Mark Johnson, CEO of Loyalty360, spoke with Bob Holtcamp, President and CMO at Bob Evans, about leveraging a new AI-driven loyalty-and-offer solution, merging marketing and IT leadership, and making customers feel recognized and important.
Mark Johnson, CEO of Loyalty360, spoke with Bob Holtcamp, President and CMO at Bob Evans, about leveraging a new AI-driven loyalty-and-offer solution, merging marketing and IT leadership, and making customers feel recognized and important.
Good afternoon, good morning. This is Mark Johnson from Loyalty 360. Everyone's happy, safe and well. I want to welcome you to another edition of our Leaders in Customer Loyalty series. In this series, we speak with leading brands about what they are seeing in here on the front lines of Customer Channel and at Brand Loyalty Today we have the pleasure to speak with Bob Holkamp. He is a President and Chief Marketing Officer. Bob Evans, Bob, thank you very much for taking the time to talk to us today.
Speaker 2:You bet. Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. First off, we'd love to know a little bit more about you, a little bit about our background and what you do at Bob Evans, and also maybe a fun fact or a passion you have outside of work.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Well, again, thanks for having me A little bit on me. I started my career on the advertising agency side a long time ago, have worked on the marketing side, the brand side, both in the consumer packaged goods world as well as in restaurant. Currently, as you said, the President and Chief Marketing Officer at Bob Evans. As far as my you know, my accountability is there. As you can imagine, the majority of what I do is drive revenue. That's my sole purpose, if you will, and the organization Not only the marketing team they roll up underneath me, but all of menu strategy and culinary and R&D rolls up underneath me, as well as our newly formed e-commerce team, which is a combination of a digital marketing team as well as infrastructure team.
Speaker 2:These are IT professionals who make everything work really well for us, the way in which we work at Bob Evans. We're not a huge organization, but we're a team-based organization. We kind of lock arms and work together across multiple disciplines and ensure that everything gets to the guest the way it needs to get to the guest. Also, we do that in order to accomplish the goals that we have for the business. Okay, excellent.
Speaker 1:It sounds like a very diverse role. It keeps you thinking a little bit of left brain, right brain, all the same thing. That's good For sure. Absolutely. When you look at Bob Evans, you're famously quoted, for everybody is somebody at Bob Evans. How does this vision apply to your customer loyalty and customer experience strategies?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, it's foundational at some level. We look at a phrase like that and what it means to us is we want to be special for people. We want them to feel special. We want to be specific with them as well. We want them to receive information from us, experiences from us that meet their very specific needs. So when we think about loyalty, we don't just think about it specifically as this data-driven program. We think about it in the context of very much making consumers feel very welcome, making consumers feel very special, and we specifically satisfy their specific needs.
Speaker 1:Okay, excellent. When you look at emotional loyalty, it's an area that's very drained to our audience. We have 100, some members that all focused on customer loyalty. So emotional loyalty how to get there, how to drive it, how to understand it measured very important. You know how do you cultivate emotional loyalty with Bob Evans customers.
Speaker 2:Yeah, what starts with and it probably started with 30 years ago, when someone was leaving our restaurant, we would say y'all, come back now.
Speaker 2:That was part of what we would do and who we were.
Speaker 2:But, truthfully, today it is a matter of having a mindset.
