Leaders in Customer Loyalty, Powered by Loyalty360
Loyalty360 Loyalty Live | Sukumar Muthya, Ansira
Ansira is an independent, global marketing technology and services company with clients across B2B, B2C, and B2B2C industries that leverage the company’s suite of proprietary technology platforms across website, media, and channel partner marketing. Ansira guides clients operating in distributed ecosystems to connect with their customers, fostering brand loyalty by seamlessly integrating digital and physical experiences from the enterprise level to the hyper-local level. Recommending best-in-class products, Ansira also works with clients to strengthen loyalty efforts. Loyalty, incentives, and rewards all fall within the company’s integrated loyalty practice.
Mark Johnson, CEO of Loyalty360, spoke with Sukumar Muthya, EVP of Integrated Loyalty at Ansira, about integrated loyalty, how brands can go beyond loyalty mechanics, and ensuring reward complexity is kept to a minimum.
Ansira is an independent, global marketing technology and services company with clients across B2B, B2C, and B2B2C industries that leverage the company’s suite of proprietary technology platforms across website, media, and channel partner marketing. Ansira guides clients operating in distributed ecosystems to connect with their customers, fostering brand loyalty by seamlessly integrating digital and physical experiences from the enterprise level to the hyper-local level. Recommending best-in-class products, Ansira also works with clients to strengthen loyalty efforts. Loyalty, incentives, and rewards all fall within the company’s integrated loyalty practice.
Mark Johnson, CEO of Loyalty360, spoke with Sukumar Muthya, EVP of Integrated Loyalty at Ansira, about integrated loyalty, how brands can go beyond loyalty mechanics, and ensuring reward complexity is kept to a minimum.
Good afternoon, good morning. This is Mark Johnson from Loyalty360. I hope everyone's happy, safe and well. I wanted to welcome you back to another edition of Loyalty Live. In this series we speak to leading agencies, technology partners and consultants in customer channel and brand loyalty about the technology trends and best practices that impact a brand's ability to drive unique experiences, enhance engagement and, most importantly, drive customer loyalty. Today we have the pleasure of Sukumar Munkian. He's the Executive Vice President of Integrated Loyalty at Insira. How are you doing today?
Speaker 2:Excellent, Mark. Thank you very much for having me.
Speaker 1:Absolutely well. Thank you for taking the time. It's always good to reconnect. First off, we'd like to start this on a more personal level, so we'd love to know a little bit more about you, your role at Ansera and maybe a bit about your background on overseeing integrated loyalty suite of services.
Speaker 2:So what we mean by integrated loyalty is, you know it's a combination of services underneath that practice, if you will. So it includes client strategy, it includes marketing technology integration so that's where loyalty technology comes into picture and then analytics, creative and print-on print on demand. So all of these things together, you know we call that as integrated loyalty. Ansera itself is a marketing, digital marketing services company, so we service clients across b2b, b2c and b2b to c industries. Um, the way we do that is we have a suite of proprietary products. We also recommend best-in-class products, that is in the industry, and then loyalty incentives, rewards, and all of that falls within our integrated loyalty practice. So as far as my background, mark, I've been with Ansera for 10 years, so I've been in the CRM and loyalty space, servicing our customers across many industries, and then overall in the marketing technology space for about 18 years, and you know, since the time of database marketing to all the way to you know, today people are talking about AI and Gen AI and that kind of thing.
Speaker 2:And then, interestingly, you know people are talking about ai and gen ai and that kind of thing. And then, interestingly, you know my background. My master's thesis was in artificial intelligence and neural networks. So the thing that I did it's a fun fact and the thing that I did in the thesis you know to work on seven variables. It took me a year to do it, hand coding in c++. And today you look at some of these chat gpt engines. You, you know it's 700 billion variables and it can generate answers in minutes.
Speaker 2:So the concept is still the same, but the compute power is skyrocketed. But anyway. And then I spent, you know, 18 years in MarTech and prior to that I spent about 10 years in supply chain space. So overall I've been in the technology space and trying to help solve customer problems.
