Postcards from Perkistan

Just this week Perkler has finalised a partnership with Trade Rite Group, assisting consumers by offering a loyalty program for a broad range of trades and services.

The Trade Rite Group is the only program that covers trades that we’re aware of, and the savings that can be made for everyday electrical, plumbing, or even if you’re building a new home, become very large very quickly.

Each trade or service you book through the Trade Rite Group will earn you 5% of the total cost in Reward Dollars. Those dollars can then be spent on other trades or services within the Trade Rite Group. Given that the group covers 32 trades and services it won’t take much creativity to find something to spend it on. Put it towards a new motorbike, spoil yourself with topshelf wine, or relax with a massage… the variety is there. For a full list of trades and services offered view the program listing.

The program definitely has potential and the service is excellent. Enquiries and bookings can be made from the Trade Rite Group home

Sweeet!
Graham

Everyday Rewards, FlyBuys, Frequent Flyer… Everyone knows. There are, however, literally programs out there for everything. This week I’ve rounded up a couple of the more active and valuable programs. If there’s a great program you know of that is for something a little, or a lot, out of the ordinary let me know below.

Petbarn has almost 50 stores Australia wide with a few “coming soons” on the way. Their Friends for Life program is simple yet effective. It’s free to join next time you’re in store and you’ll receive a card and a few key fobs. The core of the program is earn 1 point for every dollar spent in store, once you reach 500 points you’ll receive a $10 voucher to spend in store, equivalent to a 2% discount. Keep in mind, this discount is equivalent to that of MYER’s MYER one program which receives a lot of praise for being better value than a lot of credit card schemes. The second core perk is a “buy 10 get 1 free” on super premium pet food. Get your dog or cat the best there is and receive a free bag every now and then Thirdly, the program often has exclusive member sales where you can expect to see 20%+ off. All round a pretty good offering from a pet store! Find Your Local.

Fitness First Gyms are great; we pay a motza for membership, take part in their programs, and increase our sense of well-being. Fitness First are one mob who are looking at giving us more than self-satisfaction, satisfaction in the wallet. Simply by being a Fitness First member you gain access to a number of exclusive offers including monthly special deals. At the moment you can get in to some serious tunes with a free copy of Ministry of Sound’s The Annual 2010 when purchasing Ministry of Sound Sessions 7, or make a newspaper subscription affordable by saving $315 on The Age or The Sydney Morning Herald. Get your wallet in to shape.

Cheers,
Graham

Following Virgin Money’s launch of the Virgin Flyer credit card a couple of weeks ago Virgin Airlines have announced reciprocal agreements between all Virgin family airlines’ rewards programs.

Velocity Rewards members can now earn up to 1.5 points per mile on Virgin America and Virgin Atlantic. The link strengthens earning potential, but still contains far less flight earning opportunities than the Qantas Frequent Flyer program, with over 26 airline partners.

As a part of the celebration members can win a luxury 7 night holiday to Richard Branson’s private island, Necker Island, by flying on any two Virgin airlines before January 2011. The prize includes business class flights to LA and transfers to and from Necker Island for two. Entry details.

Although the Velocity Rewards program is more lightweight than Qantas Frequent Flyer it’s starting to pack a punch with over 100 online shopping partners in the ShopAndEarn store, no membership fee, and redemption options including gift cards for Myer and David Jones.

Has Virgin amped it up enough for you to make the switch?

Graham

Released yesterday the Virgin Flyer credit card is only the second card with a direct-earn option with Virgin Blue’s Velocity Rewards program. All the major banks have a link with Velocity Rewards, but this is so the user can transfer their points and is not direct earn.

The spending limits on the card are a little funny at first inspection but clearly define the target audience. Earn 1 Velocity Point for every $1 you spend on the card up to $1,500 per month, and then 1 Velocity Point for every $2 after that. Earning 1 point per dollar is in line with other credit card rewards programs when redeeming for cashback and gift cards.

