Postcards from Perkistan

Just a short one today.

Dan and I have been doing a number of pitches lately - The Incentive Show and a range of investor meetings.

In each pitch we give the example of how at Perkler we are working hard to connect loyalty information (the kind of stuff marketing managers invest a LOT of time and money in) to the point of purchase.

A classic ‘fail’ we highlight is the program that sends out the traditional Sale PostCard. Look, this kind of collateral looks great, has simple messaging but we always wonder what the take up is.

Our mantra is “Isn’t this material better off on people’s phones rather than their fridge?”. It’s what we are building our mobile platform for and it seems to make perfect sense to us.

Perkler ranting aside, yesterday when I got home I remembered that I had an outstanding Snowgum voucher. I love this program and they are really active. My Dad is in town and it’s his birthday next week so I thought I’d use my Snowgum points to get him a tshirt. So I went looking for the voucher.

I found it eventually - check out how that beautifully designed marketing collateral ends up! It’s there, on my fridge, somewhere

Snowgum nearly lost a sale because my fridge is messy - crazy!

I hope this makes our point about linking this material much close to the purchasing point so it doesn’t get lost in amongst a consumers ‘real’ life!

Jus

One of the most exciting parts of our launch was being asked by A Current Affair to go on a spending spree to show just how much you can save with Loyalty Cards.

At first even we were a little dubious - our take on loyalty is that it is consistent spending over a period of time that gives maximum benefit, but with full faith in the programs out there we headed into central Sydney to the QVB and went shopping.

The results were pretty extraordinary. With no TV magic (really)!) we saved $187.00 in less than an hour. The brands were Oxford, Esprit, Kathamandu, Krispy Kreme and Wagamama.

Each of these stores had great specials on and all of the goods were things we actually needed (well, I didn’t need that Oxford knit but is was nice).

So overall we were very happy with our little adventure. You can see it here. ACA Shopping Spree

The story on ACA was the most popular of the night, so we were asked back to rank our favourite cards the following week. This is an interesting ask because programs are so different and people find value in different ways, but in the end we applied some key criteria to come up with a list. The criteria (loosely) were:

* Instant Benefits rule over accrual

* Local and multiple redemption locations are good

* No or low fee entry is a bonus

The winning card was Show Your Card and Save which is not only the largest in the world but offers significant discounts at thousands of locations.

Other cards to make it to our final list were FlyBuys, Qantas FF, Woolworths Everyday Rewards, David Jones Amex, ANZ EDine, Krispy Kreme, Myer One, Virgin Velocity and Accor Advantage Plus. You can see our reasoning here.

You can also see the full video here. ACA Best Cards

Though naturally it was exciting to get national TV coverage for Perkler as part of our launch week what was the most exciting was the response. The fact that we were the most popular segment, and that hundreds of thousands of hits to the site resulted proved for us that there are plenty of people out there trying to use loyalty better!

Wow!

This post started just before launch yesterday and was a nice retrospective on two years of work coming to fruition…

Then all hell broke loose!

As the starting point for our launch we engaged the fantastic Magnum PR. In reality we ‘hoped’ that they would get us some national TV coverage. They stepped up to the plate and delivered the big boys - A Current Affair.

While Dan and I were in Sydney filming Adam and Graham got to work preparing for a much bigger first night hit than we planned. As it turned out the ACA story lead to over 300,000 hits on the site from an extraordinary number of unique users. I’m not sure how anyone is meant to prepare for that!

So the reality was that the publicity was excellent, the site didn’t cope and we went into major server meltdown.

While the melted server has shown us that demand for the site is extraordinary, and provided us with a nice PR angle “demand crashes site…” we just want people in there using the service so they can get full value from their programs and we can get to work building this community.

So with the help from some friends we are rebuilding the back-end and getting it firing on all cylinders.

What has been interesting about the whole process is the response of our members. I’ve just emailed well over 500 new registrations. People who came to the site and signed up but have found the site slow and even unworkable.

