Guest contributor | Simon Rowles, New Zealand Partner with Ellipsis & Company
Simon is a great friend friend of RX and a partner at Ellipsis & Co. the Customer Loyalty experts. Elllipsis & Co use Customer Science® to understand, manage and grow customer value and help businesses thrive through solving complex customer problems.
New Zealand’s loyalty industry is changing as Flybuys and AA Smartfuel close. At the same time, globally and locally, more retailers are launching loyalty programs and those with existing loyalty programs are growing them. New Zealand is in the midst of the loyalty program boom.
Choosing how to build and operate your loyalty platform used to be easy for a Loyalty Manager. Historically it was an outsourced function with providers including Flybuys, AA Smartfuel, Airpoints and perhaps one of 5 other providers.
Retailers now almost exclusively insource their loyalty strategy and embed their loyalty program into their own customer experiences. They’re delivering better revenues and margins at lower cost than outsourcing has ever been able to provide.
With this growing demand, we have a host of loyalty platforms and providers investing to build a multitude of new and better loyalty solutions. This field of options is constantly expanding with new entrants, new capabilities from incumbents and also shrinking as unsuccessful vendors fail and exit.
Loyalty Managers, who historically had less than 10 loyalty solutions providers to choose between in New Zealand, now have 127 (last year the number was 65).
For the last few years, we've been cataloguing all the loyalty solutions in New Zealand to make this complex selection process simple. We've just released the latest comprehensive and categorised map of all 127 loyalty solutions which is available here. We do deep dives with the important ones who are driving the contemporary, successful loyalty strategies offshore as well as the innovators who are making the impossible possible.
Ones to consider
In looking at solutions for a loyalty strategy there’s two important categories – loyalty solutions (the engines that run loyalty programs, accrue points and status) or rewards solutions (the tangible benefits that members achieve in the loyalty program). Each of these comes in two flavours – foundation solutions for the start of your loyalty journey and extension solutions to deploy once your program and capabilities are more mature.
We’ve catalogued 35 of the most important vendors in these categories (with more detail in our market map).
Loyalty Foundation
This is core technology to identify and score customers and their behaviour, accrue benefits, points or status and retire or exchange these. This category includes generalists who work in almost any category and specialists who have deep and unique capabilities for a particular sector.
Annex Cloud; a deep loyalty specialist and your first choice if you are an SAP shop with integrations to the likes of Adobe, Microsoft and Salesforce. Harrods and Harley Davidson are clients.
Capillary; for very large retail programs and a market leader in Asia. Shell and Sephora are clients.
Clutch; fully featured including a Customer Data Platform. Hungry Jacks and New Balance are clients.
Engage People; Canadian-based financial services loyalty platform with a growing pay with points offering. Clients include Medibank Australia and Bank of Montreal.
Epsilon; part of Publicis Groupe. Clients include Super Retail Group and Citibank.
Kobie; a platform for large and complex loyalty programs. Clients include Subway and Victoria’s Secret.
Loyalty Juggernaut; loyalty ecosystem specialist. Clients include Global Hotel Alliance and Emirates.
Salesforce; has built its own loyalty platform deeply integrated with the rest of its offerings and should be the first choice if you’re a Salesforce shop. Clients include Harvey Nichols and Metcash.
Loyalty Extension
These are emerging and differentiating capabilities that build on a foundational solution’s capabilities. They’re generally smaller and growing providers. Some may be available from foundational providers and some may also perform as foundational loyalty solutions.
Amperity; leading Customer Data Platform (CDP) growing into Australia. Endeavour Group and Brooks are clients.
Currency Alliance; fast-growing multi-partner collaboration platform leading in transferring points between programs. Bank of America and Live Nation are clients.
Loyalty Status Co; delivers status matching and high-value customer acquisition tools for loyalty programs. Clients include Lufthansa and Etihad.
Pug; gamification solution built by game designers from Disney and EA. Clients include Kimberly-Clark and Kotex.
Rewards Foundation
These are the most common reward types used in all industry categories with scaled specialists delivering the execution.
Elevate Loyalty; a new provider with a raft of digital rewards including the new OneTap loyalty for payment cards.
Ixup; data clean room provider to match two loyalty program’s clients.
Loyalty Now; card linking provider with integrations to Visa, MasterCard and American Express.
Loylogic; provides sophisticated reward offerings and platforms. Clients include Iceland Air and Amex.
Popink; rewards provision specialist and aggregator. Clients include Westpac and Woolworths.
