Leaders in Customer Loyalty, Powered by Loyalty360
Leaders in Customer Loyalty, Powered by Loyalty360
Loyalty360 Loyalty Live | Ellen Green, Bounteous
For the past 20 years, Bounteous has established itself as a co-innovation partner for numerous brand clients. The company’s core mission as a technology-agnostic agency is to assist clients from a wide range of industries in selecting, implementing, and optimizing their technology, as well as bring loyalty experiences to life through strategic consulting, mobile app design, website development, creative, analytics, and more.
Loyalty360 CEO, Mark Johnson, spoke with Ellen Green, Vice President of Loyalty Strategy at Bounteous, to learn more about her experience in consulting and how Bounteous partners with brands to build successful customer loyalty strategies.
Good morning and good afternoon. Hope everyone's happy, safe and well. This is Mark Johnson from Loyalty 360. Want to welcome you back to another edition of Loyalty Live. In this series we speak with leading agencies, technology partners and consultants in customer channel and brand loyalty about technology trends and best practices that impact a brand's ability to drive unique experiences, enhance engagement and impact customer loyalty. Today we have the pleasure of speaking with Ellen Green. She's a vice president of Loyalty Strategy at Bounteous. How are you today?
Ellen Green:Doing well, mark, how are you?
Mark Johnson:Doing well, thank you. We like to start these on a more personal level. Get to know those who we're speaking with, so I'd love to know a little bit more about you, your current role with Bounteous and maybe your background of what you did before coming to Bounteous.
Ellen Green:Yeah, absolutely. So. I've been in the industry for about 20 years. I've worked both client side and agency side, heavy focus, specializing in everything from marketing, loyalty and CRM. But in my current role at Bounteous, I'm leading loyalty. So that involves everything from helping our clients drive loyalty, whether that be through like formal program design, evolution or just looking for strategic ways to build that stronger connection between the customer and the brand. But I'm also responsible in developing and evolving our loyalty offering. So we're always looking for new ways to help brands engage with their customers. You know, personally I live in Texas but I absolutely love to type travel, especially internationally. I've been married for like 17 years now and have two little miniatures, schnauzers, Miller and Benzi. So that's kind of my life in history in a nutshell.
Mark Johnson:That's good. All right, for those who may not be familiar with Bounteous, I think I gave a little bit of a description. Can you tell us what you guys do, how you do it, how long the company's been around and what industries you play mostly in?
Ellen Green:Yeah, so the company's been around for about 20 years. We are a co-innovation partner to some of the world's most ambitious brands. I think we have around like 500 clients, about 1,800 employees around the globe, and our services range from everything from kind of the upfront alignment, strategic services building really helping clients build out their long-term strategy and roadmap to creating values. That can include anything from actually building like mobile websites, apps, commerce experiences, as well as a lot of the marketing services, so doing like the strategy execution optimization for like Sierra and marketing campaigns, as well as social, and then doing ongoing optimization. We have our own in-house data and analytics department.
Ellen Green:One of the things that we do like to do is actually partner from a technology perspective, though. So, like I like to say, from the loyalty side, like we essentially can do everything end to end other than like we don't have our own loyalty technology. So, like we consider ourselves to be agnostic, we feel like it helps us be able to create the right strategy and then help clients either, you know, match that with their current technology or help them find new technology and be able to help them implement that and optimize it over time. We work a lot across a lot of different verticals actually. So everything from our consumer vertical has, you know, retail, hospitality, cpg, as well as entertainment, and then we work with a lot of restaurant and convenience store brands, as well as financial services. We work in B2B as well as healthcare.
Mark Johnson:Okay, when you look at customer loyalty, we always like to get the definition of how people define it within different arenas, so we'd love to know what customer loyalty means to you to balance this, and to your clients.
Ellen Green:Absolutely so. We define loyalty as an outcome, and it's this outcome of great experiences. So it's all about building this deeper connection between the customer and the brand. So there's a lot of ways that we can do that, whether that be brand interactions, moments of surprise, optimizing the CX, or even formal benefits and rewards, or just strategies with engagement employees. So all of the core components from a loyalty perspective. But we're always looking for that way to go beyond just the transaction, create that emotional connection but also help our clients measure it. So we're looking at metrics that both drive transactional and the emotional piece.
