Latest / Leaders in Customer Loyalty, Powered by Loyalty360 / #439: Industry Voices: Accelerating Loyalty Through Mobile-First Engagement with Bambu’s Kyle Pretsch

Transcript

#439: Industry Voices: Accelerating Loyalty Through Mobile-First Engagement with Bambu’s Kyle Pretsch · Leaders in Customer Loyalty, Powered by Loyalty360

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Good morning.
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: This is Ethan Perry, director of Content at Loyalty360, welcoming you to another edition of our Leaders in Customer Loyalty podcast Industry Voices Series.
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: In these episodes, we talk to the leading agencies, technology partners and consultants in customer channel and brand loyalty about the technology trends and best practices that are impacting the ability of brands to drive unique experiences, enhance engagement and, most importantly, foster customer loyalty.
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: Today we have the pleasure of speaking with Kyle Prech, president of Bamboo.
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: Welcome, kyle, glad you could join us.
• 0:40
  Speaker 2: Thanks for being here, Ethan.
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah, well, can you start off?
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: Just tell us a little bit more about yourself and your role with Bamboo and your background.
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: Absolutely so.
• 0:50
  Speaker 2: You know just a little bit just about Bamboo in general.
• 0:54
  Speaker 2: It stands for Business Applications Made by you.
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: It in fact has nothing to do with the plant or the panda, and that's, I think, really important.
• 1:02
  Speaker 2: I've spent my life working with companies and organizations on trying to take the power of technology and put it in the hands of, and I've now gotten the opportunity in the later part of my career to do that as a service provider and a software builder, and that's been incredible.
• 1:32
  Speaker 2: I've built the products, I've bought the products and I've built products that people buy.
• 1:38
  Speaker 2: My job at Bamboo is to lead our initiatives to create business applications, specifically around member and consumer engagement, to continue to push our team into that market.
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: And look, this has just been the culmination of what I've spent my entire career doing.
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: I never thought that I would, you know.
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: When I was younger I thought and I got my first job and I was in retail.
• 2:05
  Speaker 2: I thought I wouldn't last.
• 2:05
  Speaker 2: I thought, you know, I wasn't doing something intrinsic, I wasn't working in nonprofit, I wasn't working in government, I wasn't changing the world and I had the opportunity in one of my first brands to see the difference in people's lives when they were able to interact with brands that made them feel good and made them feel sexy and made them feel special and made them feel sexy and made them feel special and I realized that it's okay to work for a commercial organization you can still change the world and so it's really cool to get to go work with helping people form those relationships, because they're meaningful and they change people's lives Absolutely.
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: That's amazing.
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: As a former retail veteran myself early in my career, I 100% agree with you and that's where I learned all about customer loyalty and what it takes to build a great brand was through those face-to-face interactions.
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: So I fully agree with you.
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: So for those who may not be familiar with how Bamboo supports a brand's customer loyalty efforts, can you let us know a little more specifically what you guys do and some of the industries that you work with?
• 3:01
  Speaker 2: Absolutely some of the industries that you work with, absolutely.
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: So, look, I hate to say this, especially on a loyalty podcast, but loyalty has become a little bit of a commoditized industry.
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: Right, we give discounts, we give points, we give you things for those points, and our software facilitates that.
• 3:23
  Speaker 2: I'd like to say we do it with a cleaner UI.
• 3:24
  Speaker 2: I'd like to say we do it faster and easier for the consumer and for the brand manager.
• 3:27
  Speaker 2: But what really separates us is, you know, our focus on being truly mobile first, and I think that's where you know everybody talks about doing it and nobody's actually doing it, or if they are doing it, they're not doing a very good job, which is we talk about the mobile first experience, and it's been, you know, years of talk about being reflexive and ever scrolling pages, and really what we've done is we've leaned in very heavy into the Apple, the Google and now the Samsung experiences, using native apps that already exist on the phone, like the wallet, to really enhance the experience.
• 4:02
  Speaker 2: And so you know, when you think about what loyalty is, loyalty is getting the right information to your most loyal customers about the opportunities that exist within your brand.
• 4:11
  Speaker 2: And we talk about being mobile first, and so we leverage the wallet specifically very, very heavily to do that.
• 4:16
  Speaker 2: And look, we've seen this change.
