Paula: Welcome to Let’s Talk Loyalty, an industry podcast for loyalty marketing professionals. I’m Paula Thomas, the founder and CEO of Let’s Talk Loyalty and also Loyalty TV. If you work in loyalty marketing, you can watch our video interviews every Thursday on www.loyalty.tv. And of course, you can listen to our podcasts every Tuesday, every Wednesday, and every Thursday to learn the latest ideas from loyalty experts around the world.
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Hello, and welcome to today’s episode of Let’s Talk Loyalty and Loyalty TV. We’re heading back to Australia for today’s episode with a brand and a business that was founded way back in 1903. The Royal Automobile Club Victoria is an unlisted public company and Victoria’s largest mutual organization employing about 3,900 staff across more than 50 locations. Its main product is roadside assistance for every one of its 2.1 million members. And they also offer emergency home assistance, nine resorts in three states, as well as travel discounts and benefits, as well as insurance and finance. In addition to these core benefits, the Royal Automobile Club of Victoria also has members who enjoy using all of their additional social leisure and business facilities.
To hear more about this loyalty program, we’re joined today by Hayden Hearse, their Marketing Manager for Member Benefits and Loyalty. I hope you enjoy our conversation.
So, Hayden Hearse, welcome to Let’s Talk Loyalty and Loyalty TV.
Hayden: Hi, Paula. Thanks so much for having me. Excited to be here.
Paula: Yes, I know you actually listened to the show, Hayden. So when you reached out in LinkedIn, of course, I’m always thrilled to hear from a listener and it’s always great to have an amazing brand like yours on the show.
Hayden: Yeah, absolutely. I’m a big, big fan.
Paula: Thank you, that means a lot to the whole team. So listen, let’s get straight into it, Hayden. It’s wonderful to be with you back down in Australia. I don’t know if you know, I’m coming actually to Australia for the first time in my life for the Australian Loyalty Association in August. So hope to get to meet you in person, but I love what’s going on in the industry there.
So, Hayden, as you know, we always love to start this show getting a sense of what global loyalty professionals admire and respect, either in their own markets or globally. So let’s kick us off and please do tell us what is your current favorite loyalty program?
Hayden: Yeah, absolutely. Obviously, this is an incredibly challenging question given the being in the industry and how many loyalty programs I’m personally involved in. I think the one I wanted to talk about was one that maybe hasn’t been mentioned on the show yet. It’s called RAIZ, R-A-I-Z, and it’s basically a micro investing loyalty program.
So the way it works is it’s app based. So you download it down on your phone and link it up with your preferred bank account or bank accounts. And it can do some automatic investing on your behalf and based on roundup, I, it can identify, you can set exact how much you want to round up, whether it’s 2 cents, 1 cents, et cetera. And when you make purchases, transactions, it’ll automatically round up a 1.97 to 2 and things like that. And basically those extra cents will go into a portfolio and they’ll micro invest on your behalf. So it’s just awesome. Just one of those ones in the background, kind of surprise and delight.
You know, you start off with to use it into the track. You got a couple of a hundred dollars in there and then so on and so forth. I know a few people that have been using it for, you know, two years plus that are sitting at around 10,000 mark off basically forgetting they even had it. So it’s a pretty cool one that I use regularly.
Paula: That’s amazing. My goodness. Micro investing. It makes me feel like, my God, I might actually be able to access the investment community for the first time.
Hayden: Exactly right. Yeah.
Paula: Great. Yeah. We’ll link to it in the show notes, of course, Hayden. And so that’s really cool. And thank you for picking one that hasn’t been chosen before. So I know as a listener of the show, you’ve heard a lot of the global favorites and for good reason. But again, we’re here to I suppose education inspire each other. So thank you for doing that thinking ahead of time.
So listen, let’s get into your loyalty career. Hayden, tell us how did you get to work in this industry?
