Inside Travelex Plus: Chris Frost on Personalisation and Customer Experience (#701)

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Chris: We don’t have customer accounts yet, so for various reasons that’s never quite happened.

Chris: So we had to be really, I guess, smart and resourceful and pragmatic about, okay, do we wait until we have customer accounts live, or can we launch a loyalty program without it?

Chris: And we went for the latter.

Chris: We got live as quickly as we could to start learning, and we decided we made the choice to park some of the ideas and features we had in order to be live and learn and build, rather than sit there and wait and wait.

Chris: So we now got 85,000 members.

Chris: And we’re growing fast.

Chris: We’re really happy with that.

Chris: That’s what we were aiming for.

Chris: Our average transaction value is 31% higher with Travelex Plus.

Chris: It’s delivering high value in that first transaction.

Chris: And then we’ve doubled the reload rate for new card holders who sign up with Plus.

Chris: One thing you know I’m keen to do is to explore reward partnerships at some point in the future.

Chris: Being able to work with reward partners would be great.

Chris: I think there’s lots of scope to do some really genuinely valuable partnerships for our customers.

Chris: So, how do we tie rewards, whatever they may be, to someone’s pre-trip, in-trip and post-trip journey?

Chris: Just learn, learn, learn, right?

Chris: Find ways to learn that understands what does and doesn’t work for loyalty.

Chris: Get that grounding in place so that you’re making informed decisions.

Chris: Do your homework, basically.

Chris: And understand the levers you’ve got, because then you’ll be more successful.

Chris: Without it, we don’t have a digital relationship.

Chris: Customers just become transactions again.

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 MandoConnect, a UK based agency that uses smart data to create brilliant partnerships and rewards that really work. 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 MandoConnect.

Charlie: In this episode, I’m delighted to interview Chris Frost, the Senior Product Manager for Customer Experience and Loyalty for Travelex.

Charlie: Chris specializes in customer experience, personalization and loyalty at Travelex, where he leads the development of MarTech and CRM platforms to unlock customer data and drive long-term value.

Charlie: With a career spanning customer engagement, personalization and product innovation, he helps global brands turn data into impactful loyalty building experiences.

Charlie: Today, we’re going to be learning about his favorite books, highlights and key learnings from the recently launched Travelex Plus loyalty program and all about his views on loyalty marketing.

Charlie: I really hope you enjoy our conversation today.

Charlie: So, hello, Chris.

Charlie: Welcome to the podcast.

Charlie: We’re absolutely delighted to have you on today.

Charlie: It’s a really exciting program and I can’t wait to learn all about it.

Chris: Hi there.

Chris: It’s great to be here.

Chris: Thanks for inviting me on, Charlie.

Charlie: Oh, it’s going to be a really, really good episode.

Charlie: But before we get into learning all about Travelex Plus, we wanted to start out with some questions where we get to know you and we get to know a little bit more of your background.

Charlie: So we introduced a new question in 2025.

Charlie: So I’m going to open with that one, which is please tell us about your favorite book, about life, loyalty or leadership.

Chris: So despite the book case behind me, I’m not as avid a reader as I used to be.

Chris: So I was having a little think about this.

Chris: And whilst a lot of product managers talk about a book called Inspired by Marty Kagan as a kind of product managers Bible, I’m also partial to Ian Rankin, Inspector Reba’s crime thriller.

Charlie: Yeah, aren’t we all?

Chris: I’ve been sticking with that for a couple of decades now.

Chris: The book I wanted to mention was one called Radical Focus.

Chris: So I’ve got it right here.

Chris: So I read this a little while ago, and it’s by a book called Christina Wodka.

Chris: And I found it really powerful.

Chris: So it’s quite short, which is helpful to get through that quickly.

Chris: And it’s written as a business fable.

Chris: So the first half of it is a story about a fictional startup that are struggling to hit their goals.

Chris: And it shows how they introduce OKRs, Objective Key Results, as a way to, and a method of using those to really focus on what they do.

Chris: And the second half of the book is all practical guidance on how to do it after you’ve read the story you’ve all bought in.

Chris: And it really resonated with me.

Chris: I used it and some of the methods with it that the team I worked with at the time.

Chris: And it really, really helped us to do things that are impactful.

Chris: Generally lots of success, measurable success, because it’s all about metrics as well.

Chris: And also help prioritize, stop doing those things that aren’t contributing to your OKRs.

Chris: So yeah, that’s a great book.

Chris: And I now follow Christina’s work quite closely and get her emails and things like that.

Charlie: Fantastic.

Charlie: I’m going to borrow that off you.

Charlie: For our listeners, you won’t know today, but Chris actually lives around the corner from me.

Charlie: So I’m going to sneak around, hit the coffee shop and then I’m going to borrow that book.

Charlie: Because I think prioritization in particular is something that we all really struggle with in loyalty.

Charlie: I think one of the common themes when we’re talking with all our guests is about the breadth of everything we have to do and all the different bits of the business that it touches.

Charlie: So yeah, prioritization would be personally very helpful.