Speaker 1:Okay, for those who may not be familiar with Ansira, can you tell us a little bit more about how Ansira supports brands' customer loyalty efforts? Give a brief overview of the services you provide and who you provide it to.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely so. We are, as I said, within integrated loyalty. The way we look at loyalty is not just as a loyalty program, right? So we look at loyalty beyond the loyalty program, loyalty as a culture. So when we work with enterprises, when we work with our customers, we try to introduce the concept of loyalty as not just loyalty sitting in the marketing organization. Loyalty touches across your enterprise, right? So, whether it's your customer service, whether it's your financial service, whether it's your product management organization. So everyone has to know what loyalty is all about.
Speaker 2:So we look at loyalty beyond a loyalty program. And then we want the customers, the brand's customers, to keep thinking about the brand, whether they are in the buying cycle or not, right? So if you look at typically a loyalty program, you know when you are in buying cycle, hey, do I have a coupon, do I have enough points? Can I redeem this? Can I get some discounts? So that's typically the thinking. But we want to change that thinking into. You know, hey, if you're not in a buying cycle, how do you keep thinking about the brand? So in order for us to do that, you need to really understand the customers very, very well, right? So the way you want to do that is by collecting the customer data at every interaction, every touch point at the brand level right.
Speaker 2:So we have a suite of data services where we you know, we consolidate data.
Speaker 2:We offer CDP services, implementation of CDP, so that way you can consolidate data and build intelligence. And then we have analytics offering to look at that CDPs and then you can do segmentation, you can do modeling, you can do advanced analytics, you can look at how to leverage that unified customer data. And then we have marketing technology integration team that is basically executing using that data, executing programs like CRM program. Then comes the loyalty program right. So we design the loyalty program, we help choose customers as specific loyalty technology. By the way, we also have our own loyalty for B2B. We have our incentive module. We recommend that In a typical B2C scenario we recommend best-in-class technology. Then we do the integration, Then we do all this customer journey orchestration, customer engagement, triggered emails and so on and so forth. So that's all part of our MarTech integration. And then we have, you know, creative teams. So that is actually creating compelling content to drive those customer engagements right. And then we have a strategy team that is designing what kind of strategy to execute. They're constantly looking at, you know, how the programs are performing and then how to pivot or change the strategies on the subsequent programs. And then we also have print-on-demand, which is basically an additional channel that we support in order to do the direct mail and do the catalogs and so on and so forth.
Speaker 2:So all of these things together is how we look at loyalty, just beyond the loyalty program. So we do get customers coming to us in three different asks. So one is for program modernization. So hey, I've got an existing program but I want to modernize some of this program. And then you help me modernize the program. And also technology migration. They might have a particular technology, they want to migrate to a new technology. Maybe they've outgrown some feature function that's not there. So that is one set. And the other one is just purely tech migration. So hey, you've got a program, Program is working, but I need to migrate to a new technology. So hey, you know, we got a program, program is working, but I need to migrate to a new technology. So we support that. And then finally, you know, completely, a new program design, right, so we don't have a program but we want to design a new loyalty program. And then the technology. But that piece in today's day and age, you know, people have some sort of loyalty program. So it's mostly in the first two buckets. Okay, yeah.
Speaker 1:There's a great deal of challenge right now opportunity and customer loyalty, more data, zero-party data, first-party data. You mentioned AI. When you look at the challenges brands may have in getting a holistic view of the customer right, Understanding all the interactions they may have, what are you seeing that's working? What are some strategies that you feel in kind of the state of customer loyalty wanting to get a more holistic view? What are some strategies that are working to help drive long-term customer relationships and brand loyalty?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so you know our vision Mark for loyalty, you know, in four different ways, right? So in order for the loyalty program to really work, right? So one is you have to look at loyalty. It's the value creation for the brand, beyond just the loyalty mechanics, if you will right. So what I mean by that is typically loyalty was based on transaction only. If you go beyond the transaction, what are the other areas of touch points, what are the different things that the customers are doing with the brand? And then how do you attract them to that? So you go beyond loyalty mechanics. And then the second piece that we look at is the connected experience. So you know, people are there in multiple different.
