Leaders in Customer Loyalty, Powered by Loyalty360

#479: Leaders in Customer Loyalty Industry Voices | How Paisly is Elevating Travel Loyalty Through Personalization and Partnerships

• Loyalty360

Share episode

Send us a text

Travel can be magical, or it can be chaotic. As Mark Johnson, CEO of Loyalty360, noted at the start of this episode of Industry Voices, “The higher your expectations, the more likely something is to go sideways. And when it does, everyone from the airlines to the Online Travel Agencies (OTAs) finds themselves in the hot seat.”  

To explore how brands can turn that chaos into opportunity, Mark sat down with Jamie Perry, President of Paisly, the newly rebranded travel subsidiary formerly known as JetBlue Travel Products. Perry shared insights on the company’s evolution, its partnership with United, and how Paisly is leveraging technology and loyalty data to deliver meaningful, personalized experiences.  

SPEAKER_00:

Good afternoon, good morning. Mark Johnson from Loyalty360. Hope everyone's happy, safe, and well. I want to welcome you back to our Leaders in Customer Loyalty series. This is the Industry Voices podcast. In this series, we used to be with leading agencies, technology partners, and consultants and customer channel and brand loyalty about the technology trends and best practices that impact a brand's ability to drive unique experiences, enhance engagement, but most importantly, impact customer loyalty. Today we're going to be talking a little bit about travel. And let's be honest, travel is either the most magical experience you'll ever have or a complete service. There's rarely an in-between. And the higher your expectations, the more likely something is to go sideways. And when it does, guess who's in the hot seat? Everyone. From the cruise lines, the airlines and the hotels to the OTAs and the travel agents and those mysterious intermediaries who somehow always end up in the mix. It's a high stakes of gaining above these ones up. And yet we keep coming back for more. So in the spirit of making travel less chaotic and more delightful, we're diving into how to create engaging, personalized experiences that can actually make customers feel like someone cares and drive that emotional loathing. Crazy idea, right? Today, want to jump into that and learn a little bit more. We're going to be sitting with Jamie Perry. He's a president of Paisley, a very unique and upcoming travel entity that is hoping to transform the way customers view travel. Jamie, thank you very much for taking the time to talk to us today. How are you? Good. Nice to meet you. Uh absolutely nice to meet you as well. Uh it's been a while. Uh, but for those uh new to the show, potentially, and new to understanding Paisley, can you give us a little bit of uh introduction of what Paisley is, what you guys do, how you do it, maybe what was the genesis of the company?

SPEAKER_01:

Sure. So JetBlue is, as the airline is 25 years old this year. Um, and pretty much since the beginning of its existence, it has also sold non-air ancillary products to its customers, whether that be hotels, rental cars, travel insurance, vacation packages, etc. Um, and what we've learned over time is that many airlines sell these products and they typically go down a journey of maturity as they do. They commonly would start by some kind of white label partnership with an organization that sells these types of products, which offers a quick and easy turnkey solution to starting to sell non-air offerings. But what you find is relatively quickly the amount of revenue they're able to make from those partnerships plateaus. And that's largely because of there's very limited digital integration or loyalty program integration into the airline's core offerings. So you're able to make some money quite quickly, but the amount of money you make through those types of partnerships relatively quickly plateaus. Then the next thing that happens is some airlines say, actually, let's take this back in-house and do it ourselves, because if we do that, we can more deeply integrate the offerings into our core flight offerings and into our loyalty offerings. So that's like sort of phase two. Um, and when you do that, you find that um you start to grow the revenue that you're generating from these products again, uh, as JetBlue did, but then you reach a second plateau. And that second plateau is typically caused by the fact that you need resources to grow the business. You need money, you need people, you need technology time, whatever it might be to actually grow the business as you want to grow it. But when you're facing those internal battles with the airline as to who gets what resources and prioritization of resources, this business would typically lose out because it's smaller than the airline. So it doesn't get the people, it doesn't get the money, it doesn't get the attention it needs, and it's therefore unable to grow the way people would like it to grow. Now, what we did in 2018 was to say we're going to solve that resource constraint problem by actually taking the business and spinning it out into a separate company. So in 2018, what we are now was created as JetBlue Travel Products, a hundred percent owned subsidiary of JetBlue, and we were given independence over our resources. We were given our own budget, we're able to decide who we hired, what technology we built or didn't build, how we invested, and so on. And that led to a third round of growth for us. Um, now we've recently reached a plat, a third plateau that comes around because the next constraint you face is you can only grow as fast as the airline is growing, because the airline is essentially providing you with the source of leads for you to sell things to. And as you start to maximize the amount of money you can make per lead, the growth of those leads becomes the constraint. So, what we've done now with the United partnership, which we're going to come on talk about in a minute, is we have actually been able to, we're now able to grow beyond simply JetBlue by working with um United and selling product to United customers as well. So that will unlock the fourth round of growth for us. But starting to work with Jet with United as an airline partner as well as just JetBlue has led us to rebrand. So we're not so closely tied to the JetBlue brand anymore, which is why we've changed the name from JetBlue Travel Products to Paisley.