Charlie: And it’s also a great excuse to hit a coffee as well at the same time.

Charlie: What brings us along quite nicely to kind of loyalty and loyalty programs?

Charlie: And I know actually you bring a unique perspective to this actually coming at it from a product management point of view, which I’m really keen to sort of share with our listeners.

Charlie: What are your favorite loyalty program or programs?

Charlie: Which ones do you like and why?

Chris: I think a simple thing for me is I love a program where I get rewarded regularly in quite tangible ways.

Chris: So my regular free pasta pot from Coco de Mamma is a good one.

Chris: So it’s just I buy stuff, I get free pasta.

Chris: That’s what could make you happy, right?

Chris: But the one I admire the most and I use the most personally is the Vitality program.

Chris: So we have vitalities of benefit work, the medical insurance, for those who aren’t aware of it.

Chris: And with Vitality, there’s lots of ways, if you, the more active you are, the more you do things that are good for you.

Chris: And that could be wellness stuff like headspace and mindfulness, or it could be physical exercise, or it could be walking.

Chris: And there’s lots of ways to measure that, your Apple watch or whatever.

Chris: You get rewarded with stuff like treats, such as this morning’s coffee at Nero’s, or if you are really active, you can get an Apple watch where they pay most of the cost of that for you.

Chris: I just think it’s brilliant.

Chris: I’ve used it on and off when I’ve worked at companies that had Vitality, so I did get an Apple watch years ago.

Chris: I’ve had a lot of coffee, I get a discount on my waitress.

Chris: I’m sounding very middle class now, I know.

Chris: But it’s just great.

Chris: And for me, I would love to see the business case that got through on that because it must have been really hard to say, we’re going to give away lots of stuff with lots of partners.

Chris: With, I assume, the fact that more active people are, the less ill they’re going to get.

Chris: That must be very, very hard to prove upfront.

Chris: That’s one thing that got a question on my mind.

Chris: Yeah, I think it’s great and I engage with it regularly.

Chris: It’s one of the things that drives me to walk from the station to the office on my commute rather than jump on a tube to get my steps up.

Chris: Yeah, because at least once a week, a coffee or a discount is great.

Charlie: Yeah.

Charlie: It’s such an effective program and it’s wonderful how that model is applied globally as well.

Charlie: It’s one of the things I particularly love, because I love that brand-appropriate reward for brand-appropriate behavior and it really is an effective motivator.

Charlie: And I think it becomes something that people can’t really live without as well.

Charlie: As you’re talking about there, it becomes part of your daily life.

Charlie: And I think that’s what so many loyalty programs aspire to.

Charlie: You know, they want to actually have kind of meaning outside of the transaction.

Charlie: And I do think that’s a brilliant program.

Charlie: One of my old strategists absolutely loved it.

Charlie: And her favorite was the Shantley’s Partnership, where you could kind of get heavily discounted spa weekends.

Charlie: So she’d do all sorts of exercise and all sorts of activity just to get these amazing kind of spa weekends.

Charlie: And yeah, I always thought that was rather wonderful.

Charlie: Sadly, I’m with Bupa and their program is not quite so exciting.

Charlie: So if anyone from Bupa is listening, we’d love to work with you and improve your program.

Charlie: And then tell us a little bit about your background as well, because I think one of the things I found really interesting in our sort of pre-interviews was about, you know, your perspective as a product manager coming into loyalty.

Charlie: And we talked a lot that loyalty is such a cool profession, because we get people coming in it from finance, people coming in it from Insights, people coming in it from CRM.

Charlie: So many different types of people end up kind of managing and running loyalty programs.

Charlie: But I think you’re my first product manager.

Charlie: So I’d love to learn a little bit more about your background and then what you enjoy about your current role at Travelex.

Chris: Yeah, so I may describe myself as a career product manager.

Chris: I’m counted in the decades now, rather worryingly.

Chris: And I’ve worked in a wider sector side, worked in telcos, price comparison sites, mobile agencies, building apps for clients, marketplaces, ad tech.

Chris: I’ve got quite a wide background, but more recently I’ve specialized in personalization, customer data, customer engagement.

Chris: So why I’ve stuck with this stuff is I really enjoy the sort of the art and the science of taking that customer data and things you learn about customers, whether it’s hard facts or behavioral stuff, and using that to really build much more engaging customer journeys.

Chris: Those that deliver better experiences of customers, delight customers in different ways, and also use that, of course, to drive business outcomes.

Chris: Having the two is great, but I find that really rewarding.

Chris: It’s been a theme of my last few jobs.

Chris: And yeah, and I guess from that, whilst I’ve been at Travelex, and for those of you who aren’t aware, Travelex is a company that’s been around quite a while now, 50 years.

Chris: We simplify our customers’ access to international travel money.

Chris: That could be cash in your pocket, a prepaid travel money debit card, and you can order that online, pick it up at the airport.

Chris: We’re available in 20 countries around the world.

Chris: So we’ve got a big company that’s been doing this for a while.

Chris: And I came in to do personalization, and then a year ago I became involved in the launch of Travelex Plus, our loyalty program, which went live in March this year in the UK.