Each time you purchase a Blue Saver, Flexible, Corporate Plus, or Premium Economy ticket you will be eligible for a second ticket in the same booking class free providing there is availability. Free doesn’t include any extra costs for baggage and credit card surcharges. Limited to four sectors worth of travel per year. A nice addition to the card and ties in nicely with a family holiday.

If you register now and use your card before October 15 you will receive a free Go! flight. This fare is limited to routes that are 1,000km or shorter and are on a specific list in the terms and conditions. Major routes such as Melbourne-Sydney are included. The value of this fare varies, but on some flights this will offset the first year’s annual fee.

A balance transfer rate of 6.9% for 6 months is hardly comparable to other available cards on the market, with some even offering 0% interest for 6 months.

$99 per year? The fee isn’t justified when only evaluating the Velocity points-earning potential, but with the buy 1 ticket get 1 free I can easily see a way for frequent flyers to be offsetting that annual fee each year.

Visit the Virgin Flyer Website

Cheers,

Graham.

‪We’ve just come across mozo.com.au, a pretty cool competitor for RateCity and other rate aggregators out there. They’ve been in the media this week as they have just launched a brand new tool to compare rewards credit cards.

The Rewards Revealer allows you to enter details about your credit spending habits and the type of reward you like. Then, based on the points you will earn and annual fees, the Rewards Revealer will show you the “highest rated” credits cards based on the dollar value of the redeemable rewards.

This is a great tool to start your research in to a rewards credit card that may be right for you. Keeping in mind that the tool is calculating rewards on the base earn-rate of the cards only.

In Mozo’s press release they knock rewards credit cards saying they are “Unrewarding” and that they “fail consumers”. They’re right on face value. The rewards don’t look too crash hot when reviewing individual programs with the Rewards Revealer. But utilising loyalty programs is much broader than just a $ value for point calculation.

The Rewards Revealer does not take in to account the complimentary services that come with premium credit cards, such as insurance and concierge services that don’t have a monetary value.

Though they are pretty open about not including bonus shopping days in their calculations, it’s these and other personalised rewards that consumers love – like access to pre-sale tickets and other ‘clubs within the club’. These are a critical part of the rewards credit card decision making process.

Use your credit card to earn points at the same time as using individual retailer rewards cards and you get even more advantage. Research we have conducted here at Perkler HQ reveals that an average family of four can save over $4,100 through the use of rewards programs in their everyday spending.

We agree completely with the Mozo conclusion that on paper credit card point scales offer little direct cash benefit, but we still maintain the broader loyalty redemption market is strong. As we always say – if you are going to shop there anyway, why not get some kind of benefit?

Classic example is Westpac Altitude. Here at Perkler Jus uses his. The direct points value is pretty low – but using points to fly him and Mrs Jus to Melbourne for a weekend away from the kids is worth more than a dollar calculation - though he does love his kids

Check out the Rewards Revealer

and read what SMH have to say

Over the past four weeks Everyday Rewards has been celebrating the one year anniversary of linking with the Qantas Frequent Flyer program. The core of the promotion was a different prize each day for four weeks, with a major prize draw of 5x $10,000 shopping sprees. In considering whether the promotion has been a success I have drummed up four or so key points to consider:

Good Points: Consumers
It was extremely easy to take part in the promotion. Simply swipe your card when making any purchase at a participating Woolworths, BIG W, BWS, or Dick Smith.

Bad Points: Consumers
The promotion was entirely draws to win prizes meaning there was no instant feeling of being rewarded.

Good Points: Everyday Rewards
The promotion would have revealed which consumers are most easily swayed by promotional products and those who are not.

Bad Points: Everyday Rewards
Perhaps a loss of positive sentiment for the program, but it’s hard to find much more than that.

How would I have done the promotion differently?
Well, if I was Everyday Rewards then perhaps I wouldn’t. They now have the power, or at least more than they had before, to target members based on how likely they are to respond to a particular promotion. That’s a pretty powerful piece of information to have as there isn’t a direct link between an active user and redemption of special offers.

How did you rate the First Birthday Bonanza?
(dislike) 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 (like)

Got a lengthy response? Leave a comment below.