• 4:19
  Speaker 2: I travel a lot, so I get the opportunity to go on airplanes, and I remember when people would have 10, 15, 15, 20 people no show for a flight, because people couldn't figure out when their flight was, where it was departing from what time it was.
• 4:31
  Speaker 2: And then Apple came up with this.
• 4:32
  Speaker 2: You know what we call a doohickey, or you know whiz little tool at one point, which was called the wallet, and you put your boarding pass in your phone but like there's no four hour line at LAX anymore, right, like it just literally changed my world and a lot of other people's.
• 4:47
  Speaker 2: But people get to their flights.
• 4:48
  Speaker 2: People get around 20% of people.
• 4:51
  Speaker 2: More travel to travel experiences improve, more people can can move across our country and our world because technology has enabled that to be easier.
• 5:00
  Speaker 2: And so I look at something as simple as coupons.
• 5:01
  Speaker 2: The brands we love are fueled by discounts and offers and the ability to access the gifts that we're given for our loyalty, and yet people have such a hard time getting them.
• 5:09
  Speaker 2: They just sit in your phone and expire.
• 5:12
  Speaker 2: They never get to your phone, and we've set out to really change that, and that makes a meaningful difference.
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: Awesome.
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: So can you just tell us, like you know, how would you define customer loyalty and what does that mean to your organization?
• 5:27
  Speaker 2: You know I have an interesting kind of philosophy on this and I use a very simple acronym across our organization, our team, and it's been my philosophy in business, it's been my philosophy in creating great loyalty programs called GOML.
• 5:44
  Speaker 2: Get on my level and I think you know we talk a lot about altering the brand experience, we talk a lot about taking people with us into certain brand experiences, the customer journey.
• 5:58
  Speaker 2: But you are not going to take anybody anywhere unless first you meet them where they're at.
• 6:04
  Speaker 2: And so the very first step of a loyalty program is getting on people's level, getting on the consumer's level.
• 6:11
  Speaker 2: Get on my level, and it means building a relationship, interacting, some form of and I'm going to go so far as to say intimacy, like you're creating an intimate relationship with that person keyword person it's a personalized relationship.
• 6:25
  Speaker 2: It isn't just this is our brand and this is our program, this is where you're at, I know who you are and I know what you need and want, and then I can begin the journey.
• 6:38
  Speaker 2: And so step one is getting on your consumer's level, and that's different for every person.
• 6:42
  Speaker 2: It's not brand centric, it is consumer centric.
• 6:45
  Speaker 2: That is step one of loyalty.
• 6:47
  Speaker 2: Step two is now, once you form that relationship at the speed they can go, taking them with you down.
• 6:56
  Speaker 2: The journey that works for you both is forming the relationship and then having a set of paths that you work to take people down and hopefully you speed that path, hopefully you make people move faster, hopefully you do take them with you.
• 7:12
  Speaker 2: But first it starts at forming an individual relationship with the consumer and we can do that through a variety of ways and we can be effective or ineffective with that.
• 7:21
  Speaker 2: But it starts with building something that's about a group of consumers ideally the consumer and starting that relationship.
• 7:28
  Speaker 2: And there's so many brands that choose to do that, there's brands that don't choose to do that and there's brands that say they're not doing that, that actually have done great strides in doing so and it's just being intentional about that effort.
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: Well, yeah, and that kind of leads me to, you know, our next question about you know brands and how they're engaging with customer loyalty.
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: You know, in our most recent state of customer loyalty report, 79% of the brands we surveyed said they have an interest in updating, enhancing or redoing their customer loyalty offerings.
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: What enhancements or changes are you seeing brands be most interested in incorporating into their programs, and do you see any specific industries leading the charge in that kind of innovation?
• 8:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's great.
• 8:13
  Speaker 2: First of all, super loaded question.
• 8:15
  Speaker 2: Second of all, let me make sure I get it and feel free to like push me back if I get off track here.
• 8:21
  Speaker 2: So so you know, of course we all want to make more money.
• 8:30
  Speaker 2: Like has anybody anybody seen the S&P?
• 8:34
  Speaker 2: Like I would like to make more.
• 8:35
  Speaker 2: In fact, I need to make more money because I think my retirement disappeared last week.
• 8:38
  Speaker 2: So you know, how do you do that?
