#286: Bilt Rewards: Rewarding Home Renters (Short Summary Show)

Welcome to Let’s Talk Loyalty, an industry podcast for loyalty marketing professionals. I’m your host, Paula Thomas, and if you work in loyalty marketing, join me every week to learn the latest ideas from loyalty specialists around the world.

Let’s Talk Loyalty is inviting you to come and join us to talk all about loyalty. We want to know what are the biggest challenges you face to capture the loyalty of your customers as we approach 2023. In partnership with Collinson, Let’s Talk Loyalty is planning a live session on LinkedIn to talk about creating customer loyalty in the year ahead.

I’m inviting all of you listening to share with me the burning questions and key topics you’d like to hear us cover in a live discussion. Simply drop me an email. It’s paula@letstalkloyalty.com. Then we’ll pick the most popular ideas, and questions and talk them through on our Let’s Talk Loyalty Live event this November, powered by Collinson.

My email address again is paula@letstalkloyalty.com. Please do send over your questions and ideas and then join us as we talk loyalty live together for the first time.

Hello and welcome to this week’s short episode of Let’s Talk Loyalty. I’m your host, Paula Thomas, and this week I’m reviewing my first interview with Dave Canty, Director of Loyalty and Partnerships at Bilt Rewards, an episode from August, 2021 and perhaps one of the most innovative loyalty propositions I’ve heard of in recent years.

Quite simply, Bilt Rewards is the first loyalty program in the world that rewards tenants of residential properties in the US simply for paying their rent on time. The key insight behind the program is that tenants weren’t getting anything permanent in return for what is in fact their largest expense each month.

And I think most of us know the feeling of paying rent and feeling like it’s money that’s been wasted. Bilt is on a mission to change that for tenants, and it also supports the landlord community who want retain good tenants by rewarding them for simply paying their rent on time. Landlords benefit from lower churn, and of course their properties also become more appealing to rent, to tenant.

So not only do the tenants themselves earn rewards, which they can use to claim gifts like travel and fitness, but it also gives them a pathway to home ownership. This is perhaps now one of the biggest perks of the program as members of the program have their on time rent payments reported to the credit bureaus for the first time.

With this powerful incentive, knowing that their credit score is now being monitored, it ensures that tenants remain motivated to never have a late rent payment. It also means they can start to build their credit history, which will ultimately help them buy a home of their own a better interest rates than they would’ve done without this credit score information.

With so many benefits for every stakeholder. To me, Bilt Rewards is truly unique, because it is mission-driven and Dave himself is incredibly proud of his work there. He actually said it’s perhaps the most important work of his career, and it was already an incredibly impressive career. Dave directed loyalty partnerships and propositions for top US brands, including Starwood Hotels, JetBlue Airways, and IHG Group.

He had also spent some time developing loyalty insights around the demographic that we often hear on this show is the least engaged with loyalty programs, Gen Z. And it’s clear that Bilt Rewards is exactly the kind of proposition that is now meeting their previously unmet needs. So with this work, Dave and his colleagues in Bilt Rewards are making the loyalty industry relevant to Gen Z probably for the first time.

It was also incredibly exciting to hear about the founder behind the business who originally noticed this incredible opportunity. The founder, Ankur Jain, was the former VP of Product at Tinder. So from both a technical perspective and an entrepreneurial perspective, it was so inspiring to hear of somebody with a vision for something that could be truly remarkable.

And even though he had no loyalty experience himself, Ankur created the team he needed around him to deliver on this powerful proposition and solve the pain point of paying rent and getting nothing in return. The other impressive point to note was that Bilt Rewards was founded in the middle of the Covid Pandemic.

So it really shows how powerful it is to have a strong mission and vision for your loyalty program, and always focus on remembering how you can seek to serve a particular group and solve their needs. As we’ve seen, everyone who takes part in the Bilt Rewards program has something to gain. This was such an exciting episode, so I really hope you do take the time to listen.

It’s available at letstalkloyalty.com/135. And also we’ve since done a follow-up episode with Dave to get the latest news in 2022. So if you want to hear one year later, you can also listen to Bilt Rewards on letstalkloyalty.com/261. That’s it for today. Tomorrow I’m chatting with Anita Toth, who describes herself as Chief Churn Crusher, and she works with companies to help them do exactly that.

Then on Thursday, I’m delighted to welcome for the first time some of the executive team from Capillary Technologies. Who will share some of the incredible global clients and case studies they support around the world. Thanks again for listening to Let’s Talk Loyalty.

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

The Wise Marketer also offers loyalty, marketing training, through its Loyalty Academy, which has already certified over 245 executives in 27 countries as certified loyalty marketing professionals. For more information, check out thewisemarketer.com and loyaltyacademy.org.

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