Hayden: Yeah. So, I’ve been in the marketing advertising space for, you know, just over a decade and I’ve been at my current organization, RACV for over a year. And basically I came up a bit of a non-traditional way as everyone’s unique. I kind of was back in university days working part time at a call center for a large telco company. So I’ve got a few years of dealing, you know, with customers there at the inbound call center. And after a few years there, once completing university, I did an internship in the marketing team there and then I actually ended up doing about, yeah, six or seven years in advertising after that.
So, working in creative agencies on some of Australia’s biggest brands, whether it’s, you know, Asahi base, Carlton & United Breweries over here. I’m working on some fun beer brands to our biggest supermarket coals on a few other brands, big banks and everything working across a range of campaigns, brand campaigns, traditional above the line marketing, advertising campaigns, basically with the breadth of clients, you know, whatever they need to be, we worked on.
And then along the way, I decided to make the jump that people tend to make in some part of their careers in advertising, which I went client side working at one of our Australia post for a few years. And then loved it. Love working in the marketing team. Loved working directly at big organizations dealing, you know, with directly working for, you know, the customers and the members. And that ultimately led me to RACV, where I’m currently working. And I currently head up the member benefits portfolio in the marketing team at RACV.
Paula: Amazing. Yeah. Well, super cool. Of course, moving brand side. I think for me the one thing I haven’t done that you’ve done is definitely that call center time. So fair play. That’s definitely a true calling and fair play to anyone who can deal with so much complexity, I feel like particularly for brands. So, so a great background, a great context. What was it that appealed to you about the RACV in terms of joining this organization?
Hayden: Yeah, I think the it came along very surprisingly toward the end of the year, it was around, I think it was Christmas Eve, I got offered the role, which is quite funny but it just kind of came about out of the blue and it looked like a great opportunity.
I met with the team, our GM of marketing and it just, you know, when you can just tell the right people, the right organization. I’ve been in Victoria and Australia my whole life down the bottom in one of the most southern states. So I’ve been an RACV member my whole life as my family, which is the case with most Victorians.
So the brand resonated with me through and through, and I actually have done a bit of work for them years ago on the other side in advertising. So it just felt like a natural fit and moving into the loyalty space, which I know has been around for quite a long time, but it just feels like it is the right time to get into this space. And it’s just, emerging at a rapid rate in Australia. So yeah, kind of the moons aligned and it just felt really natural choice.
Paula: Amazing. Yeah. And in fact, we have the Canadian Automobile Association coming up on the show as well, quite soon, hoping to get the US one. And for me, honestly, from when I started driving, I can honestly tell you, Hayden, you know, to have that, I suppose, core product of particularly the roadside assistance is something I would absolutely love to see, just not drive without.
So you do have extraordinary numbers. I saw on your LinkedIn, it’s over two million members. And I suppose the key we’re here to talk about today is how you’re adding even more value. So the core product roadside assistance, would you mind just talking a little bit more about even maybe the broader product as well, Hayden? I saw. amazing things like emergency tradesmen, which again, going back to, you know, when I first had a house of my own, for example, my goodness, that’s a product I would have absolutely loved and certainly didn’t exist in the Irish market. So even before we get into all the extra member benefits that you’re building, would you mind talking about the RACV and the product at its broadest level?
Hayden: Yeah, absolutely. It’s such a wide breadth. Yeah, naturally, as you’ve mentioned at the heart and historically, we’ve been in a roadside assistance company. That’s our biggest product offering historically. But now we cover so many industries with product offerings, you know, mainly focused in the home with our home insurance, our trades, as you mentioned, our emergency home assist, which is just an evolution of our roadside assistance. Which is for any incidences whatsoever at the home, even getting locked out, you know, we’re just a phone call away, which is super handy. We offer car insurance. We have bike assist, which is basically if your bike ever has an issue when you’re out on the push bike, we can come help you get on your way and make sure that’s fixed, which is really cool.
Our biggest offering and I, you know, admittedly I sit in the leisure team. So we have one of our biggest offerings is the RACV resorts. So on a national basis up the East coast, we have resorts. They’re quite large during tropical locations. Even down south in Tasmania and we have a massive holiday offering travel insurance. We have, you know, so much that we do across so many industries, which helps obviously with my job at the heart of it all in the loyalty program giving us leverage across these industries with making life easy for our customers.
