Latest / Leaders in Customer Loyalty, Powered by Loyalty360 / Loyalty360 Loyalty Live | Roger Williams, Marigold

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Loyalty360 Loyalty Live | Roger Williams, Marigold · Leaders in Customer Loyalty, Powered by Loyalty360

• 0:04
  Mark Johnson: Good afternoon, good morning.
• 0:05
  Mark Johnson: It's Mark Johnson from Loyalty 360.
• 0:07
  Mark Johnson: I hope everyone's happy, safe and well.
• 0:08
  Mark Johnson: Wanted to welcome you back to another edition of Loyalty Live.
• 0:12
  Mark Johnson: In this series, we speak with leading agencies, technology partners and consultants in customer channel and brand loyalty about what they are seeing and hearing on the front lines of customer channel and brand loyalty.
• 0:21
  Mark Johnson: We also address the technology trends and best practices that impact a brand's ability to derive unique experiences, enhance engagement but, most importantly, impact customer loyalty.
• 0:31
  Mark Johnson: Today we have the pleasure of speaking with Roger Williams.
• 0:34
  Mark Johnson: He's the head of the Loyalty Center of Excellence at Cheetah Digital by Marigold.
• 0:38
  Mark Johnson: Cheetah Digital is a leader in the relationship marketing solutions enabling global enterprise brands to acquire, understand, engage and, most importantly, retain customers across the entire life cycle.
• 0:53
  Mark Johnson: It's a lot there, roger.
• 0:54
  Mark Johnson: How are you today?
• 0:55
  Roger Williams: I'm doing well.
• 0:56
  Roger Williams: How are you, mark?
• 0:57
  Roger Williams: I'm doing well, thank, you.
• 0:59
  Mark Johnson: Thank you for taking the time to speak with us today.
• 1:01
  Mark Johnson: For those who may not know you, I would love to get a little bit about your background.
• 1:06
  Mark Johnson: You have a very extensive background in customer experience, customer loyalty.
• 1:09
  Mark Johnson: Maybe tell us a little bit about your current role at Cheetah and maybe even a fun fact or passion you have outside of work.
• 1:17
  Roger Williams: Sure, absolutely.
• 1:18
  Roger Williams: So I've worked in loyalty for over 25 years.
• 1:21
  Roger Williams: A lot of that has been in the airline space, starting my career as an airline frequent flyer manager and worked in consulting for in technology for airlines for many years, mostly around the loyalty, answi, revenue and customer experience space.
• 1:38
  Roger Williams: So most recently I've worked for Marigold and we're really just going by Marigold now it's kind of like when Prince changed his name, right, so it's a beautiful thing.
• 1:48
  Roger Williams: And so I've been here at Marigold for two and a half years and really working in the strategy space.
• 1:55
  Roger Williams: I also led one of our client success teams and back into strategy developing the loyalty center of excellence.
• 2:04
  Roger Williams: Little known fact or maybe some people do know, but fun fact about me is I do live in Colorado, in the mountains, so in my spare time I like to operate heavy equipment.
• 2:15
  Roger Williams: I have excavators, backhoes, tractors.
• 2:19
  Roger Williams: I have to maintain my own road.
• 2:21
  Roger Williams: So yeah, it's kind of random.
• 2:23
  Roger Williams: People are just like, really Well, you know how to do that and it's a lot of fun.
• 2:28
  Mark Johnson: That's awesome.
• 2:28
  Mark Johnson: Hopefully you don't do what that one actor did last year when he was plowing his driveway.
• 2:35
  Roger Williams: No, yeah, yeah, hopefully not no that would be good.
• 2:38
  Mark Johnson: Cheetah digital.
• 2:38
  Mark Johnson: Now Marigold.
• 2:41
  Mark Johnson: Can you talk a little bit more about what you guys do for those who may not know the offerings that Marigold has, what brands you work with and what you do for them, how you create unique engagement, drive brand loyalty?
• 2:57
  Roger Williams: Sure Mark.
• 2:58
  Roger Williams: So we mainly work with retailers and restaurants as far as restaurants really, including Fine Dining and QSR we do.
• 3:09
  Roger Williams: So.
• 3:09
  Roger Williams: We have a broad portfolio of products, including messaging.
• 3:15
  Roger Williams: We are a large world-class enterprise messaging company, but of course we do have a large loyalty footprint.
