Let's Talk Loyalty

Nancy Clark, Vice President of Loyalty Partnerships at Emirates Skywards, joins Lisa Brightwell on this episode to reveal how strategic partnerships drive member engagement, commercial growth and loyalty beyond the flight.

Discover why quality matters more than quantity, how AI is transforming personalisation, and what it takes to build a partnership ecosystem that delivers real value.

Hosted by Lisa Brightwell

Show Notes:

1) Nancy Clark

2) Emirates Skywards

3) Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter by Liz Wiseman

Fiona Clifford, Member Engagement and Marketing Manager at Supercheap Auto, joins Carly Neubauer to share how the Supercheap Auto Club transformed its loyalty proposition for over 5 million active members.

Recognised as Best Loyalty Program in APAC at the ORIAS 2026, the programme continues to evolve, balancing customer value with commercial performance through a simpler rewards model and data-driven personalisation.

Hosted by Carly Neubauer

Show Notes:

1) Fiona Clifford

2) Super Cheap Auto

3) Be the Unicorn (Book Recommendation)

Vuyo Henda is a decorated marketing leader. She is passionate about loyalty and this shows in her leadership of the Spur Family Card loyalty programme, Africa’s leading restaurant loyalty brand. Vuyo’s insights from this show cover the importance of operational delivery of the loyalty strategy and how to create magic at a store level.

Hosted by Amanda Cromhout

Show Notes:

1)Vuyo Henda

2)Spur Corporation

3) Spur Family Card loyalty programme,

4) Good Strategy Bad Strategy (Book Recommendation)

How can brands balance customer loyalty with profitability?

Carly Neubauer speaks with Roz Travers-Hucker, Head of Marketing at Canningvale Australia, about using customer data, relevant rewards and emotional connections to drive sustainable growth.

Roz shares lessons from Best Friends Group’s paid membership program and Canningvale’s Home Lovers Club, exploring loyalty economics, customer engagement, and the importance of creating value for both customers and the business.

Show Notes:

1) Roz Travers-Hucker

2) Canningvale Australia

3) Home Lovers Club

4) FYI: For Your Improvement (Book Recommendation)

What does it take to build a loyalty strategy that delivers more than points, discounts and transactions?

Bridget Blaise-Shamai speaks with Jacek Materna, CEO of TrueLoyal, about the evolution of modern loyalty — from customer communities and authentic advocacy to gamification, UGC and connecting online and offline behaviour.

Jacek shares real-world examples from brands including Nestlé Purina, Hero Cosmetics and more, while explaining why incrementality and measurable lift should be at the heart of every loyalty investment.They also explore how brands can turn customer communities into a source of insight, content, engagement and acquisition — and why the future of loyalty is about creating experiences that genuinely earn customer commitment.

Hosted by Bridget Blaise-Shamai

This episode is sponsored by TrueLoyal

Show Notes:

1) Jacek Materna

2) TrueLoyal

3) Good to Great - Book Recommendation

Chili’s sold close to 30 million margaritas last year — more than any other restaurant brand in the United States. The brand has just closed its twenty-first consecutive quarter of same-store sales growth. And the loyalty program sitting underneath that run has spent the last two years getting simpler, not bigger.

Aaron Dauphinee at Wise Marketer Group sits down with Nicholas Kerr, Director of Loyalty and Growth Marketing at Chili’s. (Brinker International)

And casual dining may be one of the hardest categories for loyalty. Visit frequency is low, margins are thin, the consumer has been trained on discounts for forty years, and the experience is delivered by people rather than an app. The reflex in that environment is to add: more points, more tiers, more offers. BUT Chili’s went the other way! Listen in to learn how and why.

Hosted by Aaron Dauphinee, CLMP™

Show Notes:

1) Nicholas Kerr

2) Chili’s. (Brinker International)

3) Die with Zero (Book Recommendation)

4) Our Previous Episode with Nicholas Kerr

Fresh from the 8th South African Loyalty Awards and International Leaders in Loyalty Summit in Cape Town, Lisa Brightwell sits down with Amanda Cromhout, CEO & Founder of Truth Loyalty and Chair of the South African Loyalty Awards, to reflect on one of the biggest moments in the South African loyalty calendar.