Paula: Love it. Love it. So tell us about your role and exactly what it is that you’re developing in terms of driving that loyalty proposition.
Hayden: Yeah. So, the loyalty program has officially kind of been around in the past couple of years and it’s heading into such a good spot and has done seen such success since it’s been kind of in fruition. The way it works is we have so many ways and we want to contact our member based, you know, as you, I think you mentioned earlier, we’re over 2 million members and, you know, it’s a significant portion of the state.
We also have customers members across Australia more widely given the offering that we do have. So basically, the member benefits program is a way in which we can communicate and drive value back to our members were member owned. So we exist for our members. Other than our product offering, which we did great deals to existing members.
We can also leverage our, you know, longstanding 120 year old relationships with other suppliers and other partners in market to leverage, you know, those partnerships to get a really good deal and a good offering for our member base. You know, whether it’s fuel offering, which is so relevant at the moment and does really well given the economy and the cost of living and the cost of fuel more broadly or whether it’s, you know, holidays going to the movies, anything like that.
We just have such a breadth of offers for everyday life. So the way we communicate it is every Friday we send a newsletter, which is really at the core of the loyalty program. The newsletter goes out to, you know, almost half of the customer base. They’re highly engaged as well. And, you know, much like your loyalty, your newsletter that you send out it’s every week. We got a lot of people looking forward to it. We strictly based it on a thematic so content relevant for perhaps example in Victoria at the moment. It’s a long weekend, so we let people know what’s on this long weekend. Being a member, what discount they get on whether it’s a theater or event, or if it’s something in regional Victoria we can obviously get leverage our relationship there to get a discount for our members and support those local businesses and getting people through the door, which is really nice.
We have a lot of social media in market direct to our members. We’re soon going to have an app, which is in development, which is going to have a member benefits dashboard, which is just another way of making life easier for our members on giving them those instant notifications on the benefits they have. And sometimes we have things that are limited to time only. So being able to alert customers and let them know when they’re in the app of these deals is really handy. So it’s kind of just getting the right, the value and just highlighting it for members. And we know that when they use it often. So we’re just trying to let them know what they can get for being a member and just rewarding him, I guess, for being part of the organization.
Paula: Brilliant. Yeah. And as I said to Hayden, a lot of similarities, because when I started my first loyalty proposition within telecommunications, it was exactly that proposition. And for me, I suppose the part that everyone around me, you know, in the loyalty industry seemed to find, you know, very unusual was the absence of a points currency, which if I’m not mistaken, is exactly your approach as well. Have you thought about a points currency or is it purely that you go, do you know what, there are so many partners there that we really just want to focus on building that, that breadth of the proposition.
Hayden: Absolutely. You know, I personally thought of it. You’re correct. You’re bang on. It’s a big job to create a point space loyalty program. Of course for us, we’ve got over 3000 external partner offers live. That goes up every day. So I probably behind the ball there on that because I haven’t checked it in a while.
But because we have that we’re percentage off where dollar off. We’re, you know, where we can be where we’re exclusive entry. You know, there’s certain theater and events that come to Australia that go to our members, pre-sale tickets before going to the market and the wider public. So given the flex of our offering we like to be dynamic and keep it the way it is, but you know, you never say never, right? Like we’ve talked about rewards, dollars and points. So maybe one day it’ll fit.
Paula: Incredible. Well, 3000 partners. My God, I feel exhausted. Just thinking about that. So again, I was a one woman show when I was building the partner proposition. But it definitely adds extraordinary value. And what I always enjoyed, I suppose, on the partner negotiation side, and I’m sure you’ve a team of people there.
But, you know, given that you’ve got this scale of more than two million, you know, million people. I think what happens then is as soon as you go to those partners, and I know you have the same philosophy that I did, which is what can we get that is exclusive that they won’t get if they are not a member of our organization. So I think it sounds like you have the same philosophy around making it super exciting. So when you send that weekly newsletter as you said on a Friday, people are like looking forward to it to see what you’ve negotiated for them.
