Greetings and welcome to the Loyalty program builders podcast. Here, we collaborate with top loyalty experts to tackle business and technical challenges in loyalty program development and operation, guided by a robust customer loyalty strategy.
In this episode, we talk with the specialist Adam Posner about practical ways to engage your loyalty program team, with a focus on in-store loyalty programs.
Who is the customer loyalty expert?
Adam Posner, founder and CEO of The Point of Loyalty, is a seasoned data-driven marketer with over 25 years of experience. He specializes in helping businesses develop profitable customer loyalty and retention strategies.
Adam has worked with organizations like Westpac Group, Quest Hotels Apartments, Forever New Fashion, Bed, Bath 'n Table, and many more.
Since 2013, he has authored For Love or Money, an in-depth Australian customer loyalty and loyalty program research study.
What you will learn about empowering your loyalty team
Adam talks about the loyalty team and the importance of each person. Fostering the team's loyalty and commitment is a core part when building a successful loyalty program for any company.
He uses his vast background in loyalty and speaking to teach complex subjects in a simple-to-understand manner. You will learn about "moneymoon" (the loyalty honeymoon period) and a handy roadmap to foster loyalty champions.
Finally, you will also hear about real-life case studies that will inspire you to put these strategies into action in the best ways possible to achieve repeat purchases and success.
You can listen to the full episode on Spotify, Apple Music, Google Podcasts, and here:
Key takeaways
- The first 90 days of a program naturally have high internal engagement. Companies need to find ways to keep the momentum after that
- Five steps to build up engagement:
- Enroll - The team must be active in the program to know it well, but be mindful of fraud risks for a safer experience.
- Educate - The team needs to understand, in essence, the benefits of the program to the members, along with common concerns and sales questions.
- Expect - Set KPIs, such as the number of signups, to measure progress.
- Excite - Bring in incentive programs to drive up engagement and dedication. They must feel the motivation to provide support.
- Empower - Create a system (e.g. point budget) where team members have leeway to surprise customers with responsibility.
Three actions to start today and foster loyalty teamwork and collaboration
- Team members are loyalty managers: Remember their importance and prepare the strategy accordingly.
- Remind members: Add triggers that prompt loyal customers about the loyalty program every time they are identified (e.g. when scanning their digital card at the POS).
- Facilitate "magic moments": Give team members a points budget and encourage them to interact with customers responsibly.
Loyalty program inspiration corner
"When launching a program, we have what we call the "first 90 days". I call it the 'moneymoon' period."
"Can you imagine that every single one of those team members at point of sale is seen as loyalty managers, managing the loyalty of their customers? It's so empowering. It's so strong."
"At point of sale, you should have the data that tells me straight away, 'Hi, I'm Adam. I'm four bonus points away from my next reward.'"
Full episode transcript
The following transcript has been edited for clarity.
Irek: When we talk about loyalty team, what do you mean by the team exactly, or who do you mean by the team, and why is it so important?
Adam: The team consists of both layers of human beings in the organization, first, internally, across all departments within the internal business.
But the team also means those that are at a store level. And as we've been discussing, this is more retail-oriented, those businesses that have a retail-based business where you've got stores and team members in the stores serving customers every day.
The team can be internal, which could also include customer service, who are managing calls and/or online inquiries. But the team that I'm fundamentally talking about are those customer-facing, that live and breathe every day and wake up every day to serve customers and members at point of sale in the stores. So those are the ones that I wanted to talk about more so today.
Irek: Thank you. So why is this team so important? I know that it's a very basic question, but I still want to make sure that we cover as many aspects as possible.
Adam: I think that every question needs to be asked. And I don't think it's as basic as you might say. I think it's more critical that we keep asking because they are the ones that, in essence, keep the program alive.
You're going to have the technology. You're going to have all the AI-triggered communications and the data-driven comms. But at the store level, you've still got the human being that says, "Would you like to join?"
And when launching a program, we have what we call the "first 90 days". A lot of people call, as I say, the "90-day period", but I call it the "moneymoon" period. It's a name that I came up with many years ago when I did my first early-stage loyalty studies called For Love or Money, which, in essence, is this period where everybody's so hyped up and excited at the launch of a program. And they're engaging members. They're signing them up.