• 8:42
  Speaker 2: Well, you, you come up with better offers and you raise effectiveness, and I actually and I go back to this analogy of like we talk about doing it but we don't actually do it Like loyalty to so many people is getting the right rewards and the right offers and the right opportunities to the people who want them, and so, obviously, when we talk about enhancing, we're just talking about doing a better job, and I think what people forget is the tides are against us.
• 9:10
  Speaker 2: Like Google and Microsoft are doing a better job of figuring out how to filter out our emails than we are doing a better job of getting people to open them Right, and that is why the open rates are falling.
• 9:22
  Speaker 2: So you know, naturally, of course, people want to enhance and update and push through that.
• 9:28
  Speaker 2: So the question isn't like, oh, we're going to do like a new loyalty program.
• 9:33
  Speaker 2: The question is, how are we going to meet people where they're at and how are we going to?
• 9:38
  Speaker 2: And it starts with a very simple piece of information which is sending people what they want to see.
• 9:46
  Speaker 2: If people value your content, people will read your content.
• 9:52
  Speaker 2: This is not an Apple or Google issue and how they filter it out.
• 9:56
  Speaker 2: This is about giving people what they want to read, and to do that, you have to know what Ethan wants or what Nick wants or what Kyle wants versus somebody else.
• 10:04
  Speaker 2: And so how do you get the information?
• 10:08
  Speaker 2: So to me, it becomes three things.
• 10:09
  Speaker 2: And whether or not this is what people want, this is what people unfortunately need to be thinking about.
• 10:14
  Speaker 2: The first thing is getting the data to make that decision right.
• 10:22
  Speaker 2: And here's a simple example.
• 10:24
  Speaker 2: And just if people who are watching this don't believe me, I will encourage you to remember this October, when you go to the post office and you open up your mailbox, or you open up the mailbox at your home and you get 17 things and before you even walk in your front door or walk out of the post office.
• 10:45
  Speaker 2: You're going to go through each magazine and each coupon and you're just going to toss, toss, toss, toss, keep, toss, toss, keep.
• 10:53
  Speaker 2: We've been doing this triage filtering thing for a long time.
• 11:00
  Speaker 2: We're really good at it.
• 11:01
  Speaker 2: We can do this, we can let computers do it for us or we can do it.
• 11:05
  Speaker 2: But again, even if it's done by AI, it's going to be training to the things we want to see, the things we spend time on.
• 11:13
  Speaker 2: So the sooner you start sending the right things to the right people, the sooner whether that be AI or the actual person will start keeping your content and spending time with it, and that's the first step.
• 11:21
  Speaker 2: So how do you get the data to do that and spending time with it?
• 11:24
  Speaker 2: And that's the first step.
• 11:25
  Speaker 2: So how do you get the data to do that?
• 11:27
  Speaker 2: The second thing I would tell us to do is we have to think about time, and this is a huge technology opportunity.
• 11:35
  Speaker 2: It's a people problem, which is I've worked in these organizations and the marketing teams are just incredible groups of human beings who all they take weeks to get all the data, all the mailer data, all the opens, all the this, all of that, and then they come up with a segment and six months later they apply a small ab change and then six months later they take all those ab results and they start making an improvement to sending people the right content for them.
• 12:04
  Speaker 2: And so this becomes the issue of time, which is those are really good improvements and people spend a lot of money on the bodies to go make them.
• 12:10
  Speaker 2: But you can't iterate once every six months or once every year.
• 12:15
  Speaker 2: You know my most recent brand side appointment we bought one of these voice of the customer tools and it took us a year to get it implemented.
• 12:21
  Speaker 2: It was actually.
• 12:22
  Speaker 2: It took us six months to sign the contract, six months to fight about the contract.
• 12:25
  Speaker 2: We signed, a year to get it implemented and a year to learn how to use the data, and by then, all the data was stagnant anyway.
• 12:30
  Speaker 2: So we had to kind of start the process over, and so three or four years later, I don't know if we ever actioned a piece of data and when we finally did.
• 12:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's why we were getting beaten out by AI and these things.
• 12:41
  Speaker 2: So we have to figure out how to increase the time.
• 12:43
  Speaker 2: Let's make tools, let's be effective.
• 12:45
  Speaker 2: And then the third and the most important thing I would say is I think we have to say it because we're having a conversation about technology and loyalty in 2025 AI, but AI to solve data analysis, ai to solve data collection.
• 13:04
  Speaker 2: And if you don't understand that you are, as an executive, operating on a clock and that you need the tools to help speed up the clock, then you can lead a charge, but you will lose the help.