Speaker 2:You know they come to the website. You have mobile app, you call people are there in multiple different. You know they come to the website. You have mobile app, you call, call call center, etc. So you should have consistent experience across all of this. I'll give you an example. So if you send a customer a particular offer in an email, right when they go to the website they log in, will they see the exact same offer. When they go to the mobile app, will they see exact same offer.
Speaker 2:See the exact same offer when they go to the mobile app, will they see the exact same offer? It's as simple as that. You should create consistency across your connected devices and experiences. And then the third piece is the emotional connection. So make the customer heard, valued, look at their context and why they're there and what they want at that particular point in time. That's that. And then the fourth piece is the community, the local influence. So local and community influence. So if you are a national brand, you may have multiple different local stores. Then what is happening at the local store level? And then attracting the customer at that local store level?
Speaker 2:Bringing all of these four things together. You know there is not one tool or anything that can do all of these things, right? So that's where I think an integrated loyalty strategy will really help, right? So that's where bringing it all together and you know we work with the clients to strive for that, right. So you do those things, you know, in terms of strategy, in terms of technology, in terms of marketing, technology, integration then you have a holistic view of a loyalty program that really works. Okay.
Speaker 1:From your perspective, what are the primary challenges that brands face, say, when it comes to fostering customer loyalty?
Speaker 2:Is it keeping up with?
Speaker 1:technology? Is it having internal alignment from the organization? What are some of the challenges that you see and how does Insira help brands address these challenges?
Speaker 2:Yeah, no for sure. I think it's a combination of multiple things. So, from a program standpoint, the challenges that I see is some of the programs are just complex, right. So just for customers to just understand how really the program works will create some sort of confusion, complexity and they'll just drop the program.
Speaker 2:right, because there are some statistics we you know. I read that an average person will have, at least you know, signed up for at least eight to 12 programs, loyalty programs and whatnot. And if you're in a regular day-to-day commodity groceries buying and stuff like that, it's very easy to drop from one program to another program. So making sure that the reward complexity is minimum, that's number one. Showing ROI when it comes to the brand and implementing the loyalty programs, showing an ROI is very, very critical. We help customers in terms of what are the reports and the dashboards and the KPIs and looking at exactly how much money is being spent by offering the discounts and offers and so on, and then what's the revenue that is actually generated. So really keeping an eye on the ROI part of it, because a lot of times they launch the loyalty program. What I've seen is they launch the loyalty program and that excitement it keep going.
Speaker 2:Then all of a sudden, eight months, 12 months later, oh, this is not doing anything.
Speaker 2:Why did you wait for eight months? So you constantly keep tracking this, follow the trend, that kind of thing, and then making, like I was saying earlier, making customer feel important, understanding the context right. So this is where some of your zero party data, first party data, third party data, all of that bringing together. That's where I think some of the loyalty vendors are now trying to think that, hey, I've got a CDP, also I need to integrate with CDP. Or maybe I have some loyalty vendors also have tags that they can collect data from different touch points and they are calling themselves like we are consolidating all this data within our own database. So if you know all the different touch points and they are calling themselves like we are consolidating all this data within our own database, so if you know all the different touch points, then you'll be able to understand the context of why the customers are, um, so some of those you know that's, that's where I see I think it's a combinatorial problem with the, you know, program design.
Speaker 2:you know, minimizing the complexity in the program, seeing, seeing the ROI for that and then making sure that you have the technology that can support your program design.
Speaker 1:Okay, when you look at privacy, that's a big area of concern from our members as well being compliant with the different privacy laws, how you collect data, even from something as simple as defining a term we did a research paper last year on privacy from a brand perspective and there can be a great deal of confusion or dichotomy between how terms are defined right what is an essential cookie? What is not an essential cookie? So, when you look at the increased customer data and privacy concern, how do you help your clients navigate that?