Chris: And yeah, I’m a relative new visa loyalty.

Chris: I come in with a product manager’s head, rather than maybe someone from a more marketing background or commercial background, although clearly I work closely with both of those realms throughout my career.

Chris: And yeah, it was a bit of a hard start of going, okay, well, this is a new thing to learn.

Chris: I love learning new things.

Chris: One thing that was absolutely invaluable to me was I was invited on to a fantastic loyalty seminar run by Phil Shelper last year, which is how we initially met, of course.

Charlie: Yes, absolutely.

Charlie: I have the privilege of teaching for Phil, for those of you that don’t know, the British Loyalty Landscape and the kind of partnerships and rewards piece.

Chris: Yeah, the whole course, and especially Charlie, were excellent.

Chris: And myself and my colleague, Harrod, came away, Loyalty experts in a day.

Chris: It was very intense.

Chris: We learned a huge amount.

Chris: We walked over the very big book about Loyalty, which is fantastic, too.

Chris: And we also got to mix with other people who are more experienced in running Loyalty programs and trying to get a refresh and reassess what they’re doing, or people considering it mid-launch like us who are thinking, OK, well, we really need to learn some of the basics.

Chris: So, yeah, it was really interesting as a product manager, it’s quite relatable because you’re trying to balance that.

Chris: How do we deliver value for customers and deliver value for the business?

Chris: You’re trying to find that right balance and do it in a cost-effective way, do it in a meaningful way.

Chris: And as something I talk about a lot as a product manager, I’m what I would describe as a lean product manager.

Chris: I always want to be doing the minimum we need to do to get the results we need, so that can be exceeding dieting customer in a way, it’s great for them, but not building 10 features that they don’t want.

Chris: Trying to unlock, achieve our outcomes without overdoing it or doing things that are less valuable.

Chris: And with Loyalty, I see a lot of opportunity, a lot of exciting things you can do, whether it’s point schemes and tiers and all those exciting things, but they get quite complex to do from a technical point of view, which is where maybe I come from more.

Chris: So as a Lean Product Manager, I’m thinking, okay, well, how do we get where we need to go without necessarily committing to lots of more investment, lots more time before we get live?

Chris: How do we learn as we go as well?

Chris: So how soon can we launch in order to learn, to then build the things that customers really want and test them in light ways too?

Charlie: Yeah.

Charlie: Well, I think that’s one of the nice things about loyalty programs as well.

Charlie: It’s quite common to launch sort of MVP and then build and extend it over time.

Charlie: And again, a common theme with our guests has been one of the biggest challenges you can face when you actually need to remove a benefit or a feature from a loyalty program.

Charlie: So it’s lovely to talk to somebody who’s at the beginning of that journey.

Charlie: That brings us on quite nicely to talk about Travelex Plus actually.

Charlie: Can you give our listeners an overview of what the program is, how it works?

Charlie: You’ve obviously mentioned that it’s just in the UK for now.

Charlie: So if any of our international listeners are going to hop down to the nearest Travelex and check it out, you won’t be able to see it, but our UK audience will.

Chris: Absolutely.

Chris: So it’s our exclusive new customer loyalty program.

Chris: It offers the best exchange rates and deals to our customers.

Chris: So we travel money.

Chris: The core thing customers are often looking for is a mixture of convenience, the best possible rate and combinations of those.

Chris: It’s free to opt in, so it’s not a subscription or anything.

Chris: And we reward members with discounts.

Chris: And the key thing here is in exchange for receiving our comms and updates.

Chris: So behind the scenes is a strategy of getting to know our customers, building digital relationships and offering value on that.

Chris: So the key benefits are members only rates on all in-bureau purchases.

Chris: So whenever you’re in one of our stores in the UK, you will get a better rate if you’re a Travelex Plus member.

Chris: An additional first trip discount during the first 30 days of your membership.

Chris: Now, this is a really important one for us in that we know that successful onboarding and driving engagement, particularly with card holders, we want to set you up success by priming some of those activities that we want you to do.

Chris: So, a lot of people get the card, load it up, spend on the holiday, never open the app, chuck the card in the drawer.

Chris: That’s what we want to get them more engaged with the app.

Chris: We want them reloading in their first trip to build that fuller experience to drive more usage of the card.

Chris: And the first trip discount is a good way to key them.

Chris: When they buy, they go, oh, actually, I must use some, we’ll come to this maybe a bit later, but this is a good results of driving up reload behavior there.

Chris: Also, there’s members only online rate sales.

Chris: So throughout the year, we will run exchange rate sale, so better value on an exchange rate.

Chris: We will do this throughout the year, but it’s a good way of driving up a bit of activity outside of season.

Chris: So we’re quite seasonal, as you might imagine, there’s big peaks at Easter, big peaks in summer.

Chris: And having an additional benefit just for members is working well, it’s resonating well with the members so far.

Chris: And one that’s kind of a bit more fun is we’ve got a, fun in the Travelex world.

