#240: Collinson's Daniel Cantorna Shares Loyalty Insights and Innovation from the Asia Pacific Region

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.

 

This episode is brought to you by Collinson, worldwide leader in loyalty. Creating and orchestrating loyalty initiatives and programs for some of the world’s biggest brands and travel, retail and financial services doing it globally for over 30 years. Want to know more? go to collinsongroup.com.

 

Hello and welcome to today’s episode of Let’s Talk Loyalty with a focus on some of the most interesting ideas, innovations, and insights coming from the Asia Pacific region. My guest today is Dan Cantorna, whose background includes over 15 years in loyalty marketing, automation, integration, business intelligence, and advanced analytics for global enterprise organizations.

 

Dan is now the Vice President of data insights and technology with Collinson’s Asia Pacific team based in Hong Kong. In today’s discussion. Dan showcases some of the fascinating insights and loyalty innovations emerging from both China and the Asia Pacific region as a whole, a market he described as a crystal ball to give us loyalty marketers and insights on consumers increasing expectations as our world becomes more and more digital.

 

Dan also shares some of Collinson’s latest projects, re-imagining loyalty programs for brands like Mandarin Oriental hotels, specifically for the Chinese market.

 

So Dan Cantorna, welcome to Let’s Talk Loyalty.

 

Hello, thanks for having me.

 

Great. Are you joining me today from Hong Kong?

 

I am not in Hong Kong today, but I am usually based in Hong Kong. Today I’m in London. I’m on a business trip.

 

Beautiful. Okay. Well, I think I might’ve said to you before Hong Kong and the whole Asia Pacific region to me is incredibly exciting. So I’ve been looking forward to speaking to you for a long time and hearing about all of the amazing work you’re doing there with Collinson. So to kick us off, please do tell me, Dan, what is your favorite personal loyalty program? 

 

Sure. Well, thanks for having me. Um, unfortunately, it’s going to be one that I’m sure you’ve had before. Um, it’s I think Amex, uh, has really got one of the best loyalty offerings globally as a customer that I’ve experienced having lived in many places in the world. It’s probably one, which is the, yeah, it’s a bit old because a lot of people probably reference it, but I think they’ve got, they’ve really nailed all of the elements of reward and recognition, uh, in, in, in a really good and strong way. You know, you’ve got entry to lounges, you can convert those points to air miles of your choice. So it’s not, you’re not locked into any one particular airline. You can get that on dining, You get discounts on experiences, you get status, you know, I’ve been in events in the U S where there’s an Amex lounge on Amex stand, and you can get special privilege access to go and do work at a conference where you know, you just have to flash your Amex card to get in. And it’s just one of those, it’s one of those programs where it continuously surprises me the value that you gain back from the program, but beyond the boundaries of what you think it is. That’s why I think it’s great. Um, Obviously, there are loads of other ones in Asia, which I think do individual things very well, but in terms of one with global reach breadth, depth, and scale mix for me.

 

So that’s a great example to kick us off. So you clearly know a lot about loyalty Dan, tell us all about your, I suppose, a career in the industry so far. 

 

So I’m currently Vice President for Data Insights and Technology. Um, with Collinson in the Asia Pacific, Collinson is a global leader in loyalty benefits in travel experiences. We provide services, products, and capabilities across three main sets. So. we’ve got loyalty customer experience, which is all about building the experience and the dialogue and the communication with the customer we’ve then got loyalty commerce, which is the way that people interact and use their points through earn and burn. And then we are one of the probably one of the biggest global providers of loyalty travel benefits, and that ranges across a number of different areas where we support over 1400 financial services institutions with things like access to lounge flight delay, and the various, various little to benefits that they can, then they support to their customers. So that’s why I have now, um, in the sands of time, uh, I started off in the early, in the early, early days. I was a, um, I worked on some of the really kind of pre-broad band attempts to do real-time loyalty, so I worked on my first project was working on pulling in data for Nectar in the UK. So in integrating that data from your, when you were still paying for your shopping, Getting that data back into the service to calculate your points and back then when the internet was, you know, it’s 15 minutes to load a picture that was a tall order. I’ve bounced around in the data tech space of loyalty for quieter alum reviews over 15 years and I’ve sort of, Uh, along the way, I’ve picked up a few skills around the marketing aspects and the strategy. My, I say my core skill set is really around it’s the making it happen piece. My colleagues who have great ideas are trying to make those a reality with the, you know, with the simple tools that we have the chisels and the clay tablets that are got to turn that into the exciting experiences.