Speaker 2:That is not about we have this program to drive frequency, which is that's about us. It is much more about what I was talking about before, which is making people feel recognized, they feel important, they begin to see a brand that's catering specifically to their needs, and we provide, by virtue of the great technology that we have in our fingertips, we provide that in a very specific way to consumers through those channels, because we just know them really really well, and when we know them really really well, we can form a better relationship through the communication, the offers, the things that they can take advantage of, and we want to put things in front of them that are very much about the things that they tell us or we can observe from them are their needs and their desires and their wishes and their dreams, those types of things. And so when we think about emotional loyalty, it's just that it is very much about tapping into their heart by virtue of giving them exactly what they're looking for out of the relationship that the brand can offer.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think you hit on a number of unique points there. On salient points is that making sure that your stewards of the relationship, when a customer gives you data, making sure that you take into consideration your action on it that's a very powerful way to drive emotional loyalty. And also, you mentioned that there's a challenge right now with a lot of brands is they want to drive that incremental transaction and they have to get away of just focusing on that because that can tune customers customers kind of tune into that. Some customers are cutting back potentially. So how do you keep them engaged, how do you drive that emotional loyalty if you may not be getting the same frequency out of them and doing this subtle way where many brands just hammer, hammer, hammer with emails, with offers, offers and incentives. But some customers may not want that, especially in this somewhat unique economic environment as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think we're actually guilty of some of what you just described. By the way, I would say where Bob Evans is? We're still in this, taking baby steps. The move we've just made with par with punch is a really nice step in the direction that we want to go, but we find ourselves not knowing as much as we should and looking at the transaction history on a given profile and trying to change the frequency or change their usage pattern by virtue of putting an offer or some sort of deal in front of them, and the longer they've been away from us, the bigger the deal may be and so we do some of those things, and so our journey is to move from that to a place that we just described, which is really understanding exactly what they're looking for, why their patterns may be what they are, and actually unifying this is a whole another topic, but within the conversation but unifying all of their engagements with the brand.
Speaker 2:For right now, so much of the view we have is just about how they interact with us online and specifically in an off premise setting. We don't have as much clarity that as much as we want with on premise, and so, with 70% of our of our business is dine in. We needed to close that gap a bit and so you know, if I can kind of say something very positive about the punch, you know, program, they allow us to close that gap. They allow consumers to, you know, record their, their moments in our restaurants. We can understand everything that they did by, by checking in, if you will, what they purchased, when they purchased, where they purchased, and that can that can then help to enrich the profile in such a way where we have a better handle on what their real needs are dynamic or off premise and then we can actually communicate with them effect more effectively.
Speaker 1:So you talked a little bit about the new AI-driven loyalty application that you launched, which allows you to enhance the personalization, the offers, incentives that also impact the guest experience to build stronger brand loyalty. Many brands are looking at leveraging technology, and the potential of AI is front and center, but using a very limited capacity. We actually have an emerging technology committee that meets periodically to talk about AI and they're not using it, maybe to the most full capacity.
Speaker 1:So, when you look at that, how do you think you will leverage AI and some of the insights you drive to enhance customer loyalty?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think, first of all, whatever that council is that you're describing, you should send them over to New Albany, ohio. We would love to spend some time with them Again. I think we're in a place where we're emerging. We're not sure we've got it all figured out yet, but I will tell you, the core of it and the core of the use of AI is not only understanding the consumer, but then delivering solutions to them at scale.
Speaker 2:I think that, to me, is the biggest thing for a bricks and mortar family dining restaurant brand is figuring out how we can provide solutions that fit within our operational model, but solutions that can be delivered at scale for consumers. I think AI or advanced analytics, whatever you want to call it is the manner in which we'll do that. Right now, we're about to get a lot of new information through the Punch app and the fact that that crosses all channels for us, off-premise and on-premise. We now need to be in a position where we take all the historical information that we have today and start building clearer and cleaner profiles that we can then work from. That, to me, is the next step for us, but the long term is delivering solutions at scale. Those solutions are not just about their purchase history. It's about what they tell us they're interested in and it's about closing the loop on customer service and guest relations so that we completely understand all of what they've interacted with or what they've experienced when they interact with the brand.
Speaker 1:Okay, when you look at the new platform, new technology, does it require other enhancements? We have organizational best practices committee as well and they talk about training. Training is a potential challenge, especially in restaurant USR turnover, getting the organization to buy internally and externally. From a stakeholder perspective, it can be a challenge with regard to the loyalty program, why is it important? How do you get them to sign up? Do you ask them to present the card? How do you get with AI and everything you're doing there? How do you leverage that with maybe some other training initiatives or other efforts to truly focus on a holistic customer focus?
