Paula: Welcome to Let’s Talk Loyalty, an industry podcast for loyalty marketing professionals. I’m Paula Thomas, the Founder of Let’s Talk Loyalty. Today’s episode is hosted by Tom Peace, Managing Director of the Loyalty People, a strategic consultancy with a laser focus on loyalty, CRM, and customer engagement.
The Loyalty People also runs a free global community for anyone working in the loyalty industry. If you’re working in loyalty marketing. Make sure to join Let’s Talk Loyalty every Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday to hear the latest ideas from loyalty experts around the world.
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Tom: Hi, I’m Tom Peace, Managing Director of the Loyalty People and presenter of Let’s Talk a Little Loyalty. Welcome to this week’s short summary show. In this week’s episode of Let’s Talk a Little Loyalty, I’m reviewing the original podcast where Paula talks to Lisa Routel, Verizon’s marketing strategy lead, to learn all about their loyalty program, Verizon Up, which has won multiple loyalty awards.
Verizon is one of the largest telecommunication companies in the United States and has a major challenge in retaining customers in an extremely competitive industry. In this show, I’ll summarize Lisa’s latest propositions to engage Verizon’s customer and some insights from her leading brands like Jaguar.
At the start of this episode, Lisa talks about the very interesting challenge she faced while at Jaguar. During the time they launched an SUV and then EV cars. This was a massive change for Jaguar and their existing customer base was possibly not the key audience for these new products. Lisa knew that it would be vital to target their offer at the right customer segments and expanding into new segments would be necessary. Tune in to find out how Lisa accomplished this with Jaguar.
Lisa’s challenge with Verizon was very different. The brand had many, many customers, but also operates in a highly competitive and commoditized environment. Verizon Up is a program integrated to the Verizon ecosystem and offers top brand offers, gift cards, charity offers, and once in a lifetime experience.
Lisa has also implemented partner offers and some seasonal offers, all available through the app. Verizon products and services are also available as rewards, such as Travel Pass, cloud storage, and smart family services. There is a strong element of convenience and stickiness to this program, but what is really clever, is that the offers and exclusives create lovely experiences and a feeling of privilege for the member, which makes Verizon hard to leave.
In particular, members have the opportunity to get pre sale access through Live Nation to all sorts of entertainment events. So, the added value benefits and convenience create an experiential program that creates positive emotional connections with members. And makes Verizon hard to leave. But of course this only works when your key business proposition is excellent.
And Lisa acknowledges this and affirms that Verizon also work extremely hard on their key product features of reliability. Network speed and customer service. Finally, Lisa talks about how important it is to deliver personalized messages to the customer so that the rewards and the offers are aligned to their needs and likes.
This is also a key part of creating positive emotional connection with the customer. Closing the loop in terms of relevance. Having all these offers and rewards available is only valuable if they are aligned to the customer. Otherwise, the program will feel irrelevant and will be too easy to walk away from.
This is a really good example of how brands can create value and emotional connections with a brand outside of the brand’s core proposition. Well worth a listen, and you can find the main show at www.letstalkloyalty.com and first aired on the 13th of July, 2022, episode number 248. Thanks for listening. I hope you enjoyed my summary show all the best and speak to you soon, Tom.
Paula: 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 is already certified over 500 executives in 38 countries as certified loyalty marketing professionals.
For more information check out thewisemarketer.com and loyaltyacademy.org.
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