VOLUME 13 NUMBER 2 | THIRD & FOURTH QUARTER 2019

Fazoli’s CMO
Discusses Customer
Experience and
Personalization

IN THIS ISSUE:

The Giant Loyalty The Vitamin Shoppe The Opportunity in Le Tote’s

Enhancement Shows What Personalization Lord & Taylor Acquisition
Can Truly Be

PLUS: 2019 LOYALTY EXPO CONFERENCE REVIEW

 In this Issue...
Q3 & Q4 2019 | VOLUME 13 NUMBER 2 | LOYALTY360.ORG

Exclusive Brand Insight,

for Members Only
FEATURES

12 14 Conference
As the association for customer loyalty,
Fazoli’s Executive Jodie
Conrad Discusses
The Giant Loyalty
Enhancement
Review

32
Loyalty360 speaks with top brands on Customer Experience
Fazoli’s and Personalization Giant
a daily basis regarding the challenges, Mark Johnson | Loyalty360 Mark Johnson | Loyalty360

opportunities, and trends they are seeing

in this constantly evolving market.
16 18
We invite you to join Loyalty360 The Vitamin The Opportunity
and become part of one of the fastest Shoppe Shows in Le Tote’s Lord &
growing communities in the space. What Personalization Taylor Acquistion
The Vitamin Shoppe Can Truly Be Le Tote
Exclusive insight, member-only Mark Johnson | Loyalty360 Mark Johnson | Loyalty360

discussions, and the opportunity to

learn from brands that continue to
blaze a trail in the customer experience
arena. With over 100 members on LOYALTY FORUM: IN EVERY ISSUE
both the brand and supplier side,
what are you waiting for?
5 FROM THE EDITOR
Loyalty360
Contact us for Loyalty360
membership opportunities today! 16 360 INSIGHTS
Loyalty Becomes Experiential
Mark Johnson | Loyalty360
18 FEATURED TECHNOLOGY
Featured Technology & Services
26 BEST PRACTICES Loyalty Management Editorial
Declared Data Is the Customer & Production Team
Experience Differentiator You Didn’t Mark Johnson - Contributing Editor
Know You Needed Carly Stemmer - VP of Marketing
Patrick Barney - Senior Editor
Rachel Haberman | Jebbit
Peter Mills - Staff Writer
Elizabeth Shular - Design, Design Director
28 TECHNOLOGY, TRENDS & REWARDS
Gamification: A Refreshingly Old Way
to Engage and Reward Loyal Customers Contacts
Samantha Iodice | Brierley + Partners Article Submissions & Advertising:

10 Q&A
Brand Vision
20 TECHNOLOGY, TRENDS & REWARDS
Starbucks Shifts Workflow to Increase
Customer Engagement
Chris Malone | Fidelum Partners
22 BEST PRACTICES
Generation Z: What You Need to Know
to Connect Throughout the Purchase Cycle
Julie Wojtowicz | Helloworld
For more information on Loyalty360 membership, visit loyalty360.org/join
or contact Mark Johnson at MarkJohnson@Loyalty360.org. 24 STATE OF THE INDUSTRY
Beyond CLV - How to Really Understand
Your Customer’s Value
Stacey Allgeier | Hinda Loyalty Group
Loyalty360
30 LOYALTY READS info@loyalty360.org
513-800-0360
Loyalty360
© 2019 Loyalty360, Inc. and/or its affiliates.
All Rights Reserved.
Reproduction and distribution of this publication in any
form without prior written permission is forbidden. The
information contained herein has been obtained from
sources believed to be reliable. Loyalty360 disclaims all
warranties as to the accuracy, completeness, or adequacy
of such information. The opinions shared are those of
the contributing authors and not necessarily reflective
of Loyalty360 and/or its affiliates. Loyalty360 shall have
no liability for errors, omissions, or inadequacies in the
information contained herein or for interpretations thereof.
The opinions expressed herein are subject to change
without notice.

513.800.0360 | loyalty360.org | @loyalty360

Loyalty Management™ | Q3 & Q4 2019 | loyalty360.org 3
 What’s New
LOYALTY360 ON THE WEB
ON LOYALTY360.ORG
Committees
Loyalty360 is introducing member committees, which will enable Loyalty360 members to provide
feedback and insight to our association that can lead to positive changes. Through involvement in
one of four committee groups, members will help guide, provide feedback on, and support a variety
of Loyalty360 initiatives. The four groups have been designed to help meet the evolving needs of
the member community and will meet regularly to exchange insights and highlight the trends
affecting customer-loyalty-focused marketers. The committees are as follows:
• Research, Benchmark, and Standards
• Technology and Trends
• Membership, Partnership, and Community
• Conferences
Member Benefits
Loyalty360 corporate brand members now have access to VIP upgrades, experiences, and rewards at
some of the world’s leading companies—all thanks to the commitment of our growing community of
prominent brands. The inspiration behind the Loyalty360 Member Benefits Program was driven by the
community, which wanted to add incremental value to Loyalty360 membership. The program has
been designed to enable members to participate in and learn from customer-loyalty-focused
programs, and to provide valuable feedback to those who run them. By participating in and engaging
with other programs in a reciprocal manner, members can glean insight and a better understanding of
other customer loyalty offerings. This insight will enhance brand’s own programs. In addition, the
Member Benefits Program will provide access to exclusive upgrades, discounts, and more—all
provided by members of the community.
Loyalty360 Brand Member Conference Sessions
During the first day of both of Loyalty360’s annual conferences, Loyalty Expo and Customer
Expo, we have introduced a series of brand member roundtable sessions. These sessions
are led by senior-level brand members and give attendees the opportunity to network and
exchange ideas with one another in a small-group setting before larger conference sessions
and activities kick off. After an overwhelmingly positive response from members who
attended these sessions during our spring Loyalty Expo, Loyalty360 will run them again at
this fall’s Customer Expo.
4 Loyalty Management™ | Q3 & Q4 2019 | loyalty360.org
FROM THE EDITORS
A lot of families have a Sunday ritual. After waking up early, memberships and then return that clothing without feeling
getting dressed in their best outfits, and attending church like they wasted money when the clothes are no longer
services, they head out to lunch at a local restaurant. useful to them. Members can also borrow items for dress-
Growing up, I didn’t know that other families did this pretty up events like weddings or galas.
frequently. I thought going to lunch with my mom and
brother at a fast food joint near church was our special thing. Hopefully, these four articles, along with the other content
We usually rented videos too (on VHS), which made the ritual offered in this issue of Loyalty Management, provide
feel even more special. Now that I know other people did this insight into how marketers can flourish in a loyalty space
kind of thing as well, I realize our ritual was standard practice. that is changing more rapidly than ever before. Unique
But it still feels good to think about. experiences, emotional connections, and strong value
propositions are all the rage these days, and brands need to
I remember one Sunday we tried a new restaurant that know how to use them to drive loyalty. Loyalty360’s mission
popped up in the area. Fast food Italian. What? Who had is to help brands do this, and this magazine issue is curated
ever heard of fast food Italian? I was 11 or 12, and I thought to reach this goal.
it was just about the best thing I’d ever experienced. Not
only did you get spaghetti with marinara or fettuccine alfredo
within a minute or two of ordering, but you also got unlimited
breadsticks! What’s more, servers came out to the tables
while you were eating and brought the breadsticks to you. Patrick Barney
Senior Content Editor
I’m an adult now, but I still love Fazoli’s. Unfortunately, the Patrick Barney@loyalty360.org
closest location to where I live in Cincinnati is half an hour
away, so I don’t get to go there as often as I’d like. But the
dine-in experience, combined with the company’s quality
pasta, pizza, and breadsticks, sticks way out in my memory.
Clearly, Fazoli’s knows how to provide its customers with a
fantastic experience.
Loyalty360 recently spoke with Jodie Conrad, Chief
Marketing Officer for Fazoli’s (pg. 12), to discuss how the
brand is reacting to changes in the QSR space, specifically the
advent of third-party delivery services. As Conrad pointed
THE THINKING.
out, the company is making moves to modify its one-of-a-
kind dine-in experience for an environment in which more
and more customers are eating out while staying at home.
We also spoke to representatives of Giant Food Stores (pg.
14) a grocery brand, The Vitamin Shoppe (pg. 16), and Le Tote
THE TECHNOLOGY.
THE EXECUTION.
(pg. 18), a subscription apparel brand. All of them, like Fazoli’s,
are making changes to adapt to a marketing space that is
increasingly going digital. Giant is reaching customers through
its Giant Direct offering, which enables customers to order
groceries online and have them loaded directly into their cars
at pick-up.
The Vitamin Shoppe is engaging customers through increased
personalization. It has launched the Only Me program,
which has members fill out a health assessment so that the
company can offer curated monthly packages of vitamins
and supplements. Each package is individualized to meet the
health needs of specific customers.
Le Tote has decided to meet the digital challenge by offering
an innovative new subscription program for apparel.
The program enables members to rent, rather than buy, brierley.com
clothing, a service that has numerous benefits. For example,
incipient mothers can borrow maternity clothing with their
Loyalty Management™ | Q3 & Q4 2019 | loyalty360.org 5
LOYALTY FORUM: 360 INSIGHTS
Loyalty
Becomes
Experiential
Mark Johnson
CEO/CMO
Loyalty360
Loyalty continues to change and evolve. Transactional loyalty
strategies, while still the norm, are being supplanted by
experiential offerings. More and more brand representatives
we speak to say that improving their customer experience
offerings is a major, company-wide priority. This is a result
of listening to customers, who are demanding personalized,
timely, and frictionless experiences.
Because of these changes, loyalty is becoming less and less
programmatic. Findings from Loyalty360’s 2018 and 2019
Loyalty Landscape reports demonstrate this point. In our 2018
report, 78 percent of respondents said that their company
has an explicit, points-based program. However, in our 2019
report, only 57 percent of respondents said they have an
explicit program. This decrease of 21 percent tells us that
transactional programs are no longer defining loyalty.
Instead, brands are starting to focus on customer experience
and customer engagement. Engagement still has a broad
connotative and denotative meaning, but the traditional,
points-based, buy-stuff-get-stuff programs are going away.
Instead, it’s surprise-and-delight, customer experience, voice
of the customer, and more. It’s about extending your brand
to be more meaningful to your customer. How is your brand
improving your customer’s life?
6 Loyalty Management™ | Q3 & Q4 2019 | loyalty360.org
Brands are evolving to meet their customer needs by adding
new services to make it easier and faster for customers
to purchase. They’re personalizing content to be more
Exclusive Brand Insight,
meaningful. They’re adding partnerships that extend the
brand value to the customer at other important moments.
for Members Only
They’re even adding purposeful activities for overall
sustainability. As the association for customer loyalty, Loyalty360
speaks with top brands to address the challenges,
opportunities, and trends of a constantly evolving market.
This might account for the rise of innovation teams within
brands. These teams are tasked with devising new strategies
Our goal is to pass this insight along to members and
to bring companies together to build authentic loyalty
Your Partner in Creating
and processes as loyalty is being redefined. As such, this is an
Lasting Customer Relationships
predicated on reciprocal benefit.
exciting time for innovation and evolution.
We invite you to join Loyalty360 for access to exclusive
However, as brands embark on these efforts, they need to insights, member-only discussion, and the opportunity
remember that executive-level and interdepartmental buy-in to learn from a host of brands. For more information on
are not enough to be successful. They need to make sure there Loyalty360 membership, visit loyalty360.org or contact
Mark Johnson at markjohnson@loyalty360.org.
is alignment and commitment from all department heads to
succeed. Each team needs to be committed and accountable
for the success of a brand’s customer-first strategy. 513.800.0360 | loyalty360.org | @loyalty360
Mark Johnson,
CEO
Loyalty360
Connections@Baesman.com | 614-771-2300 | Baesman.com/insights
Loyalty360_2019_QTRpg_v01.indd 1 4/3/19 2:40 PM
LOYALTY FORUM: FEATURED TECHNOLOGY

What are Loyalty360 Analyst Reports?