Hayden: And you bang on and we do it across, you know, those 3000 partners, but also internally with the different products and the different teams we have managing those products across the board, we make sure that if they are going to feature in our newsletter or go out directly to our members, there has to be an element of exclusivity on top of the normal offering. So, you know, it just goes back to the more products you have with us, the more you save. So we always kind of stay true to that for sure.
Paula: Amazing. And how’s it going? Like, what kind of engagement are you getting? I know it’s still fairly new, even with the breadth of partnerships that you’ve mentioned. But as you said, the organization itself is over a hundred, I think it’s at 120 years old, but this part is I suppose the more recent part. So, so how’s it going for you?
Hayden: Yeah, it’s going really well. It’s, we have a super engaged audience. You know, over half the audience every week are opening the emails that we send out. They’re clicking through on the social placements on the websites, they’re calling in, they’re physically coming in. We have some events and activations we do, and, you know, we get to meet the members, which is always so fun. And you get to hear, they all are aware of it and highly engaged, which is really well.
And from a, you know, utilization point of view, you know, benefits is becoming one of the biggest offerings with certain products like fuel. I mentioned earlier being really well resonated with our audience. So, going very well. There’s so much more to do. You know, we’re always trying to get ahead of the ball and just remain as dynamic and offering as much value as possible to our audience.
And as I mentioned with the launch of the app, it’s just gonna be a lot easier to do that and build out another audience. They have the same people, which is gonna be really exciting. So, yeah, going very well at the moment.
Paula: Incredible. Yeah. Well, I think as you alluded to, Hayden, this whole I suppose, economic macro environment definitely does mean that there is an increased focus on, you know, where can I get value in my everyday spend?
And I liked what you said, actually, when we were talking I suppose the last time just off air, you know, planning today’s conversation, that actually it’s every single demographic that does appreciate that. So I think when it comes to loyalty, you know, we might have thought in the past, Oh, you know, things are going well, you know, maybe people who are earning a good salary or whatever aren’t really thinking about looking for value. But I think what you’re saying coming through is that every single member is appreciative of that and maybe because of the economy focusing the mind, but maybe it’s just common sense.
Hayden: Yeah, I agree. Absolutely. I think socio demographic wise, everybody’s resonating with the value. Certainly we apply different value to different tiered products like higher, more expensive products. We still make sure there’s an element of value or exclusivity. And I think, yeah, just given everything that’s happening in the world, it really does resonate well with everybody. We do have, you know, tech stacks and certain abilities throughout, you know, newsletter, for example, other forms of communication to remain dynamic with our product offering and our segmentation.
So we do, we’re all about serving the right people, the right stuff at the right time. But we overlay like a value kind of lens to all of that at the moment, and it’s doing really well.
Paula: Yeah, the one that particularly I suppose is one I never managed to negotiate and maybe it’s a sign at the times, but you’ve mentioned the fuel discount. I’m guessing that’s possibly one of your most redeemed offers along perhaps with things like movies again, just from my own experience. What do you find are the ones that your members are enjoying the most?
Hayden: Absolutely. You feel for sure since its launch over a year ago has just been, you know, one of our top one, if not the top for most of that year. The reason it is, it’s a high offering like the most competitors market can do 4 cents, 5 cents. But given our partnership with one of the biggest grocery stores in Australia, Woolworths, we can actually leverage that partnership to combine the two offers and the actual fuel supplier on site offering of spending 5 in store to get up to 0.13 off per litre. So you basically combine your RACV offer your Woolworths store offer, and then your in store offer, and you get up to 0.13 cents. That’s our message to our members. It’s an easy few steps to jump through when you’re in the store.
And because of that, yeah, it’s just resonated so well. And, you know, at this point in time with the price of fuel, 0.13 is huge. So it does the best. And to your other point there, movies are great. You know, movies can be in excess of 25 dollars. On any given night. And if it happens to be on a Monday, our members get it for 10. Other nights we have up to 46 percent off and then you hit the snack bar, we can get you a snack combo for 7 dollars. So it’s just about keeping more money in our members pockets, really.
