An interview by Adam Posner with Rosemary Martin - GM eCommerce and Marketing at Rebel
The Loyalty Leader interviews I have the pleasure of doing never cease to amaze me with so many real-life learnings and insights for continuous improvement.
This interview (#23) with Rosemary Martin - GM eCommerce and Marketing at Rebel and leader of the Rebel Active loyalty program proved to be another one of those absolute gems!
Rosemary (Ro) has such depth in her working experience (lots of detail below) and is now leading the e-Commerce and Marketing of one of Australia’s most well-known retailers and a loyalty progam – Rebel Active, that has been going for 10 years.
Besides her insights on the loyalty program, Ro shares her experience on her visit to Nike Headquarters and how brilliantly they share stories through art and data.
Enjoy the article and watch out for some shareable quotes that so profoundly make a point!
1. So, who is Rosemary? (outside of work) + a little on your work biography
I was born and bred over the ditch in Wellington, New Zealand and I've lived in Melbourne for close to 20 years now. Thankfully, I seem to have retained my strong Kiwi twang, so I guess it will stay with me for life.
I’ve always been curious about human behaviour and find people fascinating. That's probably why history and art history were always my favourite subjects.
These days, time permitting, I try to get to exhibitions and my all-time favourite painting, is by a Flemish painter, called Jan Van Eyck. I don't know why, but he's got this painting called Man in a Red Turban that I've always loved since school.
When I lived in London, I saw it in person at the National Gallery and I was so moved at seeing it that I cried!
Oh, and yeah, I think most people who know me probably wouldn't find that that strange because I have been known to also cry at a good commercial!
Which ones?
There's probably a few but the most recent one that I teared up at was the John Lewis Beginner ad. (The Beginner | John Lewis & Partners | Christmas Ad 2022)
Also, Nike do some amazing ads and I was lucky enough to go to the Nike Headquarters middle of last year and meet a bunch of the Nike team.
Being a marketer by trade, it was a massive for me.
That sort of moment for me being in the home of, oh my goodness, one of the world's best brands and brand storytellers…was incredible.
What did you learn when you were there?
I think one of the insights for me was the authenticity of the brand. When you go to their campus and its massive, they have a range of buildings named after famous sports people.
The way they have brought each of their stories to life through art or through data is just incredible. As an example, there was this artwork of Tiger Woods that was constructed out of golf tees, and it doesn't look like anything until you see if from a certain angle and then you see his face.
The LeBron James building has a half court and they had marked out on the floor and dots every single shot he's ever taken and whether the shot was successful or not.
Amazing indicators of storytelling with art and data! It was cool, especially as I love art so much, although I think we can all appreciate art through our own lens and perspective.
Back to your background
After school my interest in humans and their behaviours led me to a marketing degree at the University of Otago. I probably tolerated the statistics subjects and absolutely loved the subjects on organizational behaviour, human psychology, behavioural economics.
My first marketing job was for Melbourne advertising agency Publicis Mojo and then I headed off to the UK around 2004. I was in the UK for about three and a half years working at the London Business School, which I absolutely loved. It was interesting because you're often dealing with professors or the academics and marketing their research and programs, which they are very invested in.
I then travelled for about 6 months through Central and South America. Argentina was a favourite, where I found the love of Spanish language. I think I have visited about 30 countries!
When I got back to Melbourne, I worked on the above the line marketing of consumer cards for ANZ Bank. And then I had the opportunity to move into retail working for Coles and that was back in 2012.
I really loved the pace, energy and genuine consumer focus of retail. When I joined Coles, I was focused on Coles loyalty and Flybuys.
Marrying up the retail element with the digital and data focus of a loyalty program was just a perfect match for me. I ended up being there for about nine years working in a range of functions including the relaunch of Flybuys. I worked with some amazing people including Phil Hawkins, who was an awesome mentor to me.