Featured Products,
Advancements &
Designed to help brands and marketers navigate vendors and providers in the market that support customer loyalty, customer
experience, and customer engagement strategies in any capacity. With a focus on objectivity, rigor, and transparency, the

Technology
Technologies Analyst Reports help brands narrow down to core competencies, strengths, and industry expertise. If you are a vendor or
provider interested in learning how Loyalty360’s Analyst Reports can help you reach new prospective clients, please contact
Mark Johnson at markjohnson@loyalty360.org

& Services To view Analyst Reports please visit: loyalty360.org/resources/analyst-report

ICF Next’s loyalty and CRM platform, Tally, is the company’s proprietary
loyalty and campaign management solution that clients can use to
bolster customer relationships and build their brands. Tally is designed to
engage customers, drive desired behavior, improve the customer
experience, and give clients the insights they need to capture greater
market share. It is fully configurable and works precisely the way clients
need to increase customer loyalty and achieve business goals.  engagement by combining customer photos and reviews with
The platform leverages the latest technology to meet the growing
demands of clients and program members for experiences. The Tally
platform offers several key functional areas that provide the capability
and flexibility to enable interaction at key points and “moments of truth”
that enrich and enhance the customer experience. These include
program management, Member Experience, Customer Care, Clientele
Management, Reporting & Insights, Advanced Analytics—
Segmentation, Modeling, and Predictive Analytics .
Yotpo offers a suite of solutions for customer reviews, visual
marketing, loyalty programs, and referrals. Its Swell Rewards
platform is designed to turn customer content into sales by
collecting product ratings and written reviews, extracting
actionable data, and enabling clients to design campaigns based
on that data. The platform is also designed to increase customer
customizable options.
In addition, Swell Rewards is intended to enable clients to build
customized loyalty programs to acquire customers and retain
currents ones through engagement. The platform is designed to
help clients understand what their customers are saying about
them and gain actionable insights to make better business
decisions. As such, the company is a perfect fit for D2C
organizations looking to build loyalty.
Brands today are looking to loyalty vendors to help guide their
success. Kobie Marketing has the consulting, analytics, and creative
experience, along with the technology, to meet each brand’s unique,
customized needs. This makes the company a partner that can drive
success and help clients navigate a complex, changing landscape.
The company understands that loyalty is the emotional connection
that customers have with brands. Brands that deliver meaningful
value will come out ahead of competitors. In the past, the value
exchange involved points and miles, but the future is about proving to
members that brands know them, understand them, and can
anticipate their needs. This is where Kobie Marketing is ahead of the
curve: understanding emotional drivers of loyalty. This approach
drives Kobie Marketing as a full-service creative agency that can meet
any client’s creative needs.
Iris Concise offers end-to-end program design and optimization, a
comprehensive suite of marketing program management services, and
other strategic services. These include program redesign; performance
management; ROI optimization; opportunity analysis and modeling;
technology enablement and customer development; customer journey
analysis and management; change management, training, and support;
personalization engine, campaign, and promotion management;
community building; and user experience management.
The company also offers a strategic planning process designed to
deliver customer insight. It strives for growth in revenue and for
innovations in loyalty services. A combination of consulting assignments
and ongoing retained business provides a range of exposure for the
company’s team members and enriches their perspectives.

Jebbit’s mission is to help clients build the best programs to engage
consumers and capture declared data by offering them a clear value
exchange. To this end, the company provides its engagement platform to
enable clients to build immersive, interactive content experiences that
directly engage customers and immediately personalize their outcomes.
Using the engagement platform, the company’s core approach is to
automatically identify and capture moments of consumer attention,
translate that attention into business results, and store that data to drive
insights. The platform captures consented, first-party data and
integrates it into existing data and technology infrastructure. The
company also offers an integration services team that can support nearly
all marketing technology integration requests.
The platform provides a machine-learning-driven experience builder,
which enables clients to build customizable, on-brand experiences that
are optimized for any device. Clients use the builder to set up attributes
for each consumer. From there, segments can be created and activated
through a client’s omnichannel marketing technology stack. In addition,
the experience builder can optimize by media, experience structure,
question analytics, and A/B testing.
Engage People offers a loyalty platform, Podium, and an e-commerce
redemption solution, Access, for clients working in the customer loyalty
space. Podium has a range of capabilities. It has automated
communication features that can produce system-generated
notifications, including password reset, order confirmation, account
statement emails, and more. It is also designed to handle campaign
management through configuration and API requests. It can support
both earn and redemption campaigns.
Access is designed to give clients the ability to enable customers to
redeem their program points anywhere in the world and in any
currency. It also enables customers to simultaneously earn bonus
points whenever they pay for purchases partially with cash. In this way,
Access is designed to elevate the personalization of loyalty and reward
programs to a whole new level.
Podium, Access, and Engage People’s suite of other solutions also offer
mass communication capabilities. Engage People leverages
segmentation and member data to personalize offers and program
rules. Podium is designed to enable every interaction to be one-to-one.
The company manages mass communication through users lists.
Ansira’s mission is to make organizations and their marketing efforts
better, from the brand to the local level. To achieve this, the company
builds upon what’s already in a client’s ecosystem. Being technology
neutral, Ansira can enhance numerous aspects of its clients’ efforts to
produce the best results from client initiatives.
Ansira encourages and enables clients to develop a sound understanding
of customers at the brand-to-customer and local-to-customer points of
intersection. As such, the company takes a data-first approach to
customer strategy, enabling brands to understand their customers and
how best to engage them. As a core service, Ansira develops an up-front
customer strategy for each client, creating a path to testing, optimization,
and long-term success management.