SPEAKER_00:

Okay, excellent. So you you talked about some of the kind of uh benefits of the rebrand, uh getting a little bit less uh tied in or affiliated with JetBlue, allows you to kind of open up and partner with others. You know, uh, does uh the alignment have uh anything in synergy with regard to kind of the broader jet forward strategy at JetBlue as well?

SPEAKER_01:

Absolutely. So there are four pillars under the JetBlue uh Jet Forward strategy, one of which is products and perks, and that's where we sit. So, on the one hand, uh we continue to grow the offerings that we present to JetBlue uh customers and TrueBlue members, uh, and we'll talk a little bit more about how we personalize those offers and how we make those more relevant to people. So that's one driver of growth, but also by being able now to uh to work with United and their customers and their mileage plus members as well, we open up a whole new uh growth avenue for Paisley and ultimately for JetBlue.

SPEAKER_00:

Okay. When you look at uh kind of the technical uh opportunities, because obviously Paisley has a deep foundation rooted in technology and technology, kind of the efficacy of said technology. When you look at the maintaining the technical foundations of Paisley, but you know, wanting to deliver a distinct, uh unique and aligned booking experience for JetBlue customers, for United customers, and for others who maybe uh go and engage with the service going forward. How do you balance that? How do you balance kind of the technology, the personalization, uh depending on the kind of scenario in which it's utilized?

SPEAKER_01:

Yes. So we, when we were founded, we never intended to build any technology, to write any code. That was not the operating mindset on day one. We very much thought that we were going to be more of an integration play by working with some of the large existing technology providers and also a range of smaller startup uh technology companies that we had access to through our then sister company um JetBlue Tech Ventures. Um but what we found was the more we spoke to the large established travel tech companies, the more we found that they had a product that they would make available to you, but they weren't really open to changing it in any way. You would take what they had, but you, and there were maybe five or six customization levers you could pull, but beyond that, it was what it was, right? So they have the experience in the space and they understand the industry, but they weren't really willing to work with us to create something different and new and special. Similarly, the startups we work with were willing to do anything, right? They had a thousand great ideas, uh, but they didn't have the expertise, they didn't have the experience. And when push came to shuffle, they often couldn't actually deliver on some of the ideas and the uh and the um the sort of enthusiasm that they had. So we found ourselves at something of an impasse and ultimately started to build out um some limited technology to solve for the problems that we saw that we felt needed to be addressed. But we still very are very reluctant technologists, only building where we think it's necessary. What we do try to do instead is leverage two things. We are not trying to be something to everyone, right? We do not necessarily aspire to be the organization that is selling to every consumer in every country in the world, right? That's not who we are. There are others who are uh more capable and better suited to doing that. What we do instead aspire to be is to be everything to someone, right? And that comes by being incredibly relevant to people. Um, and if we think about it through JetBlue and United's lenses, that basically means they're loyalty members. They are the people about whom the airline knows the most and about whom it has the most data. And therefore, those are the customers for whom we are able to put the most personalized and tailored offers in front of them. One of the things that we hear a lot is that the only really scarce resource in the universe today is our time, our attention span, right? There are so many people out there trying to grab our attention with messages, with ads, what have you, right? Um, and if you want to cut through that noise and actually be relevant, you that there's three things, three ways you can do it. You can be loud, right? You can be constantly advertising, bombarding people with ads all the time so that they ultimately engage with you. You can be controversial, you can go and try something outlandish and different to grab someone's attention. We don't aspire to be either of those. What we aspire to be is to be relevant. And relevance comes from really understanding who people are and what they need and what they value so that you can put the right offer in front of the right person at the right price at the right time. And that's what we're trying to do here. So most of what we do on the technology side is connect existing resources together with a sort of very light touch on the integration side, while simultaneously leveraging customer data to put really compelling, valuable offers in front of people at the right time.

SPEAKER_00:

You mentioned uh, as we were prepping for this, kind of the challenges uh of moving from kind of a single uh kind of client-provided entity to a more diverse entity. And with travel, uh, tons of competitors out there, right? And and maybe not direct competitors, things you know, competitors that may be doing part of what you're doing, some of what you're doing, all of what you're doing, from no service to full service, uh, you know, being kind of a loyalty, quote unquote, expert. Uh, the challenge of the full service is somewhat substantial, right? From depending if it's it's a small boutique with five employees to you know to to Macy's to you know the US post office, gonna vary. So look at that. What were the most significant uh UX improvements that you uh put in place that were needed to extend the platform from a flight-only offering to more of a full service offering?