I left Flybuys as their chief customer officer 18 months ago and I joined Rebel as the GM of e-Commerce and Marketing with a focus across customer and digital - everything from brand marketing through to our website and the running of our loyalty program Rebel Active.
I'm a personally a huge believer in a brand’s purpose and for me at Rebel, the positive role that being active has on our mental and physical well-being is what attracted me to Rebel because of its purpose and vision in that space. And you know, it's not just selling sporting goods. It's genuinely about how do we support all Australians to pursue their sporting dreams and passions.
So outside of work you'll find me running around after my two kids, doing pilates, playing tennis and attending some amazing sporting events…I am especially looking forward to the Women’s Football World Cup on home soil this year.
2. Tell us about the Rebel Active program … any stats you can share?
The Rebel Active program has been around for about ten years.
‘Closeness to the Customer’ is identified as a strategic driver of Super Retail Group’s corporate strategy. In the last three or so years there's been a renewed focus on how to grow and maximize loyalty to ensure that the brands within Super Retail Group are building deeper and more profitable relationships with customers.
Rebel’s customer value proposition is all about product - having the best global and Australian brands and the widest range, as well as also differentiating on experience.
The Rebel Active loyalty program is closely linked to that, providing value to members through club pricing on a range of products in-store and online.
We've also recently started member early and exclusive access to major promotions and then we also offer some awesome experiences.
For our members, we have Rebel Rookies, which is a kid’s school holiday sports clinic we run nationally bringing together professional athletes with the kids as a day out getting to practice or to play a range of sports.
We also offer a range of intimate meet and greet opportunities with athletes based on VIP invites and ‘go into the draw to win’ competitions.
For example, through our awesome trade partner Adidas last year, Rebel offered some of our valued members the opportunity to ride a Melbourne tram with the Manchester United football players. Unbelievable! Unforgettable for some of the members getting up close and personal for some signings and meeting their legends.
(That's a great Joyalty* moment).
We have around 71% of sales coming from our club members and around a 3.3 million 12-month active member base.
Finally, there are some new and exciting changes coming in the second half of 2023. Watch this space!
3. What is the most unique element of the program?
I would say it's that experiential benefit.
It's so closely linked to our purpose in terms of supporting Australians to pursue their sporting dreams and passions.
4. What are some of the challenges you face on an ongoing basis to keep the program relevant/fresh/thriving (internally and externally) and how do you overcome these?
Ideally, I want members to feel they benefit at every touch point they have with us. That would include every transaction.
When I say every touch point it doesn't have to always be a transaction. How are we making someone's life easier or giving them the right sort of tailored advice to help them whether they're starting out or wanting to progress in their chosen sport?
I think there's something in both of those as an opportunity and the challenge is to balance the customer and the commercial benefits, which is clearly very important.
When I'm trying to do that, I look at all the data I have available to model against. And if there are gaps in the data then I need to think of the best way to close those. It could be through customer research, or it could be through just going out and testing something.
The challenge is to find the resource for these, particularly in the tech and data insights spaces.
You're always going to have more ideas than you have time, money, or people. (quotable)
In many cases it's about determining when is close enough, good enough… getting to 65% to give you 90% of the benefit. (Quotable)
I find often with data insights, just time boxing and seeing where you get to after like 1 to 2 weeks and then saying, okay, well actually that gives us enough of a steer for now versus trying to perfect the analysis.
And finally, you really need a robust prioritization process to align to your objectives and success measures.
5. What advice would you give to brands thinking about a loyalty program?
- Ensure that you're clear on your ‘why?’. What are the strategic outcomes you need to achieve and how are you going to measure the success of those?
- The design of your loyalty program should align to your business purpose.
- Think beyond the transactional. So how can you utilise your loyalty program to build a deeper brand connection?
- How do you leverage loyalty program data to deliver a better end to end experience for your customers? An example of that is the way Coles give their Flybuys members a rundown of all the products they usually buy that are on special that week helping them to save time on curating their shopping list in addition to saving money.