8 Loyalty Management™ | Q3 & Q4 2019 | loyalty360.org Loyalty

LoyaltyManagement™
Management™ | | Q3
Q3&&Q4
Q42019
2019 | | loyalty360.org
loyalty360.org 9
 LOYALTY FORUM: Q&A
Brand Vision
Q:
How are you using social media
to drive customer loyalty?
“Social media gives us the ability to do two things. It
helps us meet people where they are, and it enables us
to have conversations with them through technology,
because by and large, that’s what this generation is
comfortable with, as opposed to talking over the phone.
It also gives the platform to talk with people about our
purpose and the reason they might want to engage with
us. Social media really does provide the opportunity to
tell a broader story about purpose and how important
meaningful work is to individuals. We know that’s
important, particularly for millennials.”
Stacey Force
Vice President, Global Marketing
ManpowerGroup
“We have invested a lot more into social media and
our interactions with our consumers. Customers can
use social media to schedule an appointment, ask a
question, or get response to a complaint. We have
people on there 24/7 responding to them, and we also
have night and weekend coverage that we provide. In a
more proactive sense, we are starting to share content
that we think our customers are interested in, and not
just things about Safelite. We can be more engaging to
them and talk about things that are important to them
rather than just important to us.”
Renee Cacchillo
SVP of Customer, Brand,
Safelite AutoGlass
10 Loyalty Management™ | Q3 & Q4 2019 | loyalty360.org
“In the early days of social media, for us, it was a channel
for consumer feedback. Recently we’ve begun to leverage
social media as more of a marketing channel as opposed
to only a customer service channel, and Facebook
has been an effective way to promote the brand,
experience, and services we offer. That said, Twitter
remains much more geared towards being a consumer
servicing channel. It’s relatively early for us, but we see
opportunities to leverage social media for things like
customer reviews and reviews of the CarMax website..”
Jim Lyski
Chief Marketing Officer
CarMax
“Our goal is to continuously connect with and engage
our customers, and the digital landscape provides an
ideal forum for us to do so through authentic, real-time
conversation. Hearing from our fans and customers
directly is key to building meaningful relationships,
and we are inviting them to join in on the conversation
by sharing their own stories and photos on Facebook,
Twitter, and Instagram using #ShareMore.”
Michelle Farabaugh
Chief Marketing Officer
Harry & David
“We’re big on social. We have, over the last couple
of years, kind of taken a deep dive into that. We were
on the outskirts for a while and really made a big
commitment specifically going after the millennial
folks because that’s where they are. But not just the
millennials. Everyone migrates to social media to some
extent or another and we’re out there. Whether its
Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn, you name it,
we’re pushing out content on a regular basis. We’re
updating our feeds on a regular basis because that
seems to be, media wise, where the industry is going.”
Josh Brockwell
Director of Investment Communications
Azzad Asset Management  
“If you look at where people spend their time, there are
multiple hours a day spent in social media, whether it’s
Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snap Chat. Whatever it
might be, people are on their devices browsing social
sites. [We want] to be a part of that conversation,
either for an existing costumer to build more of that
brand loyalty and that top-of-mind aspect, or as a
prospect who maybe saw one of our ads, clicked on
it, looked at it, to open an account. We use the social
space to reinforce [our] messaging. We create special
content. We have special story boards and things that
were filmed at an ad shoot, specifically for social. We
bring that into the social space and share that out with
customers and prospects.”
Saloni Janveja
Executive Marketing Director
Ally Financial  
“We are trying to increase our voice on social media.
For example, we have a blog that we keep. My alliance
manager uses a technology called Paper.li. This creates
an electronic newspaper based on social media feeds
that goes out to the community. We are also looking
at gamification technology that HMI has to add to our
website. Also, one thing we did in the last year was
make our website mobile friendly. There was a point in
time where you could only use our website via laptop
but now it is completely mobile-friendly.”
Todd Owens
Technical Marketing Manager
Cavium
“Over the last few years, we’ve spent a lot our time,
energy, and resources here. We’ve been very fortunate to
sell out every game in franchise history—but if you have
limited ticket inventory, how do you reach out and engage
with new fans? How do you share those moments that
happen in a match if people can’t actually experience
that in person? You have to try and tell the story across
social platforms. For instance, one project from last year
that leveraged digital was the creation of a video game
we called “Set Piece.” It was inspired by a chant from the
Timbers Army (our group of supports) called Tetris. It’s
a play on the iconic game. For us, it was about creating
something fun, accessible and repeatable.”
Cory Dolich
Senior Vice President of Business
Operations & Marketing
Portland Timbers
Loyalty Management™ | Q3 & Q4 2019 | loyalty360.org 11
 FEATURES
Cultivating long-term customer
loyalty within the restaurant
industry has always come
with unique challenges, due to
its competitive nature. Now,
consumers have more choices than
at any point in history—not just choices of restaurant,
FAZOLI’S EXECUTIVE
but choices of how to procure food at a given
restaurant. Increasingly, consumers expect to be able
to get dine-in service, takeout, or delivery from just
about any brand.
To learn about these challenges and their impact on
JODIE CONRAD
loyalty initiatives, Loyalty360 recently spoke with
Jodie Conrad, Chief Marketing Officer for Fazoli’s. Her
role has provided her with significant insight into how
customers are changing and how brands can turn
those changes into an opportunity to drive loyalty.
DISCUSSES
Conrad said, “When I first started here, not that long
ago, the majority of our business was dine-in, and a
lot of that was driven by service after the sale, which
we do a lot of. We deliver food to the table; we use
real plate-ware and silverware. A big part of our
value proposition for dine-in business is unlimited
CUSTOMER
breadsticks. With our signature crave-able, delicious
breadsticks, you can eat one or you can eat 10. We
don’t judge. We’ll keep bringing them to your table as
long as you want them. It’s an important part of how
we provide value to our guests.”
EXPERIENCE AND
However, Conrad also noted that this state of affairs
is changing rapidly. “More and more of our business is
moving to off-premise. Between drive-through, take-
out, online-ordering, third-party delivery and catering,
now the majority of our business is consumed outside
PERSONALIZATION
of the restaurant. Today’s consumer prefers to take
meals at home, and Fazoli’s has had to adapt.”
Adaptation, though, has numerous challenges,
especially when working with third-party delivery
services. “You don’t control the whole experience,
and you also don’t control the relationship when they
order through the third-party provider’s website. They
have the data on the customer, in terms of who they
Mark Johnson | Loyalty360 are, when they order, what they order. We don’t have
visibility into any of that, or very little.”
Service issues (e.g., the customer is delivered the
wrong side order) also arise. Conrad said, “The reality
is, sometimes it is our fault, and sometimes it’s their
fault. But, generally speaking, the brand is the one who
takes the blame.”
12 Loyalty Management™ | Q3 & Q4 2019 | loyalty360.org
To address this challenge, Conrad and her team
are changing tech providers. She said, “We are in
the process of going back to Olo as our technology
provider for online ordering, for both catering and
individual orders. Part of what their tools allow us
to do is integrate with some of the larger third-party
delivery providers, so the orders come right into our
POS system.”
Fazoli’s loyalty efforts are still young and in
development, however. “Until a couple of years ago,
the sad truth was that our loyalty tactics were basically
punch cards,” said Conrad. “We didn’t have trackability
or visibility in it. We launched our first mobile app and
loyalty program in the fall of 2017, and over the course
of the first 12 months got all of the franchisees on
board and participating. Part of it was having the right
technology base. It took us a little while because we
all had to have POS systems that would integrate with
this new technology.”
She continued, “We spent the first year-and-a-half
working on acquisition and trying to engage consumers
with the technology so that we had a good database of
people and could look at behavior over time. Then, in
the second quarter of this year, with the promotion that
we kicked off, we started being smarter about how we
use the tool. Using it, we were able to drive frequency
of visits while still building our database, acquiring
new guests, and lowering the amount of discounting
considerably from what we had been doing. Now we’re
maximizing profitability.”
Perhaps the most important goal for using this
technology is true personalization, and Fazoli’s
efforts towards this goal are becoming more
sophisticated. Conrad said, “In this upcoming
quarter, we’ll be adding some special offers that
are targeted to different behavioral segments,
like for the people who are churchgoers or
families with children.”
Conrad concluded by pointing out how important it is
to get personalization right. She said, “As a consumer
myself, if I get communications from brands about
things like dollar kids’ meals. I don’t have anyone in my
household that needs a kids’ meal. That isn’t relevant
to me at all. It’s clear that they don’t know me and
don’t know who they’re talking to.” For this reason,
Conrad believes that brands have to be on top of their
game as far as individualized marketing goes.
Loyalty Management™ | Q3 & Q4 2019 | loyalty360.org 13
 FEATURES
The GIANT
Loyalty
Enhancement
Mark Johnson | Loyalty360
In the 2019 Loyalty Landscape Report, 60
percent of brand representatives responded that
they planned on making enhancements to their
companies’ programs in the next year. This tells
us that marketers see a great need to evolve to
meet customer desires. This need for change
makes sense because technology and its effects
on customer behavior move at a blinding pace.
14 Loyalty Management™ | Q3 & Q4 2019 | loyalty360.org
“As we evolve and grow,
we know that whatever
technology or programs
we’re launching, they
have to make the lives
of the families we serve
easier and better.”
However, even if keeping programs fresh and relevant is an
imperative, marketers still face a significant challenge: how
do you make enhancements or changes to a program without
upsetting loyal followers? That was the dilemma faced by
Matt Simon, Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer for
GIANT Food Stores. GIANT had for years maintained its
massively popular Gas Extra Rewards program, but seeing the
changing times, the brand knew that it would have to find a
way to win the loyalty of more consumers without alienating
its current audience.
As a bit of background, Simon said he takes a multifaceted
view of customer loyalty, as he believes that loyalty is neither
purely a science nor an art, but rather, a combination of the
two. He explained, “I think it’s the ultimate measure of how
healthy a brand is, and what makes defining customer loyalty
so tricky is that you can use it with a million stats and metrics
or the hearts and minds and passion of your customers and
associates. I like to look at both.”
For GIANT, loyalty is measured carefully through a
comprehensive series of metrics. Simon said, “We look at
things like segmentation, how many visits per month, their
share of wallet and spend. It’s important to look at all of those
measurements together for a holistic view of their behavior
and how they spend their hard-earned money and at what
retailer.”
He noted, however, that “the other aspect of this is that brand
health measures the equity your brand has with customers.”
Simon thinks of loyalty as being “the ultimate art and science
of marketing and brand management, where you have the
metrics, and you also have the emotional connections.”
All of today’s loyalty marketers face the challenges inherent
in working in an industry in flux. In grocery, these changes
are especially pronounced. “Everything is changing so
dramatically in groceries—no matter where you are,” said
Simon. “I think you see it happening—brands are no longer in
charge; customers are.”
“Instead of putting offers always in the channels as we’ve done
in the past, we’re now using GIANT Choice Rewards and the
personalization engine to deliver more personal offers, catered to
the customers and their needs. GIANT Choice Rewards will help us
do a better job of communicating with customers and delivering
the right offers in the right way at the right time.”
When it came time to refresh GIANT’S Gas Extra Rewards
program, Simon factored in these challenges from the
beginning and saw the opportunity within them. He said,
“We’re very conscious of what we need to do to stand out in
this competitive industry. We must keep innovating and find
the right ways to get ahead and help make our customers lives
easier. If you can make your customers lives easier, you’ll win.”
He continued, “As we evolve and grow, we know that whatever
technology or programs we’re launching, they have to make
the lives of the families we serve easier and better.”
One example of how the grocery retailer is reaching customers
is through GIANT DIRECT, its online grocery services offering.
“We’ve launched GIANT DIRECT at 100 store locations, making
it easy for customers who don’t have time to go shopping
to order online, pull up to the store and pick up their order,
which will be loaded directly into their car,” he said. “It’s about
evolving into an omnichannel retailer that provides groceries to
customers whenever they want them, and that has been one of
our big steps forward this year.”
Similarly, the enhancements GIANT made to its loyalty
program were necessary because, while Gas Extra Rewards was
beloved by many GIANT consumers, it offered little value to
others. Simon recalled, “We introduced GIANT Choice Rewards
because we want to appeal to more households and give our
customers the freedom to choose the reward that matters most
to them.”
He continued, “We knew that in some stores, gas was so loved
and had such high penetration that if we were to mess with it,
we would really disappoint our customers. But in other stores,
gas wasn’t as relevant. We enhanced our program to offer our
customers a choice when it comes to their rewards. If you look
at the total brand, you’ll see one program, but inside of that,
you’ll see almost geographic or store specific strategies to