But the "moneymoon" period ends or the engagement cliff kicks in soon after 90 days is usually the period, in which case the team members become so important to maintain the money moon period. Really, it's layers on layers and layers over the lifespan of the loyalty program's successes.
How do we engage the team members so that they continue to be motivated and have belief and buy into the program for the lifespan of a program? And these are the team members that I'm talking about today. Those are the ones that are literally at the point of sale in the stores.
Irek: Sure, as you said, it's critical, and I also learned about loyalty programs from the team, actually. Long before I checked the website, it was actually the store. It's the place where I learn about the programs, and depending on how I'm invited to the program, I will decide, "Okay, is it worth it or not?" So I totally understand it. It's absolutely critical.
Process to build loyalty internally. E1 - Enroll
So, how do you build a team of loyalty champions? I know that you have a process for that.
Adam: Yeah, I do have a process, and it's called the "Four Times E Loyalty Champion Process." And let me go through those for you and for your audience.
E1 is called Enroll. Are your team members actually enrolled in your loyalty program? Are they actually members of the program themselves? Now, this is a tricky one. Because some programs actually incentivize their team members, their employees with different kinds of incentives.
And so then you've got to be really careful about team members enrolling in your program. And there have been case studies where team members game the program. There could be fraud risks.
You've got to be really careful about if you're asking your team to enroll and become a member of the program: what kind of program and how would you manage that? So it's not everybody enrolls all of their team in the program, but it would be a great way because
If you enroll in the program yourself, then you know the experience and what the benefits are. You've been through it yourself, and there's nothing better than having practically been through it. But E1 is called Enroll.
Process to build loyalty internally. E2 - Educate
E2 is called Educate. This E, Educate, means the team member needs to know what this program is. We really need to understand, in essence, the benefits of the program to the members.
In my For Love or Money study, the latest one, the For Love or Money 2023, where I do the research study, for the very first time, I asked loyalty program members, "Do the loyalty teams influence members? And what are the factors that influence people to engage in a program?"
I looked at two elements: acquiring new members to a program and engaging members ongoing in a program. I'm going to ask loyalty program members, what were the four factors that influenced them to sign up for a program? Well, they covered all four areas. One was, did they ask them to join? Was it easy to join? Did the team members have enthusiasm? Were they excited about the program? And did they have knowledge about the program, those four factors?
And we found in our study that these four factors really are very equally weighted. In fact, the most important one was "making it easy for you to join." Then it was knowledge, and then it was enthusiasm, and then "proactively asking you to join." But really, it's all four.
And you've got to come up with this, what I call the 25 words or less, or the 10- or 15-second proposition, that at point of sale, you can say, "Hi, Irek, are you a member of this program? Did you know that you earn this with this every time you do that? And it's an amazing program. All you've got to do is give me this piece of data, and you're in."
That's 10 seconds or 15 seconds. So we've got to have that proactive statement, that proactive proposition with enthusiasm and knowledge. And asking members to join.
And so E2 is Educate, getting your team member right across their proposition so that in 10 seconds or less, or 25 words or less, they can explain everything and be excited, which is one of the Es that I'm going to bring up in a moment.
Process to build loyalty internally. E3 - Expect
I've been through Enroll and Educate. Then, E3 is Expect. We need to get our team members to understand why we have a loyalty program. What's the benefit to the business?
We've explained to them the benefits to customers and they know those benefits like the back of their hands. They can sleep and dream about them and say them in their sleep. But why do they care about engaging their customers to join the program? What's in it for the business? And knowing and setting those KPIs and those expectations.
Setting KPIs for an engaged loyal team
So I know it sounds straightforward, but maybe it's signups, and maybe it's scan rates, and maybe other elements to setting expectations.
You could keep it simple. It's just a matter of every day, in every way, asking your customers, "Are you a member?"
And so E3 is expect. So it is Enroll, Educate, and Expect.
Process to build loyalty internally. E4 - Excite
And E4 of my 4E process is Excite. Are they excited about the program? Are they enthused, excited? Do they really think it's of great benefit to the customer?
And this is when you bring in incentive programs and ways.
One example I can give you is that we did a very exciting internal promotion for a loyalty program where for every member that the team member signed up, that team member actually also went into a draw. The more people they signed up, the more opportunities the team members had to win this amazing prize. So they got excited. They were motivated, they got incentivized, and they'd signed up members. And we had a huge spike in signups to a program.