 

Wow. Okay. Sounds like you’ve a real lifelong passion for loyalty. 

 

Yeah, absolutely. I think it’s a really interesting space. I mean, From a data perspective as a data professional, you know, loyalty is amazing, it’s one of the best ways to really, truly understand the needs and the wants of your customer, to target personalized and address those, so for me, so seeing the evolution better for the last, maybe the last five years, I’d say we’ve gone in some sort of accelerated overdrive where now we’re trying to predict people’s emotions and that’s amazing from a, you know, just from a, what you buy and what you spend your money on, we can tell what kind of stay you’re in. That’s a, you know, that’s a phenomenal amount of progress, you know, two for one or three for two, I would say the back in the old days. 

 

That’s Amazing.

 

Yeah, absolutely.

 

Brilliant. Wow. So, so data definitely down. I mean, it’s obviously something that, um, as an industry we obsess over and, and rightly so. I think it’s the fundamental reason that most of us can justify, I suppose, the investment in loyalty at the very beginning at the outset and with that explosion, I suppose of data. I suppose, what kind of, um, demands or, or inquiries or interests are you finding coming through? And I think I’m particularly interested in your perspective from the Asia Pacific down, because, you know, I do think that, um, you know, certain countries there are so far ahead of us in terms of what their capabilities are. So you probably have amazing insights of things that are happening there that the rest of us haven’t seen yet.

 

Sure. I mean, um, all let’s, we’ll start, let’s start with China. So China is the most digital-native economy experience place you can go, you know, people are so heavily integrated into their,  Um, you know, digital into their day to day lives, and so they have very, very high expectations of brands and they not only, they don’t want to interact with a company, they want to interact with a brand like it’s the same way they interact with their friends. They want to be able to have that, you know, an element of dialogue, community understanding, and to really, to get to that kind of depth of, of, of relationship with an, with a person, as a company, you really need to know a lot about them. You really need to be picking up on signals, So, you know, personalization is absolutely critical. And if you can’t get your data in order, you haven’t got a hope in getting that right. Um, and what we’ve seen is the pandemic has definitely created like, um, an accelerated wave everywhere else around the world, driving us forward in the same direction but that consumer expectation is no longer, I don’t want to interact with a brand. People do business with people and they want the brand to feel like a person. So when I talk to you, I want to fit it’s to feel authentic, like a human interaction, and you know, you, you, you, you must know, you know, when you contact, say customer service and you’re getting that robot that’s like, please say what you would like and then get you to the wrong for times, that’s incredibly frustrating. So why we’ve wanted to build, you know, um, and that’s, that will be into my second theme, which is AI, where you’re trying to add things like AI into your workflow and into your loyalty programs. You’ve got to get it right. And you’ve got to get it right by understanding what your customer wants. So these two things go hand in hand. Um, but so that’s, those are kind of the two, the first two. So once you, you, first of all, need to have sufficient data to know your customer well enough to be able to personalize rewards, recognitions, and, and the dialogue you have with them at every step, every touch, that’s foundational. From there, you then want to add AI through the customer journey. So when you’re building that dialogue, you know, you, you can’t have humans picking content for this anymore, you need to have the scale to deliver this to so many different individuals that you really do need to have AI baked into your customer journey, but you’ve got to get that right. Uh, you know, having, having a robot that can pick from 10 answers, offering 10 solutions is not the solution, is it’s not really solving a problem. It’s just automating something that most people already find irritating. So getting AI right again, is having the right strategy around that. Yeah. Two other things which I’d say are more, slightly further down the horizon, which we see already in China, but we see coming out of China, um, pay to play loyalty. So, um, China has a lot of in-the-moment interactions where people want to interact with a brand in the moment and they are willing to pay to access or unlock status or benefits or pieces of a loyalty program, Uh, which they may not be, they may not have earned enough points for you or ended up status for you. So having a pay-to-play loyalty component to your program is very common in China and in the west, we resist, we resist it and there’s a lot of, people saying things like, oh, well then you’re just making it about pay. You know, you’re just unbundling loyalty and it’s really kind of breaking loyalty by allowing people to pay for things.

