Episode Transcript
[00:00:03] Speaker A: Hello and welcome to the Advocacy Channel, a customer marketing podcast brought to you by impact.com in today's episode, our host, Will Fraser welcomes Andrew Noonan, manager of retail loyalty and affiliate products at Air Canada. With over 15 years of experience in the loyalty and payment space, Andrew has held leadership positions at Hudson's Bay Company AMIA and now oversees key aspects of Aeroplan, Canada's largest loyalty program, serving over 8 million members.
In this episode, you'll discover valuable insights about building successful loyalty partnerships, understanding different customer Personas and rewards programs, and creating everyday relevance for program members. Enjoy.
[00:00:51] Speaker B: Andrew, thank you so much for joining us here today. I'm really excited for this conversation and I know our listeners are going to get so much out of this. Just thank you so much for joining us today.
[00:01:00] Speaker C: Thank you for having me.
[00:01:02] Speaker B: You know, Andrew, we're going to get into some pretty interesting topics here, but I think one of the really interesting topics you have as well is just kind of your journey to how you've gotten here in your career. Maybe you just start like giving our listeners a little bit of background on yourself.
[00:01:14] Speaker C: Sure. Well, I guess I'll keep it limited to my, maybe my experience in kind of like loyalty and maybe, I guess payments, but I kind of, kind of been in the loyalty and payment space for a little over 15 years. I started this kind of journey at a, at a transaction processing company that managed transactions for gift cards and for loyalty programs.
Did that just for about a year and a half, moved to the Hudson's Bay company which, you know, just recently closed its doors after about 340 years. But over there I managed some aspects of the HBC rewards program as well as the gift card program over there. And then from there I went to what was group aeroplan. Shortly after that became ania, which was a proprietary loyalty program that actually owned the aeroplan program as well as the NECA program in uk. In the uk and so they, you know, managed a number of loyalty programs and then supported loyalty programs. I started doing some work for a Canadian bank there, mostly on the, on the redemption side. Then moved over into the aeroplan business on partnerships.
Took over leadership of our affiliate program in I guess about 2017.
Just something, you know, I, I generally had some, some interest in and saw some potential and raised my hand, overtook the program, which is our, our aeroplan E store and now a kind of a core of what I do at Aeroplan/Air Canada.
So I oversee our, our overall estore. So again, initially it was the affiliate piece of it, which, which is what I kind of powers our earn relationships. But now I oversee the redemption side of that business, the overall platform. And then fairly, I guess over the past 12 months or so, I actually kind of going back to some of those gift card routes. I took over the Air Canada gift card product. I also manage our insurance portfolio and a couple of other things so I can find the time.
[00:03:12] Speaker B: That's a, that's a lot going on right now and an interesting journey to get there. I think we're going to dive in a little bit on some of the, the aeroplan stuff today.
[00:03:20] Speaker C: But I think before we go in.
[00:03:21] Speaker B: Maybe you could just help our listeners understand like the breadth of aeroplan. I think a lot of people know kind of these loads of programs as like a points collection program and that's really all they know about them. Maybe you kind of just help us understand the breadth of what's going on there.
[00:03:33] Speaker C: Sure. I mean, at its core, Aeroplane is, you know, it is a frequent flyer program at its core, but it's certainly a lot more than that. And I, when I say it at the core, you know, I mean for the organization, yes, the primary point of the program is to build stickiness with our customers and obviously having them apply Air Canada. But what the program does, I think is it brings a lot more relevance, like everyday. The pro is on everyday relevancy to, to our members. So aeroplan, I don't know what our official number is. I believe maybe Most recently about 8 million Canadians are, are part of the program. And while they're earning points and interacting by flying with Air Canada, or Redeem puts it, they can also, you know, we've got credit cards with two of the five major banks in Canada. With American Express, you can earn points, you know, at Starbucks you can earn points. At Uber, you can earn points throughout your travel journey. So whether it's booking, you know, a hotel, it's renting a car, it's. Yeah, I think anything kind of, you know, that again with Uber, like, it's, it's taking an Uber to the airport or to your hotel or to your Airbnb or to wherever you're staying.