make sure the total brand hits the goals and offers meaningful
value to all of our customers.”
Simon admitted that solving these problems is one of his favorite
parts of being a CMO. He said, “Doing that is where the creativity
comes in. That’s why I’ve always loved marketing, because
anyone who does all creative or does all numbers and statistics is
missing half the story.”
He emphasized that a key component of the brand’s loyalty
refresh was that it was additive; no one lost the reward they
loved. He said, “What we did was we looked at what was most
important to customers, which was having more choices. They
wanted more options. With the original program, they would save
on gas or not participate. We’re adding to that, and because we
wanted it to be easier, we’re making it a digitally driven program.”
He noted that GIANT’s channels also changed. He said, “Instead
of putting offers always in the channels as we’ve done in the past,
we’re now using GIANT Choice Rewards and the personalization
engine to deliver more personal offers, catered to the customers
and their needs. GIANT Choice Rewards will help us do a better
job of communicating with customers and delivering the right
offers in the right way at the right time.”
This customer-focused, strategic approach to a loyalty relaunch
comes from Simon’s view of the role of a marketer. He concluded,
“What keeps me up or what the biggest challenge for me as
CMO is—are we doing enough to have our customers and their
families see GIANT as someone who helps them and is on their
side, versus a typical brand selling stuff? That’s very important
to me. We’re developing new technologies around pick-up and
delivery and loyalty that are geared toward making their life
easier, but is it resonating? Everything we do is designed with
our customers in mind. We want them to see GIANT as more
than just a grocery store, that we are a company that is helping
them by making life a little easier and ultimately, giving them
more time with their families.”
Loyalty Management™ | Q3 & Q4 2019 | loyalty360.org 15
 FEATURES
The Vitamin Shoppe
Shows What
Personalization
Can Truly Be
Mark Johnson | Loyalty360
Customers are demanding better and more
personalized experiences from brands.
That’s why brands need more relevant first- and zero-party
data, which will enable them to increase their personaliza-
tion efforts. If a brand is going to ask for data, after all, then
the customer expects the brand to use that data in a rel-
evant way. This idea of shared value, of an exchange based
on reciprocity and trust, has never been more of a focus for
brands, but it can still be a challenge.
As we know, brands are all looking to drive more personal-
ized experiences. However, many are finding that doing so
is easier said than done. To get there, brands have to take a
journey. Along this journey, companies are using different
approaches and working to add personalized aspects where
they can.
One brand has committed to this goal in an extremely in-
novative way. The Vitamin Shoppe, an omnichannel specialty
retailer of nutritional products, has launched Only Me, a sub-
scription program that delivers a personalized assortment
16 Loyalty Management™ | Q3
Q1 &&Q2
Q42019
2019 | | loyalty360.org
loyalty360.org
of vitamins and supplements to members each month. The
program achieves a sophisticated level of personalization by
having members take an individualized online assessment
that then recommends products based on members’ health
status, need states and wellness goals.
The program also curates a wellness plan for each member,
individually tailored to include support for a variety of needs,
including mood, energy, and digestion, among other things.
After completing the online assessment, members receive a
daily regimen of vitamins and supplements that support their
foundational health.
In a recent interview with Stacey Renfro, Executive Vice
President and Chief Customer and Digital Experience Officer
for The Vitamin Shoppe, Loyalty360 discovered that Only
Me was created to demystify the process of shopping in
the health and wellness category. Renfro pointed out that
people struggle to determine what’s best for their bodies
and what to do to feel healthier. The solution, she believes, is
for people to understand that they each have their own indi-
vidual health requirements, so the vitamins and supplements
they take should be personalized to those requirements.
Renfro said, “There are a lot of different reasons that people use
vitamins and supplements, and that’s why we focus on our mission
of helping you be your best self, however you define it. We use that
phrase, ‘however you define it,’ because being your best self is very
different for each of us and it’s not necessarily about fitness.”
The goal of the program, therefore, is to enable customers to
create better versions of themselves as they define it. The key
to creating this better version is The Vitamin Shoppe’s ability to
engage in a mutually beneficial dialogue with its customers that
leads to a greater understanding of customer needs and objectives.
To help members be their best
selves, the Only Me program
identifies the important nutrients
“ algorithms as needed to best serve
that they may be missing in their
daily lives. But the true differen-
tiator of the program, and where
“however you define it” comes
into play, is that it takes well-
ness goals into account. In this
way, the program isn’t just about
dealing with all present health
concerns a person may have. It’s
also about preparing that person
for better future health.
From there, members receive con-
venient daily vitamin and supplement packs that contain products
to be used at breakfast, lunch, and bedtime. Only Me members also
get access to a virtual nutritionist, who can help them with health
questions and self-reflection. In addition, the virtual nutritionist
can guide members through food or exercise plans if they have
specific weight or fitness goals they’d like to achieve. The expertise
of the virtual nutritionist provides a great deal of added value to a
program that is already excelling at personalization.
Another benefit of the Only Me program is that it helps members
who struggle with routines. The program, through the daily packs—
individually timed to morning, noon, or night—helps circumvent this
tendency to forget a day here and there.
The program also offers members special newsletters. The newslet-
ters provide tips for a variety of different health and wellness goals,
Photos By: Vitamin Shoppe, vitaminshoppe.com
from losing weight to beefing up. In keeping with the program’s
emphasis on personalization, targeted newsletters based on social
media groups and connections are also available. Of the news-
letters, Renfro said, “They’re a great way to engage and inspire
people along their journey.”
In addition to Only Me’s excellent, personalized benefits, mem-
bers can take comfort in the fact that the program has a scientific
advisory panel to ensure that it functions in accordance with
the best medical knowledge available. This panel consists of Dr.
Melina Jampolis, a physician nutrition specialist, and Dr. Taylor
Wallace, a food science and nutrition expert. These two advisors
will incorporate new studies and
up-to-date scientific information
into the Only Me personalization
member needs. Furthermore, a
range of registered dieticians,
clinical nutritionists, and well-
ness coaches have contributed to
the knowledge base the program
offers.
Finally, Only Me also adds value
through its partnership with Vita-
min Angels, a charity that provides
lifesaving vitamins to mothers and
children at risk of malnutrition.
The Vitamin Shoppe donates $1 to
Vitamin Angels for every Only Me
subscription. Since 2007, The Vitamin Shoppe has donated nearly
$13 million to Vitamin Angels during fundraising campaigns.
Of this CSR initiative, Renfro said, “We’re passionate about the
cause and passionate about helping save lives with what we do.
Only Me is another way we can continue to give more to Vitamin
Angels and impact the lives of women and children around the
world.”
Clearly, The Vitamin Shoppe’s Only Me program has a heck of a
lot to offer members. It provides unparalleled personalization,
experiential value, and even community improvement with its
Vitamin Angels partnership. We haven’t seen too many brands
tackle the personalization problem as ably as The Vitamin Shoppe,
and we know we’ll be paying attention to the company’s future
initiatives going into 2020.
Loyalty Management™ | Q3 & Q4 2019 | loyalty360.org 17
 FEATURES
The Opportunity
in Le Tote’s Lord
& Taylor Acquisition
Mark Johnson | Loyalty360
Back in 2012, friends and entrepreneurs Brett Northart
and Rakesh Tondon noticed that both of their significant
others were in the habit of getting together with friends
and swapping clothes. At the time, Tondon’s wife was
pregnant, so these get togethers were of great value for
her—any clothes she bought during the pregnancy would
be useless down the road, so borrowing was preferable
to buying. With this new insight into the behavior of an
apparel consumer, Northart and Tondon realized that
there was a massive opportunity for them.
The duo founded Le Tote, a subscription service for ap-
parel and accessories. Consumers who sign up digitally
browse the company’s catalogue, select which products
18 Loyalty Management™ | Q3 & Q4 2019 | loyalty360.org
“Customers can choose exactly what they get in each
shipment,” she said. “There’s no mystery-box aspect, no
surprises, because we know that customers in a rental
model are always planning for what’s coming up either
that week or that month.”
By August 2019, this model had become so popular that
the company found itself ready for a new challenge and
signed a deal to purchase legacy retailer Lord & Taylor
from Hudson’s Bay Company. What all will result from
this acquisition has yet to be announced, but Beiswenger
indicated that Le Tote has every intention of preserving the
Lord & Taylor brand name. The acquisition will, in some
form, mark Le Tote’s entry into brick-and-mortar retail.
The new stores will take a localized approach, in a
sense, matching the flexibility that defines Le Tote’s
digital experience. Beiswenger suggested that if, for
instance, the company were to launch two stores in
Chicago, one in the financial district and the other on
Michigan Avenue, the former could cater more towards
professionals seeking to grab business attire on the
quick, while the latter could feature inventory for event
goers. There’s much left to be decided, but Beiswenger
made it clear that Le Tote plans to eschew any sort of
“one-size-fits-all” store-model.
“In general,” she told Loyalty360, “we want to rethink the
physical store experience. That could be moving from the
department store model to the boutique model. It may
even involve rethinking how a department store works.
In the areas where we want to keep this square footage,
we’re considering how we can drive more meaningful
experiences within that footprint itself.”
We’ve heard from retailers in a similar situation, and
they’re increasingly looking to in-store experience en-
hancements. Such enhancements help reach contemp-
orary consumers who are likely to shop digitally when
cost and convenience are the only factors in play.
they want delivered to them (on either a once- or twice-
per-month basis), and pay a flat monthly fee. Le Tote’s
customers also have the opportunity to purchase any of
the rented items at a discounted rate.
The service has proven massively successful, particularly
among women seeking “everyday wear,” fashionistas
who lack the free time to shop traditionally, and
pregnant women who need temporary threads. In a
conversation with Loyalty360, Jana Beiswenger, Vice
President of Strategy for Le Tote, said that much of the
company’s popularity is due to the choice and flexibility
it offers its consumers—an important differentiator in
the growing subscription market.
Le Tote’s stance, physically and digitally, is that experi-
ences drive value for the consumer, which in turn drives
increased share-of-wallet. This is the primary metric
Beiswenger and her team use to determine if consum-
ers are loyal and engaged. The marketing team’s goal,
therefore, is “creating sticky experiences that are based
on having the right product for the right people in the
right places at the right time and then leveraging data
to ensure that [the customer] has a higher hit rate on the
stuff that she’s buying, trying, or renting.” This approach
is certainly customer-centric, and it will be fascinating to
see how it plays out in brick-and-mortar retail.
Perhaps the greatest opportunity in the acquisition lies
in Lord & Taylor’s legacy. Le Tote has, by Beiswenger’s
admission, fairly low brand recognition (it’s quite high for
an apparel subscription service, though), whereas Lord
& Taylor enjoys broad recognition and comes with a siz-
able, loyal customer base of its own. It’s possible that Le
Tote will nudge these inherited consumers towards the
subscription service. It’s also possible that some Lord &
Taylor’s inventory will become an option for subscribers,
which in turn opens up the possibility that Le Tote will
begin to offer men’s apparel products.
However, Beiswenger noted that it remains unclear
whether male consumers will take to the model. The
company wants to build experiences that match customer
behaviors, so it needs to do more research to ensure that
rental is the right service for that segment.
The rise of premium loyalty is one of the most exciting
developments in recent years, as it finds consumers
deliberately entering long-term relationships with their
favorite brands. The extension of premium loyalty into
the apparel space offers an opportunity for brands to
retain customers, at a time when disloyalty is growing
in the fashion space. We’ll be watching as Le Tote
innovates to earn loyalty digitally, and soon, in store.
19
Loyalty Management™ | Q3 & Q4 2019 | loyalty360.org 19
Loyalty Management™ | Q3 & Q4 2019 | loyalty360.org
 TECHNOLOGY, TRENDS & REWARDS
Chris Malone
Author, Managing Partner
Starbucks Shifts
Workflow to Increase
Customer Engagement
During a recent earnings call, Starbucks CEO Kevin Johnson
announced that the company has been busy redesigning its
operational processes to enable employees to spend more time
engaging with customers.
“Our Starbucks store partners who proudly wear the green
apron are at the center of connecting with customers and
we are on a mission to support them by simplifying work and
reducing some of the non-customer-facing tasks that histori-
cally have taken up to 40 percent of their time,” he explained.
As digital devices and services have proliferated in food service
over the past decade, it seems that customer and employee
loyalty have generally become more difficult to build and sustain.
Despite this trend, a few companies have managed to continue
their growth undeterred by The Digital Age. One of these is Star-
bucks, which has generated +4 percent same store sales growth
in each of the past five years. What accounts for their consistent
growth and loyalty? I learned the secret to their success over a
decade ago and Starbucks recent workflow redesign shows that
lesson remains just as relevant today.
It was the summer of 2006, when I first learned that Starbucks’