6. What do you think is creeping up on programs that could disrupt them for better or worse?
- I think you're seeing a strategic elevation of loyalty programs. Senior executives will increasingly be shining a spotlight on their loyalty programs. Is that good or bad? Well, it could be for better or worse, depending on your loyalty program. I think it's a great opportunity. Programs are going to be discussed in more boardrooms and increasingly seen as a core strategic tenant across industries.
- Customer expectations continue to evolve, and we need to ensure that we're keeping up and customers especially now they are a lot more conscious what data they're handing over and how it's being used.
- Collecting data without a use case is not a healthy data value exchange strategy. Please do not ask for someone's date of birth, pet's name, or favourite sports team, if you're not going to use that information.
7. What’s the most underestimated force behind a program’s performance?
For retailers, I'd have to say that it's the power of your store team members. A retail loyalty program will thrive or die based on the engagement of your frontline team, engaging with your customers directly.
If your store teams don't understand or see value in your program, they're never going to get behind member acquisition and engagement drives.
A special mention must also be made of Simplicity. If your value exchange is too convoluted or your offers are too complex, your terms and conditions are too long, or its even remotely time consuming for someone to sign up or log in, you've lost them.
8. What are three important skills a loyalty program marketer needs?
- A growth mindset. You need to be willing to test and learn from the inevitable failures and have an appetite to constantly improve your program, the customer experience, and your ROI.
- Customer centricity. You need to always think first about what is best for the customer and then overlay the commerciality. Build for the customer and the money will come! (Quotable).
- Commerciality. You are going to need financial and data literacy. The ability to assess the current and potential performance to inform your program decisions.
9. If we are chatting again in (say) 2 years’ time, what do you predict would be the hot topic related to loyalty programs?
I'd say one which is already firmly on everyone's radar being changes in data marketing and privacy legislation, impacting how businesses can operate.
There's a lot of focus on personalization and achieving a one-one customer communication. I personally think that one-to-many communication with good segmentation will get you close and can serve a good purpose.
However, the role of personalization in delivering a one-one customer experience is going beyond the communication to the full experience. I think that is next and where I would like to see more loyalty programs get to.
As a case in point, it’s like the Manchester United on a Tram personal experience, which even at small scale is personalising the experience or even at a store level when team members greet their loyalty program members more personally using the data they have (not to be creepy, rather to be relevant).
10. Leave us with a lasting loyalty program thought
Be simple, trusted and rewarding.
Summary
Ro Martin is an experienced executive in marketing and loyalty. There was so much wisdom in this interview with many insights to help loyalty program marketers be better at their craft and to craft better programs.
For me, those that jumped out were (as quotable):
“You're always going to have more ideas than you have time, money, or people. In many cases it's about determining when is close enough. good enough… getting to 65% to give you 90% of the benefit. You really need a robust prioritisation process to align to your objectives and success measures.”
“Senior executives will increasingly be shining a spotlight on their loyalty programs. Is that good or bad? Well, it could be for better or worse, depending on your loyalty program. I think it's a great opportunity. Programs are going to be discussed in more boardrooms and increasingly seen as a core strategic tenant across industries”.
“If your store teams don't understand or see value in your program, they're never going to get behind member acquisition and engagement drives.”
Finally, I loved Ro’s three skills a loyalty program marketer needs so here they are again;
- A growth mindset. You need to be willing to test and learn from the inevitable failures and have an appetite to constantly improve your program, the customer experience, and your ROI.
- Customer centricity. You need to always think first about what is best for the customer and then overlay the commerciality. Build for the customer and the money will come! (Quotable)
- Commerciality. You are going to need financial and data literacy. The ability to assess the current and potential performance to inform your program decisions.
And the last insight that’s often forgotten (in my words) is to connect your loyalty program’s vision to your brand’s purpose and vision – always!
Have a happy loyalty day!