• 3:23
  Roger Williams: So the entire thing has come together under what we like to describe as relationship marketing.
• 3:29
  Roger Williams: Certainly it's a familiar term that goes back quite far, but really our point of view on that is about delivering personalized experiences for your customers in the moments that really matter to them, and our one superpower is that we can deliver personalization at scale, because we're not just a loyalty engine that can measure several different signals and analyze that, but we can also deliver that in a form of our very powerful messaging capabilities at a very, very large scale.
• 4:04
  Roger Williams: So we do that for a number of clients from mission-critical operations, such as with American Airlines If you're going to get a departure email, likely that's coming from us and certainly, on the loyalty side of things, we've worked with and we work with several large brands that you know and love, such as Starbucks.
• 4:26
  Mark Johnson: Excellent.
• 4:26
  Mark Johnson: So, when you look at customer loyalty, I know you just released the state of brand loyalty in the US for 2023, which spotlight some exclusive data on latest trends in customer loyalty that you're seeing Can you give us a high level overview of the report, maybe some key findings?
• 4:46
  Roger Williams: Yeah, absolutely so.
• 4:47
  Roger Williams: Really interesting report.
• 4:48
  Roger Williams: A lot of work went into that and, you know, some of the things even surprised me, mark.
• 4:53
  Roger Williams: So the loyalty program usage has increased this year by over half 52% of consumers engaging in loyalty programs and what's really interesting is that more and more consumers are craving personalized experiences and unique brand experiences than ever before.
• 5:13
  Roger Williams: And you know, you and I have been at conferences for many years.
• 5:16
  Roger Williams: We've heard personalization for a long time, but the demand from consumers continues to be there where they really want that personalized experience.
• 5:25
  Roger Williams: We measure that at about 4% more this year.
• 5:30
  Roger Williams: Consumers are craving those experiences.
• 5:32
  Roger Williams: So what does that really mean?
• 5:35
  Roger Williams: Right, and one of the things that we discovered from surveying these folks is that about 72% of consumers they're really prepared to put their money where their mouth is and pay more to purchase from their favorite brand.
• 5:50
  Roger Williams: So all these things together is they're demanding you know a lot more from that brand in terms of make sure that you're giving me a relevant and a personalized experience and I will reward you as a consumer by spending more per transaction and more overall.
• 6:07
  Roger Williams: Now the big story that, and the one that kind of surprised me, is that switching costs that old KPI that is, loyalty managers we use to measure are going down All right.
• 6:19
  Roger Williams: And with all this demand of personalized experiences, 70% of consumers don't feel particularly loyal to the brands that they purchase from because they're not delivering on those experiences.
• 6:30
  Roger Williams: And a third of them are actually taking their business elsewhere.
• 6:34
  Roger Williams: So a third of those consumers are just walking right out the door because brands are not delivering what they need to deliver on.
• 6:40
  Roger Williams: And the report goes even further by saying you know, 25% of those folks really have.
• 6:47
  Roger Williams: They stated to us, they told us that the lack of a loyalty program was the main reason for them defecting to a competitor.
• 6:56
  Mark Johnson: Interesting Okay Price can be a key driver when it comes to brand loyalty.
• 7:02
  Mark Johnson: Brands are focused on emotional loyalty, getting a deeper connection with their customers obviously a big topic, but when they customers state they're willing to pay a little more with brands that they frequently purchase from.
• 7:15
  Mark Johnson: Why is this case and how should brands be leveraging that to enhance the behavior to drive deeper customer loyalty?
• 7:23
  Mark Johnson: What are you seeing there?
• 7:25
  Roger Williams: So one of the things that we tend to forget is that loyalty programs actually work and as loyalty managers sometimes we're close to it and we don't necessarily experience her own programs.
• 7:39
  Roger Williams: But I actually join all of our clients' programs and I like to remind myself just how powerful that psychological impact is and what it is really.
• 7:50
  Roger Williams: It's an intricate habitual pattern builder and it's really just step by step right.
• 7:58
  Roger Williams: So if you do this, you're going to get this and you start to get into that habitual pattern and loyalty programs are really really good at creating that.
• 8:07
  Roger Williams: Even if you don't execute them as best as you need to, just naturally they do that.
