Case Studies

As the largest commercial bank in Mongolia, Khan Bank was looking for a global loyalty specialist with an established presence in Asia-Pacific. Their goal was to reinforce and modernise their partnerships with key retailers and increase their card portfolio by 15% over two years. A key challenge was to streamline their processes and set up a seamless campaign management system with automated customer segmentation and instant discounts. They also wanted an innovative digital loyalty programme that would help them stand out. We delivered our Realtime-XLS solution, including a member portal with multiple reward types, an offer management portal for easier onboarding of over 200 offer merchants and integration with the banking mobile app. Working to the bank’s technological and functional requirements, we gave them the tools to deploy sophisticated campaigns with profitable sets of earn rules. The solution also supported the smooth migration of existing programmes.

Jumeirah, founded in Dubai and one of the most luxurious and innovative hotels chains in the world, needed a partner to re-develop their loyalty programme, which had become less profitable as their property portfolio grew. Our relationship with Jumeirah started in 1998 and had evolved over the years to match their changing objectives and needs. During our relationship, we had provided them with all the offerings within our loyalty agency services - so we were well placed to help them. We conducted several programme reviews during our relationship, from programme strategy, data and analytics to general annual programme reviews. One of the key outputs from these was a new marketing calendar and communications strategy that allowed Jumeirah to drive engagement and increase member satisfaction. We also looked at earn and burn rates with residences vs. non-residence, and the types of behaviours of different guests to give Jumeirah invaluable insights. The result was a strategic approach to loyalty that conclusively increased Jumeirah’s members satisfaction and engagement.

Accor Live Limitless (ALL), Accor’s global loyalty programme, wanted to enhance earn and burn opportunities for members beyond hotel stays and create a streamlined, fully digital customer experience. They additionally wanted to offer their members opportunities to redeem on “money can’t buy” experiences, which they source and sell on their site. These include meet and greets with celebrities, VIP boxes for sports events, and luxury travel opportunities. We used our SmartRedeem Store platform to help deliver the site, where members can redeem points online for items and experiences, along with leveraging our SmartEarn platform for their Collections site. This allows members to shop online for popular brands and earn more points. These solutions encouraged members to engage with the programme beyond their hotel stays, while also allowing Accor to keep complete autonomy over the process.

In 2007, SNB, a leading financial institution in the region, wanted Collinson to create a travel proposition card, Amyali, that would grow and reward their frequent traveller segment, support their branch partner network and drive cross-border spend. Over the years, the programme scope evolved and extended beyond SNB’s initial needs. Additionally, their portfolio of cards and related reward propositions grew in size and complexity, becoming difficult to manage.

In 2015, SNB started consolidating all the cards into one product, the Al Ahli Credit Card, with one reward platform called Lak Rewards.

The Amyali platform, that we created, was selected for the new Lak Rewards programme as it already contained travel rewards, eGift vouchers and points transfers, and could easily manage the evolving programme scope. We ensured that the programme delivers choice and personalisation by targeting different segments with relevant rewards and offers, using our platforms of Realtime-XLS, SmartRedeem Travel and real-time APIs with partners.

The programme was a pioneer of its time and continues to lead the market. Today Lak Rewards welcomes over 20,000 visitors per day compared to 12,000 in 2016.

Interswitch is a leading payment processing company headquartered in Lagos, Nigeria, with a presence throughout several African countries. They were looking for a multi-scheme platform to manage issuer, acquirer and merchant loyalty programmes. The company also wanted to develop and integrate their local card scheme ‘Verve’, which is transacted through their POS terminal network, as well as run powerful loyalty programmes for their bank clients. Our multi-scheme loyalty platform, Realtime-XLS, enabled Interswitch to launch a card-based national loyalty programme with multichannel rewards and bank-wide campaigns. The outcome of this was Firstclub, a platform involving 15 banks and rewards from over 1000 merchants.

We previously worked with FWD on a project to drive engagement and brand awareness in Hong Kong, and build emotive bonds with existing and potential customers. Historically, insurance companies connected infrequently with their customers and lacked emotional engagement. As a new player in the market keen to break through the clutter, FWD required a partner that would help them better engage Hong Kong consumers, capture the loyalty of their members, and drive deeper engagement to create a meaningful customer experience. Built on our SmartEngage solution, FWD launched FWD MAX. Through this platform, members received inspirational articles, videos and user-generated content. In turn, members earned MAX points through liking, rating or uploading content, and could redeem the points for diverse experiences and lifestyle rewards. FWD MAX helped FWD stand out, generating greater brand awareness and affinity, while gathering valuable consumer insights and changing the way people view insurance companies.