• 13:18
  Speaker 2: Get campaigns out the door that are quick and get you data that is quick and allow you to make changes instantly within one week.
• 13:35
  Speaker 2: And so that's the last piece, which is the people who are leading the charge are figuring out how to get data and enact a change within one week, which means they make 52 improvements to their program a year.
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: Wow, yeah, thanks.
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: That was very comprehensive and you answered it all of it Plus some right.
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah, thanks.
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: That was very comprehensive and you answered it all of it Plus some right no-transcript.
• 14:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, 2025 is a complicated year, isn't it?
• 14:18
  Speaker 2: and 2024 was complicated and 2023 was complicated, 2022 was complicated, and I feel like we've gotten in a habit of just saying, like this next year is going to be amazing, and then we're just like, oh God, it continues.
• 14:29
  Speaker 2: We have to break this trend and this is not me pushing this off on Congress, this is me pushing it to brand leaders to persevere and to break this trend.
• 14:41
  Speaker 2: There are tools.
• 14:44
  Speaker 2: Other people are using them.
• 14:46
  Speaker 2: Right, and it's interesting, you know, because I go into meetings and I listen and it's you know, and I hate to pick on the legal team, but I always pick on the legal team because legal team's, like you know, my job is to tell you how to not get sued, and so I'm going to tell you, not how to stay so far away from the black hole of risk, 50,000 miles away from risk.
• 15:11
  Speaker 2: It's the best way to not fall in that hole and you know, I think it's interesting.
• 15:20
  Speaker 2: So we're anti-AI, we're anti-sending messages to people, we're anti-text messaging, we're triple quadruple opt-in Okay, and we say we don't want to use data to do anything because people might be offended.
• 15:33
  Speaker 2: That's true, but keep in mind your competitor is Google and they are filtering out your emails to the promotions inbox by using a consumer's data.
• 15:39
  Speaker 2: So they have figured out how to do that and they too, probably have a legal department.
• 15:44
  Speaker 2: That legal department is probably also concerned about risk, but they have somebody who's saying we will persevere to improve the consumer experience.
• 15:52
  Speaker 2: And I think we have to take the reins off.
• 15:54
  Speaker 2: And I'm not saying fire your lawyer Please don't hear me say that it's not my recommendation but I am saying that we have to ask the question, which is what is the right thing to do for the people who want to build a relationship with our brand?
• 16:09
  Speaker 2: And I go back to that very first thing I said, which is there is a guy out there who's going to be unhappy about something.
• 16:17
  Speaker 2: How do we meet them at the place they're at, without inhibiting our ability to go meet the person who wants to grow a relationship with our brand?
• 16:25
  Speaker 2: I should do SMS, text messaging, because there's people who want it, and I should make it really easy for the person who doesn't want it to make that relationship known to us.
• 16:34
  Speaker 2: But I shouldn't do it at the risk of not being able to give the person who wants to grow that relationship.
• 16:39
  Speaker 2: And so let's get rid of the fear.
• 16:41
  Speaker 2: Let's figure out how to incorporate AI.
• 16:44
  Speaker 2: You know, gamification and rewards these are good things.
• 16:48
  Speaker 2: Zero and first party data.
• 16:49
  Speaker 2: Rewards these are good things.
• 16:52
  Speaker 2: Zero and first party data.
• 16:53
  Speaker 2: You must create a personalized experience and you will do so in a field of risk and you can mitigate that and you can control that.
• 17:01
  Speaker 2: But you will not survive unless you use the tools to meet people with that and give them the experience.
• 17:08
  Speaker 2: Otherwise, you're going to be stagnant, offering something, expecting people to walk through your doors, and that is not loyalty.
• 17:14
  Speaker 2: Loyalty is going to people where they're at and taking them on a journey with you.
• 17:18
  Speaker 2: And so there's all these great tools and we just have to use them, and we have to.
• 17:22
  Speaker 2: You know, I turn to our brand leaders to go back and say I hear you, how do we bring this into our strategy?
• 17:29
  Speaker 2: How do we set a roadmap, and how many of you watching this have a roadmap to these subjects?
• 17:36
  Speaker 2: What is your roadmap to gamification?
• 17:38
  Speaker 2: What is your roadmap to data collection?
• 17:40
  Speaker 2: What is your roadmap to integrating?