• 8:13
  Roger Williams: So that will just organically start to drive that price where folks are going to want to complete those hurdles in order to get what they want to do and then suddenly price becomes less of a factor, it becomes less of a barrier to them because they're trying to achieve the hurdle or the achievement that's built into the loyalty program.
• 8:36
  Mark Johnson: Okay.
• 8:36
  Mark Johnson: In the report you noted that a third of US consumers have switched away from a brand that they previously liked to buy from, and they had some sort of affinity for citing better online experiences with some of their competitors.
• 8:51
  Mark Johnson: Better brand purpose the loyalty program is better overall.
• 8:55
  Mark Johnson: More aligned.
• 8:56
  Mark Johnson: More customer value proposition.
• 8:57
  Mark Johnson: How can you get brands or how should brands be looking at that, because still there's a big push and focus on acquisition correct?
• 9:08
  Roger Williams: Yeah, there's a really big push in acquisition and we see that over-alliance and acquisition all the time and we're going to chat a little bit about kind of our approach with our customers, which is very strategic, and we really try to partner with the customers and we're right there in the trenches with them almost as a backup loyalty manager.
• 9:30
  Roger Williams: And one of the big errors, missteps that I see in programs and actually it's not coming from the loyalty managers is that hyper focus on acquisition and it tends to come from other areas of the company, such as finance, other areas that are putting pressure on the loyalty program, where they might read an article in the QSR magazine or something like this, right when there's a large brand that's saying, well, this amount of revenue comes from our program and we have this X-Many members and we're signing up all these members every month.
• 10:06
  Roger Williams: So you tend to get that pressure from certain departments that may not kind of understand the intricacies of the loyalty program.
• 10:12
  Roger Williams: And really what you should be focusing on is that activation, Because when we look at the programs that are hyper focused on acquisition, it falls off a cliff Mark.
• 10:22
  Roger Williams: I mean, you can sign up people all day long and then they may have that one transaction in which you can textually sign them up, or they have no transactions at all, and a lot of the reports that I've seen, it's just that it falls right off.
• 10:36
  Roger Williams: So we really would prefer for you to look at that.
• 10:39
  Roger Williams: That second activity activation, their number of journeys, their number of techniques that we make available to our partners, and our strategy department does a great job of really getting in there, engaging and kind of realigning the priorities and helping our very esteemed loyalty managers to fight that fight, if you would.
• 10:59
  Mark Johnson: Yeah absolutely, and I think too, as you mentioned, acquisitions one thing, but customer loyalty is a journey, as you mentioned.
• 11:07
  Mark Johnson: Right, you have to have that dedicated and committed focus to it and on it, because if you cut that, or emotional loyalty processes or any kind of that engagement strategy, that they're cut, they can obviously have a short term benefit in the financial, but long term it's going to have a deleterious impact on the brand.
• 11:24
  Mark Johnson: So I think the focus on retention, customer loyalty, listening to your customers, like you guys do, is very important for sure.
• 11:30
  Mark Johnson: So, when you look at this focus on acquisition, how can brands pivot towards retention, because that can be a mindset focus sometimes, right?
• 11:41
  Mark Johnson: Can you provide some examples of brands who have successfully refocused their efforts on retention and customer loyalty?
• 11:49
  Roger Williams: Yeah, absolutely so.
• 11:51
  Roger Williams: One example is when I mentioned before Starbucks right.
• 11:54
  Roger Williams: So that program has been around since 2008 in various iterations, and one of the things that I really admire about the Starbucks Rewards program and I am a member and, like I said, I try to experience it just as there are clients and we see it from both ends is that there is a deep focus.
• 12:14
  Roger Williams: And remember, Starbucks claims over 40% revenue attribution from their loyalty program, so it's something that a lot of brands aspire towards, and it's kind of an open secret that what Starbucks does and we enable it for them along with other vendors is a focus on convenience, and that started from them kind of refocusing their efforts on mobile and having the convenience of mobile, which really is payments.
• 12:45
  Roger Williams: So if you're familiar with the interaction of the Starbucks app, it really is obsessed about payments, like giving you extra points for preloading your payments, you know so two points instead of one point if you use another form of payment, and they make it really easy for you to top up those payments on your card and incentivize it.