Paula: You know, I always think it’s funny when I think about the movies, you know, like it’s been predicted that movies are going to die, that theatres aren’t going to survive, particularly, of course, when we came through the pandemic. But I think more particularly, you know, the explosion of streaming services. But I don’t know about you, but for me, like, I, I think I have three streaming services and I still go to the movies. So it’s a great deal.
Hayden: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I’ve got a little one at home at the moment, so I find it hard because she’s a bit restless in movies, but I definitely try to get to them when I can, because I like the experience of actually going to the cinema.
Paula: Yes, exactly. I suppose we’re in the experience economy. Tell me about the reception from the partners, Hayden, has that improved and increased over time? I felt like when I was doing the negotiations again, back now it would have been 2010, but there was an awful lot I felt of education where, you know, the model just wasn’t, you know, something that people were familiar with.
Merchants of any size, you know, small, medium or large businesses, they were able to be it retail or any kind of complimentary sectors. Is it something that you’re finding that in Victoria, I suppose, you know, led by your own brand, but is it something that the actual partners themselves are coming to you or how receptive are they when you go again with, you know, high expectations, big demands in terms of getting value for your members, how are those negotiations going?
Hayden: Yeah, it’s a great question. So I mean, coming from working in advertising and marketing, obviously. You know, it’s a very competitive environment, as you would well know, and traditional marketing and advertising. A lot of the campaigns I worked on were awards based. So you’re always obviously in competition with other brands.
Internally, you’re in competitions with other teams, if not people on your team. So everyone wants to do the best job, right? The thing I probably love most about the loyalty space coming back to your question, is that it’s transparent, it’s collaborative. I think it’s a really beautiful kind of space to being given the fact that you can work with brands to benefit both customer base of both member based. And for us, it’s when I say leverage the relationships, it’s work with our partners to give them a great deal and obviously allow our audience to have access to their product at an exclusive or discounted rate, which I think is really nice because we’re both working to the same goal, which is basically driving value back to the customers and then ultimately to the organizations.
And then that allows us to access more kind of value which is really nice. And we’ve got out, you know, you did mention it before, but we do have a sales team. That we’ve got a great product and sales team internally here that go out and leverages awesome deals. And every day they’re popping up with new stuff, which is really cool.
And we get to meet the team of the suppliers and understand their kind of goals and their enterprise direction and everything like that to make sure that it’s all in line. So it’s, yeah, it’s really, again, it’s really nice space and places like this podcast obviously coming to this actually acts as a conduit kind of to just leverage more and get to meet people and talk about the good things and share the information to make it all better and benefit us all.
Paula: It totally. And my top tip for you, Hayden, and I suppose anyone else listening is we did end up actually over time, eventually adding some budget into the rewards proposition. So in addition to, of course, the exclusive partnerships and discounts and everything available that’s funded, I suppose, essentially by the partner, we did end up building propositions with both coffee and chocolate. Two of the favorite things, certainly in my world. And from time to time, we had a particular situation that I think was relevant in that the company was changing ownership. The telephone network itself was changing hands. So you know, that’s when of course loyalty is extremely important.
Everybody’s nervous. So we managed to get that extra budget and negotiate where we could give people a free, you know, whether it’s a latte or a hot chocolate of their choice on the high street and you know, managing all of that now, of course, was a whole other proposition, but just as you go forward, it might be something that again, members of the RACV, I suppose, just might be starting to look for if if they’re listening to this show, but that’s just my tuppence worth in the interest of the audience. So I’m sure you’ve got plenty of plans for the future.
Hayden: Yeah, so much in the works. Emerging partnerships, which are really exciting. And it’s gonna be, we’re gonna learn more about our members, make sure that we’re giving them the right stuff. We’re going to take a conservative approach with everything there and make sure that it is right for them. That’s probably the biggest focus for, you know, the next financial year, at least and thereafter and just finding, you know, better deals and more relevant ways to communicate it to the right people is kind of the biggest focus for us.