• 17:41
  Speaker 2: What is your roadmap to AI?
• 17:43
  Speaker 2: And if you don't have those, I encourage you to go make four slides on your desktop called roadmaps.
• 17:49
  Speaker 2: And if you don't have four slides on your desktop called.
• 17:50
  Speaker 2: You know roadmaps, and if you don't have a roadmap for those four things, are you leading the charge?
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: Awesome, thank you Kind of answered my next question, all wrapped up in there as well, but so I think I'm going to jump to the next thing and say you know, can you share?
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: What do you think are some of the most critical metrics a brand should be tracking to measure the success of their loyalty program in 2025?
• 18:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I'm going to go.
• 18:18
  Speaker 2: Oh God, this is where I get myself in trouble.
• 18:21
  Speaker 2: I don't.
• 18:24
  Speaker 2: Can we stop talking about impressions yet?
• 18:27
  Speaker 2: Like, have we gotten over?
• 18:29
  Speaker 2: This is a metric in our industry?
• 18:31
  Speaker 2: I understand social media, I get it, um, but but this is, this is trickle.
• 18:39
  Speaker 2: I mean, you know we, we had this, like us national, like hate of this phrase trickle down economics.
• 18:46
  Speaker 2: Like we all were like this is the end, um, and you know we, we go, we grew very against that phrase.
• 18:53
  Speaker 2: But I see that in marketing right now.
• 18:55
  Speaker 2: I saw that with impressions.
• 18:56
  Speaker 2: I was like this is just trickle down economics.
• 18:59
  Speaker 2: Let me increase the amount of impressions, let me throw so much content out and if they see it they will buy it.
• 19:07
  Speaker 2: That's not necessarily untrue.
• 19:11
  Speaker 2: You can increase your top line, but loyalty is about effectiveness more than it is efficiency.
• 19:20
  Speaker 2: And look, you have to run a positive P&L, so you have to be efficient, because there is a decency and there are metrics like consumer acquisition cost and ROAS that are obviously super important.
• 19:29
  Speaker 2: But there's not ROAS in just putting things on social media.
• 19:34
  Speaker 2: You're paying people to do it, you're sending out messages.
• 19:36
  Speaker 2: It feels good If your loyalty program is not rooted in the first two circles of the bullseye and let's go back to retail fundamentals and let's stop leading off the conversation in the boardroom with impressions.
• 19:51
  Speaker 2: Let's start with, you know, average order value.
• 19:54
  Speaker 2: Like, how often do you hear that word anymore?
• 19:56
  Speaker 2: It's not enough, you know.
• 19:59
  Speaker 2: Let's think about customer frequency.
• 20:01
  Speaker 2: Let's think about lifetime value and using a standard metric, and too many times I've heard people say, yeah, it's really tough to figure out lifetime value.
• 20:09
  Speaker 2: It's not you have to choose a metric, but like choose a metric, apply it.
• 20:14
  Speaker 2: You know, maybe apply it on two different segments and then and then stick with it and measure against it.
• 20:19
  Speaker 2: Right, and that is.
• 20:20
  Speaker 2: You know, there.
• 20:20
  Speaker 2: There are no perfect metrics, but they.
• 20:23
  Speaker 2: But but a standard metric is is perfect in comparison to not having one.
• 20:27
  Speaker 2: The next one's right Customer acquisition cost.
• 20:31
  Speaker 2: You know what is the customer acquisition cost, but that is a secondary tier If you were paying more during, if you were paying more to get a consumer.
• 20:37
  Speaker 2: But they are a higher value life, higher lifetime value.
• 20:41
  Speaker 2: I guarantee that's a good economical decision.
• 20:43
  Speaker 2: And so I go back to you.
• 20:44
  Speaker 2: Know your standard, frequency, lifetime value, aov.
• 20:48
  Speaker 2: You know margin, right, those need to be the metrics that marketers and loyalty managers manage to, followed by ROAS and acquisition cost.
• 20:59
  Speaker 2: And if we're doing anything more than that, that's great.
• 21:04
  Speaker 2: But not substituting out those first six, substituting out those first six, thank you.
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: So, personally, are there any programs that you admire or that you are really loyal to from a customer loyalty perspective, and what do you like about their offerings?
• 21:22
  Speaker 2: Well, you know this is tough.
• 21:28
  Speaker 2: There are brands that I am loyal to and I'll tell you, I'm a Banana Republic kid.