Speaker 2:Yeah, you mentioned something that my guess is just about any restaurant chain or any retail bricks and mortar retail struggles with, and that is you really dramatically shifting the way in which marketing is done in a given organization, and maybe it's even clearly beyond marketing, and so you're asking people to come on a journey with you that doesn't have a lot of history, doesn't have a lot of historical. The management team doesn't look at it and go yeah, I remember doing that 30 years ago. I mean, this is all at the front end of it, at least as it relates to the application to your brand, and so what we've had to do, and how an organization like yours can help us, is help us with business cases where we can see application of some of the things we're talking about in real life. Someone's done it before, and then we can take that and convince the organization to start moving in that direction, because now, all of a sudden, we have data and so we've got an example of how other people did it. But one of the key things is the merging of your marketing leadership and the merging of your AT leadership. This is something that a lot of organizations are way ahead of us and they call people different titles in the whole bit. At the end of the day, we have got to figure out a way to take all the information that is sitting in databases and use that in such a way where marketing now can activate off of it intelligently. And right now a lot of organizations they don't even know exactly what they have, they don't know where it is, they don't know how to get it, they don't know how to find a way to move it to a place where it is actually leverageable, and so that to me, is you know, in this topic, that's where we've had to learn, that's where we're still on this journey. Fortunately, we've demonstrated enough through marketplace examples as well as some of our own examples, that has gotten everybody in the organization pretty excited. I'll give you one example.
Speaker 2:One of the things that Bob Evans does and we do a great job with it, is at Thanksgiving, and at Christmas and at Easter we offer this thing called the Bob Evans Farmhouse Feast. The Bob Evans Farmhouse Feast is something that we cook it completely, that we pack it cold so customers can come and, you know, on Wednesday before Thanksgiving or wherever, they grab their box full of all this great Bob Evans food. They take it home and within two hours they warm it all up and they have Thanksgiving dinner. And it's Thanksgiving dinner for, you know, 10, 20 people, depending on what they want. It's a one time, it's a seasonal offer.
Speaker 2:We went in back into our databases. We found everybody that last year purchased a farmhouse feast from us at Thanksgiving, as well as any other time Christmas or Easter and we were able to segment those consumers and push out an email to them that basically said hey, you bought a Bob Evans Farmhouse Feast for Easter, can we take care of you at Thanksgiving? My words, they were crafted better. In actuality. We got such a response. Our payback on that is about 170% more than any base email that was. You know, just push it out and, whatever it is, spray and pray, if you will. So that very specific grabbing from the database understanding someone's purchase history on this particular product, thank you, I mean it's doable, it's so doable and it really returns. And so, taking that information, serving that back up to our ownership and to our management team, everybody's like we'll do that again, do that for this, do that for that, and so we're building our own business case. But anytime we can use examples from the marketplace to enhance. That makes it that much stronger.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely, we actually do a lot of that. It's probably conversation from another time. We have brand lead discussions on different topics every week and it gives a great feedback mechanism for others, whether it's a voice of the customer, like we did last week with Cinemark. Their SPP of marketing talked about their customer survey approach and their methodology. A great discussion allows other people from Hilton and Sephora and others to comment on what's working, what's not working. So building a community, much like you do with your customers, is a big focus of what we do, so we'd love to have that discussion another time for sure. So when you look at Next Generation Customer Loyalty, it's a very big topic right now. We did a research paper in December brand study examine how brands are looking at the future of customer loyalty. What does Next Generation Customer Loyalty mean, varied? We'd love to know what Next Generation Customer Loyalty means to Bob Evans.
Speaker 2:Well, I'll be honest with you, I think we're still probably in first generation right now.
Speaker 2:I think what Next Generation Loyalty means is being in that position that I described, where we are able to understand the consumer and we're forging relationships.
