Loyalty Stories 40: What Loyalty Looks Like in Brazil – Claudio Cerqueira

Gabor

Hi and welcome to Loyalty Stories, that is Antavo’s podcast on customer loyalty and loyalty programs. I am Gabor Vigh, one of the Partnership Managers at Antavo, and Antavo is a technology company that empowers loyalty programs all over the world. We help various great businesses such as KFC, Benefit Cosmetics, and very well-known global automotive and fashion companies, airports and so on. 

In this Loyalty Stories podcast, we dive into the trends around loyalty programs and customer loyalty. We talk with industry experts around the world to pick their brains to learn what’s next for loyalty programs. Today’s guest is the CEO and founder of Redeem Loyalty, a marketing and technology consulting firm who are focused on customer relationships and help their clients to build strong connections between brands and customers through unique loyalty programs that they can also manage. 

Please welcome Claudio Cerqueria, one of the returning contributors to the loyalty report and the person who lives in a part of the world that is on my bucket list for a long, long time now. Hi Claudio, Bon Dia, how are you?

Claudio

Hi, Gabor. Nice to hear from you today. Thank you very much for the invitation. It is a pleasure to talk with you, talk with Antavo about loyalty programs, mostly my perspective in the Brazilian marketing.

Gabor

Great, thank you so much Claudio for accepting our invitation. Firstly, would you mind briefly introduce yourself to our audience?

Claudio

Yes, I’m having been working with loyalty and CRM for a lot of time I started working at American Express in Brazil, then we helped them to launch their program membership rewards in Brazil and then was for other companies. And most recently, I started my consultant here working with, helping companies in Brazil and other countries as well to develop their loyalty programs, and it’s a very exciting moment because we have a lot of new technologies, a lot of innovations, and the customer is involved with all of this, so it’s a good time to be working with loyalty at this moment.

Gabor

Great, and because you are a member of a lot of loyalty programs and you have implemented a lot of loyalty programs, what would you say is your favorite one and what are those features that make you say that?

Claudio

Yes, I’m not about a light problem that I have been working on, but one that is very special that I know. It’s the Planet BrewDog. And first because I have an experience as a brewery, as a marketeer as well. So I was previously the owner of a craft brewery in Brazil. And BrewDog had a bar in Brazil as well. And I used to sell my beer for them. But unfortunately, they closed it down.

But should they return to Brazil, I will be delighted to work to take care of the Planet BrewDog for them if they come back to Brazil, to be a pleasure. And I think that I like a lot of this program because of their proposal. So it’s beer, but it’s also the environment. So it’s the first program that I can see a concern about the environment. 

So some companies tell about the environment, others do the green wash but it looks like the planet BrewDog really takes care about the environment. And I think that’s very nice. But of course, I think they have also a very good communication. It’s simple, it’s clear, it’s objective.

And so it’s not, if you don’t have a clear program, customer will not understand what they have to do. So I think they have the perfect timing in communicating with their customer. I’m also about their offers. So doing pairing about beer and food, it’s for their customer, the people that love beer, pairing and harmonization. It’s a very good combination. 

And they offer possibilities, program and of course they have very interesting benefits just like to free delivery and so free delivery for a beer it’s very important because it’s a fresh beer so I think they have very interesting benefits of course the benefits should be aligned to their customers okay I think their benefits are very interesting for their customers

Gabor

Yeah, thank you very much Claudio for sharing your thoughts on BrewDog. I pretty much like their loyalty program as well. I even started to order from  BrewDog before they implemented their current loyalty scheme. But when they added these features for me as a member benefit then, yeah, definitely. 

I started to order more and also I’m very happy that, them as being the world’s first carbon negative brewery, they are able to reduce the CO2 emission and as like a loyalty customer when you purchase you see exactly how much CO2 you offset and yeah so that’s definitely in line with the ESG’s which are kind of I would say trending in nowadays loyalty programs.

Claudio

Yes, and I really believe that a customer needs to invest in their values. Okay, the values must be aligned because not only what its values could be putting practice in their actions. So I know something about the BrewDog history, and I think they are coherent with this, the speech and the actions.

Gabor

Yeah, and you mentioned that you are not going to pick an example about those loyalty programs that you implemented, but whatever that you were working on before, what would you say is the most proud piece of work that you have done in the loyalty space?

Claudio

Gabor, I really used to,  I have done some very interesting projects, but I’m always most proud of the current project that I’m working on. Because we can improve things, doing better things, using new technology, use all our background to do something better. And that’s what I loo, I’m very happy doing this. 

In the past, so I started working with very challenging and rewarding programs in the time when we send rewards and coupons by email, but not before email, by direct email, by letters in the mail. So today we have the technology offers infinite possibilities. We can make more important to work, to think strategically, because we have a lot of possibilities. So you can or should have using agile methodologies, customer and user experiences, no code, no code, all of this reality is available today. 

So I think that’s the importance of to be up to date with all the technologies, but don’t forget the strategic thinking because you need to decide which is better, not only in terms of technology, but mostly in terms of the customer needs and expectations.

Gabor

Thank you Claudio. If you look back one or two years in the timeline, what do you think were the biggest changes in the loyalty industry?

Claudio

I think that we have gone from the exclusivity and privileges moment of the large programs to democratization of the programs and then for a massification of the large problems. Okay, but I think that we need to include or to put more personalization in the problems, not only just by including the name of the customer and their communication, okay?