So far I’ve had one complain back - and fair enough. Overwhelmingly our new members have got back to me thanking me for the contact, congratulating us on the site and remaining eager to get in there and play when we’ve beefed it up.

An amazing response and one that makes us happy to be in such a great business!

Roll on Perkler!

While doing an update of the AAdvantage program I’ve stumbled across some interesting 2008 stats for the program:

Q: How many AAdvantage Awards were claimed in 2008?
A: The number of awards claimed in 2008 in each AAdvantage mileage redemption category were as follows:

MileSAAver® and AAnytime® Awards: 2,858,222
Upgrade Awards: 769,527
Product Redemptions: 407,074
Special Mileage Awards / Other Airline / Other: 780,533
Total Redemptions - 2008: 4,815,35

It’s pretty interesting to see that most miles (60%) are redeemed for flights using American Airlines even though there are 20 leading airline partners that members can redeem their points with. Total redeemed on Flights is an astounding 92%.

All flights within continental US are worth 25,000 points flying AA. A flight from New York to Los Angeles on American Airlines is worth around $382. Meanwhile, if we compare this with a 25,000 point merchandise reward we are looking at getting $250 worth of value for our 25,000 points. It certainly seems that AAdvantage members are making the most of their points.

-Me

From the previous blog post I mentioned that the NAB Gold Rewards program has turned into two different cards (linked to the one account), the NAB Qantas Gold Visa (or MasterCard), and the NAB Qantas Gold American Express.

David Jones has just released (2/3/2009) a David Jones American Express card where you can redeem points earned for ANY travel (anything that a travel agent can book can be purchased with their voucher. Booked through AmEx), including Qantas flights.

Here we’ll compare the earning and burning options of the NAB Qantas Gold American Express ($145.50 annual fee) and the David Jones American Express ($99 annual fee) cards.

Shopping In-Store:

DJs: 2 points per dollar, don’t expire, no cap
NAB (in-store means Qantas): 3 points per 2 dollars for the first $3,000 per month; 2 points per 2 dollars for $3,001 to $10,000; Nothing over $10,000.

We’ll assume that you always earn 3 points per 2 dollars for the NAB card as that is it’s highest points-earning capability.

DJs $100 Gift Card: 13,300 points. At 2 points per dollar that is $6,500 to get $100 back.
NAB $100 Myer Card: 13,500 points. At 3 points per 2 dollars that is $9,000 to get $100 back.

DJs $100 Travel Voucher (includes Qantas): 15,000 points. At 2 points per dollar that is $7,500 to get $100 of travel.
For NAB they don’t have a specific dollar amount to redeem on travel, so let’s take a domestic flight from Sydney to Coffs Harbour. 1 “zone”, 275 miles, from $104 economy class.
Sydney - Coffs ($104): 8,000 points + 3,000 points for taxes = 11,000 points. At 3 points per 2 dollars that is $7,334 to get $104 of travel.

In-Store Conclusion: DJs has a HUGE advantage if you plan on redeeming your points for a shopping voucher. NAB Qantas Gold has a slight (2.26%) advantage if you plan on redeeming your points for travel with Qantas.

Shopping Everywhere Else

DJs: 1.5 points per dollar, don’t expire, no cap
NAB: 2 points per 2 dollars for the first $3,000 each month; 1 point per 2 dollars for $3,001 to $10,000; Nothing over $10,000.

We’ll assume you always earn 2 points per 2 dollars with the NAB card as that is it’s highest points-earning capability.

DJs $100 Gift Card: 13,300 points. At 1.5 points per dollar that is $8,867 to get $100 back.
NAB $100 Myer Card: 13,500 points. At 2 points per 2 dollars that is $13,500 to get $100 back.

DJs $100 Travel Voucher (Includes Qantas): 15,000 points. At 1.5 points per dollar that is $10,000 to get $100 of travel.
Using the same Qantas flight from Sydney to Coffs:
Sydney - Coffs ($104): 11,000 points. At 2 points per 2 dollars that is $11,000 to get $104 of travel.

