was a surprising fact.

Polly: I didn’t know that before I worked on it.

Polly: But they knew that their loyalty members were seven times more valuable to the business than non-loyalty customers.

Polly: So as a business, they really back loyalty and put a lot into their scheme.

Polly: So we were doing a lot of loyalty acquisition, comms and comms to nudge drivers into certain behaviors at the forecourts.

Polly: That was another great program to work on.

Polly: Then now, I’m at ODEON Cinemas Group, responsible for digital and loyalty across our nine markets throughout Europe.

Polly: We have six brands and around 270 cinemas.

Polly: We have a loyalty program in every one of our nine countries.

Polly: They’re all very successful and membership of the schemes is growing in every single one of our countries.

Polly: It’s quite exciting to be part of that.

Polly: I think the reason that I love loyalty marketing so much is because we’re the people in the business who really get to understand the customers or the guests and why they do what they do.

Polly: As you know, Charlie, loyalty isn’t about mechanisms and points and freebies, really, it’s about behavior and psychology.

Polly: We have to get inside the guest head and work out what motivates them.

Polly: We’ve got all the data, we get to develop insights and we turn them into nudges that change people’s behavior.

Polly: It’s always testing, learning, optimizing, evolving.

Polly: I never ever get bored of it.

Polly: The main thing I think about my ODEON role that makes it so good is that it spans both digital and loyalty.

Polly: I can think about loyalty strategy and make sure it’s central to how we show up to be guests on the digital platforms.

Polly: It’s all about how we work the loyalty program on the websites, the apps, the kiosks and the CRM.

Polly: That’s really why I love it so much.

Charlie: It’s so interesting, isn’t it?

Charlie: Because you do, you touch all those different bits of the journey and you touch all the different bits of the business as well across those markets across Europe, which is really nice.

Charlie: I think what’s really interesting to me about your programs is, you have a different program in some markets as well.

Charlie: You don’t take a sort of one size fits all approach.

Charlie: What do you think it is that sort of sets your programs apart from the way that others are doing it?

Polly: So what I would say is that you sort of said it, we have a segmented approach to loyalty at ODEON Cinemas Group across all the markets.

Polly: So there is something for everybody.

Polly: So we know our most loyal and frequent guests absolutely love our subscription schemes.

Polly: So in the UK, that’s called My Limitless.

Polly: Elsewhere, it’s called Unlimited.

Polly: And this is when you spend a set amount of money per month.

Polly: So in the UK, it’s 16.99 or 19.99, dependent on how premium you want to go.

Polly: And you can come as often as you want.

Polly: You can literally come every day.

Polly: You could come five times a day.

Polly: It’s just so valuable if you love cinema.

Polly: And it’s not even about unlimited cinema, but you get money off food and drink, exclusive events, early screenings.

Polly: You can bring friends and family at discount too.

Polly: It’s just so rewarding for, like I say, those fans.

Polly: And a lot of them come on their own.

Polly: They just have their own subscription.

Polly: And that’s like their special time in their day just to come and like, you know, really focus on something wonderful that you enjoy doing.

Polly: But it’s not just about paid subscriptions.

Polly: We also then have free to join schemes.

Polly: And in exciting news in the UK and Ireland, we’ve just relaunched our free to join schemes to make them even more rewarding and relevant for our guests.

Polly: So we worked with you and the team at MandoConnect in 2024, and we reviewed our schemes across Europe.

Polly: And we did discover that the UK and Ireland schemes were lagging.

Polly: So we’ve just relaunched our free to join scheme, and we’ve named it ODEON Extras.

Polly: And it rewards you every single time you come to the cinema.

Polly: So the basic tier is for people who might come to the cinema, you know, maybe even once, twice, three times a year.

Polly: And you can earn points every time you come.

Polly: So you can redeem against free tickets.

Polly: And that’s the thing we didn’t have before.

Polly: You couldn’t redeem against tickets, and that’s what people really, really want.

Polly: So you can redeem against tickets, food and drink.

Polly: You get a birthday treat, like you said, you get a free popcorn.