Chris: So when a currency hits its best rate in 30 days, Travelex Plus members will be notified that we’re going to freeze the price of that currency until 7am the next day.

Chris: So if euros were the rate for people in the UK, if the US rate was really, really good and the highest has been for a while, we will ping you and say, hey, this is great rate, maybe now is the time to buy because there’s a lot of fear of people exchanging currency too early because I think they’re going to miss out.

Chris: But equally, if you wait till the last minute, then maybe the markets aren’t as good as they were a little while ago.

Chris: And if you remember Plus, then of course, you’re happy for us to chat with you and converse, we’re trying to drive, build that relationship, so we deliver more opportunities, we need to get good cash.

Chris: And yeah, a big part of Plus is that right to communicate, but find things that are relevant to you as well.

Chris: So we learn about your behaviors.

Charlie: Well, that’s really nice that you’ve kind of locked into those insights about how people buy currency, but also those kind of pain points and worries that they have and then built that into the program.

Charlie: That’s a really nice approach.

Charlie: And as you say, quite a unique sector, quite hard to bring kind of fun and scarcity and gamification into a kind of effectively a currency program where you’ve got quite specific needs.

Charlie: And what stands out for you in the new program?

Charlie: You know, what do you think sets it apart from the rest?

Charlie: Or what should other programs look to go?

Charlie: Actually, that’s a really cool feature.

Charlie: I should be exploring that for my program.

Chris: I think for us it’s about our direct competitive space.

Chris: So it’s a genuine innovation that none of our direct competitors have, the other pure play currency converters.

Chris: So yeah, we are able to offer much more value to our customers over longer term because we have a longer term relationship.

Chris: So now if you’re a Plus member, when you walk away from the Bureau, you will then have access to these offers and more things to come in the future.

Chris: So you’re gonna get better rates with us for the long term.

Chris: And that’s something that simply our direct competitors don’t do.

Chris: So it’s quite sector specific, but it really is us leading the way.

Chris: And we’ve often been a company that is ahead of the pack in that sense.

Chris: So really important for us.

Chris: And it’s again, unique to our company, maybe it’s delivering on our core strategy, as I mentioned before, of driving a much larger proportion of our customers from anonymous to no.

Chris: And there’s a lot of focus on that on the business, and this is a key part of that.

Chris: We’re offering that strong value exchange upfront in order to say, hey, can we have that relationship with you?

Chris: So yeah, maybe more unique to our circumstance.

Chris: And then I think, what should other programs learn from this?

Chris: I was thinking about that there’s maybe from the launch of it, but it was the, as I mentioned for about being lean, you need to, in my opinion, at least, you need to try and drive value early and build from there and not get distracted with all the bells and whistles or the things you could do.

Chris: So we got live as quickly as we could to start learning.

Chris: And we decided we made the choice to park some of the ideas and features we had in order to be live and learn and build rather than sit there and wait and wait.

Chris: So in what we would call waterfall delivery in the product management world, that’s something you try to avoid because the longer you wait, the more you find actually the market’s moved.

Chris: So what your launch proposition you’ve been building may not be relevant by the time you get it live.

Chris: You’re not earning any value until it’s live and you may have some misunderstandings with your customers.

Chris: There’s always going to be some features that resonate better than others.

Chris: So I would just encourage anyone who’s not launched a program yet to get close to their customer and be super lean and ruthless about the features you launch with.

Chris: Don’t overcommit, as you mentioned earlier, if you have to take stuff away from a customer, even if they weren’t using it, I’m sure they’re going to get quite upset about it and complain quite vocally.

Chris: And there’s bad PR, bad presence.

Charlie: There’s great case studies in loyalty, which we won’t go into today.

Charlie: But for those of you who are listening, I know you know what I’m talking about.

Chris: If you start lean, then you’re in a better position to innovate from a space of knowing your customers rather than think they’re going to want all the bells and whistles and find well.

Chris: For us, our customers are transacting with us once or twice a year typically.

Chris: We want to just bridge that gap, at the very least, have a great first experience and give them something to come back in a year’s time.

Chris: And we need to know who they are and have permission to market to do that and capture some data about how they’re using our products.

Charlie: That’s a really nice way of thinking about it.

Charlie: And I think, again, lots of us have launched programs and it’s such a challenge.

Charlie: And I love that point about getting distracted with the bells and whistles.

Charlie: I think when you come at it from a creative point of view or a commerce point of view, it’s quite easy to then suddenly get wrapped up in a huge amount of complexity.

Charlie: So to sort of start small and build it over time is a really nice thought.

Charlie: I’m sure, however, even starting lean, there were some highs and lows.

Charlie: I can only imagine how challenging it is to launch a Loyalty program in the financial services sector that you operate in, let alone thinking about all the markets that you operate in.

Charlie: What have been some of the highs and lows of that journey that you’re able to share?

Charlie: I’m sure there are some that are strictly for the pub.

Chris: Definitely some of the pub chat.

Chris: Highs are focused there first, so launching on time, we set a deadline which was just ahead of Easter.

Chris: So important season for us, but it was still quite an ambitious deadline and we achieved it.