But what we’re finding is that if you get it right, if you get the blend, right, whether it’s the right amount of reward recognition that can be earned and the right set of benefits that can be paid to unlock. Almost like candy crush where it’s a freemium game, right? So you can keep playing for free, but you can also pay to get some extra gems. right? And that’s, that’s what we see a lot of, Um, becoming a lot more commonplace. Um, and finally, sorry that’s the long answer. It’s the evolution of digital is bleeding to written more and more rich experiences. And so we all had lots about the metaverse and augmented reality, and people see that as this kind of, at the moment it’s being perceived as this really far off the horizon, you know, I’ve got to go into a 3d world with glasses on, but this stuff exists already today. You know, metaverse interactions where, you know, I can have a character. Well, it can go into a virtual store and shop around and talk to a virtual assistant about what I want to buy. These things are real and exist already, and they don’t need any special technology they’re just, just a phone. So, so taking the experience beyond just, um, you know, here’s a picture or here is, you know, here’s a piece of text, you know, video 10 KOL’s, it’s adding layers and layers and layers and depth to the digital experience for the consumer. Um, that we see is, is becoming more complex. Um, by month, year by year.

 

It’s utterly fascinating, Dan and I suppose my first question on all of that extraordinary opportunity for brands is, is that, you know, I suppose dependent on having, you know, the infrastructure of a WeChat for example, like. The super apps that can support, you know, extraordinary experiences like that. Like, do you think it’s unique to China right now? Or do you see other markets in APAC or even elsewhere around the world, starting to actively engage with these kinds of concepts?

 

Yes. So absolutely China has a huge head start in so much as they have the super app, which is WeChat, which allows you to do all of that stuff through one single pane of glass. They absolutely have that as a head start. In other parts of the world, In other parts of APAC, we’ve seen pieces of it coming together. So, a very common scenario, which we’re seeing now with loyalty is WhatsApp kind of concierge, some simple WhatsApp e-commerce type experiences. Similarly with Instagram, uh, and on, in some parts of Asia aligned. Um, we also see, um, the banking apps and financial services trying to become super apps, but for a specialized purpose. So, where your banking app, you can now, go shopping with discounts, Uh, you can tap into the partners, you can earn through your, you combine your favorite, you know, frequent flyer programs to your banking app and those partners can collaborate. So those kinds of things are coming together in a slightly more sophisticated way than, you know, historically, you just had the co-branded credit card, now you’ve actually got kind of co-branded. Um, interfaces through, through your app. 

 

Super, super. And I’ve talked a lot about WhatsApp on this show, Dan, It’s definitely the one that I, um, I suppose, as a consumer, most excited about, and I’ve seen just a lot coming out from Metta, uh, who obviously own WhatsApp just in the last even three or four weeks Dan, I don’t know if you’ve seen it yourself, but you know, there is an appetite, I think, you know, at the platform level to support loyalty practitioners, I think like us, who want to be creative and want to have these levels of innovation. So I think it’s going to be a super exciting time. And what I really also wanted to ask you Dan, in that, um I, in fact, it’s lots of things that you mentioned that I’m super curious about, but the one that you mentioned about pay to play. That almost sounds and just correct me if I’m wrong. It sounds almost like a hybrid between our traditional free programs and a full subscription for all benefits, almost like, you know, people can opt into a selection of, as you said, on bundles loyalty benefits, just in a moment, if they’re feeling impatient or, you know, they need to top up, is that, is that what you’re saying?

