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The philosophy “the customer is always right” drives many marketers to value client, patron, and guest feedback.
Piada Italian Street Food, known for its fresh Italian-inspired menu, has steadily expanded since its founding in 2010, now operating in seven states with plans for continued growth. The brand has made it a priority to listen closely to customer feedback, leveraging data-driven insights to enhance both its on-site and digital experiences. As loyalty programs evolve, Piada has embraced gamification, flexible reward redemption, and exclusive offers to engage guests more deeply.
Loyalty360 recently spoke with Jason Profitt, VP of Technology at Piada Italian Street Food, about their latest loyalty program updates aimed at delivering a more personalized, seamless experience for customers. -
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When a large financial institution decides to enhance the construction of its customer loyalty program, it can be challenging. Yet repositioning a program in a highly competitive Canadian market where large coalition programs are inter-matched with traditional brand-based customer loyalty efforts can be even more daunting. One of the ways to measure how brands enhance customer loyalty efforts is to look at the program’s metrics and KPIs. Another is to take home multiple awards at Loyalty360’s 2024 Loyalty Expo. Nothing says success quite like the recognition from your peers within the customer loyalty industry!
To learn more about this award-winning program, Loyalty360 recently spoke with Avery Miller, VP of Avion Rewards Digital Product, at the Royal Bank of Canada (RBC). Miller “grew up” in the financial services industry in the payment space, working for a relatively large issuer in the U.S. He joined RBC about two years ago to lead the digital product for their freshly revamped Avion Rewards.
In this interview, Miller discusses the award-winning Avion Rewards program, creating emotional loyalty, and growing relationships with non-RBC clients.
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Founded in 1993, The Lacek Group designs, builds, and maintains loyalty programs for top brands across the globe. As part of the Ogilvy network, the Lacek team converts disconnected tech stacks and processes into successful CRM programs powered by data-driven strategies. The company helps brands deliver relevant messaging at scale across channels to ensure connected, seamless experiences. The company works across a broad range of industries, including travel, financial services, hospitality, cruise lines, QSR, retail, automotive, health care, telecommunications, CPG, and more.
Loyalty360 spoke with Todd Hedberg, Senior Director of Digital Strategy at The Lacek Group. Hedberg has been with Lacek for just over three years and is still relatively new to the marketing side. He defines customer loyalty as an opportunity to strengthen customer bonds—both emotionally and transactionally—in every customer interaction. Hedberg and the Lacek team aspire to help clients achieve brand devotion with their customers.
In this article, Hedberg discusses working with clients to achieve deeper personalization, how artificial intelligence and machine learning fit into the equation, and going deeper to mine individual customer preferences.
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Inspired by its San Antonio roots, Church’s Texas Chicken® has served flavorful fried chicken for over 72 years. Founded by George W. Church in a location across the street from the iconic Alamo, the restaurant was first known as Church’s Fried Chicken To-Go®. Today, there are 800 Church’s locations in the U.S., spanning 25 states plus Washington D.C. Outside of the U.S., the brand is known as Texas Chicken® and can be found in more than 23 countries and regions, including Canada, Mexico, New Zealand, the Middle East, and more.
Loyalty360 recently spoke with Jessica Wu-McConnell, Vice President Digital and Loyalty at Church’s. With just over a year at the brand, Wu-McConnell’s role is to ensure guests are presented with the easiest, fastest, and most rewarding ways to enjoy Church’s menu.
In this interview, Wu-McConnell discusses the newly launched Church’s REAL REWARDSTM program, prioritizing a true omnichannel experience to better serve all guests, and educating team members so they can communicate the value of the program.
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Founded in 2008, WillowTree was built on a heritage of mobile applications. While the company still engages in much of that work, it’s grown into other areas in support of brands, including strategy and consulting, data and artificial intelligence (AI), digital marketing, loyalty program design, and more. WillowTree works alongside brands to develop successful loyalty programs and, in many cases, administers them. The company works in a variety of industries, including Financial Services, Health Care, Telecom, Travel and Hospitality, Food Service, and Retail and Consumer Goods, among others.