Chris: That was a big win and I was really happy around the business because it’s hard in any company.

Chris: It’s hard when you’re doing new stuff.

Chris: We’re on a bit of digital transformation and data transformation journey at the moment.

Chris: We didn’t have everything lined up and ready to go and just switching something on.

Chris: We were trying to do new stuff in quite hard ways.

Chris: We did it as a team across all the departments.

Chris: Everyone got on board and that’s great.

Chris: I love that as a product manager when that happens, that you hit your targets and everyone’s pulled together, that’s great.

Chris: Of course, seeing the impact we’ve had, so we’ve now got 85,000 members.

Chris: I’ve been told I can say that.

Chris: And we’re growing fast.

Chris: So we’re really happy with that.

Chris: That’s what we were aiming for.

Chris: Our average transaction value is 31% higher with Travelex Plus, which is fantastic.

Chris: So it’s delivering high value in that first transaction.

Chris: And then we’ve doubled the reload rate for new card holders who sign up with Plus.

Chris: So that 30-day activation and the onboarding, which is wrapped around the customer a lot more and more reasons to come back.

Chris: That’s fantastic.

Chris: That’s better than expected.

Chris: Our card sales penetration is higher with Plus as well, which is a huge thing for us because that’s a key part of driving the long-term relationships.

Chris: And the opt-in rates, well, compared to a year prior to launching Plus and piloting it, our opt-in rates now are 20x higher in retail.

Chris: We’re really struggling with opt-in.

Chris: That’s a lot of what kicked off this sort of what could we do to give ourselves a good value exchange for our customers?

Chris: Why should they sign up for marketing opt-ins was kind of where a lot of this started.

Chris: And then it evolved into, well, if we really say here’s, if you are willing to commit to us, here’s what we will give you.

Charlie: That’s incredible, I think.

Charlie: And we’re really seeing that as a trend across the industry, actually.

Charlie: That getting to know your audience has always been a primary driver for loyalty programs.

Charlie: But actually that opt-in and that permission is now, I’m seeing in a lot of our client work, is actually kind of one of the primary drivers of the business case versus other channels.

Charlie: And loyalty programs are so much more effective because as you say, there’s the incentive to do it, isn’t there?

Charlie: So that’s great to see those kind of uplifts.

Charlie: Wow.

Chris: Yeah.

Chris: And I think as someone who’s worked in and around marketing opt-ins for a while, I feel much better offering something in return rather than just, please can we send you emails?

Chris: We want to actually give you value.

Chris: We can.

Chris: We are doing.

Chris: And it’s a win-win.

Chris: We’re driving up the value of a customer whilst giving them more back as well.

Chris: It’s great.

Charlie: Yeah.

Charlie: It’s nice as well that you can talk about that value for the long term as well.

Charlie: I think we’re all quite used to seeing acquisition sort of deals, you know, give us your data and get this one-off thing.

Charlie: But I suppose what’s so lovely all talking about there is it’s continuous value for your members.

Charlie: So next time they travel and they need currency, there’s actually still the added value equation in.

Charlie: So you really are building loyalty for the long term.

Charlie: Not to lower the tone, but what about some of the lows or perhaps some of the challenges that you face?

Chris: I was hoping you’d forget that, but…

Charlie: Sorry.

Chris: As I mentioned before, we’re a business that’s going through digital and data transformations.

Chris: We’re a nearly 50 year old company.

Chris: We’ve got some legacy systems.

Chris: Everyone’s got legacy systems and it’s a regulated sector too.

Chris: So it’s a bit more challenging to get things signed off.

Chris: But probably the key things for us were we don’t have customer accounts yet.

Chris: So for various reasons, that’s never quite happened.

Chris: So we had to be really kind of, I guess, smart and resourceful and pragmatic about, okay, do we wait until we have customer accounts liable?

Chris: Can we launch a loyalty program without it?

Chris: And we went for the latter and we were confident that we could do a good job of this.

Chris: And by using it to build our marketing orchestration, customer engagement platform in clever ways and being resourceful in other ways and leveraging our newish single customer view, we were able to deliver the benefits of Plus without needing a full customer signup experience.

Chris: Without customer accounts, there’s certain things we can’t easily do.

Chris: But yeah, that was a bit of a kind of bump of how should we go ahead without it?

Chris: Can we?

Chris: But thankfully, we found a good, really good path through.

Chris: So yeah, we ended up unlocking quite a bit of value from what’s a light solution.

Chris: But we know we want to invest more to go a bit further in the future.

Chris: But that case has to validate itself as we go.

Chris: We also had some bumps along the road blending the new approach to Plus signups and the promotions and the promotion pose and things like that with the constraints of our retail technology.

Chris: So we had to go really fast and there are certain things that weren’t immediately easy to do.

Chris: So we had to have made post launch, we’ve made lots of changes and improvements that mean that we can keep, we kept building those optimists where they are now.

Chris: So in particular, the last couple of months, we’ve seen really great progress because as we’ve learned of, okay, well, there’s a segment of customers who we can’t reach at the moment for various reasons, because there was some lock in with some promotional codes.