 

Absolutely. Yes. So let, let me, uh, give you a good scenario. So in the, in the context, say of a hotel, uh, I might have already within the loyalty program, I may have some enough status that I can access a free night, but when I arrive at the hotel, I may want. Um, pay downs and also upgrade that to a superior room and that may be with, I would tier up from where I’m at, but I can say that, hey I’ll put down a certain amount of money combined, combining that with my reward or with my existing status to get me to that next level up, or it could be. You want to unlock. So say, for example, I want, I just want to unlock access to lounge and airport because I’m about to travel and that’s not part of my, I don’t have that within my tier, but I’m just going to pay for instant access. That’s one of the benefits in the, in the next tier up, but I’ll pay to access that one benefit just here and now in the moment.

 

Yeah. Yeah, lovely. Yeah. And as you said, you know, data underpins all of it. Um, and what I do like is when a brand does know what to offer me, you know, in terms of something that I might want to avail of. So even if it is on a paid basis, you know, I think that’s a really nice idea that I haven’t really thought about before.

 

Yeah. And I think it’s a tricky one, uh, because we, we often think about. Uh, the complexity of the program. If you start allowing people to pay for individual elements, and individual benefits, it starts to make the program complex. It’s where the consumer demand is going It’s instability that I want it on and I want it now, you know, if you can fulfill that need, there’s a huge amount of value that you can gain from that. 

 

Yeah, and you’re absolutely right Dan, I suppose, you know, it is a fine balance between keeping the program simple enough to get people engaged and educate themselves along that journey and at the same time, allowing us very complex solutions for them. Because again, we’re all getting very demanding as consumers, but I suppose if we have the underlying data in place, Um, it’s possible to plan for, but I still find that a lot of companies struggle with the complexity of capturing and optimizing their data Dan, What’s your experience working I suppose again, in different regions around the world, but predominantly in APAC, do you think people have their house in order in terms of their datasets?

 

Sadly no, We regularly run research with, um, a large number of loyalty leaders across the region. So we spoke to loyalty leaders in Hong Kong, Singapore, and Australia. And we ask questions, these exact questions. So we ask a thousand brands, what’s the most important thing or, or, you know, what, talk to us about what you’re trying to do with loyalty. And they’re saying, well, we would like to use data to identify loyaly customers, So say a 300 hundred out of thousand wants to do that. I’m gonna say, all right, great. So you guys are really on the money. You’re trying to identify your loyal customers. How many of you guys, how many of you guys have considered, once you’ve identified those customers, you then need data to know what to reward them with. And only a third of those people have considered that. And then we asked the question, how many of those? So now we’re down to say a hundred companies out of a thousand. How many you guys have considered that you need the, maybe you have underlying data gaps to identify the customers in the first place. And it turns out that only about 8% of businesses have thought through the whole concept of identifying loyal customers requires uncovering the data gaps we have in, um, collection methodology. So, so very few brands or many brands have identified the mega problem, the big problem, that you have kind of got the strategy that will all lead to the results that they’re trying to obtain. So that’s often where we thought, we find ourselves stepping in as Collinson to advise and that’s usually one of the first conversations we have with, with our, uh, Clients is to say, where is, where are you at with your data story? What was your strategy? What are you collecting? What are you doing with it? Um, and, and often we identify very quickly identify that you know, the opportunity to personalize is very limited because you are not collecting the right things about your customer. 

 

Um, would the aptitude be there? I mean, it sounds like, you know, as you said, a lot of people, first of all, you know, understand, okay, yes, that’s an opportunity if we want to personalize, but as it coming, would you say at the C-suite level where there is maybe a bigger vision of the potential for personalization, or would you say it’s coming from the likes of us as loyalty practitioners.