Speaker 2:We're not just transacting based on information, but we are truly understanding and building our relationship with the consumer to the point where it's not only just us reading their activities but we give them a platform to have a voice in what we do. And so it's circling back and using it as a bit of an informed communication channel where it's two-way, that it is in a sense a research tool in that they have a voice and we have an ear to what they're doing and, ultimately, that we're in a really good position to deliver those solutions at scale, regardless of what channel they're wanting to use. And so a lot of times brands and even at Bob Evans, the experience is a little different whether you go to a dining room or you go to using us for off-premise, or you're going to this dining room versus the dining room across the city. We want to make sure that we're at a place where we just know that customer well enough to satisfy their needs, give them solutions, regardless of where and how they want to use us.
Speaker 1:OK, excellent, and I think you mentioned a number of things. So restaurants, especially at the formation, they know their best customers. It's similar to Cheers back in the day, right, everyone knew their name. But to be able to operationalize that from data and clientele, using clientele approaches, to do that the Lallam and Anderson do that, it can be challenging but it sounds like you guys have, at least in version one of the loyalty approach, a good focus.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we're getting there. Like I said, we've made more first generation. But guests are all very different. Some people they value the fact that they can sit at that table. That's more valuable to them than the beverage choices that they have. And other people are like no, I want to know all about your desserts, it's all about the food. We need to know our customers at that level and provide them great solutions based on that.
Speaker 1:Absolutely Well. Now we have the wonderful Quick Fire session round, so one word or short phrase answers are always appreciated, or I get in trouble with the content teams. I don't like being in trouble. First off, what's your favorite word?
Speaker 2:Favorite word would be inspiration. What's your least favorite word? I'm not sure I have one. I don't like many of the four letter words that people use in colorful speech for emphasis. If you know what I mean, it just kind of bums me out.
Speaker 1:OK, what excites you?
Speaker 2:What really gets me is and just I love this is when I see one of my guys, one of my people, one of my team members achieving something that lifts the whole team up. We have an award at Bob Evans. It's primarily marketing award, it's called the Golden Beton Award and that Golden Beton Award this doesn't fit with your rapid fire, I know, because now I'm jumping into story, but Golden Beton Award when you do something awesome, when you basically ran the part of your race really, really well, enabling the rest of the team to win the race, you get the Golden Beton Award. I love to see that Everybody in the organization gets excited about that. It makes me emotional a lot of times when I see that happen, when we get to award that.
Speaker 1:Okay, what do you find tiresome Negativity? What's your favorite dish at Bob Evans?
Speaker 2:It is the three meat protein bowl at Bob Evans. We're actually launching a new version of it February 8th and I find my favorite thing Okay.
Speaker 1:What initial advice would you give to other CMOs who are seeking to enhance their loyalty program?
Speaker 2:Advice would be don't look at this as it's going to solve all your needs. It's a journey that you're going to go on and you have to be very attentive at using the things that are in front of you, the technology and the tools, in order to build the relationships. But if you go into it and you forget about all the other things about your business that are important, like service and cleanliness and at least in our business and food preparation, well, it's not. It's. You know it's. It's really important, mindset is really important, but it's not a silver bullet.
Speaker 1:Who inspired you to become the person you are today.
Speaker 2:By far my mom and dad.
Speaker 1:Okay, what is your favorite book recommendations? Sorry, with you may make two team members or someone in the industry.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I have a few of them All the one that really stands out is a book called Lincoln on Leadership. Yeah, I can't remember the author author's name. It's an older book but it just talks about Abraham Lincoln and how he handled being a leader during one of the most difficult times in this country's history.
Speaker 1:Excellent, and how do you want to be remembered by your friends and family?
Speaker 2:I would like to be known as a fun and happy faithful servant.
Speaker 1:There you go. Well, Bob, thank you very much for taking the time to speak with us today. It was very interesting to hear more about Bob Evans and how you're approaching customer loyalty, and also good to know a little bit about you, so looking forward to hearing more from you and your team in the coming year. Got it, thank you very much. Absolutely and thank you everyone for listening today. Make sure you join us back for another edition of our Leeds and Customs and Loyalty series. Until then, have a great day.