Polly: You wouldn’t be surprised to get that from us.

Polly: But one of the really cool benefits is Member Mondays, where all our members pay less for our tickets on Mondays.

Polly: So that’s quite a big deal.

Polly: So wherever you are in the country, you can get a discounted deal on a Monday.

Polly: So that’s a really popular day to come to the cinema now.

Charlie: I think it’s so nice that that member, it’s such a unique cinema way of doing member pricing, isn’t it?

Charlie: Actually, it’s been around for a long time, but it’s really nice that that’s become like a loyalty norm, actually.

Charlie: You could almost argue that other sectors have taken that from cinema along with some of the stuff you’re doing in subscription.

Polly: Yeah, definitely.

Polly: So that is becoming more and more popular, actually, that benefit.

Polly: But we also now have an elevated top tier, like I said about Space NK and Dolge, it’s called Extras Plus.

Polly: And we’ve made it quite attainable.

Polly: So you only have to come twice in a quarter to justify that.

Polly: And then you really get some big benefits.

Polly: So you get double points, which is actually quite valuable.

Polly: You get 10% off every time you come.

Polly: And then you get exclusive member screenings and popcorn upgrades.

Polly: And like I’ve mentioned it, but I think the thing about that that we’ve really tried to do is make it attainable for everybody.

Polly: We want you to be on Extras Plus, not just on Extras.

Polly: So it gives us a platform to nudge increased frequency in our higher value members.

Polly: And early insight is that it’s going really well.

Polly: People are keen to reach Plus status.

Polly: And it’s also had some sort of surprise benefits, like it’s grown our app base significantly and marketability has shot up.

Polly: But before I really talk about the success of it, we need a year’s worth of data.

Polly: But it’s going really well and we’re really pleased with it.

Polly: So, yeah, that’s great.

Charlie: And I love the inclusivity of the approach as well.

Charlie: I think it’s really interesting.

Charlie: Tearing is such a hot topic in loyalty at the moment, isn’t there?

Charlie: And there’s so much debate about internal tearing or external tearing.

Charlie: And how should you break tears?

Charlie: And should you move people up the tiers?

Charlie: And actually, how do you do that?

Charlie: And I really like it in your programme that it is it’s really inclusive.

Charlie: It does feel exactly as you said, like ODEON wants you to be a plus member and actually wants you to get there and it is trying to encourage that.

Charlie: So that’s marvellous.

Charlie: I’m not there yet, I must confess, but I will be, I promise.

Charlie: What about some of, you know, that’s a huge thing running all those programmes across Europe, changing the UK programme as much as you had.

Charlie: I’m sure there’s a whole series of highs and lows that you’ve had on that journey.

Charlie: Anything you’re able to share with our listeners?

Polly: The highs are that you get to make a genuine impact on the business.

Polly: We’ve got a lot of data and it strongly backs up the importance of our loyalty schemes in bringing back guests to see not just the blockbusters, but other films too.

Polly: So it smooths out our attendance across the year.

Polly: And that’s important to us because we want you to come and see sometimes the more interesting films that don’t have the big marketing budgets.

Polly: And it really helps people come back and see that.

Polly: The other high is that it’s so rewarding.

Polly: I’ve talked a bit about it, but you can test hypotheses, you get to measure the outcomes and you can iterate because, unlike some of the other marketing disciplines, you can really directly see the effect on guest behaviour.

Polly: It’s nice to have tangible results.

Polly: We know our loyalty members are more our most frequent guests.

Polly: So that’s really important.

Polly: And also creativity comes to life through the loyalty programme.

Polly: So some of our best creatives around loyalty, the storytelling.

Polly: I’ve talked about the digital experience and the behavioural science elements as well.

Polly: So there’s a lot of highs for me across the loyalty.

Polly: I think the lows though, there are some lows, honestly, because there are high expectations from stakeholders around loyalty, because they are really expensive to run and they take a lot of people power.

Polly: So there’s pressures to justify ROI.

Polly: And incrementality is a word I hear so often in the business.

Polly: You’ve got to prove that.

Polly: And there’s a real complexity of balancing the rewards and the profitability.