• 21:37
  Speaker 2: Luckily, I've promoted myself out of the kids version of that store into the adult version, but I am still a Banana Republic guy.
• 21:47
  Speaker 2: Everything I wear is Banana Republic.
• 21:48
  Speaker 2: There was this cartoon that was really going to be embarrassing, that was called doug on nickelodeon and um, and he used to open up his closet and he had the same pants, the same shirt and the same sweater vest every single day.
• 21:59
  Speaker 2: And if I could live my life like that, that is how I would live my life, and they would be all the same pair of of um, of banana republic khaki pants, followed by the white button up with the same belt and the same ugly sweater vest.
• 22:11
  Speaker 2: And that would like.
• 22:12
  Speaker 2: That would make my dreams come true.
• 22:14
  Speaker 2: And fortunately there's this thing called like relationships and dating that inhibit the ability to have a single phased closet, um and.
• 22:21
  Speaker 2: And the reason I'm a loyal banana Republic customer, um is interesting.
• 22:28
  Speaker 2: It's because they give a coupon that's 40, 50 and 60% off every single week, like if you ever go to Banana Republic and they're not 40, 50, 60% off, you probably shouldn't go in because it will be the next week and what determines my purchase is not 40, 50, or 60.
• 22:45
  Speaker 2: It's when I remember they're 40, 50, 60% off, like, and I, and I, like I consciously know they're 40% off at least every single week and I'm not saying like, oh, I'm going to wait out until it's 50%.
• 22:58
  Speaker 2: I am always interested, I just need that push and so I go back to um, that is the brand I am loyal to.
• 23:06
  Speaker 2: But the opportunity exists for me to be in banana Republic 10 times a year.
• 23:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah, honestly, the opportunity probably exists for me to be there 50 to 20 times a year.
• 23:17
  Speaker 2: They could absolutely pentuple my spend, which, again, would not, would probably not be good for my closet.
• 23:25
  Speaker 2: I would.
• 23:26
  Speaker 2: I could order it all online, I know exactly what it is, but, but I go back to that.
• 23:30
  Speaker 2: There's such an opportunity and I do not want to hit down on Banana Republic because I'm obviously their biggest, biggest customer and supporter.
• 23:37
  Speaker 2: But you know, and they send these cards in the mail, right, and they say 40% off, but they can't afford to do that every week because it takes them six months to get the data, to figure out if they should send me the 50% off versus the 60% off and those things expire and then I'm like, oh, bummer, right, I'll wait until the next one.
• 23:53
  Speaker 2: And so I just think about and yet I don't read the emails because I get emails that aren't necessarily relevant to me and Google got to them before Banana Republic got good content to me that I click save.
• 24:05
  Speaker 2: So so I think I think that's a great example, which is, if they could meet me where I'm at, they could take me through a journey where they could go four or five 600% my spend.
• 24:16
  Speaker 2: You know one, one program that I really really like.
• 24:21
  Speaker 2: There's a couple, and I'll tell you my other favorite brand and this is I'm an East Coaster by trade.
• 24:29
  Speaker 2: I'm like a Sheetz Wawa guy, that is if I like.
• 24:35
  Speaker 2: I'll admit I think I secretly took my prom date to Sheetz because it was like the greatest food and the greatest price, and I'm always hunting for a deal, and you know I don't live on the East Coast anymore so I don't always get there.
• 24:50
  Speaker 2: But I get their emails.
• 24:51
  Speaker 2: They're fun, they've gamified it.
• 24:54
  Speaker 2: They don't expire my points because they know I'm not there.
• 24:58
  Speaker 2: Very often they give me offers that have longer expiration dates.
• 25:02
  Speaker 2: So I actually am like, oh, I might keep this.
• 25:04
  Speaker 2: They let me put it in my wallet, which means it's in my phone, in case I end up on the East Coast and they will always win me over Wawa and I love both of the brands.
• 25:15
  Speaker 2: But they figured out how to get the coupon into my phone and they figured out how to get me to download it.
• 25:20
  Speaker 2: And they figured out who I am.
• 25:21
  Speaker 2: And when you look at the other people's experiences, they're different.
• 25:24
  Speaker 2: They figured out how to meet me where they met and they figured out how to draw me into their physical locations.