tremendous success is largely due to something other than the
quality of its coffee or the location of its stores. Back then, I was
20 Loyalty Management™ | Q3 & Q4 2019 | loyalty360.org
senior vice president of marketing at Aramark, a $13 billion
company that provides food service in schools, hospitals,
universities, corporate offices and stadiums around the world.
At the time, Aramark was a licensee of Starbucks and operated
about 75 of its coffee shops on college campuses. But Aramark
had been struggling to deliver the kind of customer experience
that Starbucks was known for. As a result, Aramark was at risk
of losing its Starbucks license.
Now this would have been a huge problem for Aramark, so
we pleaded with Starbucks to give us a chance to turn things
around. In a last ditch effort to salvage the relationship, a team of
Aramark executives was invited to spend a few days at Starbucks
headquarters in Seattle to get immersed in the company’s
operational philosophy and approach. I was fortunate to be
among those that made the trip.
During our visit, I expected to hear about how Starbucks
prepared their coffee, designed their stores and standardized
their customer experiences. And we certainly heard about
some of those things. But the thing that stood out most for
us – the thing that Aramark was missing was something entirely
different. It related to how Starbucks recruited, managed and
motivated its employees.
In particular, they told us about something called the Little Green Apron
Book, which as the name suggests, was a little green handbook sized
to fit inside the pocket of a Starbucks apron. The book describes for
employees what Starbucks calls “The Five Ways of Being,” which are: be
welcoming, be genuine, be considerate, be knowledgeable, be involved.
For each of these ways of being, the book offers specific examples of
behaviors that describe what that way of being looks like.
Perhaps most surprisingly, these “Ways of Being” weren’t just
training ideas that sat on a shelf somewhere. They were the core
management approach in every location. Every day, Starbucks
“partners” would catch one another in the act of one of these Ways
of Being, whether on behalf of a customer or a colleague. They
would present one of these cards to their colleague with a short de-
scription of what they had done on the back. The cards would then
be collected for each person in an apron on the wall with cardboard
cuffs in the back room.
At the end of each month, these cards were sent to the district office
where they were summarized in stories that were shared across the or-
ganization, celebrating all the ways these Ways of Being were practiced.
They shared some of these stories with us and one story in particular
made a big impact on us.
We were told about a Starbucks store with a regular customer named
Pete. Pete was a quiet, elderly man that came in several times a week
for a simple cup of coffee while he read the newspaper. The Starbucks
baristas knew him by name and how he liked his coffee. Pete had been
a regular at the store for a few years, but then one day his visits suddenly
stopped.
Some weeks later, a young woman showed up at the store asking if any-
one there knew of an older man named Pete, and of course, everyone
did. She told the employees that Pete was her father, and that he had
recently passed away.
While cleaning out her father’s apartment, the young woman found some-
thing that surprised and confused her. There were two large bags filled
with Starbucks cups with hand written notes to her dad that said things
like “have a nice day”, “come back soon” and “hope you feel better.”
Apparently they meant so much to her dad that he couldn’t bear to throw
them away. So she wanted to come down and thank them for the obvious
difference they had been making in her dad’s life. She never knew about
it before.
So it begs the question, what caused Pete to keep the cups? Was it the
quality of the coffee? The price? The location or the rewards program?
No, it wasn’t any of those things. It was those simple gestures of goodwill
and kindness that make another person feel valued and cared about.
These little things that cost us nothing more than a bit of extra effort and
consideration that make all the difference in the world.
That’s what we were lacking at Aramark in operating Starbucks stores.
We needed to aim higher than delivering prompt service or a properly
made beverage. We needed to aim for making a lasting difference in the
lives of customers every day. It we are willing to aim for that higher pur-
pose, we’ll get all the lasting loyalty and growth we want right along with
it. That’s the real secret to Starbucks continued success, as evidenced by
their recent workflow changes that enable employees to spend more time
engaging with customers.
So even in The Digital Age, the key to lasting loyalty customer and em-
ployee loyalty in food service remains the basic human connections that
occur between them. Food and beverage operators of all kinds would do
well to remember and embrace this in their own establishments as they
rush to implement mobile apps and online ordering.
Loyalty Management™ | Q3 & Q4 2019 | loyalty360.org 21
BEST PRACTICES
Julie Wojtowicz
Director, Strategy & Insights er
What you need to know to connect with
Gen Z throughout the Purchase Cycle
Julie Wojtowicz
Director, Strategy & Insights
Not all generations are created equal. Marketers
need to be more cognizant of this most recent
generation, Gen Z, as the group enters adulthood
and expands its influence and purchase power.
Let’s first go through the basics. Gen Z includes
anyone born between 1997 and 2012. This group is
massive, with 86 million generation members in the
United States, and more than two billion worldwide,
compared to 72 million US Millennials and 73 million
US Boomers.* Gen Z holds more than 44 billion
dollars in annual purchasing power and influences
the majority of household purchases.**
As the first generation of digital natives, Gen Z has
already proven it’s truly a “mobile first” generation.
Leveraging mobile will be the first point of contact
for brands to connect with this audience, as well as
continuing to use mobile to engage with them and
build meaningful relationships. It’s obvious that this
generation is a force to be reckoned with, but how
can you activate them in your brand’s purchase cycle?
22 Loyalty Management™ | Q3 & Q4 2019 | loyalty360.org
CONNECTING POST-PURCHASE
CONNECTING DURING PURCHASE
INTERACTIONS WITH GAMIFICATION
CONNECTING PRE-PURCHASE WITH This generation prefers to research products online and shop brick
STORYLIVING and mortar, which presents an opportunity to reach them at that Gamification is important, but you don’t need to run out and
moment of truth at-shelf to encourage purchase and build brand create an app to accomplish the same outcome. Remember that
affinity. This is achieved when the physical and digital worlds collide Gen Z is very choosy about the apps they download. Instead,
The way to gain Gen Z’s attention
is through storyliving. What is
to bridge the gap between offline users and online consumers. consider starting with web-based games that keep the consumer
engaged, even after the purchase has been made. For instance,
storyliving, you might ask? It is
Create an interactive experience with a short quiz at-shelf for provide a personality test that recommends additional products
modernized storytelling which
consumers to learn more about products and receive product or an advergame that highlights your product’s features.
enables consumers to experience
a company’s brand narrative or
recommendations, product offers, and/or chances to win. This
grabs the attention of consumers while shopping, motivates them Games use individual, physiological, and social motivators
brand DNA. This refers more to
to interact with your product, and generates share-worthy content. that encourage repeat action and specific behaviors. We can
the values on which the company
Additionally, these types of efforts can garner data acquisition into use gamified experiences to create fun, bite-size engagements
stands rather than what they do
or sell.***Gen Z has forced marketers to evolve the way they tell their
CRM database for future conversations. that leverage Gen Z’s desire to interact with the brands they
consider fun. Doing this allows the opportunity to continue the
brand story. This evolution has shifted from a one-way communication
Research shows that Gen Z prefers to shop in-store versus online. conversation beyond purchase and to stay top-of-mind among
of a brand to an anonymous consumer to a conversation between
This presents the brand with a unique opportunity to engage Gen known consumers. Whether playing for bragging rights or prizing,
brands and their consumers. Using Gen Z’s propensity for mobile
technology, we can facilitate those conversations in meaningful ways to
Z at-shelf or at home with product packaging. Web-based image it matters to this audience and will maintain engagement over
recognition can be a great way to trigger an experience through longer periods of time. Creating a bracket challenge or daily
build a deeper relationship with brands in the pre-purchase stage. Vocal
scanning product packaging. Add social and influencer content gamified experience anchored in cultural interests like sports,
brand advocates can tell your brand story and build credibility and
into the experience to help tip the scales for the audience. movies, or pop culture can help connect with this group.
authenticity among Gen Z. Platforms like YouTube and Instagram will
reach this audience where they already learn about brands.
Gen Z uses social media for entertainment and information, so To learn more about connecting with this newest generation and see
combining the digital and physical worlds to generate unique and some in-market examples of brands who are doing it right, check out the
Explore Augmented Reality (AR) experiences both in app and on web,
interesting content appeals to this audience. Making it fun and latest eBook from HelloWorld, a Merkle Company: helloworld.com/gen-z.
as well as with partners like Snapchat, to align with preferred Gen Z
share-worthy is even better! The key to relevance and authenticity
platforms. Being present in a relevant social platform in an authentic * U.S. Census Bureau, July 2017
way could make a huge impact with Gen Z. Using web-based AR to
with this group is to put the consumer at the center as they interact
** Adweek, Gen Z Power List, June 2017
reach the audience to allow consumers to experience your brand’s with your product in a genuine way.
*** Forbes, Why Storyliving Brands Win with Gen Z, June 2018
personality is a great way to create the fun and cool experiences this
generation gravitates toward.
Loyalty Management™ | Q3 & Q4 2019 | loyalty360.org 23
STATE OF THE INDUSTRY
Stacey Allgeier
Account Manager
BEYOND CLV – HOW TO
REALLY UNDERSTAND
YOUR CUSTOMER’S VALUE
Customer Lifetime Value, or CLV, is a common standard for
measuring a customer’s potential value to your organization
and understanding how much time you should invest in that
customer. CLV is a great predictor of returns from marketing
activities and allows you to focus on a broader view of your
organization’s activities beyond the weekly sale. A typical CLV
considers many factors: average basket size, average purchase
frequency, customer’s age, marital status, education, home or
purchase ZIP code, shopping patterns (When are they most
likely to shop? Weekdays or weekends?), shopping behaviors
(Do they only buy on markdown, or do they pay full price?), and
their likelihood to make returns. This approach can be helpful,
but it only focuses on factors that create repeat trips and
doesn’t factor in the other areas of brand engagement which
will fuel your long-term success.
To calculate Suzy’s base CLV, we would use the following:
Suzy’s CLV
Average Purchase Value ($30) – Product Cost ($15) $15 profit margin
Average Purchase Frequency 18x per year
Average Customer Lifespan 25 more estimated years of purchase behavior
Average Rate of Returns 0x
Potential to Retain Customer
(1+ 10% discount rate, 80% average retention rate) 30% potential to retain
Customer Lifetime Value $6,750
24 Loyalty Management™ | Q3 & Q4 2019 | loyalty360.org
Today’s consumers aren’t just buyers; they are brand advocates.
A loyal customer is worth more than the typical CLV model
will tell you. To really understand your customer, you’ll also
need their Engagement & Behavioral Value (EBV). Begin with
what you know about your customer’s CLV as a base for your
calculation. For our example, let’s say we run a brand called
“Hinda Bookshop”. One of our customers, Suzy Sunshine,
buys about 8 books annually from our storefront operation
presumably to read herself. Plus, she buys about 10 more books
annually on our website shipped to different locations around
the country. She buys over half of these around Christmas, so
we can assume those online purchases are primarily gifts. Suzy
has been doing this for the last 5 years. To keep things simple,
let’s say the average book sells for $30, and our margin is about
$15 (or 50 percent) on each one.
This is only the first step. Suzy’s CLV to our brand may only be $6,750,
but now let’s add her engagement and behavioral value.
Engagement and behavioral value will be unique to your organization.
You’ll need to put some heads together to determine which engagement
or behavioral metrics best align with the goals of your organization. One
company, for instance, might value a customer’s post on Instagram more
than their referral to a friend. Another company might value attendance
at a brand event more than a redemption in their loyalty program. Only
you can determine which mix of engagement and behavioral activities
will drive your scoring model. For our organization, Hinda Bookshop,
we have chosen the following engagement activities and behaviors, and
assigned a point value based on its importance to our brand:
• Member of Loyalty Program (30 Points)
• Length of Membership (10 points for every year of membership)
• Active within the last 12 months (40 points)
• Is opted into Email (10 points)
• Is opted in to receive Text Messages (20 points)
• Shops In Store (10 points)
• Shops Online (30 points)
• Has shopped in more than 1 department (20 points)
• Follows us on Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter (15 points per channel)
• Shared one of our posts on Social (20 points per share)
• Referred a friend to our Loyalty Program (25 points per referral)
• Attended a local event (20 points per event)
• Redeemed loyalty points for a sweepstakes entry
(10 points per redemption)
• Redeemed loyalty points for a free product (5 points per redemption)
In our example, we provide more points to someone who shops
online than in store, because we’re trying to grow our online
business. We award more points to customers who shop in more
than one department, because that helps increase basket size and
revenue. We also gave a customer a higher score for redeeming on
a sweepstakes entry than redeeming for product because our cost
per point is lower on sweepstakes. If we go back to our example of
customer Suzy Sunshine, we can now calculate an engagement and