 

So that’s another, uh, lots of interesting one. So, uh, we see that the vision exists and the loyalty professionals have the belief in what they would like to achieve, which is what we’ve been talking about. It’s when you then talk to the, uh, the people who are responsible for achieving and activating the results, they are a lot more pessimistic about what they’re doing.

Okay. So I think there’s definitely a gap between the vision and the delivery. And one of the things which I’m a huge advocate of is that loyalty needs to not be a siloed adjunct to a business you need to have within a company, the very interconnected approach to loyalty because it spreads across so many of departments that who have, should have an interest in it and should have a stake in it. And then when you get down to the data level, data goes beyond the data is, is part of every business database is the same as technology is pervasive. So data is the responsibility of everyone in the company, not just this little data team who we locked in a room somewhere who was solving all our data problems with no inputs. Um, and so, and so these are some of the challenges that is part of the called evolution, where do we try to take our customers on, which is that you’ve got to get, these different groups talking and working together more closely to get those kinds of results because it’s great having the vision and the strategy, but very often those strategies don’t link and the meaningful way to what the, what the data folks doing.

 

Yeah, I totally agree. And I think there is a job to be done worldwide for all of us to be able to, to bring all of the depart, departments, pardon me together with, you know, traditionally I suppose, um, exclusive KPIs around functional areas. And align them all to a vision about customer loyalty. And first of all, being loyal to your customers, obviously with the goal of driving behavior change and getting loyalty back from them. So it sounds like you’re hearing the same thing, that there’s still a lot of more collaboration and education internally required, particularly, I guess, coming in from your perspective where you’re being brought in as external experts.

 

Absolutely. Absolutely. I think, uh, strategies, 20% of the process, change management and the organizational realignment is 80% of the challenge that we will find ourselves trying to help our customers to solve.

 

My God. Yeah. That’s, uh, that’s very clear. And I think, yeah, at least if you can start with that level of preparation psychologically for the business, actually, that definitely helps manage expectations in terms of what’s going to be involved to get the whole thing, moving in a way to level up, to what customers are needing.

 

Indeed, Agree.

 

Yeah. And then I suppose with, you know, almost a continuation Dan of that post, you know, the fact that we do all have our own KPIs and, you know, there also has to of course be, you know, KPIs around the investment for the loyalty program itself. So, how do you manage to get people aligned to, you know, I suppose understanding what their core KPIs might be for building a program.

 

So I think they vary by industry in terms of what you’re trying to measure. But inevitably we are trying to drive up value for the business. So it’s about finding the right track and the right measure that’s going to show you that. So that could be, you know, from a, if you’re in a hotel that could be the number of rooms stays, the number of, you know, the average spend per stay.

If you’re in an airline that’s to know that it’s the number, it’s the number of, uh, bookings per period of time when that’s the, you know, financial services, it’s the overall value of that, that that customer, uh, has with the brand. I mean, generally speaking. Um, we are always driving towards some kind of measure of a customer score customer value to the back to the brand and how we can track that that is growing as a result of being part of the loyalty program. And invariably, we’re able to prove that through whichever measure we land on. Uh, I’m quite, I’m quite a fan of just having a cool high school, like a loyalty score where you can just say, this is the numeric, you know, the numeric number of interactions I’ve had with that customer. And you recall that you can correlate that to spend. So if I’ve touched that customer and talked to that customer three times and they’ve spent this much, then I can say, You know, the amount of interactions I had with that customer translated it into X value. 

 

Yeah, absolutely. And, and I like the simplicity of that approach Dan because, you know, I do hear a lot of people talking about so many measures and, you know, I do like myself, I suppose to understand, you know, just, um, I suppose, an emotional intention of the program. So, you know, just at a cultural level, like. Why are we starting on this journey? But then I think you’re absolutely right to put a measure alongside that, that everyone can kind of see how their department is contributing into that one overall metric, you know, something like an, an NPS score. For example, in my mind, That feels like it’s something everybody can kind of share as an objective to build over the longterm because let’s be honest, loyalty is not a short-term business.