Polly: So if the rewards are too generous, the margins suffer.

Polly: And if you’re too mean, the guests just disengage and won’t sign in, won’t log in, won’t swipe.

Polly: So we’re always trying to strike that balance.

Polly: So lots of highs and lots of lows.

Charlie: Yeah, that’s really good.

Charlie: And I think that is something that a lot of our guests talk about, actually, that healthy tension between you want to give as much value as you can to your membership to make it really valuable, but you also need it to pay back to the business.

Charlie: And actually, in the current kind of business environment, that’s not always the easiest balance to scale.

Charlie: So it’s quite nice that you have got some flexibility there in the programs and some levers you can pull.

Charlie: I’m going to pick up on one of the things that we’re both massively passionate about, which was behavioral science, because I’m sure a lot of our listeners will be like, oh, how are you using behavioral science in loyalty?

Charlie: And I know you’ve done a lot in this space, actually, with the team at Ogilvy.

Charlie: So are there any sort of highlights you can share with us about what you’ve been up to with behavioral science and how it’s working or not working?

Polly: Yeah, I am a big fan of behavioral science.

Polly: And we at ODEON have worked with Ogilvy for quite a long time now.

Polly: I think it’s about seven, eight years.

Polly: And one of the real value adds you get from working with them is the behavioral science practice.

Polly: So we’ve worked with Dan Bennett and Jordan Burke to bring in a lot of the behavioral science theory as it relates specifically to loyalty.

Polly: So a few examples of what we’ve done that has worked particularly well.

Polly: The first one is the goal gradient effect.

Polly: So that’s when if we feel we’ve made some initial progress or have been given a head start towards a goal, we’re more motivated to achieve it.

Polly: So we might send a push message to non-members that says, your points are already waiting for you, you’ve earned them, so register to claim them now.

Polly: So that feeling of the head start, that’s quite powerful there.

Polly: Another one that we’ve learnt works well for us is the power of because.

Polly: That’s about giving guests a reason to do something rather than asking them just to do it.

Polly: So rather than saying order your food and drink in advance of the visit, we now tell them that if they do, they’re going to beat the queue, and give them that real benefit for doing it.

Polly: So that’s really improved that kind of messaging.

Polly: Then the old classic is loss aversion.

Polly: So we’re naturally more refers to losing what we already have our own.

Polly: So we might send a push message like, your points vanish in just two weeks.

Polly: Don’t let them disappear.

Polly: Treat yourself to a movie night on us.

Polly: This messaging has really boosted our results, but not just in comms.

Polly: It’s also used throughout our websites and apps and kiosks now as well.

Polly: The focus is really on to help the guests get the most out of our loyalty scheme.

Polly: So make sure we’re nudging in the right places to sign in and so on.

Polly: So yeah, it’s worked really well for us behavioral science.

Charlie: Yeah, I think it’s fascinating.

Charlie: If any of you want to get in touch with Polly, do and ask her more about it, because there are some really interesting ABCD tests that you can try and guess which one you think actually had the best effect.

Charlie: And I’m actually, it turns out, not that great.

Charlie: I only got about 50% success rate of thinking which one is actually going to work.

Charlie: And I think it’s fascinating how you can see that behavioral science really at play, but then sort of directly see the results as a result of those changes that you’ve made.

Charlie: So yeah, it’s a fascinating program.

Charlie: And now whenever I’m interacting with ODEON Extras or any of the programs, I’m sort of looking out for the signs of it.

Charlie: And you can spot them as soon as you start to sort of look for them.

Charlie: It’s great that you’re doing that.

Charlie: And I think that’s some really kind of cutting edge stuff.

Charlie: Obviously, your programs are really important.

Charlie: Obviously, ODEON Cinemas Group are investing in them.

Charlie: But how important are they, do you think, to the business?

Polly: Yeah, they are incredibly important.

Polly: And I don’t think of them as just part of our marketing program.

Polly: They really are the heart and soul of our whole business, actually.

Polly: Because for a start, our members are, and I’ve talked about this, but they are the most frequent and loyal guests.