Chris: That’s now, that’s all fixed.

Chris: And yeah, so a few bumps there, a few head scratching moments.

Chris: So why is that not working?

Chris: Is it expected?

Chris: Lots of chats with our staff in the front line who have to make the magic happen in the moment.

Chris: And now we’re in really good shape.

Chris: But yeah, quite a bit of effort there optimizing.

Chris: And the last one, reporting.

Chris: So because we haven’t really done a lot of customer data until the last 18 months, we didn’t have the right reporting, customer-level reporting ready to build on top of.

Chris: We were very much in a transactional reporting mode.

Chris: So there was an extra piece of work that had to be done to be able to report, build lovely Travelex Plus dashboards that are customer-focused and looking at multiple transactions for a customer rather than just saying, oh, here’s a bunch of transactions.

Chris: It was a great accelerator to have that in place now.

Chris: But we had to do that at pace, which was fun.

Charlie: Particularly when you’re seeing the kind of uplifts that you’re seeing as well.

Charlie: I imagine that those dashboards look really good.

Charlie: That’s actually really wonderful for internal stakeholder management, I’m guessing, and improving the business cases, as well as actually being actionable.

Charlie: How do we optimize?

Charlie: I love a dashboard.

Charlie: Everyone who knows me knows me.

Charlie: I love some good data visualization and a dashboard is right up there.

Charlie: One of the first things I’m always looking at with programs.

Charlie: I think that brings us on the importance of the program within the company.

Charlie: You’ve been able to share a lot of the success factors and metrics, which is great.

Charlie: How is the company responding to the new Travelex program?

Charlie: How important is it or how important do they see it being?

Chris: It’s a vital part of our strategy.

Chris: So we just had a refresh of our three top focus areas and pluses named within that.

Chris: It’s really, really important.

Chris: This is how we drive our value we generate per customer.

Chris: So yeah, it’s talked about a lot.

Chris: It’s an increasingly big part of my job because I’m also looking at the customer engagement platform and other things.

Chris: So yeah, it’s vital.

Chris: Without it, we don’t have a digital relationship.

Chris: Customers just become transactions again.

Chris: It’s helping us, it’s helping fuel our data science team to work on, to be able to model data segment customers.

Chris: It fuels so many other things around the business that will help us serve customers better and help our acquisition across paid channels and what have you.

Chris: So huge amounts of focus.

Charlie: That’s great.

Charlie: I love that, obviously.

Charlie: I’m very biased as a huge loyalty program fan, but it’s lovely when it kind of starts out, it proves itself.

Charlie: And then you’ll probably, well, I’ll talk to you again in two years and it’ll be kind of a central kind of bedrock across the kind of business.

Charlie: And I think it’s wonderful when you see it used, you know, the data that it brings in the inside, it brings everything from customer services through to frontline operations, through to internal PR.

Charlie: They really can kind of spiderweb their whole way through the organization.

Charlie: So great that that journey is starting so soon after the launch.

Charlie: What sort of areas are you looking at for the future?

Charlie: I mean, it might be a little early to ask, because obviously you’re still sort of proving it, you’re still sort of seeing the impacts, but have you got any plans for the future that you’re able to share?

Chris: So launching in more countries, I won’t say which ones, but definitely we’ll be always intended on a Giro rollout once we’ve nailed it in the first country, which is again, a kind of lean, productive thing of do it really well, one place to learn, perfect it and then roll it out.

Chris: There will be some, I’m sure some regional differences, because there are some differences that matter across our channels.

Chris: But certainly, I can’t say when really, but not too long in the not too distant future, we’ll be live in more of our countries.

Chris: And we’ll keep rolling that out and there will be different flavors locally.

Chris: The current iteration we’ve called an MVP, you said that as well, minimum viable product.

Chris: We have some exciting extra features and things we’d like to roll out.

Chris: But I think some of that will fall in place with the customer account, so that someone could log in and actually then manage the elements of their loyalty experience with us more directly.

Chris: One thing you know I’m keen to do is to explore reward partnerships at some point in the future.

Chris: So picking the right moment to do that, again, keeping focused on doing the right things at the right time, but being able to work with reward partners would be great.

Chris: I think there’s lots of scope to do some really genuinely valuable partnerships for our customers.

Chris: For me, it would have to be very relevant to Travelex and the travel experience, which is mostly holiday makers, but there are business customers as well, and frequent travelers.

Chris: As we’ve discussed, I’d love to tie it into an individual’s personal journey.

Chris: So how do we tie rewards, whatever they may be, to someone’s pre-trip, in-trip and post-trip journeys?

Chris: Three things that we focus on a lot.

Chris: It’s not the entire day of the journey, but that’s the thinking of traveling or planning.

Chris: I’ve booked a flight.

Chris: I’m in the airport.

Chris: I’m taking off.

Chris: I’m using my card.

Chris: I’m spending my cash that I’ve acquired for Travelex.

Chris: And I’ve got the post-holiday blues.

Chris: I’ve come home.

Chris: I’ve got some balance on my card.