And so we, what we try to do is again, build a program that is relevant, I think a, to your entire travel journey, but then also to your, your general kind of like when you're not actually even traveling. And so a lot of, you know, what I do on our E Store is a lot of that everyday engagement. So it's, it's Finding ways to earn. When you're shopping online, it's redeeming points for gift cards and for merchandise and you know, for other things and you don't necessarily want to use those points for travel. And so again, what we're really trying to do is be, you know, a part of our members lives, you know, I think every day and bring them, bring them real value and be there, you know, their program of choice and you know, that supports again them, you know, having a credit card with us or working with the group of partners that we have and building engagement with those partners and making that again a part of their everyday life.
[00:05:32] Speaker B: I think it makes a lot of sense to you know, sometimes I think loyalty programs or rewards programs on the surface, you know, you think you understand them but, but when you hear this, you know, there's just so much more going on and there's just so much more that can be done with these kind of programs. I think that's like very exciting when you look at that estore and the partnerships you're building there. You know, what are some of the key challenges that you're seeing today in, in making that successful like an engaging in that everyday life?
[00:05:56] Speaker C: Yeah, I think one of the things that we like specifically on the E Store at least in the earn side and where it really I think ties into kind of the affiliate business is probably some issues we occasionally see tracking. And so, you know, where I think there's an issue there is having the member understanding, you know, how they're earning points and if they're not earning points, why are that not earning points and ensuring that that communication is kind of clear to the member and then that we, you know, we're able to build trust with our member that you know, things are going to work out the way that they should. I think with any loyalty program, you know, trust is extremely important. And so we're, you know, cracking kind of again falls into that is that if something doesn't, you know, track properly, whether because somebody, you know, goes to another site in their journey or because they didn't consent to, you know, a certain brand's consent platform that can, you know, obviously break a transaction that creates a problem because it doesn't often make sense to the, you know, to the end user, to the consumer, to the member, why something is not working. I've, I've enrolled in the aeroplane program. I've accepted that, you know, Aeroplan is going to, is going to, you know, share my data with partners of the program and I've signed up for that. If it doesn't happen because of a reason that, you know, maybe it's something that I, the member have done, but I don't even realize I've done it that, that I think can, yeah, can certainly present, present a challenge.
[00:07:19] Speaker B: And, and are you finding any strategies that you're finding more effective to, to helping get that education into the customer or is this still very much a, A, a work in progress, you think, for the industry?
[00:07:29] Speaker C: Both. I mean, I, I think we've, we've done a, we're continuously doing a better job, I think, of educating. So whether that, you know, at the beginning of a shopping journey, making sure that people understand, you know, again, what is going to be eligible for earn, what is not going to be eligible for earn, but then also, you know, post transaction building things into a member's order history to help them again understand why, you know, like if something does go wrong, what went wrong, why it went wrong, hopefully preventing that from happening, you know, in the future. I mean, we certainly do have ways of supporting our members and compensating them when that happens. But you know, I mean, we obviously want to, to avoid it happening and I think so. With that said, yes, we're making progress, but there's definitely, you know, more work, you know, that can, that can be done. I mean, in an ideal world, if a member for us, you know, again, is, is agreeing to our privacy policy and is agreeing that we are going to share information again with, with a merchant that we're working with, it would be great that that can kind of help govern that relationship. And if a person doesn't accept cookies and not really realizing how that is going to impact their relationship with Aeroplan and earning points, you know, there was a way around that, that we could support, you know, and not in any way saying we don't want to. Obviously, you know, our members deserve privacy. But if, again, if, if, if they're looking to, you know, if they're actively looking to go to our site and, and, and are clicking button to say I want to go earn points somewhere, they're obviously doing it with intent. And I think there's an understanding generally speaking that there's a relay of data to, to support that.
[00:09:08] Speaker B: Yeah, that makes sense. I think what's interesting as we talk about these points and as we, we look at this idea of like, you know, tracking that journey, there's something really interesting which is kind of like to what end is the points, right? Like why does someone collect points and how do they collect Points. And I think one of these we talked about before the show was just this difference between, you know, someone who's a point collector who might be out there shopping every day using that kind of a part of the product, or someone who's maybe collecting points through their, their by accident, through their air travel, whatever it is. But maybe you just help us understand, like, how do you think about the different types of Personas, collecting points? How do those affect your business? And what kind of a, what kind of objectives are you hoping that they achieve for you?