Mark Johnson:Okay, when you look at your clients and some of the things you do for them, what's helping them drive successful customer loyalty efforts in the program strategies, you're seeing what's working today.
Ellen Green:So we find the best in-class loyalty strategies have these three different pillars. So it's all about the customer needs, are the business goals and also what's right for the brand. So, from the customer perspective, that's really listening to them, whether that be putting in place listening tools, ongoing progressive profiling, zero-party data to build up those profiles over time, or even looking at ways to incorporate different feedback loops at key points within the customer journey, as well as like formal consumer research, whether that be quantitative or qualitative. But essentially we're looking for all of that to look and help brands figure out where they should be making investments, how they should be evolving, both digital and loyalty. So a lot of times it's informing, like current and future roadmaps.
Ellen Green:Then, from the business side, I think one of the things that we've seen especially recently as brands are looking for ways to still drive loyalty but, say, from a cost perspective.
Ellen Green:So one of the ways that we've seen that come to life is through enhanced experiences.
Ellen Green:So whether that be things that make it more convenient to do business with a brand, like leveraging technology to do that, or bringing in things like fun and gamification into the picture, but also making sure that it's right for the brand is the big third key piece.
Ellen Green:So there's a lot of different reasons why customers choose brands, so we help them uncover what those are and help them activate it from a loyalty perspective.
Ellen Green:So we did this with a lot of brands, but one of the ones examples that I like is we work with Dutch Bros and one of the things that's really key about their brand is this whole notion of the connection between the customer and the employee, and so we look based to amplify that. So like bringing to life and the digital experience, bringing to like personalization so that the bracer can identify the customer, see something that's unique to them, create that personal connection, as well as lean into things that have worked really well from a brand perspective so they can stand out like physical stickers at their stands, and so actually bringing that into the digital environment, allowing customers to be able to collect these in a way with something that customers were already doing, like waiting in line once a month for, like, a sticker and a drink. So bringing that in digital and enable customers to be able to do it on a more frequent basis has been a big win.
Mark Johnson:Okay, when you look at some of the challenges brands are having, either your clients or clients that you're potentially looking to work with, you know you talked about a number of things that work well. What are some of the challenges that you see? Is it getting access to all the data? Leveraging it? What are some of the challenges that you see currently?
Ellen Green:Accessing and leveraging data is certainly a challenge. Like one of the things that we have is kind of a we have a growth marketing maturity model that we use and when we kick off engagements we kind of map clients out on that model to kind of see where they all are today but also talk about, like, where they want to go in the future, and so that way it helps us to align with them on Are there certain technology investments that they need to make? Are they under utilizing the technology that they have, or do they even have the right data foundation In place to be able to do that? And then essentially we can help them put together a plan to get where they're trying to go.
Mark Johnson:Okay, excellent. One of the things that we saw in our state of customer loyalty report in the last year is there are a number of brands you want to redo or enhance their customer loyalty program, their customer loyalty efforts at either new functionality or incentives that can drive Unique engagement. You know what are you seeing around Program relaunches or brands wanting to update their customer loyalty offerings. You know what are clients coming to you asking for.
Ellen Green:A lot of it has to do with value. So they're looking to add value in low-cost ways. So whether that be, you know, creating a better experience. So some of the elements that we've been able to do is take some of the physical elements can put them to digital, making it easier to interact with the brand. We've worked with brands where sometimes they some of their business challenges, like they have a really long line, so maybe we can use like geolocation technology to kind of streamline some of the processes so that customers don't have to wait in lines when they arrive. I think also new and better technology solutions in general. So a lot of brands are coming to us when they've kind of Outgrown or run into limit limitations with their current loyalty technology. So as they're looking to revamp their strategy or they're looking at new technologies, they're looking to revamp their strategy at the same time. So it's like just like it's better to start with the strategy and then choose the right technology. So then we help them basically find the right partner to bring that to life, implement it and then kind of bring it together in their entire ecosystem.