And I think we all think once the program is launched, you know, we’ve got the job done, but I think it’s only starting at that point.

 

Absolutely. And you’re right. and you’re right. Uh, you know, attribution is always an exciting and fun discussion, that we all have, the attribution across it’s departamental attribution is also, yeah, it’s difficult. It’s difficult. So you’ve got to boil it down to something that you can keep quite simple. And I think, number of touches, so number of touches varies in it, you know, whatever the way, the right way to be fair to the different parties involved. But, but, but generally speaking that is a core measure. I’m glad that you’ve touched on emotional and, um, we’ve away from a transactional into experiential loyalty. Cause that’s, I’m very, I’m very keen on. Yeah. I think it’s one that people still are figuring out what that actually means to businesses. And I think that’s an interest for me. That’s an interesting theme of where we go because data, data, and emotion, somewhat diametrically opposed, but we have to kind of come up with ways to score it, and that’s challenge that we, uh, we’re always working on trying to improve the way that we can score. Uh, we’ll all people’s emotions within the program. 

 

Yes. Yeah. I know you alluded to it earlier Dan and certainly on the show a few times, we’ve talked about that being a huge objective, but I guess when I think back, it’s probably in, let’s say a markets like the UK, for example, I would hear that coming out a lot and, and in Europe, so.

It seems to be very clear, um, at least in that part of the world that that’s what’s needed. Whereas as you said, it’s still seems to be much more around in Asia, you know, at the risk of generalizing more around instant gratification and on how can I get more status and that kind of thing. So do you see that trend then for emotional loyalty as well in Asia Pacific?

 

So in our most recent study in Asia, most investments in emotional, uh, loyalty was quite low. Only a few percent of the people we surveyed are investing in that as a theme. However, I see a very clear bridge from recognition to emotion. So I think that within the market, the Asian market, having status, having that unlock, having access to things that money can’t buy. Yeah. Is what thrives the emotional loyalty. It is the fact that you can say to your friend, I’ve got a black card, that’s going to get us into this queue, jumps this restaurant, or I’ve got this special unlock. That’s going to get us into this bar that, you know, you’ve got to normally put down, put down a three-month waiting list for, It’s that those types of things, which we’re starting to see more frequently. Um, as brands, particularly luxury brands, uh, that have properties or have bars, but hotels and things like that start to try to drive more value from their existing assets. They’re creating secure, curating, and creating some very interesting, uh, concepts around sort of that gamified unlock. And that I think its a natural link to emotional bond. Yeah. Like I said, the Chinese consumer wants to be friends to view it doesn’t want to interact with a brand that wants to feel like it’s doing business with the person in its very nature is tending to emotional loyalty, but it’s not. As a concept. It’s not all we’re trying to do in emotional loyalty is really more about just creating more human like interactions.

 

Well, I do like the friend and concept Dan, because I do think a lot of people struggle with, you know, emotional loyalty just feels, uh, difficult to measure, difficult to execute, how do you know how to do that? Like what actually is going to resonate. It’s more than, you know, partnering with a charity or things that we might’ve done quite simplistically in the past. So I do think, you know, thinking of your customer or your member as a friend, must changed the shift in terms of how you execute and even, I guess, back to capturing data, the big topic we’ve, we’ve talked about already quite a lot, but it must change how even you do that and then how you use it. Because I do agree, you know, the status and for big brands, the opportunities are just extraordinary. And I know you’ve started doing some work yourselves as Collinson and China as well Dan. So keen to hear a bit about that, because, you know, I love innovation. 