Loyalty360 spoke with Caitlin Watson, Partner, Marketing Services, and David Shaw, VP, Business Development, at WillowTree. Watson has been with the company for the last three years, helping to develop the company’s marketing services department—specifically in the areas of loyalty, strategy, and technology—while also working to build out MarTech services, CRM, lifecycle, and all elements of the customer journey. Shaw has led insight and strategy teams for his whole career. At WillowTree, he leverages his experience in strategy development to help determine how the company can go to market with individual companies and with specific vertical strategies—many of which involve loyalty. -
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Founded by William Carter, children’s apparel retailer Carter’s is nearly a 165-year-old company that helps parents navigate parenthood. Today, the company operates more than 1,000 stores worldwide. Carter’s family of brands—including Carter’s, OshKosh B’gosh, Little Planet, and Skip Hop—are recognized across the globe and available online and in Carter’s owned stores, while exclusive lines can be found at the brand’s retail partners, such as Walmart, Target, and Amazon.
To learn about the recent updates to Carter’s loyalty program and how the brand is intentionally addressing the challenges and perceptions of parenthood, Loyalty360 spoke with Jeff Jenkins, CMO at Carter’s. Jenkins is an acclaimed marketing professional with extensive experience in multiple industries and has been with Carter’s for five years. In his role, he oversees marketing, brand strategy, customer insights, business intelligence, communications, creative, visual merchandising, PR and customer service experience, and more.In this interview, Jenkins discusses the concept behind the “More Than Just Cute” campaign, appealing to the next generation of customers, and how platform integration needs to work in a martech stack to create a seamless customer experience.
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Hilton is a leading global hospitality company with 24 world-class brands for all guests’ stay needs at over 7,800 properties across 126 countries and territories. Through acquisitions that allow for more destination choices, technology innovations that make processes easier for guests, and brand partnerships that offer guests and Hilton Honors members even more benefits and perks, Hilton has set the bar high for what it means to truly deliver an elevated customer experience.
As a hospitality brand, the goal is to make the stay better for guests in almost every corner of the world. This includes loyalty program design, enhancing the value proposition and loyalty redemption, and making travel more seamless and flexible for program members.
To learn about Hilton’s latest customer loyalty and experience efforts, Mark Johnson, CEO of Loyalty360, spoke with Brad Anderson, Vice President of Hilton Honors at Hilton. Anderson joined Hilton nearly eight years ago and leads the overall global strategy for the brand’s award-winning loyalty program, Hilton Honors, which now reaches more than 195 million members worldwide. Since joining the company, Anderson and his team have charted new courses for the program, achieving massive growth—almost 130 million new members.
In this interview, Anderson discusses the brand’s growing portfolio, establishing the right strategic partnerships, and speaking the language of Gen Z and Millennial travelers through digital innovation. -
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Paris Baguette specializes in whole cakes, pastries, and breads, as well as artisan coffees, sandwiches, and other savory items. Globally, the brand has over 4,000 locations. In North America, the brand currently counts almost 200 locations.
To learn about Paris Baguette’s recent changes to its loyalty program as part of a broader effort to enhance the overall guest experience, Loyalty360 spoke with Cathy Chavenet, Paris Baguette’s North America Chief Marketing Officer. Chavenet is a seasoned marketing professional with extensive experience in the food service industry, particularly in the coffee and snack shop sector. At Paris Baguette, Chavenet is responsible for brand marketing initiatives and menu innovation.
In this interview, Chavenet discusses the brand’s updated rewards program, approaching challenges while leveraging opportunities in technology, and building emotional loyalty by creating joyful experiences for guests. -
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JOANN is an iconic 80-year-old brand that’s continued to succeed over the years by prioritizing relevancy with each new generation. JOANN operates approximately 850 stores in 49 states, and while the brand is the number one retailer in “all things fabric and sewing,” it also carries a large assortment of crafts, arts and crafts, and seasonal decor for customers.
