Leaders in Customer Loyalty, Powered by Loyalty360

Send us a textAs a leading digital financial services company, Ally Financial focuses on serving communities and helping customers navigate life milestones and achieve financial goals. From helping customers chart a path to homeownership to planning for retirement, the brand seeks ways to connect with customers in meaningful interactions. Personal finance can be very emotional, and Ally works to balance leveraging customer data while serving as a guide to assist customers in building a solid financial foundation. Mark Johnson, CEO of Loyalty360, spoke with David Hixon, the Executive Director of Product Marketing and CRM at Ally, about how sports partnerships bring Ally and communities together, using data and insights to support personalization, and leveraging the right metrics to determine success.Watch the full interview here: https://youtu.be/U5vHWa85-jE

Send us a textFounded in 2009, vLoyalty is a privately held company headquartered in Dallas, Texas. The company combines the power of payments, card-linking loyalty and promotions, and text messaging to help companies easily enroll, engage, understand, and reward customers to drive repeat visits and sales.  vLoyalty offers clients a patented cloud-based suite of solutions that meets the needs of small businesses as well as large franchise enterprises. These solutions enable efficient and convenient loyalty program enrollment at the point of purchase. Clients can also take advantage of real-time access to historical purchasing data to optimize point-of-sale (POS) targeted offers and leverage compliant SMS text messaging to engage customers—all with seamless payment integration. Loyalty360 spoke with Peter Vogel, Chief Revenue Officer at vLoyalty, about loyalty program automation at the checkout, vLoyalty’s recent quick-service restaurant study, and what’s coming next for the company in 2024.

Send us a textBaesman Group helps brands solve personalized marketing challenges with a strategic focus on loyalty programs. Their team of customer engagement strategists, made up of former brand-side marketers, specializes in helping their clients truly understand their customers’ buying behaviors and mapping that to their overall loyalty journey. Baesman also offers its own customizable loyalty platform, Intuition, or has the ability to integrate and work with any platform on the market. Baesman believes in evolving loyalty programs so loyalty strategy drives the program, rather than technology limitations that can often exist. Mark Johnson, CEO of Loyalty360, spoke with Kelsey Crookes, Account Management at Baesman. Crookes is a fourth-generation member of the family-owned company—her great-grandfather started the business in 1952. Kelsey is experienced in deriving strategic insights and customer engagement strategies from data to create a more loyal customer. In this interview, Crookes discusses loyalty program differentiation, leveraging “secret” or “unpublished” tiers, and harnessing customer data to create more personalized communications.Watch the full interview here.

Send us a textA&W Restaurants was founded in 1919 as a root beer stand in Lodi, California, to welcome the troops home after World War I. As America’s oldest franchise restaurant chain, today, there are nearly 450 locations across the U.S. and another 450 in Asia spanning four markets.  The chain is 100% franchisee-owned. The brand ensures franchisees have a voice in company decisions that will affect their businesses, and franchisees are represented by the National A&W Franchisee Association (NAWFA). A&W works collaboratively with franchisees on everything that happens in their restaurants—particularly on brand and marketing initiatives. The brand engages franchisees to ensure that anything new that’s launched—whether it’s products or advertising and marketing programs—is there to support profitable same-store growth as well as new restaurants being established.  Betsy Schmandt, President and COO of A&W Restaurants, oversees all revenue at A&W Restaurants, driving aspects of the business, operations, training, marketing, innovation, and franchise development, as well as technology and legal. It’s a broad scope, but Schmandt affirms it’s wonderful to be a part of a great American brand with 105 years of experience.  Mark Johnson, CEO of Loyalty360, spoke with Schmandt about A&W’s new enterprise reporting and analytics solution, connecting with customers on an emotional level, and next generation customer loyalty. Watch the full interview here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7lQLjA5FJP8Read the feature on Loyalty360: https://loyalty360.org/content-gallery/in-depth-exclusives/a-w-restaurants-building-customer-loyalty-through-data-driven-insights-and-personalization

Send us a textAddtowallet.io offers a mobile wallet marketing platform that lets brands create, manage, and distribute digital offers and pass them on to Apple Wallet and Google Pay. Traditional coupons, loyalty cards, gift cards, and event tickets can be made visible and accessible to customers no matter where they are—dynamically updated in real-time and tracked from inception to intent-to-purchase to redemption.  After the Addtowallet platform was built, the company realized that there were not many marketers active in the digital wallet channel. The company saw an opportunity for marketers and brands to start learning about the technology as the team at Addtowallet believes the digital wallet channel is the next place for marketers to focus. Mark Johnson, CEO of Loyalty360, spoke with Steven Douglas, Founder and CEO at Addtowallet, about how the wallet channel offers marketers the opportunity to personalize loyalty efforts and how customers’ interactions with coupons in their digital wallets can reveal an intention to buy.Watch the full interview here: https://www.youtube.com/live/Pf5HRlPoMJ0?si=kOjYh7GZqWdwBozqRead the article on Loyalty360 here: https://loyalty360.org/content-gallery/daily-news/loyalty-live-addtowallet-on-how-brand-marketers-can-harness-the-power-of-digital-wallets