Paula: Yeah, that’s super exciting. And you’re absolutely right. And again, we built a dedicated app ourselves and what you will find that will do as well as, of course, the huge consumer benefit the whole purpose. And also, I think what it does is your partners get super excited because then they feel that they’ve got again, more media capacity in the palm of your member’s hands. So, you know, again, most of the partners I would have talked to have been, you know, maybe didn’t have a media budget. So again, that’s that win proposition where they get the visibility in a way that they mightn’t have previously. So best to look with the App Aid and that’s definitely a huge development.
What I’m hearing from you actually though is the idea that the utility is so broad of what the RACV is doing that of course once people are aware of it through your weekly newsletter of course they’ll be highly motivated to download it. I think that’s one of the issues that some apps have struggled with in the past. You know, I don’t necessarily want a new app for every single thing I do in my daily life but if there’s a lot of utility I definitely will.
Hayden: Yeah, exactly right. It’s going to be crucial to launch, but we’ve got a really good you know, strategy in place for that, which would be really nice to get it out there and just, you know, let us, let our members know we’ve made life easier for them and just another way.
Paula: Amazing. And I’m guessing with that you know, what I’m concluding and correcting. me if I’m wrong, Hayden, but it sounds like the internal buy in is fully behind the member benefits proposition, I suppose, bringing you in first and foremost to develop something so broad, as you’ve said, with over 3,000 partners and now taking it to the next level with the app. It sounds like the business fully sees that this is driving, I suppose, the overall stickiness of your member base.
Hayden: Yeah, some amazing leadership, which is key. You know, long before my time that we’re heading in this direction. I’m definitely part of the bigger picture for sure. But we wouldn’t nothing about this would be possible without that.
And you’re right in this sticky comment. We are the glue between all these products and the massive environment and the big enterprise that we are. So, yeah, everybody understands the importance of the benefits program and how it resonates with our members because we hear it directly from them. And the data comes up throughout the organization regularly showing how crucial it is. So all very aligned.
Paula: Amazing. Yeah. And I know you can’t share any commercially sensitive figures, but you know, it won’t be surprising to anyone to hear that if they do engage with those extra benefits that you’ve negotiated, they are proven to be stickier and to be able to, I suppose, justify in their own mind that they are investing in road sized assistance, but actually it’s much more than that. So I know you’ve got the data to prove it. So it sounds like exciting times for you.
Hayden: Yeah, exactly. Right. And, you know, we just have to make sure we get the better offers for the members to make sure they are using it. And the only way to do that is to make sure they’re compelling and great, which we’re on the way to doing more and more every day, which is nice.
Paula: Brilliant. Well, listen, from our side, Hayden, we’re really thrilled to hear, I suppose, the simplicity and the effectiveness of your loyalty proposition. At the end of the day, we all know we’re here to drive profitable behavior change, and I can hear that’s exactly what’s materializing for the business.
So with that said, I don’t have any other final questions for you. I would love to you know, obviously link to your profile on LinkedIn for anyone around the world who might be maybe considering a proposition like this for their own membership base. So are you comfortable if we share that on our show notes?
Hayden: Yeah. Please do. That’d be amazing.
Paula: Amazing. Great stuff. Okay. Well, listen, please do stay in touch. I definitely want to hear your progress over time. So Hayden Hearse, Marketing Manager, Member Benefits and Loyalty with the Royal Automobile Club of Victoria. Thank you so much from Let’s Talk Loyalty and Loyalty TV.
Hayden: Thanks so much, Paula. Have a good day.
Paula: This show is sponsored by Wise Marketer Group, publisher of The Wise Marketer, the premier digital customer loyalty marketing resource for industry relevant news, insights and research. Wise Marketer Group also offers loyalty education and training globally through its Loyalty Academy, which has certified nearly 900 marketers and executives in 49 countries as certified loyalty marketing professionals.
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