The brand has learned that while trends may change over the years, in its industry, millions of people remain hardwired to create items with their hands, minds, and hearts. The team at JOANN believes how a customer is served will make or break a customer loyalty program and focuses on delivering exceptional customer service in support of its Smiles Rewards program. This is one of the reasons for JOANN’s longevity in retail.
While the brand has remained relevant in its authenticity with its customers, as the decades have passed, creators have evolved, too. More than ever, with a new generation of customers seeking to express themselves and connect with their communities through creative efforts, JOANN must ensure it is delivering the right message in the right channels to successfully engage younger creators while maintaining its connection to customers who have come to JOANN for decades.
Mark Johnson, CEO of Loyalty360, spoke with Chris DiTullio, Chief Customer Officer at JOANN, about the retailer’s rebranding as “JO-AND,” serving the next wave of creators, and how the customer experience makes way for emotional loyalty. -
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Edible Brands was founded in 1999 by Tariq Farid, and the company has revolutionized the gifting industry by merging the innovation of a powerful e-commerce platform with locally owned brick-and-mortar locations worldwide. The brand’s expansive footprint and delivery network sets it apart. Edible can deliver to 80% of U.S. households in an hour.
Seeking to ensure that the brand was truly meeting the expectations and demands of an increasingly busy consumer, Edible recently launched a new brand within its portfolio: FreshFruit.com, a direct-to-consumer fruit delivery service. Ease of ordering, quality, and a frictionless experience are designed to enhance relationships with consumers while strengthening emotional loyalty.
Mark Johnson, CEO of Loyalty360, spoke with Lindsey Servold, Director of Marketing at Edible Brands. Servold’s role encompasses a wide range of responsibilities to drive brand growth and enhance market presence. This includes managing integrated marketing strategies and overseeing the execution to help propel the company’s goals and vision forward.
In this interview, Servold shares more about the new FreshFruit.com brand, growing emotional loyalty through delivering quality and delight, and investing in world-class technology in-house.
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Harps Food Stores was founded in 1930 by Harvard and Floy Harp. Today, headquartered in Springdale, Arkansas, the grocery retailer counts 147 stores in six states, offering conventional to cost-plus formats. The company is the largest employee-owned company in the state.
To gain more insight into today’s grocery retail industry while learning about Harps’ recently launched loyalty program, Loyalty360 spoke with David Ganoung, SVP and CMO, at Harps. In this podcast, Ganoung discusses the brand’s rewards program, personalized promotions based on a customer’s shopping habits and basket, and the challenge of bringing customers in-store in an e-commerce world. -
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What we are seeing and hearing for the week ending September 13th, 2024. Today we are going to discuss the top 8 challenges related to customer loyalty.
Loyalty360 has the privilege of being in a unique space in the customer loyalty industry, we hear from the leading brands and technology companies as to the “state” of the industry. We do brand focused research throughout the year based on areas of interest from the brand community.
Loyalty360 also has an advisory board who helps shape the topics, trends and area of focus for the association. It is a very diverse group of senior level experts in the customer loyalty space.
During the 2024 Loyalty Expo, the group met and during a breakfast meeting we went around the table to discuss the challenges and opportunities they are seeing, which led us to this top 8 challenges of customer loyalty.
• Shorter Attention Spans
• Engaging Younger Generations
• Keeping up with Martech
• Increased Pressure on Cost
• Data & Privacy
• Partnerships
• Bringing Focus to Loyalty
• Framing Customer Loyalty - Cost vs. Investment
2024 State of Customer Loyalty Paper
Loyalty Expo Partnership Session
Amy Barnett’s – Lunch and Learn
Next Generation customer Loyalty Paper
Per Jenson’s July Lunch and Learn session on socialization of customer loyalty program
About the series:
Loyalty360’s videocast is “What We're Seeing and Hearing,” a weekly summary of trends, insights, and best practices that our team is hearing directly from leading brands — both member and non-members — as well as from supplier partners.