Everywhere else conclusion: DJs extends it’s advantage over the NAB card when redeeming your points for a shopping voucher. NAB Qantas Gold loses it’s slight advantage and DJs gains the slight advantage (10% now though! 12.26% change…) when redeeming your points for travel with Qantas.

Of course you may need to consider your shopping habits and your financial needs when choosing a credit card that is right for you and this is a mere glimpse of what both programs have to offer.

Just did a bit of an overhaul of all our credit card programs due to some big changes happening with the Qantas Frequent Flyer (QFF) program. A lot of banks have had to re-organise their rewards programs to create QFF specific cards and non-QFF cards. A lot of cards have been axed and there is a whole breed of new QFF specific rewards programs. One of the more interesting outcomes is with the NAB. NAB Gold Rewards card holders previously had one card, but with the new QFF program NAB Gold Rewards members will have two cards: Either a Visa or MasterCard and an American Express card. The Visa/MasterCard is so card holders can still use their credit card and earn QFF points where AmEx is not accepted. The AmEx card is provided so that card holders can gain maximum QFF points-earning potential wherever AmEx is accepted. Don’t we all have enough cards in our wallets already? And who wants to deal with another decision to be made at the checkout?

Also having a bit of a look at all the programs I’ve noticed some really sweet deals. Top programs include the ANZ eDine Add On and the David Jones Store/AmEx Cards.

eDine has thousands of participating restaurants, hotels, cafes, and entertainment locations across Australia and NZ where the discounts are often 20% or greater. The annual fee weighs in at a low $35 per year, so using the card just twice will often result in a discount that is more than what the program costs you each year. They are updating and finding new partners all the time, with their last update having in excess of 100 additions to the program. Pretty sweet!

DJ Cards are awesome! Every month they release a catalog that includes 25-30 exclusive offers, the smallest of which is a neat 20% discount and the largest is normally 30% (sometimes greater). The discounts come off a wide range of products including men’s, women’s and children’s fashion, manchester, and crockery. The discounts are always off leading brands, some of which are only available at DJs.

Just read a really interesting article in Digital Media news about research just in that shows consumers are much more willing to identify with brands and purchase product when they have been exposed to online campaigns.

The research was conducted using Sultana Bran (I’m not sure if Tall ‘malicious’ Jan) was part of it!

This is good news for digital media agencies - as the article says “the research provides much sought after data that will lead to marketers being able to increase online advertising and brand building”.

It’s also good news for a site like ours that is based on the premise that retailers should engage with consumers through Perkler!

But what about the next step. This research shows the link with brand and purchasing - the reason we have set up Perkler is that we want people to be ADVOCATES for retailers and program providers that value loyalty.

It’s why we’ve set up forums and ratings for programs. We could have just built a big search engine (which we did!) but long-term, we want people who engage with brands online to also influence the development of a market that often gets a lot of bad press (loyalty, not bran). Loyalty can be complicated now. Perkler tries to make managing and talking about it simple, but it can only really get better if retailers listen to the kinds of rewards and interaction consumers (people) want.

So the research gives us heart, but as well as it showing retailers they can increase advertising, we hope they undertake brand-building by jumping on board with Perkler to make those ‘members of loyalty programs’ actually loyal!

Justin

People in the private beta and those who’ve seen our presentations etc are always commenting on our branding and the use of sketches. All of these little Perkler characters have been drawn by a good friend Leonard Ward. Len is a very talented animator who is currently based in Cologne Germany.

Len did some drawings (storyboards) for me in my very first start-up - an ‘ideas bureau’ called Creative Juices. We lasted one pitch a few short films and representing a local band for a couple of weeks - but it was great fun.

Len went on to bigger and better things in his trade (as did my Creative Juices cohorts) and has now put his mind to bringing our perkler characters alive in a short animation. It will sit on the home page and act as part tour, part icon for perkler cheekiness. We love the little Perkler man, hope you do to.

If you love Len’s work and want to be put in touch just let us know here at Perkler.

Justin