• 13:08
  Roger Williams: And then that leads into other kind of habitual behaviors where they're really good at discovery and that's something that, of course, our platform can power where it's not just transactional but really allowing you to discover all of what the brand has to offer In this terms of menus, right?
• 13:23
  Roger Williams: So if you haven't tried certain drinks, magically there's going to be incentives for you to try other drinks in that menu.
• 13:32
  Roger Williams: Another example that I've worked on personally, with loyalty and really driving that personalization looking beyond the you know, how can we get more out of a customer is relevance, and that example is with American Airlines, and you probably heard me give this example before we did a promotion for them.
• 13:52
  Roger Williams: You know, a couple years back, that you use zero party data or data that essentially things that customers tell us, and this was, you know, soon after COVID and American and a lot of airlines were struggling a little bit in terms of business travel and the type of travel that people beyond and those things were conflated in the reason behind travel.
• 14:14
  Roger Williams: Why are people going certain places?
• 14:15
  Roger Williams: And you may remember, for as long as ever, their airline marketing has been guilty of sending you somewhat irrelevant destination recommendations in your email.
• 14:26
  Roger Williams: So yeah, Mark, you should go to these places and you're not interested in single one of them.
• 14:30
  Roger Williams: So what we did was actually we asked customers, members of the Advantage program in a visual way.
• 14:37
  Roger Williams: We showed them two pictures, right, and it was the view you want to wake up to in the morning and what we pack in your bag, and based on that, we created an algorithm that generated five different personalized recommendations based on Americans route map, and it was one of the most successful promotions ever, because we simply asked customers what they wanted and we were able to, at scale, distill that into actual offers and communications that got into your inbox.
• 15:07
  Roger Williams: So if you said that you want to wake up to a beach destination and you know you look at a picture of the beach, then you'd get you know five different recommendations in a very clever format that were you know Miami Beach or you know LA, whatever it might be right, and it resonated really, really well and the bottom line was an additional 20 bucks per booking from American Airlines.
• 15:30
  Roger Williams: So these things are tried and proven techniques and you know there's a lot more things that you could be doing to make the experience more relevant than simply going out there and trying to acquire more customers.
• 15:42
  Mark Johnson: Absolutely Great to hear the zero party data because I think, especially with privacy concerns you know 10 states have them a growing number of states are looking at it it's a great way to address that right, Getting that explicit permission, and it creates a communication bond with the customer too, which you guys do such an effective job at developing and leveraging, and it's great to hear what you do at American Airlines, for sure.
• 16:04
  Mark Johnson: So when you look at the research, it's clear that consumers still appreciate a rewards program that can deliver some discounts, especially in some of the economic uncertain times that we've been having.
• 16:16
  Mark Johnson: But it's clear also that there are other components that can drive true loyalty as well.
• 16:24
  Mark Johnson: You know what did you see in developing the report?
• 16:29
  Roger Williams: Yeah, so one of the things that really reinforced the notion that and the reason why we invest in so many other loyalty levers besides just transactional, and we try to listen to the customers and help our marketers to distill that at scale.
• 16:44
  Roger Williams: In the report we found that 13% versus 8% of consumers wanted personalized recommendations over discounts, right, so 13% wanted personalized recommendations and then 8% wanted discounts, and we're continuing to see that gap grow right, the gap between members that simply want to rebate program or retain coupon program something that's going to be a little bit mind-numbing, quite frankly.
• 17:16
  Roger Williams: There's programs out there that would send you a coupon on a schedule and then you're never ready for that and coupon expires in 30 days.
• 17:22
  Roger Williams: These things create a lot of consternation and they've been building up for a long time, where we've seen the proliferation of programs that have this very rigid, marketer-centric, finance-centric, liability management-centric approach and consumers are rebelling against that, and the report's really showing something that we had a feeling for for a very long time.
• 17:49
  Mark Johnson: Okay, so personalization is another key aspect of successful multi-programs big focus for brands being able to scale, making sure they have great technology.
• 17:58
  Mark Johnson: Your latest report included some breakdowns by demographics.
• 18:02
  Mark Johnson: How can brands across various verticals effectively leverage data and disparate customer insights to create personalized experiences through the different demographics?
• 18:14
  Mark Johnson: What are you seeing there?
• 18:16
  Roger Williams: Yeah, what we really see for the various demographics, and there's nuances between each of these demographics, but we are seeing commonalities where some of the younger generations and older generations are having very similar priorities and needs.