Cheers,
Graham

A few months ago we covered cinema loyalty programs with the release of Hoyts Rewards, the last cinema to create a loyalty program. However, with this addition it meant that all major cinemas had a loyalty program that had some kind of frequency-based benefit… except Village Cinemas. Re-launched this morning the Village Movie Club has now added more loyalty-focussed offers. This is how the programs compare:

Australian Cinema Loyalty Programs

Taking a quick look at the table we can see that all the programs are very similar. This means we aren’t being forced to make another decision about where to take our money. This brings about a few observations and questions. If the programs aren’t competing with each other then the sole purpose can be to give something back to their regular customers, what a loyalty program should be from a consumer perspective. Given that all the programs are similar though, they aren’t gaining sales through the program, creating a low return on their investment, what a loyalty program shouldn’t be from a business perspective.

Are movie theatres wasting their time and money on their loyalty programs? Let us know below.

Cheers,
Graham.

Okay, so after being asked by a range of media outlets what I thought of the Choice wrap-up of loyalty programs I thought I’d better sit down and pencil in a response for our members.

Firstly - if you haven’t read the Choice material, you should.

Here are some top of mind thoughts - I’d love to know what you think.

Loyalty Card Review or simply supermarkets?

Firstly (and I know this is being a bit trite) but headlining your article as a Shopping Loyalty Cards story and then only really reviewing two supermarket programs in detail and anecdotally looking at a couple of other larger programs seems a bit disingenuous.

I used Choice a lot when I was having kids and I didn’t expect them to do reviews of prams or cots and only look at the two major brands… If it’s a review of Supermarket Points Based Loyalty then call it that!

The reason this is important is that the media (and now Choice) can be guilty of not relating the loyalty market to a total consumer point of view. Supermarkets are important but a large amount of discretionary spending takes place in other retail segments - holidays, transport, insurance, fashion etc.

Picking one segment and then using this to say ‘loyalty programs don’t offer anything’ is simply wrong. Saying - ’supermarket programs in their current form offer low earn ratios when used without any related offer’ is a bit more correct. But it would have been a short report then!

I take on board that they also looked briefly at Myer, Priceline and a couple of others but this story was all about having a close look at the big two supermarkets (in my opinion).

We have over 650 loyalty programs in the Perkler database, ranging from membership entitlements and pure discount programs through to points accumulation. Each one of these types of programs, across multiple retail segments, is the consumer reality. This breadth of the industry simply isn’t addressed by Choice.

And that’s okay, just be clear about it when you are using the loyalty market to get publicity!

The maths of loyalty

The part of the report focused on the maths around earning points and the time taken to earn vouchers and flights is spot on (as you’d expect). I think Choice have always done an excellent job of breaking complex consumer interactions down to the simplest form to helppeople.

I guess what I also expected to see here is the linking of bonus deals and related programs that make this point generation more attractive. Phil Hawkins from FlyBuys certainly touched on this in the press that he did, and in fact Choice acknowledge the existence of these deals in one of their tables without then bothering to add those scenarios into their top line equations.

Under ‘What you get for your loyalty’ they say “You’ll earn more points and rewards sooner if you pay with an affiliated credit card, use your card at other program stores during the same week, do only one weekly shop, spend more or make use of bonus point promotions” Exactly. So where is the modelling to show how this affects the assumptions they made?

I think it’s a shame that Choice didn’t look into this. It could alter the story by a fair amount.

What those mean retailers really want!

This was the part of the story I found the most bewildering. Not because any of what was said was wrong, but because it seemed so naive. The report makes constant references to supermarkets and other retailers trying to trap consumers into giving away information, get them to shop exclusively at their stores and discriminate on discounts.

I would have thought that all of these tactics are widely known and accepted by consumers. Maybe I’m wrong, tell me if I am, but part of the loyalty dynamic is that consumers accept that the retailer is collecting information about them in exchange for a benefit!

So when I see “Discount Discrimination” in a story that is critical of programs not offering enough, I don’t get it.