Process to build loyalty internally. E5 - Empower
And also it's also about empowering. So it could be a fifth E, actually. I didn't realize, but maybe we've got five Es, but this fifth one I've just made up on the moment, which is: how do you empower your team with moments of magic? Well, I call them Joyalty. You've heard me talk about Joyalty.
This is an example: I can give you a little bit of a bank of bonus points to give away at their discretion, as they wish. The planned spontaneity you've heard me talk about, or we've discussed before, with giving back to members, but at retail, at point of sale level. Yes, you can manage that. You can give them a budget. You can give them a planned number of bonus points.
How amazing would it be, Irek, if you walked into the store where you're a member of, and maybe you didn't have the most amazing experience, or something went wrong, and the team member says, "Hey, Irek, I've just credited your account an extra five euros or extra five bonus points." Amazing. At that moment, at the discretion of the team member. Again, planned spontaneity. You can bring in those royalty moments with your team.
So maybe we've got a fifth E here, which is empowerment. So the four Es typically are Enroll, Educate, Expect, and Excite. And Empower is now the new one. Thanks to you for asking me this. What you thought was a basic question but really is really important.
Tips to improve content in POS and related projects
Irek: I really like it, especially if you think about your local community. So then, if you empower the team to decide on their own how to manage a certain budget of points. Definitely, it just creates so many possibilities, and it just creates opportunities for exceptional customer experience.
Adam: Exceptional customer experience exactly.
And this can be triggered at point of sale. I mean, you're the technology experts. At point of sale, you can have nags, call-outs, or triggers that every time identify me as a member at point of sale, whether it's because you asked me for my email or I scanned my digital card.
But at point of sale, you should have the data that tells me straight away, "Hi, I'm Adam. I'm four bonus points away from my next reward."
Can you imagine if you say to me, "Hi, Adam, did you know you're only four bonus points away from a $10 reward? And if you buy this, you'll get that reward now. And by the way, did you know that you've got a birthday reward coming up, as well as another $5 reward waiting for you?"
That engagement can happen because it's triggered by data triggered at point of sale. And it's incredible. If you can tell customers, remember how many rewards they've earned to date and what's still waiting for them. It's just so powerful, the psychology behind both of those. And I know it can because I do it already. I know it can be triggered at point of sale.
Case study 1 - empowering team members with year-long program
Irek: Absolutely, absolutely. Thank you. So we have the five Es. It's Enroll, Educate, Expect, Excite and Empower. I really like it because it's simple yet very actionable. So I'm pretty sure that our audience can benefit from it right away. But do you have any examples? I'm a huge fan of case studies. I'm a huge fan of use cases. So, do you have any examples that could actually bring those Es to life?
Adam: Yeah, I have got a couple that are a few that I'd like to share with you.
The first is: I've got a client in hospitality, and they have over 40 hospitality venues. And what we've done over the last four years, if we built a loyalty champion program, which encompasses pretty much all of those, in fact, all of those keys.
This program is taking a key person from each of the venues and getting them to nominate themselves to become a loyalty champion. That's the first little clue there: they've all been nominated to become part of this program.
And it's not just a one-off. It's a full-year program where we not only educate and excite them (and, as I've mentioned, Explain and Expect), but we take them on road shows to other loyalty venues to see what loyalty programs they're doing. We take them to events to educate them on loyalty more than just what's happening in their own little venues.
It's a whole program, a whole strategy embedded throughout the loyalty program. And every year, year after year, people are actually very excited to join and become a loyalty champion.
It's been a very successful program because we've seen activations at the different venues all motivated by these champions. And they're proud to be champions. In fact, at the end of the year, we have an award evening, and we give loyalty champion of the year awards and prizes. So there are incentives. That's the other E of Excitement.
So this is a full strategy that we've been going for now for almost five years with this client that I work with. And it's a very successful strategy. So that's one example.
Case study 2 - seeing team as loyalty managers
I recently interviewed, and your listeners could download and have a look at a blog article I wrote on loyalty leaders of a very well-known loyalty program here in Australia called Rebel Active, which is a chain of stores, of sports stores. The head of loyalty said something really, really important to me about their team at Point of Sale. She said to me, "Our team members are all loyalty managers."