• 18:30
  Roger Williams: So there are a few immutable truths that I'd like you to retain and hang on to.
• 18:35
  Roger Williams: It's really kind of three things right.
• 18:41
  Roger Williams: It's timing and the channel, and these really transcend those demographics.
• 18:50
  Mark Johnson: Okay, when you look at customer expectations definitely changing they changed.
• 18:58
  Mark Johnson: Going in through COVID is a question we like to ask brands as well.
• 19:01
  Mark Johnson: What are they seeing?
• 19:03
  Mark Johnson: And loyalty programs and strategies are.
• 19:06
  Mark Johnson: They had to adapt rather quickly and we saw that in research we did last year that brands want to.
• 19:13
  Mark Johnson: A significant number of brands want to either redo or add incrementality or redesign their program.
• 19:20
  Mark Johnson: So when you look at the customer expectations as they are changing, how do you envision the future of loyalty programs in various industries evolving, considering the new technology, considering the changing in customer behaviors?
• 19:35
  Roger Williams: Yeah, that's a great question.
• 19:36
  Roger Williams: So one of the ways we see this evolution mark and we've seen it for some time it's just that the technology wasn't necessarily there to support the desire by our brand and loyalty marketers.
• 19:50
  Roger Williams: And one of the things that we see is that, especially restaurant programs, they're taking a deeper look at revenue integrity.
• 19:57
  Roger Williams: So it's really evaluating where the member is in their life cycle and determining if discounting is warranted.
• 20:06
  Roger Williams: Because, as you may know, depending on where you are in the life cycle, you may or may not be open to a discount.
• 20:13
  Roger Williams: Just as we just talked about where folks are looking for personalization.
• 20:16
  Roger Williams: Well, that varies all the time and there's different personas.
• 20:21
  Roger Williams: So, for instance, if you're a commuter and you're going to your favorite QSR in the mornings, you're one persona, but then you're going to take your family to the same restaurant or QSR on the weekends, then you're in a completely different persona and that's momentary.
• 20:38
  Roger Williams: That can be within the same week or within several weeks.
• 20:41
  Roger Williams: You could evolve in a very simple way where you're buying less, or you're staying the same, or you're buying more.
• 20:49
  Roger Williams: So, based on those things, we're able to then scientifically inform or marketers and saying well, at this particular moment in time in this life cycle of this customer, for this segment of one, you don't need to give them a discount.
• 21:02
  Roger Williams: And what we've seen happening before and still now today, right, and there's systems out there that struggle to support this and we're able to do it is you really want to be able to?
• 21:14
  Roger Williams: Then look, sorry, you have 10 million members.
• 21:16
  Roger Williams: Are you sending all those 10 million members 20% discount offer?
• 21:21
  Roger Williams: Is that really necessary?
• 21:22
  Roger Williams: Probably not, because they're all in different stages of our life cycle.
• 21:26
  Roger Williams: So we're really getting a lot of demand from that and we're also trying to help our partners to synthesize soft benefits.
• 21:34
  Roger Williams: Soft benefits is going to really make a comeback.
• 21:36
  Roger Williams: A lot of these programs have kind of fashioned themselves on the airline frequent flyer model and I kind of chuckle when I see it, because I was part of that for most of my career and one of the things that we had to work with organically in the airline space was soft benefits.
• 21:50
  Roger Williams: Right, get you through security faster, get you a seed upgrade, there's all these.
• 21:56
  Roger Williams: Get you in the lounge, all these different things.
• 21:59
  Roger Williams: Right, waving things.
• 22:00
  Roger Williams: But in an environment like restaurants and retail sometimes you don't necessarily have those.
• 22:05
  Roger Williams: You're not going to have like a VIP line at a register.
• 22:08
  Roger Williams: But there's other clever ways that we can come up with a number of soft benefits, and we're helping our partners to do that now.
• 22:16
  Mark Johnson: Okay, what's one piece of advice you would give to a brand that's looking to Adapt or innovate their loyalty program in the mid, as I mentioned big interest in that, you know, are there any quick wins that a brand can implement or consider in its current program to help, you know, keep customers coming back?