Polly: So just in terms of simple revenue, it’s massively important.

Polly: And I’ve spoken about the times.

Polly: We have big blockbusters in, but then we have times of weakest late.

Polly: And so there might be a weekend without the launch of a big blockbuster, but it’s our loyalty members that fill the cinemas on those weekends.

Polly: So it’s really important.

Polly: And then I think it’s about advocacy.

Polly: So our members are incredible advocates for us.

Polly: So there was an example recently of an influencer called Grace Beverly, and she just talked about how amazing our subscription schemes are on TikTok.

Polly: She was going, it’s only 20 pounds a month.

Polly: And we got millions of views, and you’d normally pay thousands of pounds for advocacy like that, but we get it for free because they love our schemes.

Polly: And it’s really genuine and really authentic.

Polly: So like I say, it’s sort of advertising.

Polly: You can’t really pay for it.

Polly: And then, you know, it’s just the insight you get from it.

Polly: It’s, you know, I’m completely fascinated by how our different cinema audiences in different locations respond to different member offers, you know, who in what part of the country respond well to different sorts of offers on screens like IMAX, iSense, Dolby, who loves the Luxe seats and who likes the classics and what you can do to get people to choose differently.

Polly: So I’m fascinated by the insights.

Polly: And then I think finally, it’s a brand differentiator.

Polly: I believe we have the best loyalty schemes.

Polly: And I think in our most competitive markets, where other brands can and do undercut us on price, our loyalty program build emotional stickiness as well as financial value.

Polly: So yeah, just in terms of that differentiation, like it’s huge trust.

Polly: Yeah.

Charlie: Oh, that’s massive and so good to hear, obviously as a loyalty found that it is so important to the business.

Charlie: What’s the most important lesson you’ve learned so far?

Charlie: I mean, that feels like a big question, but is there something that really stands out?

Polly: And this is a genuine learning, recent learning that I’m not sure I was aware of before, because I just thought that you could maybe just put out this brilliant loyalty scheme and it would just work if it was great.

Polly: But actually, what I’ve learned over the years is that you can’t stay still.

Polly: You have to innovate and push hard to keep things exciting and fresh for the guests, because if you don’t, I think they just get bored and just start to fall away from the scheme.

Polly: So I’m constantly looking to see what others are doing, looking at the market, looking at what I’m jealous of and how we can maybe take some of that ourselves, ask friends what they use.

Polly: We’re doing this thing now in our business, like I’m encouraging people on regular calls just to say, well, what you’ve done to me actually, Charlie, and just say, what’s your favourite loyalty scheme and why, and getting people to share that with the loyalty practitioners across our business.

Polly: So just always looking at that.

Polly: And then we’ve got this great, because AMC is our parent company in the States, and they have a fantastic loyalty programme.

Polly: I think it’s held up not just as one of the best in the sector, but across all sectors, and they are always innovating.

Polly: So we take a lot of that from them.

Polly: And then just being obsessively guest-focused and asking them questions.

Polly: Research is always powerful.

Polly: So I now believe that if you keep things fresh, people will keep using the schemes, and if you don’t, they will, like I say, just fall off and stop working.

Charlie: Yeah, I think that’s really true, actually.

Charlie: We’ve actually seen that in qualitative research groups recently and in discussions.

Charlie: People are genuinely asking for what’s the new news, what’s coming, what’s the extra benefit?

Charlie: And to tie back to what you were talking about before in behavioural science, loss aversion, you can’t take anything away, but you have to be very careful about what you’re adding in and how you’re innovating and how you’re moving things on.

Charlie: So I think that’s a real trend, particularly in the UK market, actually.

Charlie: Consumers are ever more demanding.

Charlie: You’ve talked there about a lot of different success metrics, actually, from emotional stickiness to revenue to profitability.

Charlie: What does success look like for you with the programmes?

Charlie: And how are you going about measuring that?

Charlie: Because that’s a broad array of sort of KPIs to be looking at.

Polly: Yeah, it depends who you’re talking to, really, because we look at, obviously, frequency, membership revenue, loyalty attendance, and they’re the sort of KPIs that our senior team look at closely, so we report those upwards.