But focusing on their needs and wants. So, some people believe that artificial intelligence or generative artificial intelligence could help to generate personalized messages for each customer. But I believe that what we really need is to a more human touch in their communication.

Okay, we need to do the managers, the companies need to think for the customers, what they want to do because doing this personal touch, the human touch for each program. I think that’s important today to include in the personalization.

Gabor

Great. And if we turn back from like the history and we look ahead, what do you think what will be the two biggest trends in the loyalty space for even towards the end of this year or next year?

Claudio

Yes, I think that one certainly is the increasing facility to use points. Okay, more possibilities of rewards because it’s a demand for the customers. They have a customer that has a lot of points and sometimes it’s just difficult to to redeem these points, to find where to use the points that are expiring. 

So I think that it’s important to offer more facilities to use these points. And also, a dissemination of experiences as rewards, because that’s a way of engaging customers and differentiating the programs from the competition. So, if you have a TV set, a Seaward, all of your competitors do the same. 

But if you create a special, just like a BrewDog experience, that will be unique for your customers. But in addition, I’d like to add one, because I see an increase in the relevance of the ESG in companies, because of the pressure of stakeholders and of regulators as well. So I think this topic will have an impact in the future.

Gabor

Great, lovely. Thank you so much for sharing your thoughts on the trends Claudio, and we slightly touched based on some like technical requirements in Earlier questions, but what do you think how a loyalty program technology company should support this? What are the main features that it’s not just nice to have but have to have to support these new age modern loyalty programs?

Claudio

I think market is looking for solutions that are quicker and cheaper, and also simpler from a technology point of view. And not only for the company but for the customer as well. So I think that soft as a service model, the use of clear and easy to use apps will be key for the marketing today. So of course it’s very important that the solution offers a lot of possibilities. But in fact, it’s important to select what you are the most important for the customer at the time.

Gabor

And is there anything else that you have in mind that you wanted to share with the audience that we haven’t touched upon?

Claudio

I think that’s the most important is the ability to design a very good loyalty program. So that’s I think that a consultancy company like Redeem can provide. Because we can see a lot of technologies and we see, what’s important for the company and the customer point of view and develop a program that’s relevant for the company at that moment. It’s a point that we were working and differentiating for us.

Gabor

Great. I have a couple of more questions. It’s more like, I would say, like slightly off-topic but still related to loyalty. If you remember last year we were collecting the list of the most frequently used KPIs and also we were collecting or trying to discover: Who are the main stakeholders when it comes to a loyalty project? 

So this year, I again would like to pick your brain on that. What do you see? Who are the main stakeholders? Is it marketing team or IT who are coordinating these projects? Or is there anyone else who is involved in these projects?

Claudio

Wow, I think that IT is a very important piece of this, but marketing should lead to these projects. And with solutions, that’s why I think that solutions with low code, no code, will be very helpful, because now the marketing depends less on the IT, to manage, to create their campaigns, to input their rewards. So I think that the use of local technologies is a great advantage, and that will help the market to lead these initiatives. 

And of course, understanding the customer needs and wants, and also thinking about the possibilities. Okay, gamification, for example, it’s exciting, but it’s not appealing for everyone. We need to understand for who is better to use this kind. So that’s maybe some benefits or benefits of a solution, but the market needs to understand how to decide how to implement and if it will implement.

Gabor

Nice. And what would you consider the best measure of success of a loyalty program?

Claudio

Wow! And so that’s will depend from depending on the business specifically for the business and if you go to look at the airlines program okay they will keep adding points okay and for other companies they are looking to retain customers or increase sales. So it depends on each business specifically. 

But I think that, of course, if you can calculate the lifetime value of a customer and you develop a program that will provide tools and actions and develop actions to explore all this potential. Okay, let’s go through lifetime value. But to understand lifetime value, you need to look at other point-to-all measures, just like the retention, how many customers I’m adding and losing, and the average tickets. So I think that’s a combination of this.

Gabor

Oh, great. Lovely. Thank you so much, Claudio, for sharing your thoughts with us today and being here. I really enjoyed our conversation. I made a couple of notes because I had a couple of favorite parts in this conversation, especially when you mentioned a democratized way of loyalty. Yeah, I just, I don’t know, love to use this word when it comes to loyalty. 

And also that customers need to feel a personal touch when they are a member of a loyalty program. And this is when personalization comes into the picture. And also when you mentioned experiences as rewards. And this really helps to make the difference between one loyalty program to another. So this is a differentiator for the brands. 

So for me, definitely these are the key takeaways. Yes, so thank you very much, Claudio, for sharing your thoughts. And for the viewers, wherever you listen to us, be it on a podcast platform, YouTube or LinkedIn, please like us, like this podcast, subscribe to our channel, so this way you will get the notification when the next episode is out, and also tell us your point of view about loyalty in the comment section below.

Feel free to visit antavo.com to discover your next loyalty software. Antavo is a next-generation loyalty program technology company used by global companies like KFC, Benefit Cosmetics, global automotive and fashion companies, and airports all over the world. 

And also visit Redeem Loyalty’s website at redeemloyalty.com.br or Claudio’s LinkedIn page to find out more exciting details of his work. 

Thank you! And see you on the next one. Bye for now.