behavioral value by utilizing our customer data.
Suzy’s EBV*
Member of Loyalty program 30 points
5 Years in program 50 points
Active in the last 12 months 40 Points
Is opted into Email 10 Points
Shops In Store 10 Points
Shops Online 30 points
Redeemed Points for Sweepstakes 10 Points
EBV = 180 Points = $180 added to CLV
New CLV + EBV = $6,930
*Note, your point value and calculation of EBV should be specific to your
organization’s needs and desired behaviors. It may take some sample
modeling to calibrate the right EBV calculation for your business.
With the EBV added to Suzy’s CLV, we now get a
clearer picture of the additional value she brings to our
organization. Her value went up, because she participates
in activities that are important to our brand. The EBV
allows us to divide our customers into better segments for
marketing, offer more personalized offers or target Suzy
for specific activities which will increase her value. It also
gives us a clearer picture of which customers to focus
on – in our example, since Suzy has never referred a friend
to the program, we may want to target and incentivize
her to use the referrals feature. Since we’ve analyzed her
behavior, perhaps we choose not to target Suzy for our
events because it wouldn’t be as valuable to acquire her
as it would be someone who engages with us on social
media. The EBV helps us create subgroups within our
customer base and provide insights into what is resonating
with our customers, allowing us to figure out what the
next engagement or behavior is right for them and for our
business.
In our example, we know that Suzy would be more
valuable to us if we could get her to refer a friend or two
to the program. It would increase her own personal value
to our business because she’d be helping us acquire new
customers, and it would also give us an opportunity to
reward her for her loyalty and her brand ambassadorship.
We use our EBV segmentation to give Suzy a personalized
offer to receive a discount on her next purchase if she
refers a friend to the program, and she decides to refer her
friends Brian and Penny. An associate also gets her to sign
up to receive text messages while she was shopping in our
store. Now, Suzy’s CLV+EBV goes up!
Suzy’s EBV*
Member of Loyalty program 30 points
5 Years in program 50 points
Active in the last 12 months 40 Points
Is opted into Email 10 Points
Shops In Store 10 Points
Shops Online 30 Points
Opted into Text Messages 20 Points
Refer a Friend 25 Points (x2 referrals)
New EBV = 240 Points = $240 added to CLV
New CLV +EBV = $7,000
Happy, loyal customers are your brand’s best ambassadors. In order
to spend the right amount of time to understand and nurture their
engagement in your brand, you need to dive into your customers’
behavior. The CLV can help you understand the transactional value
of your customer but adding the EBV can help you understand
your customers’ future engagement with your brand and help you
segment and target them more appropriately to shift their behaviors.
Not only will this increase their value to your brand, they’ll also be
receiving more personalized and relevant value from your business.
Loyalty
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BEST PRACTICES
Pam Erlichman
Chief Marketing Officer
DECLARED DATA IS THE
CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE
DIFFERENTIATOR YOU
DIDN’T KNOW YOU NEEDED
Digitally savvy organizations have come to think of
the customer experience as a trail of information, each
touchpoint leaving behind a data footprint that we
aggregate into vast data lakes in the hopes of turning
that data into granular insights that will in turn power
highly relevant and differentiated brand experiences.
Big data paints a rosy picture—but for most marketers,
it doesn’t live up to its promise. More than two-thirds
of marketing executives report conflicting information
across multiple data sources. Even first-party data, widely
considered to be the most accurate source of data relies
on inferences for its usefulness. Layer in concerns about
data privacy and increasing regulation, and all that data
starts to look like a double-edged sword.
For marketers struggling to make heads or tails of their
data, the answer isn’t more data—it’s the right data.
Declared data can be the difference between meaningful
personalization across the customer experience and messy
assumptions.
26 Loyalty Management™ | Q3 & Q4 2019 | loyalty360.org
WHAT IS DECLARED DATA?
Declared data, also sometimes called zero-party
data, is a type of first-party data, meaning that it is
generated by a direct interaction between consumer
and brand rather than purchased from a third party.
Unlike other kinds of first-party data, though, declared
data is knowingly and explicitly volunteered by a
consumer. It’s the difference between a consumer telling
a brand that she is looking for clothes to wear to her
business-casual office and seeing that she has viewed
several pencil skirts on your e-retail site.
Declared data can validate demographic and identifying
data (a consumer’s age, gender, location, etc.), but it can
also capture “soft” attributes like intentions, motivations,
interests, preferences, or aspirations—things that, without
explicitly asking the consumer about them, marketers can
otherwise only make informed guesses about.
NOT ALL FIRST-PARTY DATA IS CREATED EQUAL
The definition of declared data is straightforward; why it
matters is a more complicated question, one that has to do
with the flaws inherent in other types of first-party data.
THE GOOD SIDE OF INFERRED DATA…
Most first-party data is inferred data, data produced
in the course of an interaction between a brand and a
consumer. Inferred data is usually one of two types:
Behavioral data is information about a consumer’s
actions on an owned channel, such as what web pages
they visited or which emails they opened.
Transactional data is also known as purchase data—what
a consumer bought from a brand and when.
Inferred data offers plenty of benefits. With the right tech
stack in place, it’s relatively scalable, and better yet, it’s
proprietary—unlike second- or third-party data, it’s unique
to a brand and can’t be accessed by their competitors.
...AND WHERE INFERRED DATA GOES WRONG
Inferred data can paint a picture of the consumer, but as
the name suggests, it relies on guesswork to paint that
picture—and guesses can be wrong.
Take for instance a consumer who searches for skateboards
on an online sporting goods store, then purchases one.
They’ll leave behind a trail of data that looks identical if
the buyer is a fifteen-year-old kid who wants to be the
next Tony Hawk or if the buyer is that fifteen-year-old kid’s
grandmother who is searching for the perfect birthday
present. With inferred data alone, any remarketing would
treat those two buyers exactly the same way, despite the
fact that they’re vastly different consumers.
WHERE DECLARED DATA COMES IN
A single declared data point—whether they were buying
the skateboard for themselves or as a gift—validates and
contextualizes that incomplete picture of the consumer in a
way that completely changes any subsequent messaging.
Just a few more pieces of declared data, such as what
additional accessories the teenager might be in the market
for, or the grandmother’s relationship with the gift recipient
and the date of their birthday, and the retailer can set in
motion a personalized, highly relevant retention campaign.
It’s not only a question of opportunity, but of cost as well.
A 2017 Accenture study put the cost to businesses of
customers switching brands due to poor personalization
at $756 billion annually. Our own research at Jebbit into
trust and consumer data shows that roughly a quarter
of consumers say that the thing that makes them most
distrust a brand with their data is creepy or inaccurate
personalization—comparable to the number of respondents
who identified a public data scandal as their top reason for
mistrust. Personalization based on declared data, rather than
assumptions, neatly sidesteps many of these issues.
AND THEN THERE’S THE DATA PRIVACY PIECE
Declared data, by virtue of the fact that it is volunteered
by consumers, is by its nature consented—an important
consideration given the steady drumbeat of data privacy
laws, particularly GDPR in the EU and the upcoming
California Consumer Privacy Act, that restrict the collection
and use of consumer data.
Even setting aside the legal necessity of compliance,
consumer sentiment is shifting towards a growing desire
for better data privacy and more control over their data.
Marketing strategies that rely less on purchased and
inferred data in favor of explicitly consented data will be
more defensible in the shifting data privacy landscape.
ASSUMPTION-FREE MARKETING STARTS
WITH DECLARED DATA
When it comes to consumer data, if you didn’t ask the
consumer for it, it’s just a guess.
Inferences about prospects and customers have their
usefulness, but they also come with hidden costs that
marketers don’t need to accept as the cost of doing
business. Bad targeting isn’t only a missed opportunity, but
a risk of customer annoyance, unsubscribes, lost business,
and loss of trust.
Declared data provides the context that behavioral and
transactional data are missing. It allows you to only
show consumers the messaging, products, offers, and
rewards that are directly relevant to them—because
they’ve told you so.
Loyalty Management™ | Q3 & Q4 2019 | loyalty360.org 27
TECHNOLOGY, TRENDS & REWARDS
Samantha Iodice
Director, Digital Solutions
GAMIFICATION:
A REFRESHINGLY
OLD WAY TO ENGAGE
AND REWARD
LOYAL CUSTOMERS
Gamification in email - it’s not a new idea in the
digital space. In fact, it’s been around since Club
Nintendo awarded points for opens and clicks
within their emails. However, what is new-ish, and
recently kicking up quite a fuss, is how gamification
has advanced and the myriad of ways to apply this
incredibly engaging technique, especially in email.
First, let’s tackle what exactly defines Gamification.
Gamification is utilizing game mechanics in some form
within a non-gaming environment. It’s a pretty broad
definition, which is purposeful, because using the
concept of gamification can be applied in a multitude
of ways. You can apply game mechanics to everything
from email to your website, onsite at a conference,
via mobile app – like a number of games inspired by
Pokémon Go. You can even employ offline game tactics
in a store environment, such as how retail grocer
Trader Joe’s hides a stuffed animal – a whale at my
local store – somewhere in the store. If a kid finds it,
they get a prize and get to ‘re-hide’ it for the next kid to
find. A wonderful way to keep the kids entertained so
their parents can shop.
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2019 | | loyalty360.org
loyalty360.org
You’ve likely heard, and perhaps played, blockbuster
games from McDonald’s like their annual Monopoly
game running for over 13 years now, or how Starbucks
often uses games to collect more stars and increase
engagement.
Famous games have their iconic place in history, but
the secret to effectively employing gamification into
your marketing arsenal is that it doesn’t have to be big,
flashy, or wildly expensive to drive some serious results.
Much like the original Club Nintendo example, the game
was based solely on open/click behavior and nothing
more – no sign-up page, landing page, game pieces, etc.
While we’re discussing how awesome gamification
is, let’s also discuss what gamification is not. It’s not
a magic bullet or mystical unicorn for driving loyalty,
member engagement, and revenue. As with any tactic,
it’s only as good as its strategy and implementation. All
too often clients get super excited to start playing with
games, and then get a little crazy about blowing the
idea up too much – but, who can blame them, games
are fun! But, it’s vitally important to the success of
your campaign to start small, test, and grow the program.
Much like any personalized element of your marketing
strategy, gamification can become an essential piece of
your customer journeys from Welcome to Re-engagement.
Therefore, apply this age-old gem and keep it simple.
Now that you’ve decided to play with
gaming in your email and other spaces,
where do you start? Here are the steps
to outline your business problem before
digging into a game strategy and design:
1. Why do you want to use a game?
2. What is your intended outcome?
3. What channel(s) do you want the game to
be active in?
a. And how do you intend to deliver the
experience?
4. Who is your target, and is it appropriate to
the above answers?
Once you’ve nailed down your objective, you can begin
working on the strategy. It’s important to consider the
strategy before planning the design. Similar to putting the
cart before the horse – the horse is the strategy and the
cart is the design. Depending on your industry and space,
consider the variables that could affect the performance
and outcome of your game as part of the strategy. As an
example, if you want to create a Welcome Journey game to
not simply engage members, but to show them how their
new loyalty program works, you may not need to build a
game and can create an experience via email and landing
page design. This approach may be quicker to market as
it won’t require app updates or a game to be created and
coded in a platform for use either through a vendor or your
loyalty agency. Let your strategy guide the design and the
“MUCH LIKE ANY PERSONALIZED ELEMENT OF
YOUR MARKETING STRATEGY, GAMIFICATION CAN
BECOME AN ESSENTIAL PIECE OF YOUR CUSTOMER
JOURNEYS FROM WELCOME TO RE-ENGAGEMENT...”
experience be coupled with time and budget limitations.
Once you’ve completed building your strategy to meet your
objectives, the game design can begin – a.k.a. the fun part!
When designing the game with your internal business
partners, agency and/or vendor, keep everyone focused on
the strategy to prevent the “bubble effect” – allowing the
game to grow and grow out of control until it pops! Take
different approaches and perform research to see what
the competition has done. No one likes a copycat, despite
imitation being the most sincere form of flattery.
During the design phase, make sure to:
1. Maintain strategic alignment throughout the
process (avoid the bubble effect!).
2. Focus on simplicity and possible opportunities
for testing your hypotheses .
3. Lean on your agency or vendor(s) to help guide
the design and provide options.
4. Take inspiration from the industry and
competition, but be uniquely your brand with a
fresh approach.
5. Keep it simple!
Make sure to measure and test your results and continue
to build on your success. Also, remember that you don’t
have to award money or prizes for games – sometimes
rewarding members with knowledge, as in the Welcome
Journey example, can be just as successful as cash prizes.
The prize(s) should solve your business problem and be a
‘surprise and delight’ or a simple “that was a cool way to
learn” reward.
If your members feel fulfilled and delighted by their
experience, you’ve created a successful gamification strategy
that also helps grow your 1:1 personalization behavioral data
for additional optimizations moving forward.
Loyalty
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 LOYALTY READS