Amanda shares the standout insights from the summit, from AI and consumer psychology to loyalty economics, customer lifetime value and the power of ecosystems. She also takes us behind the scenes of the awards, including why FNB eBucks and Shoprite Xtra Savings continue to stand out, what challenger brands can do to get noticed, and why the awards celebrate commended and highly commended teams alongside category winners.

The conversation also looks at how the International Leaders in Loyalty Summit has evolved from a small classroom gathering into a global loyalty community—and what Amanda hopes to bring to its next chapter.

Hosted by Lisa Brightwell.

Show Notes:

1)Amanda Cromhout

2) International Leaders in Loyalty Summit in Cape Town

3)South African Loyalty Awards

4) Truth Loyalty

5) The Courage to be Disliked - Book Recommendation

Our guest today is Megan Chickrell, Sr. Manager, Loyalty Strategy Ahold Delhaize USA. Megan is a dynamic marketer and a force in the grocery sector, just named as one of Progressive Grocer's 2026 Top Women in Grocery: Rising Stars! Ahold Delhaize USA is a division of global food retailer Ahold Delhaize operating multiple brands in the US which taken together comprise the largest grocery retail group on the East Coast and the fourth largest in the nation.

Megan was interviewed in October 2024 by Paula Thomas, where they talked through current loyalty initiatives at Ahold Delhaize USA. In this episode, host Bill Hanifin, CEO Wise Marketer Group expands on this conversation, discussing the evolution of loyalty and personalization, how customer expectations are evolving alongside technology and AI, and the unique opportunities and challenges for customer marketing in the grocery sector.

Note: A small portion of the audio in this episode has been adjusted using AI voice cloning to correct a few mispronounced words. This was used only to fix pronunciation — the content, meaning, and speakers' original statements remain exactly as recorded. No AI-generated commentary or altered content has been added.

Show Notes:

1) Megan Chickrell

2) Ahold Delhaize USA.

3) The Calamity Club

What happens when points, discounts and rewards are no longer enough to earn lasting customer loyalty?

Elie Carrier-Walker, Vice President, International Client Services, Loyalty at Epsilon, explores how loyalty is evolving from a traditional marketing programme into a strategic business capability.

Elie shares why successful loyalty strategies need to go beyond transactional rewards to build trust, emotional connection and long-term brand preference. We discuss the balance between transactional and emotional loyalty, the role of brand reliability, and why loyalty needs to be embedded across the wider business — not treated as simply another marketing initiative.

We also explore some of the most common reasons loyalty programmes fail to deliver lasting value, and what brands can do differently to create stronger customer relationships and sustainable growth.

This episode is sponsored by Epsilon. Epsilon has been helping clients deliver on their loyalty objectives globally for more than 50 years. Today, Epsilon Loyalty combines deep loyalty expertise with market leading technology to create growth-based programmes that fundamentally change habits and deliver measurable long-term value.

Hosted by Charlie Hills

Show Notes:

1)Elie Carrier-Walker

2)Epsilon

3)The Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns.

What happens when a loyalty programme becomes deeply connected to the brand customers already love?

In this episode we are joined by Pascale McBain, Head of Digital Customer Experience at Baker’s Delight, to explore how Dough Getters is strengthening customer relationships across more than 500 bakeries in Australia.

Pascal shares how Baker’s Delight uses loyalty data to understand customer behaviour, why research revealed that awareness—not rewards—was the biggest opportunity, and how Dough Getters is driving emotional connection, advocacy and commercial value.

She also discusses the importance of simplicity and frictionless experiences, the role of personalisation, engaging franchisees across a complex network, and how customer data is shaping the future of the programme.

A fascinating conversation about building loyalty by combining brand love, customer insight, simplicity and meaningful rewards.

Hosted by Carly Neubauer

Show Notes:

1) Pascale McBai

2)Baker’s Delight

3) Dough Getters

4) The Chimp Paradox by Professor Steve Peters (Book Recommendation)