Polly: But within the team, we look at a lot of other things that ladder up to those.

Polly: So I think I’ve mentioned app growth is really important to us.

Polly: We know that our members love using our apps, and so we try to nudge people into using the apps because, again, that creates some sort of stickiness.

Polly: And also a new channel for push messaging, so really important.

Polly: And then having said that, like marketability is incredibly important in a world where channels are proliferating.

Polly: So if you don’t want us to communicate via email, we want you to opt in to push, or social, or one of the other channels.

Polly: Program engagement stats, obviously really important.

Polly: So how the guests are using the programs, what benefits are used the most, how many, I’ve talked about member Mondays, how many people are actually using member Mondays, how many people aren’t, how often they’re being used.

Polly: And then the verbatim feedback to guest services, because we have a guest services team also really important.

Polly: And then what people are saying about us on social channels as well, increasingly important in the new world of AI-driven search.

Polly: What people put on social media is going to come back to the, you know, come back to us in terms of the search responses.

Polly: So that’s increasingly important.

Polly: We look at that more than we used to.

Polly: And there’s more, but those are probably the main things.

Charlie: Yeah, it’s interesting as well.

Charlie: We see that from a lot of program leads as well.

Charlie: Actually, they talk about the impact on the business as what gets reported up.

Charlie: And those are their kind of impact KPIs.

Charlie: But then actually that granularity within the program about what’s working or what isn’t working, there tends to be a much broader suite of things that you look at within the team, as well as that business impact.

Charlie: So it’s nice to see that kind of reflected in your answer as well.

Charlie: What about the future?

Charlie: I mean, we’ve talked about innovation.

Charlie: We know you’re always looking at what other programs are up to.

Charlie: Are you able to share with us anything that you’re looking at for the future for the program?

Polly: Yeah, we’ve boiled it down to three things really.

Polly: The first one is making it seamless.

Polly: So we are relentlessly working on all our digital touch points, particularly the app, to make it easier for you to access and use the programs.

Polly: And we use the other streamers and big e-commerce brands as sort of like North Stars in this.

Polly: Just think how easy it is to use Amazon Prime.

Polly: You don’t even think about it.

Polly: It’s essentially a loyalty program.

Polly: So really trying to just make it seamless and easy.

Polly: Secondly, then making it personal.

Polly: So our most successful programs use data to personalize experience for our guests.

Polly: So things like reminding guests of how many points they have, what they could use them for, reminding them to use expiring points by a certain day.

Polly: With push messaging being really central at the heart, that would be app usage.

Polly: So that’s a big one.

Polly: Then three is the constant striving to make it emotional.

Polly: So it’s important to build in that emotional loyalty for us because cinema is an emotional experience.

Polly: It’s meant to be and so we want to give guests experience as well as points of discounts.

Polly: We know we’re living in a world where live and communal experiences are more and more important to people, particularly young people, and that is the heart of our business.

Polly: So we want to reward our loyal guests with more exclusive live experiences.

Polly: So those are the big three for 2026 and 2027.

Charlie: Well we’ll all be keeping a close eye, particularly on that last one in my case.

Charlie: I love going to the cinema, it’s one of my favorite things.

Charlie: What about resources that you rely on for that inspiration and to help sort of set those priorities?

Charlie: So obviously I know you’re talking to colleagues, you’re talking to guests, and you’ve talked about some sort of sources of insight, but are there any kind of industry resources that you look at or you’d recommend for our listeners?

Polly: Well, I find it hard to sort of like switch off and, you know, get that content that I need about loyalty.

Polly: So for me, the best way is to attend conferences, because you put your outlaw office on, you close your laptop, you put your phone in your bag, and you focus completely.

Polly: So, you know, I’ve been to the Loyalty Summit.

Polly: It’s for the last couple of years, it’s great, really great speakers from the loyalty industry, tech industry.

Polly: You can find out about what the latest tech is out there that can support your scheme.

Polly: And then I think most importantly, you get brands sharing what’s working and not working for them.