I also think “Discount Discrimination” is “Tailored Benefit” something we’ve been trying to push programs to get better at. If it is a loyalty program, why should the guy who doesn’t buy as much get the same offer, even if we live under the same roof?

And Finally

I’ve only really touched on a few of the points here. I may be too close to this market now but I guess my overall feeling on the story was, yeah - so what?

The gaps in analysing the broad range of programs, investigating the relative worth of bonus shopping days and hidden member benefits like those you find in affiliated programs left me a bit underdone on this one.

From what I can tell, Choice got good press on this one so good luck to them - whether it helps anyone understand the loyalty market and how they CAN save I’m not so sure on.

But there’s always perkler.com for that

PS: no retailers were involved in the drafting of this response - not even our clients

Heya!
Graham here. It’s tough to find a great sale in the 6 weeks leading up to Christmas, but we’ve found some great loyalty deals that will help you save on some great gift ideas. We’re going to be updating the blog when new cool deals come out.

My mum always loves a good read, if yours does too keep your eye on the Borders Shortlist and Angus & Robertson A&R Rewards. A&R Rewards you need to make a purchase before you can become a member. If you aren’t already then you’re probably better off signing up for the Borders Shortlist. Free, online registration and they send an email once a month (usually in the third/fourth week). Discounts are consistently 20-30% off. This week’s offer is 25% off one non-fiction book.

Candles are also a great idea, and we’ve got another free email signup for you. This one’s with Dusk, pretty much the only decent candle store if you ask me. Go to their website and signup for the dusk candle club. Immediately after joining you’ll receive a 10% off voucher for your first ONLINE order. So get your shopping done early and snag a great bargain: Sign up now

It’s tough to find dad a present that isn’t socks or jocks, or just the same old thing that you get him every year. Give him some excitement this year by getting him a RedBalloon adventure. They’re normally pretty costly, so you’ll have no problems saving on this one. Use your Presidential Card to make the purchase and you’ll receive a $30 discount on any purchase of $129 or more. Nice! Don’t forget to enter your voucher code at the checkout. All the details. The same discount is applied for MBF’s In2Life program.

For all your christmas shopping you can save 5% with your Presidential Card or QRI Lifestyle card by pre-purchasing gift cards. What’s also kinda cool (I asked FlyBuys but they didn’t get back to me) is that you can still earn QANTAS Frequent Flyer points when you make your purchase with a WISH gift card at Woolworths. Sweet, huh?

If you’re in to the hamper market, let’s face it… we all are, you can usually save 10% by ordering through your motor club or by using your credit card. At the bare minimum you’re gonna get some bonus points for it. Confirmed discounts are available through RACQ (usually the other big motor clubs are reciprocal so be sure to check out RACV, NRMA, RACT, RAC, and AANT), ANZ Frequent Flyer Credit Card, Westpac Instant Offers, ANZ Rewards Credit Card, St. George Instant Benefits, Bank of Queensland Q-Rewards.

You can also save up to 20% on Hampers with a National Pharmacies Membership. Simply view the Christmas Catalogue.

Shopping for kid’s toys is always a bit of a hard one to find discounts on. Save 20% by buying online with your Presidential Card at GR8 Toys. Save 10% at Entropy using your QRI Lifestyle card. Sign up to the Australian Geographic Newsletter and receive an in-store coupon. We’ll try to nut this one out and bring you some more great bargains from the free programs out there

Decorations: Keep an eye out for great offers from Myer and David Jones in their monthly instant offers. Failing that you’ve got National Pharmacies with some great low-cost and discounted decoration options that are up to 20% off.

Christmas Entertainment: Reading Reel Club, Hoyts Movie Club, Cine Buzz weekly emails include an exclusive member offer for a discounted movie.
Christmas Entertainment: AMF Bowling AMF Roller club - 10% off everything. They usually include discounted school holiday offers, it’s free to join. Thursday night is cheap bowling night, too

We’ll be sure to add the latest benefits here as they come… Also, you can do your own search from our home page: Search Now!
-Me

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!