SPEAKER_01:

It's a great question. Um, so as I mentioned a second ago, what we aspire to do is to put the right offer at the right price in front of the right person at the right time, right? Now, what that requires is a lot of work behind the scenes to ingest all the data that you have about individuals and then sort through the various offers and products that you have available to make the right ones available to them, right? That's where the real smarts happens. In terms of the UX, though, we have this concept that we call optimal distinctiveness, right? There are some areas where you can really benefit by being different from the others and standing out from the crowd. And we choose to be different through uh the human-centric customer service approach that we take, uh, as opposed to the highly automated approach most others take. And also through this highly personalized uh offer that we put in front of people by giving you something that we talk about as a segment of one, right? I'm not looking at um all people who are mosaics or all people who are um mileage plus gold members. I'm looking at you, Mark, and trying to come up with the right offer for you, which will be different from the offer for me, different for the offer from my wife, et cetera. Now, in terms of the way the screen looks, we found that people are so used to the way travel is booked today that they don't actually want anything that is significantly different, right? They like the use of maps, for example, and being able to look at where properties are on maps with price points hovering over them. They understand how that works, they're very comfortable with that, right? So we spend a lot of time trying to figure out what are the areas where we can differentiate with a difference and with impact in a way which customers feel they get extra value from, whilst sticking to what they know in other areas so they don't feel discombobulated or struggling to understand what we're doing.

SPEAKER_00:

Okay. When you look at uh the personalization of offers, you've mentioned a number of times throughout the interview, how important it is to make sure that the that they're relevant, they're timely, the right channel. Yes. When you look at uh kind of the data sets that are needed, uh we've talked a little bit about leveraging itinerary data potentially. You know, what other types of data do you need? And how can you or how do you look at you know creating the model, creating the algorithms that uh can make that irrelevant to the customer?

SPEAKER_01:

Yes. So we've learned some interesting lessons on this one. Um sometimes there is there is some things you will never know, right? For example, if you are flying from Denver to Fort Lauderdale on your own, right? We can put a rental car offer in front of you that is perfect for um a man flying from Denver to Fort Lauderdale uh on his own. There is no possible way we can know that you are meeting 10 of your buddies in Fort Lauderdale uh and going to play in a soccer tournament, right? Because that's just not information we have access to. So we recognize that there are some limitations in terms of how deeply you can personalize. Um, but what you can start to do is you can start to look at patterns through what people have done in the past. Uh, you can start to look at things like people are telling you in real time. So, does this person always rank hotels based on um star rating? Do they rank them on price from lowest to highest? These are signals that you can that you can interpret in ways that help you help inform you as to as to what the right offer I should put in front of someone is. And also something that's incredibly valuable is understanding how many uh loyalty points you have, uh, whether you have a Co-Brand credit card, because then I can start to merchandise offers based around your individual status. So if you have a 500,000 true blue points, I might put an offer in front of you for a hotel that is priced entirely in true blue points. If you have 10,000 true blue points, that's not going to be enough points to get an entire hotel stay, but I could alternatively position that as a discount off the available rate by putting some putting the 10,000 points you do have towards it, right? Um, and then the other thing we found is incredibly useful and often overlooked is just publicly available data, right? What's the weather forecast where you're going? Something we found incredibly powerful last year was what is the agenda of the Taylor Swift Eras Tour, right? Because there are things like that that can really help inform why you might be doing what you're doing in the travel space and how we might be able to put an offer in front of you that is relevant to what you're doing. If you're flying from Denver to Newark last July with two teenage girls on the same days when there's a Taylor Swift concert, rather than offering you a hotel in Times Square, I might start thinking about offering you a hotel in East Rutherford, right? Because it's probably more relevant to where you're going than the Midtown New York Hotel would be.

SPEAKER_00:

Okay. One of the things that uh we brought about the new program, I know mosaic members get uh exclusive hotel perks and benefits and bonus-related opportunities. Is there a plan to potentially tailor the offering kind of holistically to more loyalty-tiered redemption or promotional opportunities?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, I mentioned earlier this concept we have of a segment of one. Um there are a number of offers. The pricing in the accommodation industry and the cruise industry is incredibly complicated. One of the things that Paisley does is it ingests all available pricing and figures out in real time what is the best offer we can put in front of you. Now, sometimes that will be a function of the fact that you've already got a flight booked, sometimes it will be a function of your loyalty member, um, your loyalty tier status or the fact that you're a member of a loyalty program. There are other criteria as well. We do all that behind the scenes and make sure that we're putting the lowest price point in front of you that you qualify for. Um, beyond that, it's really much more about individual personalization than it is about blanket across three or four segments.