• 25:30
  Speaker 2: They've even figured out how to get me to shop online and I'm not sure why you ever shop for a gas station online, but they figured out how to do it.
• 25:36
  Speaker 2: So I give them the the massive award there as well awesome thanks.
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: Those are two great examples um.
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: So what do you see as the next big thing in customer loyalty?
• 25:48
  Speaker 2: um, there was this movie a long time ago I'm gonna age myself here called angels in the outfield, um and uh, and it was was with Danny Glover, and like two thirds of the movie he screams like we're going back to fundamentals and I've always remembered that because, you know everybody had this dejected.
• 26:10
  Speaker 2: Look on their face.
• 26:10
  Speaker 2: But, like, the next big thing in customer loyalty is using tools and going and fixing the fundamentals.
• 26:17
  Speaker 2: And you know I look at the spends and the P&Ls on we're going to spend money on this.
• 26:24
  Speaker 2: We're going to spend money on that.
• 26:25
  Speaker 2: We're going to, like, just drive all this cost into these areas.
• 26:29
  Speaker 2: That we're going to get better creative and like, people don't open the email.
• 26:34
  Speaker 2: Like, great, you're going to improve .00001 bottom line performance.
• 26:40
  Speaker 2: Go figure out top line.
• 26:41
  Speaker 2: Go figure out how to do
• 26:42
  Speaker 2: that.
• 26:42
  Speaker 2: I think you're going to also see a giant slimming down of relationships.
• 26:46
  Speaker 2: I think you're going to see social media is ready for the algorithms to call and focus.
• 26:53
  Speaker 2: I think we're going to see some restrictions in how people drive brand relationships.
• 26:59
  Speaker 2: And so you know, I think the, I think the future, I see the big thing is I see this all coming to a head and I see people having to get really good and really focused on winning.
• 27:09
  Speaker 2: And I see brands.
• 27:10
  Speaker 2: I see people not having relationship with 20 brands.
• 27:13
  Speaker 2: I see them going to their five or six brands.
• 27:15
  Speaker 2: I see them choosing that
• 27:17
  Speaker 2: relationship.
• 27:18
  Speaker 2: I also see co-branded sponsorships being really huge Payment cards, gift cards, this accessibility to give people discounts for shopping with certain
• 27:28
  Speaker 2: brands.
• 27:29
  Speaker 2: I think here's the bottom line when we are able to get discounts in people's wallets more effectively and if you look at the numbers, 70% of our decisions are made by discounts and 1% of them get into our hands when we are able to solve that 1% problem, people will get to choose the brands they love and have the relationships they want.
• 27:44
  Speaker 2: And we're going to see a little bit of a culling on the brands and we're going to see people innovate product, and that's what I'm excited to see.
• 27:50
  Speaker 2: I'm excited to see brands start at the end of customer loyalty.
• 27:54
  Speaker 2: It's brands changing what they make to meet the consumer demand, and that's when loyalty runs full circle, when you get the data, you respond to people and you put the right product in the right place for the right consumer.
• 28:07
  Speaker 2: And that's when it all like that's nirvana AI is going to enable us to do the basics right, the fundamentals right, that allow us to then feed that into the machine and change the products we make to meet the next expectation of the consumer.
• 28:20
  Speaker 2: That's what makes me excited.
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: Awesome.
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: So, more specifically, what's next for Bamboo as we move forward in 2025?
• 28:29
  Speaker 2: Oh, my God, what a year we are having.
• 28:33
  Speaker 2: What a year we had, you know, I just it's been, it's been incredible so far this year.
• 28:42
  Speaker 2: Our Q1 was was insane.
• 28:44
  Speaker 2: Our Q2 is is shaping up to be more.
• 28:47
  Speaker 2: So, you know, so we're super excited.
• 28:49
  Speaker 2: We are, you know, quickly forming more relationships with brands.
• 28:53
  Speaker 2: We are really focusing on quick wins, quick go to markets, quick campaigns, and so when I think about what's next for us this year, we are going to focus on, you know, getting every brand to appreciate the statistics that go along with being truly mobile first, and we are going to make it super quick for brands to be able to get something out the door and start building those relationships.
• 29:16
  Speaker 2: And we are going to focus on a very simple metric, which is time, and with our capabilities we can get, you know, at the end of the day, changing a person's behavior, which is after you build the relationship you got to take them on that journey.
• 29:30
  Speaker 2: It's about 23 touches, right?