[00:09:50] Speaker C: Yeah, I mean, I, I think for aeroplan, we have, Well, I mean, we have a, a number of different, certainly Personas that you can look at. I think, you know, two that maybe kind of, you know, really jump out standout is one, you've got people who are just very loyal to the airline. And that kind of, I think, is, is often the fundamental of what makes up a, a frequent flyer program. Right. And so you're rewarding people who sometimes they're, they're work road warriors and they're flying every week, or, or maybe they're leisure road warriors, I don't know. But, but there are people who are flying with the airline quite regularly. Again, sometimes it is due to work. And so we want to obviously ensure that those customers are continuing to fly with Air Canada. And the behaviors you're going to see there is, you know, they're often going to again, earn a lot of points through flight. They may participate in other areas of the program.
And then how they redeem those points can be, you know, you know, they potentially are again going to continue flight. But in some cases, those people are flying with a high level of frequency where they're now looking for other ways to kind of redeem those points. So they may go and say, you what? I'm going to, I'm going to redeem for a MacBook. I'm going to redeem for a gift card. I'm going to, you know, kind of take this route. And so they're, they're frequent flyer program, sorry, they're frequent flyers who are going to part of the program. And then you get another subset of people who probably a larger subset of people who are, you know, maybe are infrequent travelers. You know, they might fly two or three times a year. I mean, not, not people who are not, you know, traveling at all, but they want to find out ways to actually, you know, to help pay for that next trip. And so, you know, they, those are people who you see often engaging with all sorts of the program in the everyday piece, right? They are people who are linking their aeroplane account to their Starbucks account. They're linking it to their Uber account. They often have a credit card with us and they're looking for all the different ways that, you know, they can engage with aeroplan. And most cases those people are ultimately again looking to fly. And so they want to earn those points, they want to be able to take a play. They, maybe they're, they really want to fly in business. And so they're obviously that's going to cost more points and so they're going to be, be very engaged in the program there because it's going to help kind of drive that. And so I think those are kind of like two ways we see in both, both sets of people are highly engaged in the program. They're just engaged in different ways. And I mean you do get, you obviously do get members that are, that are both, those are often, you know, obviously our most valuable members are going to be ones who are both very interested in flying with the airline, but also the other offering. And so they definitely complement each other. But at the same time, you know, if you're not a road warrior when it comes to flying quite frequently, there are ways to be able to again engage with the program and earn points. So, you know, you can take a flight every year. And at the same time, you know, if really your, your main interest in the program is, you know, you love your Canada but you're not as interested in other aspects of it. You know, we, we have a great program there with a suite of redemption options where you don't want to apply. You have, you know, lots of different ways you can alter them, redeem those points.
[00:12:55] Speaker B: So yeah, it's always fascinating to me once again, when things aren't always exact, they're not, they're not as simple as it sounds. It's still, I think fairly straightforward and logical. But like it's always fascinating when we get into these details, I think kind of flipping away from the kind of like the different types of user Personas, what's really interesting to me is thinking about like you have a bit of a different loyalty relationship with your partners, right? So in a lot of other kind of loyalty type offerings, you don't have this idea where your, your customer is also the, the user of that, that loyalty program for. We're talking about more of a partnership economy here. So I'm kind of curious like, do you find there's ever dynamics where the brands that you're Partnering with don't quite understand the relationship you have with your user base. You find that ever gets kind of lopsided or maybe too aggressively focused on one thing or another, it can, I.
[00:13:43] Speaker C: Mean, you know, we work with, I believe today, about 270 brands. And some of them, I think if the person or the people who are, you know, often leading a partnership are active in the program, they obviously will have better understanding of it than people who don't. I think, you know, understandably so. A lot of brands are going to be focused on what their own KPIs are. And whether that is acquiring new customers or that is just driving sales. That is a lot of where their focus is. And again, I think that's understandably so. But I think if you're going to be working as a part of a loyalty program, especially a program that you're not managing, I think it is, it's important to kind of understand, I think, the different facets of the program because, you know, that person who's our member is also your customer. And so the way that they experience aeroplan will reflect either directly or potentially indirectly or subconsciously with, with how you, you know, use the brand itself. And so if you have a good experience with Aero Plan and that members or the customer has a good experience with Aero Plan, they're earning points, they're getting something in return, they feel those points are valuable. And that is going to reflect, of course, well, how the customer views your brand. And likewise for us, if we're going to be sending our members to go shopping with, with a certain brand, you know, we want them to have a good experience because if they don't, you know, that could poorly, that could reflect poorly on aeroplan. And, you know, this kind of gets back to some of the, you know, the tracking pieces we talked about, you know, earlier is that, you know, if a person doesn't get their points, you've got, you know, like the brand's got an upset customer, we've got an upset member, it's the same person. But, you know, we, we kind of a, a dually vested interest in supporting that person and ensuring they have a great experience. And so I think if you, with any partner you're going to work with, I think especially on loyalty, it's just, it's important to understand what the overall, you know, kind of value proposition is what your customers getting out of it.