Send us a textFounded in 1982 in Minneapolis, MN, Great Clips, Inc. counts more than 4,400 salons in the U.S. and Canada. The brand is 100% franchisee-owned and is the largest salon brand in the world, employing over 28,000 stylists. The brand prides itself on fast and convenient walk-in haircare services and allows online check-in to minimize the time customers spend in the waiting room. Just prior to the 2024 Super Bowl, Great Clips and mobility manufacturer Kawasaki partnered in a campaign featuring Kawasaki’s RIDGE® side x side while tapping into the power of a legendary haircut.  Mark Johnson, CEO of Loyalty360, spoke with Lisa Hake, the Vice President of Marketing and Communications at Great Clips, about the fun promotion with Kawasaki, collecting zero-party data, and building a path to loyalty. Watch the full interview here: https://youtu.be/er1rcH8OJhs

Send us a textA part of Xponential Fitness, a large global franchise group of boutique fitness brands across verticals including pilates, barre, cycling, rowing, dance, yoga, and more, Pure Barre is a barre-focused franchise boasting over 600 wellness studios across the U.S. and Canada. Thousands of members of all fitness levels enjoy Pure Barre’s low-impact classes every day in support of strength, cardio, and flexibility goals. A standout in barre and fitness boutiques, Pure Barre ranks in Entrepreneur Magazine’s Franchise 500 List each year.  Mark Johnson, CEO of Loyalty360, spoke with Caroline Linton, CMO of Pure Barre, about forming strategic partnerships, leveraging the power of fitness challenges to increase engagement, and the brand’s recently launched ClassPointsTM program on the Pure Barre app. Watch the full interview here: https://youtu.be/oQh4WCAE_lw

Send us a textThe brainchild of Adam Breeden (All Star Lanes, AceBounce, and Flight Club) and brothers Steven and Dave Jolliffe (Topgolf), Puttshack is a high-tech mini golf concept where technology has been injected into the traditional game to make it even more exciting and fun. The 9-hole mini golf games feature Puttshack’s proprietary TrackaballTM technology, and each game takes approximately 30 minutes, depending on how busy the course is and the number of people playing in the group. While reservations aren’t required, walk-in groups will be served on a first-come, first-serve basis.  The Puttshack experience is enhanced by food and beverage options, and guests can enjoy bar and restaurant areas when visiting. At present, the brand counts 14 locations in the U.S. and 18 locations worldwide, with more locations under construction. Mark Johnson, CEO of Loyalty360, spoke with Susan Walmesley, Chief Marketing Officer and Chief Operating Officer of Puttshack, about the brand’s popular Ace Puttman campaign, the Puttshack Perks program, and leveraging data in support of personalization. Read the full article on Loyalty360 here: https://loyalty360.org/content-gallery/in-depth-exclusives/puttshack-engaging-and-educating-customers-with-a-whimsical-brand-ambassador

Send us a textIn 1965, a mail-order veterinary supplies business named UPCO was founded in San Diego, California. By 1979, it became Petco, and in 1980, the first Petco store located outside of California opened in Tigard, Oregon. Petco’s significant growth began in the late 1980s after acquiring two pet supply chains, WellPoint and the Pet Department. The purchase not only expanded the footprint of the company but more than tripled the brand’s store number from 40 to 130. In the early 1990s, Petco opened its first East Coast stores, and by 2001, Petco.com was launched. In 2013, the company opened its first Petco stores in Mexico, with one in Mexico City and another one in Guadalajara.  Today, Petco is a successful pet health and wellness company, reflecting nearly six decades of providing thoughtful customer service to “pet parents” and their beloved pets. The brand has created an environment in which customer loyalty is built through the emotional connections nurtured by in-store employees.     Mark Johnson, CEO of Loyalty360, spoke with Justin Tichy, Chief Operating Officer for Petco, about growing into a health and wellness company, building emotional loyalty with pet parents, and fostering an environment of engaged employees.  

Send us a textCapillary Technologies is a managed SaaS solution powering 500+ loyalty programs with its best-in-class loyalty technology platform and expert services. Founded in 2012, Capillary has a strong global presence across the United States, Asia, Europe, and the Middle East, working with 400+ brands like Tata, PUMA, Shell, Petron, Domino’s, Kanmo Group, and Marks & Spencer. The platform’s suite of products—Loyalty+, Engage+, Rewards+, Insights+—are all AI-powered and sit on top of a powerful consumer data platform that has touched more than a billion end customers.As part of the Loyalty Expo Speaker Preview Series, Loyalty360 interviews presenters who will lead dynamic sessions at this year’s Loyalty Expo in Orlando, Florida, from June 4–6.  Mark Johnson, CEO of Loyalty360, spoke with Don Smith, Chief Consulting Officer at Capillary, about the upcoming session he will lead in June. The session will address the mechanics of customer loyalty programs and what metrics to tap into when measuring customer loyalty efforts. Read the article here:  https://loyalty360.org/content-gallery/daily-news/capillary-s-2024-loyalty-expo-session-understanding-the-mechanics-of-customer-loyalty-programs-and