• 29:32
  Speaker 2: That's like standard.
• 29:33
  Speaker 2: Every marketer knows that it takes you got to touch people a certain number of times to be able to change your behavior.
• 29:37
  Speaker 2: Great, 23 touches.
• 29:40
  Speaker 2: Okay, we've built the technology to get people 23 touches with a hundred percent adoption rate within a week.
• 29:47
  Speaker 2: We can change people's behavior in a week.
• 29:50
  Speaker 2: We're just taking brands six months to three years to do one iteration of.
• 29:53
  Speaker 2: We can do it in a week and we are going to start showing people that, we continue to show people that and we are going to start showing those.
• 29:59
  Speaker 2: You know, we are going to start winning the foot race again with ai and against ai and against the things that are are trying to push us out, and so, um, we're super excited to take brands through that journey with us that sounds amazing.
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: We'll have to have you uh back on the podcast later this year to hear more about how it's going.
• 30:16
  Speaker 2: I can't wait.
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: Awesome.
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: Well, that brings us to our amazing quickfire set of questions we like to do to get to know you better.
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: We just try to limit the answers to these to one short word, or one word or short phrase, so I will jump right into it.
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: How would you describe your work life?
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: So I will jump right into it.
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: How would you describe your work life?
• 30:40
  Speaker 2: That suggests there is no other life.
• 30:42
  Speaker 2: I'm 100% work.
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: If you have a day or a week off from work, what are you doing?
• 30:51
  Speaker 2: I would never take a day let alone a week off from work.
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: If you could live in any city or country, where would you want to live?
• 30:56
  Speaker 2: In American Airlines 757, so I can be connecting with my customers each week.
• 31:01
  Speaker 2: Nice, the airport.
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: If you could go back to school, what would you?
• 31:07
  Speaker 2: study.
• 31:09
  Speaker 2: I did go back to school.
• 31:10
  Speaker 2: I changed and started to study economics.
• 31:12
  Speaker 2: It was the greatest decision I ever made.
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: Awesome.
• 31:18
  Speaker 2: What facet of your job would you like to know more about?
• 31:22
  Speaker 2: I want to know how to motivate the brand manager to go have that aspiration of the first year they were in the business.
• 31:32
  Speaker 2: You know that person who's been there for 25 years.
• 31:34
  Speaker 2: What is the thing I say?
• 31:35
  Speaker 2: To go make them feel like it's year one again and we're focused on trying to move up the AOV by $2.
• 31:43
  Speaker 2: And remember that like reckless abandon, that's what I'm focused on.
• 31:46
  Speaker 2: That's what I want to learn how to do.
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: Awesome.
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: What facet of your job would you like to know less about?
• 31:53
  Speaker 2: God, we all have a CFO, don't we?
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: So what motivates you when you're tackling challenges at Bamboo?
• 32:02
  Speaker 2: IT is a powerful thing, but empowering a business user to be able to go affect change without having to get in line, that's what motivates me.
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: Awesome.
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: What do you draw inspiration from?
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: What lights your fire?
• 32:16
  Speaker 2: I am scared shitless of failure.
• 32:17
  Speaker 2: There's people who like to win.
• 32:20
  Speaker 2: There's people who hate to lose.
• 32:21
  Speaker 2: I am scared of losing, so I must win awesome.
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: What is your favorite sport or hobby?
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: I was a soccer player, but my true passion is in aviation and what do you typically think about at the end of the day?
• 32:42
  Speaker 2: I mean, if your day never ends, it's just kind of a circular process back to my first answer.
• 32:47
  Speaker 2: But really I go to bed thinking about how can I get and start my day off with something that is productive and affects our business.
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: Awesome.
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: Well, kyle, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with us today.
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: We really appreciate you coming on Leaders in Customer Loyalty.
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: It was great getting your perspective on the customer loyalty industry and the landscape, and we look forward to learning more from you and the team at Bamboo throughout the rest of the year.
• 33:14
  Speaker 2: Can't wait.
• 33:15
  Speaker 2: Love to join you again and thanks for having us, Ethan.
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: Awesome, and thank you everyone for tuning in to our Leaders in Customer Loyalty podcast series.
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: If you haven't already, please be sure you subscribe and follow us on YouTube and LinkedIn, and don't forget to come back every Tuesday for another episode of Industry Voices.
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: If you have questions, don't hesitate to reach out.