SPEAKER_00:

Okay. When you look at uh customer loyalty, uh are there programs that you admire uh holistically from a kind of a customer engagement, customer loyalty perspective? Uh what do you like about their offerings? And do you take some of that potentially even include it in kind of the Paisley offering?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, I I'm not going to name names because I'm a man of peace, but I um there are a couple of credit uh attributes I look at when I'm looking at other loyalty programs that I admire. One is leaning into what I said earlier, programs that are relevant to me, right? What are the ones that are really understanding who I am and what I'm doing and put messaging and offers in front of me that work for me. Those are the ones I think are the most effective. The other thing I really like is programs that find a way to engage with you every day, right? If you think about airlines, very, very few people are buying flights every day or even thinking about buying flights every day. Hell, some people don't travel more than once a year or once every two years, right? So if you're able to actually find a way through your loyalty program to get me to engage with the program once a day, once a week, even if I only travel once a year, then that's how you really start to get your brand to be top of mind so that when I do come to book a flight, I think of whoever you are as opposed to someone else. Because I've been engaging with your loyalty program that much more frequently and that regularly.

SPEAKER_00:

Okay. When you look at customer expectations, uh, there's some headwinds right now from the economic perspective. And you continue to read in the travel industry that kind of the upper tiers, mid-upper tiers are doing well, economy uh is struggling a little bit holistically, both uh in the US and internationally. You know, what other customer expectations uh do you see potentially changing or evolving, you know, through the rest of 25, going into 26, and how should brands, especially in the travel industry, prepare to meet them?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, I think that's a great question. And I think we have to look at social media, right? If there's one thing we can take away from the last 20 years, right? Imagine going home in the evening after work, you turn on linear TV, one of the networks, doesn't matter which one, it's entertaining, right? You can watch, there'll be something you'll watch, right? Other alternatively, you go home and you put on Netflix or you go to uh Instagram on your phone, you're gonna feel much more compelling content there because what's there is so personalized to you. It's so relevant to you. It comes from what you've done in the past, what people like you have done in the past, um, what your friends have done, et cetera. Uh, which is why those channels are winning relative to the legacy TV networks. And I think the same is true for travel, right? It's about it's on us increasingly to find ways to be relevant to our customers, to be talking to them about things that they care about that matter. Um, and if we can continue to do that, I think that will keep us in the conversation uh as time is increasingly scarce.

SPEAKER_00:

Okay. So what's next for Paisley? What's next uh for you guys?

SPEAKER_01:

Great question. Well, we've obviously uh we we've obviously partnered with United in the next sort of six to 12 months is very much focused on executing on what we have agreed to uh and bringing that those programs live. So everybody's very focused on that. Longer term, uh, I would love to see us bring on more airline partners in due course. Um, but I think uh certainly for now we're we're very much focused on just making a success of the uh the United Partnership.

SPEAKER_00:

Excellent. Well, thank you very much uh for taking the time to talk today. It was great uh getting to know a little bit more about the program, a little bit more about you, Jamie. But uh uh don't jump off yet, because uh we have our favorite uh quick fire question round where we we like to keep the responses to uh you know a word or a short phrase, and uh they're usually very interesting. So here we go. What's your favorite word? Joy. Excellent. What is your least favorite word? Pain. What excites you? Life. Okay. What uh do you find tiresome? Passport application forms. Okay. What profession, other than the current one, even one that you currently have, would you potentially be interested in doing?

SPEAKER_01:

Professional sailboat racer.

SPEAKER_00:

Okay. Uh I mean what do you also enjoy doing that maybe you don't get uh the the time to do as often? Sailboat racing. There you go. Uh who inspired you to become the person that you are today?

SPEAKER_01:

I've done many things in many industries, in many places, and they all contribute to who I am.

SPEAKER_00:

Excellent.

SPEAKER_01:

Uh, what do you typically think about at the end of the day?

SPEAKER_00:

My family. And how do you want to be remembered by your friends and family?

SPEAKER_01:

Someone who they could count on, who was always there for them.

SPEAKER_00:

Excellent. Well, Jamie, thanks again for taking the time to speak with the state. It was great having you on the Leaders in Customer Loyalty series, the Industry Voices podcast. Uh, looking forward to hearing more from you and the Pegasus team going forward, and thank you very much. Thank you for having me. Absolutely. Also, want to thank everyone for taking the time to listen today. Uh, if you haven't, please uh subscribe and the Leaders in Customer Loyalty podcast below and follow us on uh YouTube. Looking forward to having you guys back soon. Until then, have a wonderful day.