LOYALTY READS Acquisition to Loyalty

Many of the world’s best brands trust Cheetah Digital to help them drive
revenue, build lasting customer relationships, and deliver a unique value
exchange throughout the entire customer lifecycle.
In Building a Storybrand, best-selling author and marketing expert
Visit us at Loyalty Lounge #1 or cheetahdigital.com to request a demo today.
Donald Miller explores the importance of storytelling for brand success.
Miller helps brands communicate the compelling benefits of their
products, ideas, and services to customers by teaching readers the
seven universal story points to which all humans respond. He also
discusses the real reason customers make purchases, how to
simplify a brand message so people understand it, and how to

YOUR
create the most effective messaging for websites, brochures,
and social media. Every issue, Loyalty Management features the latest
Building a Storybrand should resonate with any type of leader, whether content from the members of our association. For

NAME more information on joining our growing membership

that person is the marketing director of a multibillion-dollar company,
the owner of a small business, a politician running for office, or the
Donald Miller lead singer of a rock band. Miller’s insights can help such leaders of both brand and supplier companies, please contact
transform the way they talk about who they are, what they do,

HERE!
and the unique value they bring to their customers. us @ loyalty360.org

In Friction, marketing expert Roger Dooley examines the inevitable points of friction
in businesses. Dooley defines these as “the unnecessary expenditure of time, effort,
or money in performing a task.” His book provides the tools and insight businesses
need to eliminate them. By understanding the impact friction can have, marketers

What makes
can establish positive habits and eliminate negative ones, all with the end result of
building a successful company. Turn your CRM
into a competitive
customers
Friction takes readers step-by-step through the process of empowering

advantage with
frank conversations, guiding individual and team behaviors, getting ahead
of friction, optimizing the customer experience, and building a frictionless
declared data.
loyal?
corporate culture. Combining scientific research with real-life examples of leaders
who have conquered business friction, Dooley teaches readers how to identify
roadblocks, alter them for the benefit of both business and customer, and create
Roger Dooley positive, lasting change.

In Red Shoes Living, author Lonnie Mayne explores an award- When you know
them better than
winning philosophy and five-step framework that leadership
teams are deploying organization-wide to engage employees,
win the battle for top talent, create standout customer
experiences, and build meaningful company culture. In a world anyone else.
that is increasingly noisy and negative, the Red Shoes
philosophy has become a symbol for making a positive impact.
Mayne shares his expertise on how people can stand out in the way
they live and the way they interact with others. He believes doing so can
make a huge difference in one’s professional and personal life. His
philosophy suggests that, simply by acknowledging another person’s
humanity and listening to his or her story, people can bridge the gulfs
that tend to separate them from others.
Lonnie Mayne
jebbit.com

30 Loyalty Management™ | Q3 & Q4 2019 | loyalty360.org

 Conference Review
Conference Review

MAY 20-22 Platinum Award Winner for

Sheraton Charlotte Hotel
Charlotte, North Carolina Technology and Trends:

About Loyalty Expo

The 2019 Loyalty Expo conference in Charlotte, North Carolina,
celebrated the brands and thought leaders that are driving innovation
and change in the customer loyalty industry. Caesars Entertainment,
7-Eleven, Verizon, Domino’s, and a number of other recognizable
brands presented on topics such as customer experience strategy,
social impact, metrics and measurement, technology, and loyalty
program design, among others. Loyalty360 recognized these leaders
with awards in 12 different categories, each award based 7 Eleven is the largest chain in the convenience-retailing industry. Based in Irving,
Texas, it operates, franchises, or licenses more than 67,000 stores in 17 countries,
on quantifiable data showing the advantages of brands’ including 11,800 in North America. Its current focus is to be a customer-obsessed,
digitally enabled company.
initiatives. Their successes, and the metrics they’ve
used to show them, prove that driving loyalty and As part of this mission, the company bridged the gap between Facebook Connect and
Facebook Messenger by creating a digital loyalty card within the Messenger platform.
increasing brand advocacy have substantial This enables customers to join the company’s loyalty program more easily. Customers
benefits for brands. can also join via text, in-store at the sales counter, or by scanning a QR Code with
their cameras. Using big data aggregation via cloud-based data lakes, AI tools, and
customer analytics, 7-Eleven can now provide customers with personalized offers and
experiences.

In addition, the company uses real-time technologies to deliver updates to customers

on their point balances and rewards. The loyal program app also offers enjoyable
experiences through augmented reality, providing rewards and engagement wherever
customers are. The company uses a mobile-first approach that merges light-weight and
flexible apps and mobile web experiences with highly configurable and scalable APIs.
Performance monitoring and customer analytics enables continuous improvement of
the customer experience and the underlying technology infrastructure.

7-Eleven has also added a new feature to its app, Scan & Pay, that makes it possible for
customers to select items from the shelves and pay for them on their smart phones.
This enables customers to skip the line while still earning points or redeeming rewards.

The company’s 7REWARDS program had an extremely successful year in 2018.

Membership doubled from 9 million members to 18 million. The 7-Eleven app rating
increased on both iOS and Android platforms to an industry-leading 4.8. In addition,
the company saw an increase in user engagement and positive reviews.

Manish Agarwal Nate Beran

Senior Director Digital Group Product Manager
Finalists: Hertz, Zumiez, Caesars Entertainment
Technology
loyaltyexpo.com

32 Loyalty Management™ | Q3 & Q4 2019 | loyalty360.org Loyalty Management™ | Q3 & Q4 2019 | loyalty360.org 33
 Conference Review
Platinum Award Winner for
Metrics and Measurement:
Caesars Entertainment Corporation owns and operates nearly 50 casinos in the United States
and the United Kingdom. Its major properties include Harrah’s, Horseshoe, and Rio casinos,
as well as Caesars Palace, Paris Las Vegas, and Planet Hollywood. Caesars Entertainment’s
operations, which comprise hotels, riverboat casinos, and gaming establishments, boast
millions of square feet of casino space and thousands of hotel rooms.
The company has implemented a customer experience strategy based on analytics, CRM,
and national scale. The strategy involves the Caesars Rewards mobile app, which enables
customers to check into and out of their rooms, order and pay for food, call hosts, check loyalty
balances, and book rooms and shows. In addition, the app contains a digital concierge called
Ivy. Ivy is an automated chatbot that converses with customers. Ivy has handled emergency
medical situations, maintenance problems, and even been asked out on dates. Customers who
download the app increase spend by 17 percent, and the NPS scores of those who interact with
Ivy increase by up to 9 points over those that have not interacted with the concierge.
The company also focuses on customer data and metrics. The company uses proprietary
algorithms to create detailed and sophisticated marketing segmentation schemes. In addition,
the company recently partnered with Adobe to enhance its personalization and segmentation
efforts through Adobe’s audience manager platform. Whenever a customer clicks on a
Caesars advertisement or searches using a keyword, the company can now code that customer
into a segment. Upon arrival at the website or app landing page, content is dynamically
rendered based on customer segmentation and previous behavior.
Caesars has also partnered with Salesforce to marry CRM data to anonymized data from the
internet. This enables the company to personalize with relevant creative, copy, and offers that
resonate with customers. This has manifested in higher conversion rates. Overall, this focus on
metrics and data has led to an improvement in the company’s marketing efficiency ratio, from
25 percent in 2014 to 20 percent in 2018. The company also sees a fair share premium that
averages 15 percent.
Josh Margolis
VP of Customer Journey Finalists: Sodexo, McClatchy
34 Loyalty Management™ | Q3 & Q4 2019 | loyalty360.org
Conference Review
Platinum Award Winner for
Platinum Award Winner for
Creative
Creative Campaign:
Campaign:
Founded in 1960, Domino’s is the largest pizza company in the world based on global
retail sales, with a significant delivery and carryout business. It ranks among the world’s
top public restaurant brands with over 15,300 stores in 85 markets. In Q3 of 2018,
Domino’s had global retail sales of nearly $3.1 billion.
Recently, Domino’s launched a campaign in which it gives away rewards points
whenever a customer scans a pizza through a function on the company’s Points for Pies
program app. However, in an industry-first, customers can scan any pizza in the app,
even if it is a competitor’s pizza, homemade, or frozen. Customers earn 10 points, up to
6 times total, throughout the campaign whenever they scan a pizza. After earning 60
points, they can redeem them for a free medium, two-topping Domino’s pizza.
The two main campaign goals are to drive new customer acquisition and gain new
rewards members. The program was designed to get new customers to try the brand’s
pizza and include Domino’s in their pizza line-up. Once customers are enrolled in the
program, they receive exclusive deals, personalized experiences, easier ordering, and
free pizza.
Since the program began, the company received a significant number of social media
impressions, which has helped to maintain and increase program recognition. In
addition, the Points for Pie rewards program has reached enrollment levels that make
it one of the largest programs in the QSR industry based on publicly available data. The
program now has more members than any of its competitors.
Finalists: Mountain Dew, Sony Rewards, Ally
Allie Porter
Digital Marketing Program Leader
Loyalty Management™ | Q3 & Q4 2019 | loyalty360.org 35
 Conference Review Conference Review

Platinum Award Winner for Platinum Award Winner for

Loyalty Program Design: Social Impact:

Food Lion has more than 1,000 stores in 10 Southeastern and Mid-Atlantic states and
Designer Shoe Warehouse (DSW) offers thousands of shoes for women and men employs more than 63,000 associates. The company offers low prices, convenient
in over 500 stores nationwide. It also offers a huge assortment of handbags and locations, and works to provide a full shop grocery experience in the Southeast.
accessories. In addition, the company’s website, dsw.com, makes shoe shopping very Through Food Lion Feeds, the company has committed to provide 500 million meals
convenient. Its DSW Rewards program enables members to earn points toward $10 to individuals and families in need by the end of 2020.
rewards certificates every time they shop.
To help tackle the problem of hunger in America, the company had dedicated itself to
In 2018, the company launched the DSW VIP loyalty program to 25 million existing providing ongoing hunger-related support to the communities it serves. In 2014, the
members. The program offers faster rewards and a new tier, and it creates a more company created the Food Lion Feeds to provide this support. Through the foundation,
personalized customer experience for members with relevant and compelling rewards. the company has worked to donate 500 million meals to hungry families by 2020.
The program is designed to be simple, meaningful, and buzzworthy.
Food Lion Feeds has donated more than 450 million meals to date, including more
DSW kicked off the program by collecting insights into the relationship between than 83 million meals in 2018. This was achieved through monthly community
women and shoes through a survey taken by 4,383 of DSW’s female loyalty members. donation events, associate volunteering, equipment donations, quarterly in-store
Key program elements were designed around customer feedback, including the ability promotions, and internal programs utilizing the business’s 63,000 associates.
to earn points by donating shoes, to earn more rewards more often, and to receive free
shipping on anything. In addition to this social impact strategy, the company offers a monthly rewards
program entitled the Personalized Savings Tool. Designed with the shopper
The program now includes three tiers: VIP Club (free to join), VIP Gold ($200 annual experience in mind, customers interact digitally by loading personalized offers each
spend), and VIP Elite ($500 annual spend). All three tiers receive birthday rewards. month with varying rewards and thresholds. This enables members to earn rewards
Gold and Elite can also give two $5 birthday rewards to friends and enjoy early access that are automatically redeemed on their next purchases.
to exclusive offers and events.
The Personalized Savings Tool program has led to a significant customer retention rate
Since the launch of the program, DSW has seen double-digit customer enrollment and increased monthly spend.
growth, best-ever member retention and reactivation rates, and increases in average
member spend. The company has experienced the best customer file growth and
health it has seen in years.