Chris: What can we do with that?

Chris: You’ve shared some great ideas for that, how we can use it.

Chris: I think there’s a lot we could do, but it has to be cautious about us not having partnerships that aren’t truly valuable as well.

Charlie: It’s so important.

Charlie: You’ve got to invest to get it right.

Charlie: You’ve got to understand who the brand partners are that your audience love, what rewards are actually going to engage, and then what’s going to add value to that experience and kind of in a unique and differentiating way.

Charlie: So yeah, we can talk about that for ages.

Chris: Yeah, I think anything that can help us bridge that gap, that’s a common problem.

Chris: Someone goes away with a holiday in July to Spain for seven days, uses that card.

Chris: How do we stay relevant in that period in between?

Chris: What could we do and maybe reward partnerships help with that?

Charlie: Interesting.

Charlie: And then what about kind of you talk very much about the loyalty and reward co-training?

Charlie: I will let Phil know that you’ve mentioned it.

Charlie: He’ll be thrilled.

Charlie: It’s a great kind of, you know, it’s a great course.

Charlie: But what other sort of resources do you use as somebody who’s obviously very experienced in CRM and products and all that area, but kind of relatively new into loyalty marketing?

Charlie: What resources have you found helpful?

Chris: Mostly chatting with you, Charlie.

Chris: So there’s a few people I follow on LinkedIn.

Chris: Phil, of course, Emile, I’m going to try and pronounce his last name.

Chris: Yeah, Emile and Milton and Serena, who’s brilliant.

Chris: And he’s very active on LinkedIn, sharing some thoughts on loyalty, particularly at the moment.

Chris: And also because I tend to attend a lot of events and around marketing, martech there, and I’m in touch with some loyalty platform providers, just as we look to the future.

Chris: Yeah, I pick things up from webinars and emails and what have you.

Chris: It’s all sort of flowing in there.

Chris: But yeah, I feel I’ve been so immersed in loyalty the last year that it, yeah, it’s sometimes it’s a lot going on, right?

Chris: But yeah, so I tend to pick your brains when I’m a bit stuck.

Charlie: It’s a very busy industry, I think.

Charlie: And I think one of my top tips, and we’ve talked about it a lot, is just join as many as you can.

Charlie: I always think that’s really interesting when you look at, you know, my phone, it’s horrifying to people that how many are on here.

Charlie: And I’m like, well, that’s my job.

Charlie: You know, of course, I need to know what’s going on.

Charlie: But actually kind of joining programs and living the experience of them, you know, your experience with Vitality, for example, will inspire kind of, you know, loads of thoughts what you could do with the program.

Charlie: And that’s always my kind of top tip.

Charlie: I was fascinated as well when I go on holiday to see how programs are different in different markets, that sort of freedom and a framework thing.

Charlie: So that’s always really fun.

Chris: I find myself reverse-engineering every loyalty program I’ve mentioned.

Chris: And one thing I caught last night was an advert from Sainsbury’s for their very personalized loyalty program, where the name of Sainsbury’s as they arrived seemed to change in the background to Davebury or whatever it was.

Chris: Yeah.

Chris: Yeah, I was thinking about, okay, how does that work?

Chris: How could, technically, how could you do that?

Chris: That’s kind of exciting.

Chris: So, yeah.

Charlie: Yeah, there’s some really lovely stuff happening in personalization at the moment.

Charlie: I think the kind of the way a lot of programs are using that concept that Spotify started so brilliantly, you know, the kind of Spotify wrapped, what’s your activity been?

Charlie: Where do you sit versus others?

Charlie: And bringing that kind of social and community element into the program is definitely one of the things I’m having a look at.

Charlie: We were at, I was at a conference earlier in the year and one of the hot topics everyone was talking about was Duolingo and the streaks.

Charlie: And actually how we kind of, you know, can be inspired by things within loyalty, but also, you know, slightly on the edges of loyalty.

Charlie: And think about that as kind of actually, how would you bring that thinking into a loyalty program?

Charlie: So that’s technically one I’ve got my eye on at the moment.

Charlie: In line with that, have you seen any kind of cool new ideas or innovations, or is there anything you’re particularly proud of that you’ve done or admire that you’d like to share?

Chris: I think, I mean, it’s hard not to talk about the kind of obvious AI revolution that’s going on at the moment and think about how that might change things and see how that’s changing things.

Chris: So in different ways, it’s going to make it much easier to more significantly personalize customers’ journeys and the offers that individuals receive.

Chris: So there’s lots of tech out there, a lot probably still to be proven.

Chris: We have some challenges as I mentioned as a regulated business, you have to be, you can’t, there’s some limits about how personal an offer can be, but parking that aside from the moment, there’s, yeah, the ability to scale what you do, scale content creation, scale micro-targeting, also the ability to look at all the data you’ve got and auto-magically, I love that word, sift through the data to find the signal and the noise.

Chris: Sometimes you don’t know what question to ask, but with a lot of the capabilities out there, and get data scientists and all those things, a lot of stuff that was hard to do five years ago is bread and butter to free up your best minds to go beyond that.