• 22:37
  Roger Williams: There's always a quick win, right and Well, we really try to avoid those where and it's funny because we get that question a lot right we're hey, give us some quick wins goes, and then if you end up looking at all of your meeting notes for the last you know Several years in a relationship, then every meeting is saying, hey, what are the quick wins?
• 22:58
  Roger Williams: So when does a quick win really stop?
• 23:00
  Roger Williams: And what I would advise our loyalty marketers out?
• 23:04
  Roger Williams: There is that surprise and delight.
• 23:06
  Roger Williams: It's great, but it really won't be successful long term.
• 23:13
  Roger Williams: So you know, one of the things that I like to focus on is a mantra I learned from a great loyalty marketers names Mike Capizzi and and it goes a little something like this where, tell your members what you plan to do and Then remind them what you just did when you deliver on that and and that, that.
• 23:34
  Roger Williams: That is really important to to really reinforce that habitual patterns that we talked about earlier, where we sometimes underestimate the power of incentives and folks driving towards that, and simply then communicating that and putting it in the predictable construct.
• 23:51
  Roger Williams: It's way, way more powerful than quick wins.
• 23:54
  Mark Johnson: That makes sense, absolutely so, when you look at 2023, do you have any closing advisor thoughts for brands, maybe even well, what's next for Cheetah Digital?
• 24:05
  Mark Johnson: I'm sorry Marigold.
• 24:06
  Mark Johnson: What are you focused on To help brands for the remainder of 23?
• 24:11
  Roger Williams: Yeah, absolutely so.
• 24:12
  Roger Williams: Really, this year we're looking at a strategy first year.
• 24:17
  Roger Williams: So for a very long time We've had a professional services organization that are very talented.
• 24:24
  Roger Williams: I'm part of that.
• 24:25
  Roger Williams: That organization, as far as strategy, and really for the first time, our leadership has has really Put us front and center and and we're leading strategy first where, in all of our partnerships from whether or not we're gonna discuss early on if you'd like to consider what we have to offer or you're a long time customer of ours, client of ours then we're really just leaning in with strategy.
• 24:56
  Roger Williams: And that's one thing that I would share with our marketers out there whether you're with us or one of the other many loyalty providers out there is really to look at the strategy first and try and figure out what is it that you're solving for those objectives and putting in those key results and those goals are really, really important.
• 25:15
  Roger Williams: The other thing is that that we're doing at Marigold is we're doubling down on a seamless end to end experience for our marketers Right, for marketers that are happy.
• 25:26
  Roger Williams: There are end users.
• 25:27
  Roger Williams: Their customers are going to be happy as well.
• 25:29
  Roger Williams: So that starts with that strategy and it's making sure that you're interfacing with client success folks and technical resources and support resources that all know and understand your business.
• 25:41
  Roger Williams: So another thing that we've done is actually we've invested in certifications for all of our client facing staff certification similar to what I have and the other strategists have, where almost anyone has strategy shops in our organization, even if they sit in the technical, technical role or support role, so they understand where your business is going, and our leadership thought it was very important for us to do that.
• 26:07
  Roger Williams: So at the end of the day, we're really dedicated to loyalty for our clients.
• 26:15
  Mark Johnson: That's awesome.
• 26:15
  Mark Johnson: Well, Roger, it's always a pleasure speaking with you.
• 26:17
  Mark Johnson: You're a fountain of wisdom with regard to customer loyalty, customer experience.
• 26:22
  Mark Johnson: It's great to hear some of the insights from the paper.
• 26:25
  Mark Johnson: I actually perused it.
• 26:27
  Mark Johnson: I need to read it more depth, but thank you for what you did in the report and thank you for all you do for the industry, because customer loyalty is more important than before and Marigold continues to kind of set the pace on the technology and strategy side.
• 26:40
  Mark Johnson: So it's great to see.
• 26:42
  Roger Williams: Mark, it was my pleasure and thank you so much for the great work you do in your organization.
• 26:46
  Roger Williams: We really appreciate it.
• 26:47
  Roger Williams: It's always great to be here.
• 26:48
  Mark Johnson: Absolutely.
• 26:49
  Mark Johnson: Thanks again everyone for joining in and make sure you access and download and copy the board.
• 26:54
  Mark Johnson: I think Link will be in the notes.
• 26:55
  Mark Johnson: And have a wonderful day and join us back from another edition of Loyalty Live soon.
• 26:59
  Mark Johnson: Thanks,