Polly: I’m scribbling notes like crazy, I find that invaluable.

Polly: So yeah, for me, it’s probably a conference so I can actually switch off and concentrate.

Charlie: I really value that as well, actually, as you know, I’ve sort of been heavily involved with the Loyalty Summit for the last couple of years.

Charlie: And it is, it’s one of the few opportunities you get to sort of park the day job, let the team run the day job, but actually kind of focus on what’s new.

Charlie: And I always think if you can come out with like two or three big innovations or big new ideas, then that’s time really, really well spent.

Charlie: Not to mention the brilliant kind of networking that happens at those things as well.

Charlie: Have you seen any ideas or innovations recently that you particularly are proud of or that you admire that you’ve seen somebody else do?

Polly: Not so much maybe what someone else has done, but I think one of the things that the UK team at ODEON have done actually, I think, is really good and really innovative, which is making, because of the ownership of the digital and the loyalty, we put those things together.

Polly: So in the UK, what they’ve done is they’ve managed to change the purchase journey, so that it constantly nudges you to sign in.

Polly: And I’ve touched on this a bit, but what they’ve done is they’ve changed the ticket price framing to highlight the member savings.

Polly: They’ve made the membership benefits throughout the journey more salient.

Polly: They’ve made signing in the default option over and above the guest check out.

Polly: They nudged you to sign in throughout the journey in multiple places.

Polly: So you can sign up as a new member now within the purchase flow, without leaving the purchase flow.

Polly: Oh, wow.

Polly: Sign in to check out.

Polly: Yeah, it’s all really, really good stuff.

Polly: And I’ve been really impressed with how they’ve done that.

Polly: And when they tell me the results, I’m just delighted, really.

Polly: There’s just so many more people using the scheme sometimes.

Polly: And we’re really delighted with the results.

Polly: So I think, yeah, I would shine a light on the UK ODEON team in that purchase funnel.

Polly: That’s fantastic.

Charlie: And really nice to see that laser focus on the user experience as well.

Charlie: And how actually, sometimes I think in loyalty, we can get really caught up with what’s the next big benefit or the next big reward or the next big something else.

Charlie: And actually, it can just be about changing those experience and those touch points so that they work much better for members.

Charlie: And you can get just as big a result without needing a whole new hero, reward or benefit or perks.

Charlie: So that’s really great to hear.

Charlie: We’re sort of coming to the close of our interview now.

Charlie: Is there anything else you’d like to share with our listeners at this point?

Polly: Well, if you haven’t been to the cinema recently, I feel like you should come because there’s some really, really good stuff coming up soon.

Polly: Personally, I’m really excited to see Hamnet with Paul Meskell.

Polly: That will be great.

Polly: There’s a new Scream film coming out for those who like horror.

Polly: And there’s this really great new film coming out in Q1 next year called Project Hail Mary with Ryan Gosling.

Polly: I think it’s going to be huge and everyone’s going to need to see it in the IMAX format because it’s visually going to be so exciting.

Polly: And just to say that if you do come to the cinema though, come to ODEON and don’t forget to sign in or sign up to our loyalty scheme.

Charlie: I love that.

Charlie: That’s brilliant.

Charlie: Thank you for the film recommendations and yes, absolutely sign in when you go.

Charlie: You get some amazing, amazing benefits and perks.

Charlie: Oh, that’s brilliant.

Charlie: I’m sure some of our listeners might have questions for you, Polly.

Charlie: What’s the best way for them to reach out to you?

Polly: Definitely LinkedIn.

Polly: I’m on LinkedIn and I’m happy to connect with loyalty practitioners on there.

Polly: So, yeah.

Charlie: Wonderful.

Charlie: Thank you.

Charlie: We’ll put Polly’s LinkedIn in the show notes for everybody as well.

Charlie: So all that’s left for me to say is thank you so much.

Charlie: What a brilliant host of programmes, what some brilliant stories, some great insight.

Charlie: And thank you very much for coming on the podcast.

Polly: Thanks, Charlie.

Polly: It was really nice to be part of it.

Polly: Thank you.

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.

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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.

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