Juile Roy Neil Norman Cheryl Pinkham

Vice President, CRM, Digital & Analytics Finalists: Food Lion, BreakTime, Cinemark Director of Loyalty & Shopper Marketing Shopper Marketing Manager Finalists: Ally, DSW, Erie Insurance

36 Loyalty Management™ | Q3 & Q4 2019 | loyalty360.org Loyalty Management™ | Q3 & Q4 2019 | loyalty360.org 37
 Conference Review
Platinum Award Winner for
Influencer Marketing:
IHG Business Rewards, the loyalty program of InterContinental Hotels Group
(IHG), has approximately 280,000 members globally. The program rewards
planners for booking meetings, accommodations, and events at participating
IHG hotels on behalf of others. Members also qualify for Your Rate, an exclusive
rate offered when they book direct. In addition to flexible features such as
no blackout dates and free internet, members have hundreds of options for
redeeming points. These include reward nights, digital downloads, brand name
items, and retail gift cards.
The program supports the company’s drive toward long-term loyalty. It is
designed to enhance acquisitions and defend against competitors. The company
also recently embarked on a thank-you campaign in which it gave 150 million
rewards points to members for posting photos of themselves enjoying time at
home or at an IHG hotel to Twitter or Instagram. Members used the hashtags
#HomeWithIHG, #RewardsOffer, and #Ad.
The company secured nine top-tier influencers from the United States and
the United Kingdom to create content that aligned with IHG Rewards Club
messaging and to invite their fans to follow along with #IHGRewardsClub and
#HomeWithIHG. The influencers were selected based on criteria that aligned
with the brand’s values.
Lanna O’Connor
Finalists: Vitamin Shoppe, Dollar Car Rental, Sleep Number
Loyalty Marketing Manager
Global Direct Marketing Manager
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Conference Review
Platinum Award Winner for
Employee Engagement:
Omni Hotels & Resorts offers 60 distinct luxury hotels and resorts in
leading business and leisure destinations across North America. In total,
these properties feature 25 golf courses and 16 award-winning spas. Omni
Hotels & Resorts is the official hotel of the PGA TOUR and PGA TOUR
Champions.
The company’s employee engagement strategy is an engagement contest
that focuses on five KPIs: 
1. Total conversion rate of non-member guest to members
2. Conversion rate of online travel agency non-member bookers
3. Redemption of local experience awards
4. Member recognition
5. Benefit delivery 
To help keep employees excited and engaged, the company has multiple
contest themes throughout the calendar year. Ranging from card games
to board games to head-to-head, it adapts the rules and goals of each
game to align with the KPIs set at the corporate level. This strategy has
had several measurable benefits. The company has seen an increased
enrollment conversion rate, reward redemption, and recognition and
benefit delivery.
Sara Blackwood
Finalists: Sodexo, MGM, Overstock
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 Conference Review
Platinum Award Winner for
CX Strategy:
Rosie O’Neill and Josh Resnick had dreamed of opening a luxury candy boutique
ever since their third date, a screening of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.
Inspired to create the first-ever candy store for grown-ups, the couple traveled the
world in search of the finest candy makers to produce their exclusive and inventive
line of confections. Best known for Champagne and Rosé-infused gummy bears,
Sugarfina has been named one of the “World’s 50 Most Innovative Companies”
and “World’s 10 Most Innovative Retailers” by Fast Company as it disrupts
the $200 billion confections industry. Recognized as one of the “World’s Most
Beautiful Candy Shops” by Architectural Digest, Sugarfina opened its first boutique
in Beverly Hills in 2013 and now has more than 50 locations across North America
in major cities such as Los Angeles, New York, Boston, Chicago, and Vancouver.
The brand’s loyalty program, Sugarfina Rewards, incentivizes social media
engagement, as well as purchases. Shoppers can earn points by writing reviews,
subscribing on social platforms, and purchasing from the brand online or instore.
The program uses a tiered rewards structure and is omnichannel to engage
customers online, on mobile devices, and in stores. Sugarfina Rewards enables
customers to personalize their rewards, which range from free candy to exclusive
product offers to an in-store party for the customer and friends.
Since implementing Sugarfina Rewards, the brand has seen an increase in referrals
and has gained thousands of additional followers on social media.
Zainub Naqvi
Senior Marketing Manager
Finalists: Tarte, Caesars Entertainment, MGM
40 Loyalty Management™ | Q3 & Q4 2019 | loyalty360.org
Conference Review
Platinum Award Winner for
Customer Loyalty Strategy:
Sunglass Hut is an international retailer of sunglasses and sunglass accessories with
1,600 retail locations around the United States. Sunglass Hut is a part of Luxottica
Group with presence in multiple countries around the world.
With a base of customers that typically has a long repurchase cycle, Sunglass Hut
faced a unique challenge in designing its loyalty program. With this in mind, the brand
created a program that is not a tier-based or traditional points-based program, but
one that includes personalized benefits based on customers’ affinity to the brands,
activities, and location.
As a part of the Sun Perks program, members get early access to brand collaborations,
product launches and sales, access to member only products, and VIP access to
events and experiences hosted by the brand. There are opportunities through the
year where members can also participate in invitation-only campaigns for giveaways,
chance to win promotions, and earn products or a gift with purchases. The program
also rewards customer loyalty throughout the year in the form of surprise and delights.
The Sun Perks program celebrates the Sunglass Hut brand, customers, and associates.
A key part of the Sun Perks program is associate buy-in. As a part of the program
launch, all store associates were trained to ensure understanding of the program and
were invited to participate in an associate incentive campaign once the program was
launched to keep the momentum going.
Sunglass Hut has been able to strike a balance between not only different types of
rewards, but also in the approach, as they have successfully demonstrated how to
engage customers and employees in the Sun Perks program.
Shinjani Agrawal
Sr. Marketing Manager, CRM & Loyalty
Finalists: Overstock, Wyndham, Sumo Sushi & Bento
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 Conference Review
Platinum Award Winner for
B2B Customer Loyalty:
Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc. is the world leader in serving science, with revenues of more
than $20 billion and approximately 70,000 employees globally. The company’s mission
is to enable its customers to make the world healthier, cleaner, and safer. Thermo Fisher
Scientific helps its customers accelerate life sciences research, solve complex analytical
challenges, improve patient diagnostics, deliver medicines to market, and increase
laboratory productivity. Through its brands – Thermo Scientific, Applied Biosystems,
Invitrogen, Fisher Scientific, and Unity Lab Services – it offers combination of innovative
technologies, purchasing convenience, and comprehensive services. Thermo Scientific
instruments, equipment, software, services, and consumables enable scientists to solve
complex analytical challenges in pharmaceutical, biotechnology, academic, government,
environmental and industrial research, as well as the clinical laboratory.  Its products
address a range of needs from sample, material characterization, and chemical analysis
to clinical diagnoses and biological-based therapeutics manufacturing.
Launched in July of 2017, Thermo Fisher’s Aspire Member Program is a loyalty program
for the biotech and scientific community. In less than two years, Aspire has piloted and
launched a comprehensive platform that has inspired loyalty and brand affinity from its
members and has also exceeded the business’ expectations on several key performance
indicators. Since inception, Aspire’s goal has been to transform customers into vocal
advocates of Thermo Fisher products and drive growth. This has been achieved by offering
members differentiated rewards and trial products and investing in member’s career
pursuits through the program’s career accelerators.
Aspire has substantially increased Thermo Fisher’s incremental revenue. Aspire’s CAS
(Customer Allegiance Score) was on average five points higher than the rest of the division.
Finalists: Hilton, IHG, Floor & Decor
Carrie Thomas
Market Development Manager
42 Loyalty Management™ | Q3 & Q4 2019 | loyalty360.org
Conference Review
Platinum Award Winner for
Incentive and Reward Design and Program
Partnership, 360 Degree Award (Brand):
Verizon Wireless is the largest wireless telecommunications provider in the United
States, offering a range of wireless products (e.g., mobile devices) and services (e.g.,
wireless plans) to over 113 million customers. The company, with headquarters in both
New York and New Jersey, employs over 144,500 nationwide.
Verizon’s mission is to deliver the promise of the digital world by enabling people,
businesses, and society to innovate and drive positive change. It currently operates
the nation’s largest 4G LTE network, covering approximately 98 percent of the US
population and recently launched the world’s first commercial 5G service in 2018
with Verizon 5G Home.
The brand’s loyalty program, Verizon Up, rewards consumers each month. Its approach
to engagement is built on a balance of rational and emotional rewards. Program
members can access personalized rewards through a simple mobile experience.
Rewards are delivered through the different carousels within the app, and members
earn credits (one credit per $300 spent on wireless bills) than can be redeemed for
rewards. Members also have access to everyday rewards that do not cost a credit;
these range from bonus rewards like exclusive discounts and surprise and delight offers
to local offers, with which members can save up to 50 percent off restaurants and
entertainment.
Verizon has found that the majority of members consider Verizon to have a best-in-class
rewards program and that members feel 38 percent more valued than non-members.
Members are more digitally engaged, averaging two times more visits to the app and
perform more transactions online, such as adding a line of service, upgrading a device
or purchasing accessories.
Julia Russell
Director, Verizon Up Loyalty Program and
My Verizon mobile app strategies Finalists: Mountain Dew, Telus, Wyndham
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 Conference Review

Platinum Award Winner for

360 Degree Award (Vendor):

CrowdTwist provides a SaaS-based omnichannel loyalty and

analytics platform. The platform is designed to enable brands to
acquire, engage, and retain customers.

The information provided by the platform can be analyzed and

used by brands to create segments and individual customer
profiles. The platform offers brands visibility into their customers’
activities on digital, social, mobile, and transactional channels.

The platform can track customer attributes such as age, gender,

location, social influence, recent online activity, and online
purchasing history. This information can be used by brands to
create personalized marketing campaigns and target customers
with relevant offers.

Emily Rudin
Chief Customer Officer

44 Loyalty Management™ | Q3 & Q4 2019 | loyalty360.org Loyalty Management™ | Q3 & Q4 2019 | loyalty360.org 45
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