I love that. Can you imagine that every single one of those team members at point of sale is seen as loyalty managers, managing the loyalty of their customers? It's so empowering. It's so strong. When the leader said to me, "Our team are loyalty managers," I just thought that, just that phrasing, that essence, was so powerful. And that case study, your listeners can have a read of my website.
Read the blog: Rosemary Martin – a Loyalty Leader with a passion for art, human behaviour, and balancing commercial reality with customer centricity
Case study 3 - creating one of the best moments
And the third example I'm going to give you is in my royalty paper that I know you recently downloaded, and other people can download. This pet business called Pet Circle had a program called Wow Moments, in which they empowered their team to give something at their discretion to their customers. In fact, they won a big award for this program because of how their team members were empowered to engage with customers.
Maybe something had gone wrong with a delivery, and they gave them something. Maybe the customer wasn't having a great day, and they gave them something. Or something happened with their pet, and they gave them something. All of what I would call empowering moments for the team across their customer base.
And that case study you can read about in my Joyalty paper.
Your 2023 guide to a Joyalty* Program (it's joyfully free)
Study cases recap
So, there were three examples.
One that I've worked with for the last five years, and it's a full strategy.
One, coming from a brand that's very successful here and how they talk about their team as being loyalty managers.
And another one which was empowering a team through what they called wow moments and having huge success. They said something to the effect that they've given over 400 wow moments to their customers in a period that was being assessed.
Planned spontaneity in practice
Irek: Great, thank you so much for sharing. I really love it. Yeah, it totally makes sense to think about your team as loyalty managers because, in fact, these are the people who manage the community. These are the people who invite people to join the program. And yeah, they totally manage the loyalty community. So this is excellent. That's a really great example. Thank you so much. And I love the idea of empowering the team.
So, and I've seen it, it's actually huge, and it doesn't belong to loyalty alone. I think that any sort of situation where you can come up with ideas for empowering the team is always beneficial for the business.
Adam: Yeah. And back to this comment about what I call plan spontaneity. I've often had a little bit of pushback. Well, how do we manage that? Well, you manage it through planning the spontaneity. You plan the budget, you allocate that across your network or your business, and you monitor it because it can be monitored through the data, through the point of sale, through the connection with the member.
In fact, in Australia, there's another program called the Good Acts Program, driven by a very big retail grocery group called Woolworths. And they have a good act program where they empower their team to do something special for a customer, again, at their discretion.
And I saw a lot of great examples of how they did that through COVID with a little gift, a chocolate bar, and an order, and they also know the data that this was the 11th order and a little handwritten note with a bunch of flowers saying, "Hi, Irek. Thanks for this order. This is your 11th order, and here are some flowers and some chocolate for you."
So, imagine that arriving at your front door. That's just magic. That's what I call moments of magic. That's what I call joyalty. But it's all done through planned spontaneity.
Irek: I love this concept. I know that it is an oxymoron, and you've said it right away, but it definitely helps you think about it in a way that it actually becomes possible. So you can plan spontaneity.
Adam: Correct, I love it, yeah. And you're right. You can make it happen.
Irek: Okay, so thank you so much. I think that we have covered everything we wanted to. Is there anything else you would like to share with the audience before we wrap up?
Adam: No, I don't think so. I just think that you've had some great guests talking about strategy. We've really gone deep on the team.
The importance of the team
I just cannot explain how important that team member is. And I know they've got so many things to remember. Not only do they have to look after stock and serve customers, and they've got so many things to remember.
But clearly, when you know you've got 100 or 200 or 500 stores, and you've got thousands of people. Well, you can systemize the process, and you can manage the process, and you can report on the process.
But they are human beings, and seeing them as loyalty managers, as that case study from that interview that I gave, looking at the five Es that I've mentioned and fifth, by the way, was a new one today, never been said before. So you've got a bonus on this podcast.
Recap and conclusion
But just to remind everybody, it's Enroll, it's Educate, it's Expect, Excite. And then it's Empower, as we've discussed today. Irek, thanks so much for the opportunity to share with you and your audience the power of the team and building a team of loyalty champions.
Irek: Thank you so much for sharing, Adam. I'm sure that it's going to be actionable, and our audience will use it to improve their loyalty program performance.
Adam: Thanks, Irek.