Ellen Green:Okay, and I think the last one is really around the brand differentiators. So I think you know, we've seen a lot where a lot of brands have launched very similar programs to one another and so it's not really driving true customer loyalty anymore. It's one of those things where they're trying to get the best results. One of those things where the customer really isn't getting something. In business A versus business B Maybe it's points, but at the end of the day it's not enough to really drive and motivate customer behavior and really ship share or build that connection that they're looking to for customers.
Mark Johnson:Okay, you touched on the fact that many programs are the same. You hear that quote unquote see of sameness within customer loyalty programs. You know how do brands address this. You talked about personalizing the offers and you know understanding differentiating points. You know how should brands be looking at the challenge of this. Quote unquote see of sameness.
Ellen Green:Yeah, so we see this a lot. You know, I always say you shouldn't be able to take another company's logo and just paste it on your loyalty program. So every solution that we're creating is unique to the brand. So we're looking at the beyond, just that core value proposition. So we're looking at all the different ways the customer is actually integrated into the entire experience. We're looking at creating ownable experiences across a digital In store marketing social.
Ellen Green:But a lot of times we're doing consumer research, understanding kind of like what's most minimal from a brand perspective if the brand doesn't already have theirs, and then looking at some of those key things and getting insights from customers and feedback. So, for instance, one of the good examples is around if you've seen Panda Express' new program around like good fortune, like one of the things that really resonated with Panda's customers was this whole concept of actually having this good fortune journey and so now when customers visit the first time each month, they actually unlock a fortune, and so this whole notion of having a personalized fortune cookie and kind of building an emotional connection and leading into a lot of the brand elements that make it different and unique.
Mark Johnson:Okay, excellent. And when you look at technology that could be of importance CDPs, mobile proximity, marketing or kind of the differentiating pieces that you talked about is there a trend or technology, or even a kind of an overall idea that you believe is important for brands to be focusing on today?
Ellen Green:I think one of the big challenges is, with a lot of the economic pressures that are happening, I think customer loyalty is more important than ever, but I think a lot of times in these situations, brands forget the customer. So my biggest piece of advice is don't forget the customer. Like I think, customers believe that a loyalty strategy is about being loyal to them, but a lot of companies actually get too focused on the business side of it, and so making sure that it has the right balance so that it ends up building a stronger relationship rather than tarnishing it.
Mark Johnson:Okay, excellent. And when you look at some of the challenges that exist and opportunities, is there a piece of advice that you share with brands who are looking to improve their customer loyalty to customer experience strategies? That are one or two things that work well, or make sure you consider.
Ellen Green:Yeah. So we always look at it as like tell them to consider the end-to-end experience. So I think a lot of brands focus on just the program itself, but actually by evolving a lot of the and optimizing the ongoing experience. So, whether that be like making it more convenient to interact with the brand or just bringing in new elements that customers love, I think that's how brands actually win long-term.
Mark Johnson:Okay, and the last question I have is you know what can Loyalty 360 do as an association to help you and your team with their customer loyalty and customer experience during their education?
Ellen Green:Yeah. So I think two big things One is content and the other is connections. So you know, while loyalty is an easy concept, it's actually pretty complicated to execute well and actually build true customer loyalty, and so I think the more education that Loyalty 360 can bring, the better, especially around pitfalls that brands run into. And then connections, like helping brands be able to navigate the loyalty space, finding the right partners, but, I think, also creating forms for brands and agencies to connect and learn from one other. I got to attend loyalty 360 this year. It's absolutely fabulous event, so nicely done. But that energy and passion of loyalty space is so big, and so the more that that can be amplified, the better.
Mark Johnson:Okay great Well, Ellen. Thank you very much for taking the time to join Loyalty Live. It was great getting to meet you and also learning more about Bounteous and also what you're seeing with the industry. It's great to hear and again, thank you for sharing some of the tips for brands that they should consider with regard to impacting their customer loyalty strategy. It was great to hear.
Ellen Green:Absolutely. Thanks for having me, Mark.
Mark Johnson:Absolutely, and thank you everyone for listening. Make sure you join us back for another edition of loyalty. Live soon and have a wonderful day.