Rewards Extension
These are emerging and differentiating rewards and experience capabilities with smaller, niche specialist offerings.
Pointspay; turns rewards points into cash for use online. Clients include Etihad and Amex.
Stampix; personal photos printed and delivered to members as a reward with your brand attached. Clients include Unilever and Nespresso.
The homegrown heros
New Zealand’ world-beating in many things including loyalty platforms and services. If you’re a B2B buyer looking for a B2B loyalty solution your best bets are locally founded and globally growing platforms.
Based on Auckland’s North Shore, Simplicity Loyalty delivers the B2B loyalty programs for Stihl, Placemakers and Mico. Their expansion offshore includes Schneider Electric in Australia. In New Zealand, Simplicity Loyalty also drives both Subway’s loyalty program and Genesis Energy’s award-winning Power Shout program.
Fonterra, Bayer, BidFood, Samsung, Nufarm, Spark and Daikin all trust Incentive Solutions (also on Auckland’s North Shore) for their B2B loyalty programs. Incentive Solutions have expanded successfully into Australia and the USA.
If you’re after a smart B2B coalition loyalty provider, Hamilton-based Smart Loyalty delivers for Honda, HirePool and Fonterra’s Farm Source and in Australia; Maxliner.
The expansion of loyalty programs has far outgrown the resources and staff needed to operate them. Nowhere is this more keenly felt than in the marketing campaigns that result from the firehose of new customer data these loyalty programs manufacture. New Zealand institution Datamine is resourcing loyalty campaign capabilities for the likes of Freedom Furniture in New Zealand and EVT in Australia. Datamine’s also struck a partnership with data innovator and ANZ Bank venture company DataCo for a privacy-compliant clean room solution that allows two loyalty programs to match shared customers.
Locally founded and now global Task delivers McDonald’s loyalty program in New Zealand and multiple markets globally as well as Tank’s domestic loyalty program.
Bank loyalty starts to merge with retailer and travel
The growth in bank loyalty programs (the biggest sector by spending in New Zealand’s loyalty economy) will be in their relationships with retail and travel companies. Here Visa’s partnership network has been the first to move with its partner Pokitpal delivering the new category of retailer-funded discounts earned on payment cards at Latitude (on their Gem credit card). Expect many more of these offerings.
Visa’s bank loyalty partner Ascenda is the engine powering BNZ’s new BNZ Rewards program which converts bank points currency into a host of different airline and hotel loyalty programs. These airlines include Qantas, Cathay and Emirates and hotels IHG and Wyndham.
Westpac has been one of the first banks globally to launch MasterCard’s Pay With Rewards solution. Westpac’s proprietary points currency hotpoints can be spent as cash at any retailer.
Mercury Energy exited its Airpoints relationship some time back and launched its new loyalty program on Europe based Antavo’s loyalty platform. Antavo also serves Kathmandu and Rip Curl here in New Zealand.
Two of our biggest and most sophisticated retailers have adopted a big and sophisticated loyalty platform from the UK in Eagle Eye.
Australian headquartered Gratifii is the platform driving Fusion5 and Caci’s new loyalty programs. Gratifii also partners with the fitness app WithU. WithU was a key loyalty program benefit for both AA Smartfuel and Vodafone.
Incentives expert iGoDirect from Australia has an impressive client roster in New Zealand including Canon, Bosch, Arlo, Lion Nathan and Simplot.
Also with multiple New Zealand clients, Marigold Loyalty delivers the loyalty programs of PGG Wrightson, Life Pharmacy and Baby Bunting.
Auckland Airport launched their Strata Club loyalty program several years ago with Kognitiv. Kognitiv last month sold off its legacy platform to concentrate on its fast-growing Saas offering.
Working out who to put on your short list of potential loyalty providers
The New Zealand Loyalty Solutions Market Map is a useful tool to navigate options. If that doesn’t sufficiently focus your targets, we at Ellipsis run a speed dating service to help you develop both your shortlist and understanding of what’s out there. We’re also experienced at selecting partners and running RFPs.
Check out the map here.
Simon Rowles is the New Zealand Partner with Ellipsis & Company. Ellipsis are the Loyalty Experts with clients including Kathmandu, Mercury, Farmlands, Visa, Star Alliance and BNZ. Ellipsis use Customer Science® to understand, manage and grow customer value. Contact Simon (simon.rowles@ellipsisandco.com) or visit Ellipsis and www.ellipsisandco.com
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