JetBlue came to us in 2014 as part of a migration of clients who were using an online earn solution provided by Points.com. The motivation to convert these clients to our SmartEarn solution came from a desire to offer a more streamlined user experience, in turn increasing conversion and commission revenue for JetBlue. In recent years, JetBlue has worked to improve their customer experiences by making all interactions seamless and simple to understand. We worked with them to redesign and improve the UX and UI of the earn website, creating an easier, simplified path to earn both in-store and online. The result was a clean look and feel that was easy for members to navigate. We also rolled out a flat value proposition across all merchants. Finally, we launched SmartLink to provide card-linked offers for their members to earn in a frictionless way online and in-store. Following these changes, JetBlue opened up additional communication opportunities to increase awareness and engagement across the TrueBlue member base.

Hackett wanted a loyalty programme that reflected their brand values, involved the in-store sales associates, and would let them stand out in the busy world of retail loyalty programmes. As a luxury brand, purchase frequency is low. They also had very little insight into their customer base, with the majority of their sales taking place in-store and no way of collecting data beyond product and transaction level. To counter this, we built an unpublished, invite-only, surprise-and-delight programme. Through the use of connected smart phones, store staff were able to offer customers the same level of personalised recognition and reward as a tailor’s black book. We also involved their partners such as Aston Martin and British Polo. Through this, Hackett was able to build up customer knowledge allowing for a huge amount of data and insight around the membership, resulting in an award-winning programme that has encouraged engagement between store staff and customers.

Improving loyalty and engagement with premium customers.

Alfa-Bank develop premium services, offer convenient solutions and select the best partners in market for their affluent customers, to drive acquisition and retention. As the leading premium airport lounge programme in Russia and globally, Priority Pass plays a key role in keeping Alfa- Bank’s customers engaged and satisfied with the bank’s service offering. Alfa-Bank provides complimentary Priority Pass membership to their premium banking segment and it remains the most requested non-banking loyalty benefit. This benefit allows the bank’s most valued customers to enjoy access to the world’s largest and growing network of more than 1,300 airport lounges. Many of these lounges are domestic and supplemented by Priority Pass’ premium railway lounge network in Russia, which meant Alfa-Bank's customers could keep using the benefit even at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. For three consecutive years, Alfa-Bank have been a Frank Premium Banking Award recipient. In October 2020, the bank was rated top in premium bank services in Russia, with Alfa-Premium being named the Best Premium Service Program, based on studies of 16 premium banking services conducted by Frank RG analysts.

Collinson’s relationship started with Cathay Pacific in 1998. We provide end-to-end solutions involving strategy, data services, marketing communication execution and partnership marketing. Our creative marketing and communications support teams helped to enhance awareness and education of the Marco Polo Club programme, and in turn increase the engagement of members. We also provided strategic consultancy and social media servicing as part of the Marco Polo Club re-vamp, initiating the implementation of predictive modelling that can be used for a relevant and effective contact strategy, supporting further by formulating targeted member dialogue and managing communication strategy through marketing automation tools. Enhancing the member experience further, we secured relevant partners for exclusive offers, while managing marketing communications and collateral fulfillment.

Eucatur, an important bus transportation company that connects Brazil from north to south, reached out to us to develop a loyalty strategy in a market that was more competitive than ever.

Our consultancy team designed a single loyalty programme that will work for consumers, employees and external travel agents. These B2C, B2E and B2B initiatives address the different stakeholder needs using different mechanics and earn rules in a sector pioneering loyalty programme.

After the programme design was approved, we participated in an RFP to provide the technology solution and agency services. Due to our system’s ability to cater to different audiences, we have been chosen to build the programme. It is due to launch in 2021 and is linked to Eumais, Eucatur’s online travel agency.