 

Of course, so we’ve been working, at Collinson we’ve been working with a few brands trying to take them into the China market. Um, one of our most recent ones was we’ve been working very closely with the hotel brand Mandarin Oriental. As I said, loyalty outside of China and loyalty inside China were very, very different in some regards, because you’ve got different channels, different methods of access, but it’s really all about WeChat going into. So we’ve helped them to build their first kind of integrated mechanisms for taking that dialogue into the China market. That’s I seem to build out those kinds of, in the moment experiences. And so where we want to go with this is that you know, as you interact with that hotel, you’re hearing more about what’s available. Then you’re hearing, you’re getting that kind of experiential dialogue with the, with the consumer, but then as they arrive on the hotel, they can have a digital experience with a, almost like a virtual concierge cause you know, you can scan a QR code. Yeah. And then, how to go on, uh, you know, an in the moment journey, we’ll talk you through, what’s available to you. And then at various moments during your stay, it’s going to say, oh, Hey look, you know, maybe now it’s time to have a drink on us, or, you know, perhaps some have some money off for your meal tonight cause, you know, we love you, things like that. It seems like building out these kinds of on, on property in the moment in the moment experiences. So we’re, we’re, we’re really excited to be working with them and to be helping them to advance and digitize loyalty 4.0 in their journey.

 

Wow. Loyalty 4.0, well certainly I would say Dan, that does sound super exciting. And if there’s an opportunity and if Mandarin Oriental wants to come on, obviously once they’ve had some learnings from that, they want to share that with our audience, we would love to have them. So I’m so super exciting. So I think we’ve touched on loads Dan. Um, I was particularly just interested, I suppose, as a final point on, you know, where you get all of your insights from Dan, because it’s great to have 15 years, especially pre broadband. Your, your, um, you know, dating yourself now. Uh, I suppose with all of that, but just in terms of, I know you’ve got clients across, you know, financial services and super strong and travel and hospitality, but where do you go to then for, for loyalty insights, I suppose, because again, this audience loves to learn from you and from what you think. So, yeah, just any final thoughts you have on that would be very useful.

 

I think we’re very lucky at Collinson because not only do we do loyalty for our customers, but we own and operate our own very significantly large loyalty program, which has priority pass. Um, so that’s, we get to learn internally and externally, both as a supplier and the customer, um, in terms of sources to me, Um, you know, the most common place I’ve come across things obviously is LinkedIn. There are hundreds of blogs. I read probably 40 borings and less out here on today’s call. I love to participate in events, um, in Hong Kong, in particular, you know, the world, there’s not been that many in the last year, but we, we participate in FinTech Week in MarTech Week, uh, in Tech Week. So for me, I’m, you know, I’m doing all the geeky once.

Um, but, uh, but really it any means necessary. So I think in-personal interactions you always pick up small, interesting pieces. Like then obviously the constant, the constant search for content online, you know, we’re awash with information in days. Um, and then conversations like this, uh, uh, great. You know, it’s good, It’s good to share. And I think. As loyalty professionals, I really appreciate the, the opportunity to come and wax lyrical about my experience and hopefully, someone will learn something from what I’ve said today. 

 

Well, honestly, it’s a joy for me to have these conversations Dan. So I really enjoyed our conversation today, as I said, there’s a hundred different directions we could have taken it. And I’m assuming you’re happy Dan if LinkedIn is somewhere you like to spend time, which clearly I do as well. Are you happy for people to reach out if we link, for example, to your profile, if they want to talk about any of these topics?

 

A hundred percent Let’s Talk Loyalty anytime.

 

Well said, Totally on Dan, Great. I love it. Okay. On that note, I will say Dan Contorna Vice President of Data, Insight, and Technology for Asia Pacific at Collinson. Thank you so much from Let’s Talk Loyalty.

 

Thank you so much.

 

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

 

Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Let’s Talk Loyalty. If you’d like us to send you the latest shows each week, simply sign up for the Let’s Talk Loyalty Newsletter on letstalkloyalty.com and we’ll send our best episodes straight to your inbox.

 

And don’t forget that you can follow Let’s Talk Loyalty on any of your favorite podcast platforms,

and of course, we’d love for you to share your feedback and reviews. 

 

Thanks again for supporting the show.