[00:15:40] Speaker B: Yeah, and I think that that makes a lot of sense.
I think it's kind of, you know, one of the interesting things here is that you also have like this membership base to protect, I guess. Right. Like, it's kind of an interesting idea there. And I know everyone's got their membership base protection. You just have a very nuanced details here, but kind of thing, the inverse of that, you have a membership base to grow.
I think that's, that's obviously one of the main objectives as well is, you know, you got to keep getting new members in there.
And we talked about before, a little bit before the show, but and I've seen it online, you have your family sharing features. And I was actually just flying home on Air Canada from Austin the other day yesterday, literally, and I was in my airplane checking it out and I noticed, you know, there's this, there's this kind of family activation feature. Maybe just for context, you can explain that to the audience here. But then also I'm really curious, like, how does that work and does that have a meaningful impact on people's engagements in the programs? Does that drive anything different for you?
[00:16:31] Speaker C: Yeah, I think redemption is, is a really important part of your plan. Right. And we actively want our members to not just earn points, but also redeem points. Right. And if they, you know, they get value from those points, again, you know, you build a secular relationship where they're earning the redeeming and that is, you know, the behavior you want to have. And so family sharing, I think allows again, like as it says families to, to share their points. And so if I am again, that frequent flyer and I, I don't know exactly what to do with my points, but I. One of my kids, maybe my kids, my kids are a little young, but used to travel on their own. My oldest is eight. But, you know, if you've got teenage children and, or maybe they're a college and stuff and they want to be able to use those points to fly, it's giving that family unit a way to, to get value out of the points. And they, they see more value in the overall program. Right. And a lot of travel again, outside of that road where you travel, especially leisure travel, you know, families do together. I mean, people do individual trips, couples do trips, but families do trips. And so I think, you know, we, we see that family unit in like that how they interact with the loyalty program.
It can be again, as, as a family unit. And so it really, I think again, just, it delivers more value. Someone doesn't feel like those points, again, are limited to how they necessarily want to use them. I mean, you, you can still transfer points to, to other individuals, but this allows you to do it in a way where again, you are, you can see the, the family and how it's earning points to together. There's no fees for transferring between your, your, your family subset that you, that you create. And so, yeah, for us, again, it's just another way, I think, well, a great way to deliver value to our members and help them, you know, redeem those points.
[00:18:19] Speaker B: Wonderful. I mean, I think anywhere where we can get more of that, you know, social connectedness, whether it's through your family unit or other unit, and I be able to deliver that value. Sounds, sounds like a wonderful, wonderful dishanding program. I think one of these I look at now is, you know, where does this go? You know, I know everyone's talking about AI. I'm not sure if AI has a place in loyalty, but like, where do you see this industry going? Where do you see everything, you know, advancing in the next little while?
[00:18:45] Speaker C: Yeah, I think, you know, this, this is a, it's something, I think it kind of comes up all the time is that as, as individuals, people, we, we. We are just constantly inundated with different types of communication. Right. And whether that is communication we receive through more traditional methods, whether it's like television or email or it's social or it's different applications, what you' tons of different messages. You're getting different messages. You know, when you're driving your car, you're getting messages when you're going for a walk, you're getting messages when you're on your computer, when you're on your phone.
And so I, I think where AI can kind of, you know, play a role, I think is, is bringing more relevancy to, to the, to the individual. For us, you know, as a, as a loyalty member program, we do, you know, we do obviously collect data through that program. And I think what we can, you know, better do, and we always strive for relevancy, but I think where I can be a really important tool is, is again bringing more relevancy into the messaging. And so that's like a. What you are sharing with, with the members. So, you know, if we have, you know, earn bonus points on flying to Paris, but we see that this individual really only travels domestically, then that might not be super relevant. And so I think we can carve a more relevant message, but then I think it's also like how you convey that message. Right. And so the more you know about an individual, hopefully, again, the AI can ultimately also convey that message to a person in a way that it's Engaging. Right. And that they're going to want to read it and you know, it's going to help them get through again all that clutter. Whether it's again like just messages that are getting pushed via your social or ever growing email box of emails that you don't read. It's something that can like it's going to get the attention of the person and, and I think you're going to get that person's attention by being relevant and they're going to want to engage with you if you're giving them, you know, an offering that is relevant to their needs and their wants.