Chris: Also, I think AI can be a game changer and level the playing field for the smaller, leaner companies.

Chris: Because someone who works one of them, for those who don’t have armies of data scientists, or huge marketing teams, and 20 people working in CRI and whatever it may be, any opportunity to kind of hand off some of the more manual tasks or scale up your capabilities means you can compete with the bigger companies.

Chris: And that in itself is great.

Chris: I do think fortune favors the brave, though.

Chris: Companies really have to embrace the opportunity here and try stuff out.

Chris: Keep clear outcomes in mind, not just do fun stuff necessarily.

Chris: Yeah.

Chris: But it does mean chucking a little bit of resource and budget at the expense of maybe some of the day to day things you do now.

Chris: You have to create a bit of space for innovation and be prepared to fail.

Chris: Not everything’s going to work.

Chris: It needs that focus and investment and not just assume that we’re a company that does things in certain ways.

Chris: This isn’t for us.

Chris: We’ll wait and see.

Chris: Well, actually, you might miss out.

Chris: You may miss out your chance to overtake your competition if you don’t jump into it quickly.

Charlie: I think that’s very much the mentality we’ve been taking as well, actually, in our work.

Charlie: It’s sort of, we have almost an experimentation mindset.

Charlie: Actually, we’re kind of going to ring fence resource for learning and experimenting with it now.

Charlie: One of my favorite ones we’ve done, we’re quite lucky as a WPP company, we’ve got WPP Open, which is a kind of custom-built AI marketing operating system.

Charlie: One of my favorite experiments recently we’ve been doing is, we’ve been building AI personas and AI-based focus groups, and then actually using them to test concepts in a completely secure environment.

Charlie: And when I think about how quickly we can do it and the quality and depth and breadth of the responses you can get back versus the investment we previously had to make in terms of focus group testing, obviously it’s not quite there yet, but it will be soon.

Charlie: And I think that for us has been really interesting actually in terms of getting to know customers and actually test things out.

Charlie: I wouldn’t even imagine that that was possible three years ago.

Charlie: Someone had told me that that was going to happen.

Charlie: I would have no idea.

Charlie: So I think those are the things that are so exciting and interesting in it as well as how we can then play it back to customers and personalize and down to segments of one.

Charlie: I think it’s really exciting.

Charlie: Everyone’s looking at it now.

Charlie: All the conferences, all the webinars are all about what can we do with AI.

Charlie: Then I always think it’s lovely the tension between people’s personal and professional experience as well.

Charlie: Because professionally, everyone’s doing very kind of glamour experiments and then personally people are a bit like, well, I use chat GBT to help me book my holiday.

Charlie: There’s so much more out there.

Charlie: So yeah, it’s a really exciting area.

Charlie: So as we round out, is there anything else you’d like to share with our listeners?

Charlie: And I think a key question we’ll also have is people might want to reach out with additional questions.

Charlie: So how can people find you, Chris?

Charlie: What’s the best way?

Chris: Best way is probably LinkedIn or Waybridge Cafe Nero.

Chris: I’m going to get my free coffee.

Chris: The only thing for me really is to share some of my thoughts on, maybe for the newbies there who are new to Loyalty or their companies approaching Loyalty for the first time is, just learn, learn, learn, right?

Chris: Find ways to learn, understand what does and doesn’t work for Loyalty.

Chris: Get that grounding in place so that you’re making informed decisions.

Chris: And whilst it’s good to learn from other programs, we don’t necessarily know that some of the hidden traps or things that you can do that might cost a lot of money later on, you really don’t want to have a program that launches and you have to pull back.

Chris: So, engage the expert and look into workshops, things like that to help you.

Chris: I’m sure Charlie is there to help to do your homework, basically, and understand the levers you’ve got, because then you’ll be more successful.

Charlie: Oh, great.

Charlie: That’s a really nice way to round out on.

Charlie: God, I’m 20 years in, I’m still learning all the time.

Charlie: I think it’s such an exciting industry and it’s brilliant now as well, because the benefits and the sorts of KPIs that you shared, we are seeing that cross-loyalty marketing as a whole.

Charlie: We are seeing engagement, appeal, membership really ramping up.

Charlie: So it’s brilliant that it’s working so well for you.

Charlie: I’m delighted.

Charlie: I also can’t wait to see as it rolls out, new features appear.

Charlie: I’m also looking forward to obviously a lot more companies in Cafe Nero in Weybridge.

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

Charlie: That was really, really interesting.

Charlie: And I’m sure our listeners have absolutely loved it.

Charlie: That’s goodbye from Let’s Talk Loyalty and Loyalty TV.

Chris: Cheerio.

Chris: Thanks for having me on.

Paula: This show is sponsored by Wise Marketeer Group, publisher of the Wise Marketeer, the premier digital customer loyalty marketing resource for industry relevant news, insights and research.

Paula: Wise Marketeer Group also offers loyalty education and training globally through its Loyalty Academy, which has certified nearly 900 marketeers and executives in 49 countries as certified loyalty marketing professionals.

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

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