We were approached by IKEA KSA, which at the time had risen to be one of the top-ranked retailers in Saudi Arabia, however they had a real challenge obtaining customer data. IKEA wanted to learn more about their customers so they could create a better targeting model for more personalised experiences, to further drive customer intimacy with the IKEA Friends Loyalty Programme. Our task was to help them learn more about their customers in order to achieve this, and to increase the average number of store visits, drive incremental sales and enrol active members. Using our Realtime-XLS solution across all channels, IKEA launched the IKEA Friends programme throughout Saudi Arabia. With Realtime-XLS, IKEA customers are rewarded based on their spend and received instant discounts at the point of sale, both online and in-store. We also integrated our solution with IKEA’s new m-commerce mobile app which helped to streamline enrolment, personalise the customer experience, create a more convenient shopping experience and provide more opportunities to interact with the brand. During the first month alone, over 1,000 customers enrolled into the programme every day and in 2019, IKEA won the Seamless Middle East award for Best Omnichannel Experience.

Cielo is the largest payment cards processor in Brazil, the biggest payment systems company in Latin America by revenue and market value, and one of the top five processors worldwide.

When they first started working with us, their long-term goal was to deploy real-time loyalty services on a national scale in Brazil, for both card issuers and merchants.

Their main challenge was differentiating themselves from competitors so that they could sign up more merchants and keep them loyal to the Cielo brand.

Cielo also wanted to deploy real-time loyalty services on a large scale to reach issuers with dozens of millions of cardholders each, as well as serve millions of merchants in Brazil.

To help Cielo achieve their goals, we provided them with our highly scalable and powerful loyalty platform Realtime-XLS, so that they could empower merchants to deliver merchant-funded loyalty promotions to their customers, while including national card issuers’ loyalty programmes.

This same solution also enabled Cielo to launch their own card scheme with several large Brazilian issuers, bringing exclusive discounts and offers to their cardholders.

Thanks to the flexibility of Realtime-XLS, Cielo’s merchants are able to create their own promotions and have them run in real-time on their payment devices.

As the loyalty programmes brought increasing revenues to the merchants, Cielo was also able to use the platform to sign up new merchants.

They also managed to win back a famous Brazilian restaurant chain from a competitor.

What’s more, many well-established Brazilian retailers experienced large increases in transaction volumes and average purchase values when collaborating with Cielo.

In 2018, Cielo was named World’s Most Innovative Company in Southern America, by Forbes Business Magazine.

Our partnership with Vhi Healthcare spans over 20 years and includes creating Nurseline, an equivalent to NHS 111 in Ireland, enabling Vhi customers to access 24/7 clinical advice. Following the success of the project, Vhi identified a need for international medical care within their existing private medical insurance customer base, so they approached us to create an international health proposition. Combining our significant international health underwriting experience, in-house assistance and first-class customer contact centers, we launched the Vhi International product suite. These products enable Vhi customers to maintain their existing underwriting while accessing high quality medical care when abroad for study or on long-term assignment. With embedded features such as international security alerts, second medical opinion and employee medical assistance alerts, Vhi customers are reassured that their health needs are taken care of wherever they go. Our relationship has continued to thrive with further additions of multi-trip travel and dental insurance culminating in a total revenue value of £50m.

With online aggregators and OTAs offering great customer and user experience, getting direct bookings is increasingly difficult for travel companies. The increase in easy car rentals, car share, other coach companies increasing their fleets, plus the discounting of rail travel causes further disruption. With these challenges in mind, National Express wanted to optimise, improve and relaunch their existing loyalty programme. We undertook a bespoke loyalty discovery and design process, which included internal interviews, data audit, primary and secondary research and competitor analysis. The programme was also designed to integrate into National Express’ existing technical and data structure. This helped us to produce a unique milestone loyalty programme based on customer behaviour to drive and recognise each journey.

BPI initially approached Collinson in 2012, requiring a unified, “all-in-one” loyalty solution to include all their products and services, with an emphasis on their credit card portfolios. In 2017 they added several new requirements, including the need to integrate the loyalty platform with a travel-related redemption solution.

The challenge was to manage online, real-time reward points for all credit card holders and find a dynamic travel redemption solution for their Visa Signature credit cards portfolio. The solution needed to not only power the loyalty programme, but also deliver a customer-facing redemption portal, offering access to a gift catalogue and member communications (SMS/email).

Collinson delivered integrated loyalty capabilities with our Realtime-XLS loyalty platform and our SmartRedeem Travel redemption portal. Our loyalty engine was also adapted to business needs so that they could onboard their merchants more easily from existing systems. We provided them with dynamic content management tools for an easier member portal configuration, including points redemption options, multi-channel registration and advanced system administration.

BPI is now able to offer their members an improved customer experience and greater transparency on points accrual and redemption history through a single touch point, it's member portal.