[00:20:46] Speaker B: Yeah. And I can only imagine those more relevant offers also allow you to tune the actual business outcome for yourself as well. Right. You know, the last thing you want to do is offer the trip to Paris to the person who flies to Paris every week at full rate. You know, there might be some interesting things like that to play with too.
[00:21:02] Speaker C: Yeah, for sure. I mean, yeah, we're looking for different. Yeah. Ways to, you know, certainly drive engagement and, and yeah, sometimes it, you know, it, it could be again something that's familiar if that drives obviously the business outcome that we wanted to, to drive. But the, the outcome may also be, you know, hey, we know you like this. Maybe you may also like this. Right. And so doing that and driving relevancy based on like, for like is something we've, you know, been doing for quite some time. I think before like AI was the, the buzz that it is. But I think it can certainly allow us to do that a lot better and, and faster, more relevant on external factors. Right. Like you could offer certain things depending on what the, you know, the weather is or where someone happens to be at the time that they're reading that message. And you know, if AI can again help us better deliver that message and, and deliver something that's then yeah, I think it's, it's, it can be a benefit for the member, but it certainly can be a benefit for our business. It can be benefit for our partners, businesses.
[00:22:00] Speaker B: Well, we learned a lot of great stuff here today. But Andrew, if there's one thing that you can have someone take away, someone who's maybe running their own program or about to start a program, what's kind of the one key message you'd hope that they take away today?
[00:22:13] Speaker C: Yeah, I, I think again the, the value I think of understanding like how these partnerships work. And if you look at that individual again, who's the shared customer, who's the, the shared member again, recognizing that it is the same individual and how important it is that you understand, again, what their journey is with, not just in your own business, but with your partner. Right. And so if you're going to partner with a loyalty program, you don't need to know, like all the ins and outs. Maybe not, but you should, you know, understand, I think, the fundamentals because, you know, your customer is a part of that program and if they're going to have a good experience, a bad experience, and how you can shape that so it can be a better experience, you know, I think it's really important. And if you're, you know, on the other side and you're managing, you know, you're managing the loyalty program, again, I think it's important to look at, you know, who you're partnering with and making sure that what you're bringing to your, to your member is something, you know, that they, they can trust in, that they're getting value from, that they're going to have, you know, a great experience. You don't want to, again, you certainly, in loyalty, never want to damage trust. And so I think, you know, again, it's that trust is, is very important. And the trust, you know, again, can come from what you're doing, but it also can come from the partner you're working with. And so be mindful of who you work with and understand, again, what your customer or member is kind of going through in their entire journey.
Wonderful.
[00:23:31] Speaker B: I think that's a great way for us to end this episode. Such a great conversation, Andrew. Before we break, though, where can people find you if they want to reach out? They want to connect and learn more.
[00:23:40] Speaker C: Yeah, LinkedIn probably the easiest way. I don't post a ton of content myself. I just kind of focusing more time on my kids. But if somebody, my family, my wife as well. But no, if somebody has any questions, wants to reach out, you know, you just. Andrew Noonan on LinkedIn. I'm generally quite responsive on there. So if anybody wants to partner or learn more about our business or the aeroplane program or anything like that, probably the easiest way to get a hold of me.
[00:24:12] Speaker B: Wonderful. Thank you very much for your time, Andrew. I just very much appreciate it.
[00:24:15] Speaker C: Thank you. Well, it's been a pleasure.
[00:24:19] Speaker A: Thank you for tuning in to another great episode of the Advocacy Channel brought to you by impact.com. join us next time as we bring on more expert guests like Andrew. If you enjoyed this episode, please review, rate and subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts.
To learn more about customer marketing, visit our blog or follow us on LinkedIn. The links are in the show notes. If you're looking to create powerful customer marketing programs to better activate, engage and retain your customers, head over to impact.com to learn more about our referral platform. That wraps up another great episode of the Advocacy Channel. We'll see you real soon.
