Let's Talk Loyalty

Lindsay Eichten is a seasoned loyalty executive across multiple industries, but in her role as Director CRM, Loyalty & Media, she leads a small team to deliver the launch of Fridays Rewards for the iconic brand, TGI Fridays.

Lindsay highlights that loyalty is a key strategic initiative for TGI Fridays, which therefore means she has the support and the focus on her team’s deliverables in this role. She emphasizes how starting the change management process with the chain’s front line staff has been critical to understand what makes a great restaurant loyalty experience and to get the buy in from the team at the front line.

Finally, Lindsay supports how important it is to secure the right technology partner, which can work on a global scale for a brand as expansive as TGI Fridays.

Hosted by Amanda Cromhout.

Show Notes:

1) Lindsay Eichten

2) TGI Fridays

3) NEW Fridays Rewards

4) Data Delivers

Yesway is one of the fastest-growing convenience chains in the United States, and was voted the U.S. Convenience Chain of the Year in 2021.

Tune in to hear Tom’s summary from the original podcast hosted by Paula Thomas featuring one of the leading marketers in U.S. convenience retail, Derek Gaskins, Chief Marketing Officer of Yesway.

Derek shares the exciting challenge of keeping customers loyal while acquiring new stores with products that customers love, and building a leading retail brand that combines the best of them all.

He also explains how Yesway have embraced loyalty at the heart of their business, and how they are leveraging their award-winning “Yesway Rewards” program to support their ambitious growth.

Hosted by Tom Peace

Show Notes:

1) ⁠Yesway⁠

2) Derek Gaskins⁠

3) Yesway Rewards

4) #204: Loyalty Lessons from "USA Convenience Chain of the Year" - Yesway

This episode features a multi-award-winning loyalty program from one of the leading retail, entertainment and hospitality conglomerates in the Middle East region.

Majid Al Futtaim was founded in 1992 and now employs more than 43,000 people, operating a portfolio of more than 270 outlets in 15 countries, including 25 shopping malls and 13 hotels, as well as holding the exclusive franchise for Carrefour supermarkets in 37 markets across the Middle East, Africa and Asia.

With such a huge portfolio of lifestyle brands, designing, developing and executing a successful loyalty program was an immense challenge for the group and yet, they have achieved huge success for this complex yet compelling multi-brand programme.

Joining me today to announce their latest awards and share some of the insights for the “Share” customer loyalty program is Kashmira Motiwalla, Group Head of Loyalty for the Majid Al Futtaim Group, based in Dubai.

Show Notes:

1) Kashmira Motiwalla

2) Majid Al Futtaim Group

3) Majid Al Futtaim Group's "Share" latest awards - The Marketing Society UAE

This episode focuses on the pan-European loyalty programme, Samsung Members, featuring expert commentary from Cathryn Lodwidge and Laura Moore.

Laura is the European Head of Customer Data-Driven Marketing Retention & Loyalty and Cathryn is the European Cross Channel Retention Lead at Samsung Electronics. They are very passionate about developing and delivering global loyalty solutions that delight customers across multiple markets and, under their stewardship, Samsung Members has gone from strength to strength.

They are key contributors to the “Understanding Loyalty in Europe” White Paper created by Mando-Connect in partnership with YouGov, which explores loyalty membership, appeal and impact across 24 European Markets.

Listen to learn about Samsung Members – what the programme proposition is, what the big new news is and how the programme adapts its approach to different local market needs across Europe.

Hosted by Charlie Hills.

Show Notes:

1) Cathryn Lodwidge

2) Laura Moore

3) European Loyalty Whitepaper

4) Mando-Connect

5) YouGov

In March 2022 Mando-Connect and YouGov launched their first report, “What Brits Want From Loyalty Programs Now“.

This comprehensive, independent research analyses the topics, attitudes, opinions and behaviours that are driving the loyalty industry today in the UK, one of the most sophisticated and diverse markets for the loyalty industry worldwide.

In this week’s episode of Let’s Talk “a little” Loyalty, Tom reviews the learnings from last years reports and looks at where we are a year on.