Many details in “What We Are Hearing” will be high-level and often anonymous to provide an open dialogue for those telling Loyalty360 their story. As a trusted advisor to the customer experience and the customer loyalty market, we see a significant amount of impactful and challenging scenarios in the market. This is Loyalty360’s way of bringing this inside information to the market in a timely and concise manner that others can learn from -
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Kobie provides robust solutions for its brand partners. Thoughtful design on the front end, coupled with extensible, configurable technology, leads to a seamless customer experience. The company takes a strategy-led, technology-enabled approach as it works to narrow down to what truly drives a consumer to be loyal at an emotional level. This allows clients to grow the enterprise value of their membership and of their customer base through loyalty. Kobie’s market-leading platform helps deliver those end-to-end loyalty solutions.
Kobie primarily works within retail, financial services, travel and hospitality, and quick-service restaurant (QSR) industries, but it also serves clients in a number of other verticals. From the company’s strategic services standpoint, it partners alongside clients in healthcare and manufacturing, among others.
Loyalty360 spoke with Dr. J.R. Slubowski, Kobie’s AVP of Strategic Consulting and Head of Kobie’s Research Center of Excellence, about key findings in its recent consumer research report, leveraging the power of program tiers, and avoiding pitfalls when rolling out new program features or functionalities. -
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Emotional loyalty is one of the most important facets of customer loyalty. Understanding what drives it and being able to leverage it throughout all the brand touchpoints is important—and extremely challenging.
David’s Bridal focuses on supporting the moments that matter to its customers. The brand endeavors to help customers enjoy these deeply emotional experiences and has developed holistic loyalty programs such as David’s Bridal Diamond and Diamond High to address the opportunities before them.
In this podcast, Loyalty360 CEO Mark Johnson talks to Dave Feldman, Chief Marketing Officer at David’s Bridal, about the brand’s loyalty programs and offerings. Feldman also touches on how providing customers with incredible value helps make the process of planning for “once-in-a-lifetime” events as stress-free as possible, as well as how a focus on next generation customer loyalty supports Diamond High and, ultimately, Diamond loyalty.
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In this week's Loyalty360 What We're Seeing and Hearing, we dive into the ongoing discussions and trends shaping the customer loyalty industry. Key topics include the importance of training and socialization within loyalty programs and the latest insights from our peer group discussions.
Training and Socialization: We explore the critical need for effective training in loyalty programs, focusing on recent discussions and insights from Stop & Shop’s Per Jenson’s impactful July session.
Highlights:
Brand Refreshing: Leveraging customer loyalty programs to enhance brand experience.Employee Engagement: Identifying passionate advocates and improving internal understanding of loyalty programs. Metrics and Training: Emphasizing the use of data to align sales incentives and exploring the effectiveness of bite-sized training.Upcoming Digital Roundtables: Join us August 27th at 12pm as Amy Barnett from Cracker Barrel shares strategies on brand transformation and loyalty ecosystem advancements.
Listen to Stop & Shop's discussion here.
Trends Discussed:
More information here.
About the series:
Loyalty360’s videocast is “What We're Seeing and Hearing,” a weekly summary of trends, insights, and best practices that our team is hearing directly from leading brands — both member and non-members — as well as from supplier partners.
Many details in “What We Are Hearing” will be high-level and often anonymous to provide an open dialogue for those telling Loyalty360 their story. As a trusted advisor to the customer experience and the customer loyalty market, we see a significant amount of impactful and challenging scenarios in the market. This is Loyalty360’s way of bringing this inside information to the market in a timely and concise manner that others can learn from. -
Send us a text
Driving customer loyalty can be a difficult task in the best economic times. As the year moves forward, economic headwinds are impacting a significant number of customers in varied ways.
One of the industries most impacted is grocery, as customers continue to look for value. Many grocers seek to increase their assortment of private label and store brands to bring that value to customers while strengthening the bottom line. There are challenges and opportunities in doing so—navigating changes, educating customers, and working with consumer packaged goods (CPG) companies.
These challenges are being deftly handled by Ryan Draude, Head of Omnichannel Loyalty at Giant Food. The award-winning Giant Flexible Rewards® program was configured by Draude, and he continues to administrate it. In this interview with Loyalty360, Draude shares what he is seeing within the grocery industry.
Watch the full interview here.
