This episode of “Let’s Talk Loyalty” summarises my top insights from British Gas Rewards – an award-winning UK loyalty programme that’s loved by millions.
With a goal to make customers feel recognised and rewarded in an intensely competitive sector, British Gas Rewards developed an innovative concept without using points.
With customers asking for simplicity and exclusivity, British Gas in partnership with their agency Mando Connect developed a concept that combined core rewards from British Gas in the form of “loyalty days” with exclusive partners offers across key categories that customers love.
Listen to hear the highlights of my learnings from the British Gas Rewards loyalty programme or listen back to the full interview in December 2019. It’s episode #16 of “Let’s Talk Loyalty“.
1) British Gas Rewards: https://www.britishgas.co.uk/rewards.html
2) British Gas Rewards Partnership Agency: www.Mando-Connect.co.uk
Speaker 0:
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.
Welcome to let’s talk a little loyalty. My shorter show released every Tuesday for loyalty marketing professionals. For this episode, I listened back to my interview with British Gas Rewards – an award-winning loyalty program launched in 2017 as an innovative company-owned loyalty program, which they developed after their decision to leave the Nectar program, the main coalition loyalty program in the UK market.
British gas is the biggest energy company in the UK in a sector that’s highly regulated, highly competitive, and really seen by consumers as a grudge purchase. Alongside those challenges, energy prices were rising globally and margins are always tight. So as a result, British gas had become the target of a huge amount of negative publicity from the UK media, from research with customers, British gas realized that rather than feeling loyal, in fact, their customers were really feeling short changed.
As new customers were often being given better price than existing customers. The whole idea for British gas rewards was to rebuild trust in the brand, by doing something innovative, engaging, and unexpected, their customers also said they didn’t want another points program. Instead. They wanted something exciting, something simple, and of course engaging. So in the full interview, which is episode 16 released in December, 2019, you can hear the full loyalty proposition they designed and launched in an incredibly short timeframe of just four months from the concept approval through to the launch of their first version of the British gas rewards program.
Some of the key things I learned from British gas rewards was the power of their loyalty days. Essentially giving customers a discount back on their bill in return for the number of years they had been with the company, which I think is a superb way of acknowledging the length of time a customer has been with them. The customer’s tenure as it’s known is definitely something that’s rarely used or even acknowledged by utility brands.
So to me, this is a brilliant idea. And one I can imagine that really drives emotional loyalty as an explicit. Thank you. Also, in our interview, we chatted through the partnerships that have been negotiated exclusively for members of British gas rewards by their agency, Mondo connect as a way to go above and beyond what customers expect from a loyalty program. It includes ideas such as movie nights out discounts would talk travel partners for holidays, both at home and abroad as well as some great exclusive offers from members who love things like chocolate and Haribo gums.
I hope you will listen to the full interview. It’s episode 16 of let’s talk loyalty. It’s a 50 minute show packed with all of the insights and ideas that help this unique program. When so many loyalty awards in 2019, that’s it for this episode of let’s talk a little loyalty
Speaker 1 (3m 53s):
Speaker 0 (3m 58s): This show is sponsored by the wise market here. The world’s most popular source of loyalty, marketing news insights and research. The wines marketeer also offers loyalty marketing training through its loyalty Academy, which has already certified over 170 executives in 20 countries as certified loyalty marketing professionals. For more information, check out the wise market tier.com and loyalty academy.org.
Speaker 1 (4m 28s):
Speaker 0 (4m 32s): Thanks so much for listening to this episode of let’s talk loyalty. If you’d like me to send you the latest show each week, simply sign up for the show newsletter on let’s talk loyalty.com and I’ll send you the latest episode to your inbox every Thursday, or just head to your favorite podcast platform. Find let’s talk loyalty and subscribe. Of course I’d love your feedback and reviews. And thanks again for supporting the show.
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