Tune in to hear Tom’s summary from the original podcast hosted by Paula Thomas and featuring Charlie Hills from Mando-Connect alongside Nick Fishbourne from YouGov.

Hosted by Tom Peace

Show Notes:

1) Mando-Connect

2) YouGov⁠

2) Charlie Hills

3) ⁠Nick Fishbourne

4) “What Brits Want From Loyalty Programs Now” Research Report

5) #203: Groundbreaking Research on What Brits Want From Loyalty

This episode features one of the loyalty industry’s leading strategy experts!

Shannon Ottinger is the Vice President of Loyalty Consulting at Epsilon, based in Atlanta, and in this episode, she shares some extraordinary

experience and insights on the key loyalty concepts that brands are excited about in our industry in 2023.

Listen to hear how Epsilon is helping clients begin to measure *emotional* loyalty, a concept we all know is absolutely critical to focus on with our members, but it can be extremely hard to create emotional loyalty and even harder to measure it!

Shannon also shares how brands are thinking about localizing their global loyalty strategies as well as other exciting examples of some exceptional loyalty programs she admires around the world.

This episode is sponsored by Epsilon.

Show Notes:

1) Shannon Ottinger

2) Epsilon

3) Forrester Research Report: Epsilon named a Leader in The Forrester WaveTM: Loyalty Technology Solutions, Q1 2023

This episode is focused on the role of customer communications in driving customer loyalty.

Rick Ferguson is a loyalty thought leader, with proven success in transforming traditional corporate communications into innovative, storytelling content across multiple platforms on a global scale.

Today, he shares insights from his more than 20 years’ experience, including a reminder of the three fundamental drivers of customer loyalty - trust, commitment and reciprocity.

We also discuss how our member communications can drive emotional loyalty - a lever that's often neglected as a way to optimize our programs.

Show Notes:

1) Rick Ferguson

2) Phabolousity

Loyalty programmes are traditionally designed to retain customers, but rarely is that incredible data used by marketing teams to inform how they run acquisition campaigns to ensure they focus on “profitable” new customers – quality over quantity!

This technique has proved invaluable as cookies have disappeared from the toolset that digital marketers have relied on for so many years.

In this week’s episode of Let’s Talk “a little” Loyalty, Tom showcases how we can all use the data and profiles of your most valuable loyalty programme members to help acquire new customers with the same profit potential, from the original podcast hosted by Paula Thomas and featuring Joseph Taylor, previously SVP of Strategic Consulting and Operations for Epsilon.

Joseph shares real case studies and examples of brands who have already leverages this clever idea – so you can too!

Hosted by Tom Peace

Show Notes:

1) Joseph Taylor

2) Epsilon Guide to Personalisation

3) ⁠Epsilon

4) #201: Leveraging Known Customer Data to Acquire New Members

Today we are showcasing lessons and learnings from this year finalists who are each hoping to win one of the highly prestigious “International Loyalty Awards” being announced in London in June 2023.

Our guest is David Parker, the Chair of the Judging Panel for the Awards.

David is the CEO of Polymath Consulting, and an active fintech investor and advisor, with many years of expertise across some of the world’s best-known

advertising agencies and building loyalty programs in global markets.

David joins us to highlight the exciting trends that emerged from this year’s highly anticipated judging day.

I hope you enjoy his insights from the Finalists of the 2023 International Loyalty Awards.

Show Notes:

1) David Parker

2) Polymath Consulting

3) International Loyalty Awards

ASDA is one of the UK's biggest grocery retailers, and in late 2022, with over seventy years already as a market leader, ASDA launched its first loyalty programme.

ASDA Rewards is undoubtedly one of the most exciting loyalty programme launches in recent memory, given how well-known and well-loved this brand is with the British public, and it’s the last of the big grocery retailers in the country to launch a loyalty proposition.

In this episode we meet Matt McLellan, a Vice President for Asda in the UK, who shares the thinking, approach and intentions for ASDA Rewards, and its "Pounds Not Points" proposition.

Listen to learn how clearly this brand is devoted to delighting its customers, and how it's leveraging the power of data and creating a dialogue with its customers in order to achieve that.

Show Notes:

1) Matt McLellan

2) ASDA

3) ASDA Rewards