Read the feature on Loyalty360 here. -
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Elevating customer loyalty while driving personalized content, experiences, and incentives that truly resonate with the customer is critically important in today’s marketplace. Loyalty360’s brand members report the need to drive personalization at scale—necessitating a deeper understanding of disparate technologies that require seamless integration to allow for coordinated orchestration leveraging first- and zero-party data.
Often, in challenging economic environments, budgets are constrained. Understanding new technologies and their actual functionalities can be a hurdle for many brands. Securing placement in the organization’s implementation queue and earning priority designation can be an uphill battle.
Loyalty360’s research consistently indicates that brands do not feel they have the ability to understand the rapidly evolving martech environment, yet that did not stop Blaze Pizza from leveraging their legacy technologies into a series of manual processes to drive award-winning personalization.
Blaze Pizza was a finalist at Loyalty360’s 2024 Loyalty Expo in the Customer Analytics, Insights, and Metrics category, taking home the Bronze Award. In this in-depth exclusive, the brand’s Senior Growth Marketing Manager, Lindsay Smith, discusses the company’s unique approach to customer loyalty, how it’s leveraging geo-fencing and gamification, and how—even in a cautionary economic environment—Blaze Pizza is creatively driving sales.
Watch the full interview here.
Read the feature on Loyalty360 here. -
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Engage People is a technology innovation company with a vision to bring technology to the forefront to enable a better customer experience. The company seeks to leverage today’s technologies to drive improved outcomes for brands while elevating loyalty programs and the member experience.
Jonathan Silver, CEO of Engage People, has worked in the industry for over 36 years. He began his career with Maritz Canada—now Bond—before holding various senior positions in the loyalty sector. Nearly 16 years ago, Silver co-founded the precursor to Engage People before rebranding the company in 2015. Today, his role at Engage People focuses on strategy and sales.
Mark Johnson, CEO of Loyalty360, spoke with Silver about “paying with points” technology, the uChoose Rewards® program managed with partner Fiserv, and making the offer-redemption experience seamless for customers. -
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In 2003, Insomnia Cookies was founded by Seth Berkowitz, a University of Pennsylvania college student seeking a late-night sweet treat—a shared need that turned into an opportunity for Berkowitz on the UPenn campus. He baked cookies in his college house kitchen and delivered them to hungry students in the early hours of the morning.
The brand now counts two decades of serving up delicious cookies to customers, with nearly 300 stores across the U.S. and a couple in the U.K. and Canada. Select stores are open late—sometimes until 3 o’clock in the morning— depending upon the night. The cookies are served warm, and brand fans can also order ice cream to accompany baked treats.
Mark Johnson, CEO of Loyalty360, spoke to Tom Carusona, Chief Marketing Officer of Insomnia Cookies, about launching a new loyalty program, understanding customer segments and how to activate them, and tapping into emotional loyalty.
Watch the full interview here: https://youtu.be/Or-mtujWRDQ
Read the feature on Loyalty360 here: https://loyalty360.org/content-gallery/in-depth-exclusives/insomnia-cookies-launching-a-new-loyalty-program-and-building-robust-customer-profiles-for-increase -
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Switchfly was founded in 2003 as a travel technology startup. Today, Switchfly is a travel experience platform that allows brands to create memorable moments for employees. As a concept, the company is the silent partner in many of the major loyalty programs that consumers recognize. For the last 20 years, the company has been behind many of the loyalty points programs in financial services and the airline industry, which reward and engage consumers with travel. When consumers take points earned through a credit card to pay for travel, Switchfly works behind the scenes, applying those points to hotels and flights. The company also services car rentals and activities globally.
About 18 months prior to sitting down with Loyalty360, Switchfly began to focus on Human Resources and Rewards and Recognition for Employee Engagement in corporate America. Internal customers—employees—have many of the same expectations and wants in a loyalty program as a brand’s external customers.
Mark Johnson, CEO of Loyalty360, spoke with Nowell Outlaw, CEO at Switchfly, about effectively engaging employees with loyalty program benefits, modernizing tools in the travel ecosystem, and leveraging technology to make “smart” recommendations for customers.
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