Speaker 2:data and privacy concern. How do you help your clients navigate that? I mean it is you know, when it comes to privacy, number one is whether you're collecting the first party data. You know in terms of cookies. You know if they've declared, if they're not declared, so collecting the data in terms of cookies, everything has to be concentrable, right? So that's why you see, you know today anything. You know any website. You go you 100 times you have to click accept the cookies, accept the cookies, right? So that type of thing is there. So, and then you know any, because we are talking loyalty program here and people are signing up for loyalty program.
Speaker 2:So when they are signing up for loyalty program, what we advise our clients is you know, don't ask all this information upfront when they're signing up. Get the minimum information that is needed to create a loyalty record for that particular customer. As a part of that, you have obtained an opt-in. Because you obtained an opt-in, now you have a preference center where you can do a progressive data collection strategy so as they start engaging in the loyalty program, you can start collecting more information about that individual. So that means now you have a database filled with 100% accurate information given by the customer who have consented that you can communicate with them. So that is why a loyalty program aligned with a preference center technology, with a hub and spoke so. Normally what happens is you have a preference center. If you're sending an email, your email program ESP may have a preference center. The loyalty technology may have a preference where you're collecting the data. Your website might have some other piece of information that's collecting the data. Now bringing it all together becomes yet another complicated technology.
Speaker 2:But if you have a, hub and spoke with one technology. All the information is collected in different places are coming together in the central place and that can be used, leveraged by loyalty programs, to actually, you know, do that and then you know collecting that um consent based.
Speaker 2:And then you know, obviously you know we work with a lot of technology vendors and then we make sure that our client requirements are met through the vendors in terms of how they collect the data, how they store the data, in terms of privacy, security, and then how we track the data right. So obviously, with GDPR, the right to be forgotten has to be 100% honored.
Speaker 1:Okay, excellent. So when you look at customer loyalty and some things your clients are doing, what do you think is working when it comes to building successful customer loyalty programs and strategies? Can you give us a couple of examples?
Speaker 2:What I see there, mark, is in terms of what is working is, you know, like I said earlier, right? So when we work with them, creating a simple program, so a loyalty program that has to be understood by the customer, so it should be a very, very simple program, and then it should be generating value to the brand. It should be what is the value for the customer Sorry, value to the customer. And then, in infrastructure that is available to support that program, so that's what.
Speaker 2:When we work with our customer, we look at the customer requirements, use cases and what are the goals and objectives. Number two we look at what is the infrastructure that they're operating in, so the cloud infrastructure, what are the different pieces of technology integration that is happening, and then the third piece is what data is actually available and what else we need, right? So that's the data part of it. And then the fourth thing is overall technology stack, right? So when you look at these four things and then you design a loyalty program, and that is very, very simple to understand, very simple to implement.
Speaker 2:And then the more important thing about all of these things is getting a hundred percent buy-in from from the executive management because I've seen time and time again, loyalty has become a by-product of an enterprise objective versus loyalty as the main product, right. So if it becomes a by-product, they'll very easily shelve it. Hey, this is this. We can move this to the next year. We don't want to do it this year because we've got all these other competing priorities. So that is important.
Speaker 2:And then you, when you look at this technology, infrastructure and data, what are the pieces that they are trying to modernize? You know what is their e-commerce? You know, are they planning to migrate e-commerce? Who are the technology technology vendors? Sometimes they may be on an old platform, point of sale system also right. So if you're on an old platform, you have to migrate. And then, at the same time, you're trying to introduce a loyalty program, design, implementation. Then you're stuck until this point of sale technology is migrated. I can't do an integration with that. So these are some of the things that you have to keep in mind holistically across these four dimensions Creating the program, which is simple, looking at your infrastructure, looking at what technology pieces are currently available, what is yet to be migrated, and then making sure that the data supports that program.
Speaker 2:So when you look at it, I mean it's a lot of things, but we can make it very, very simple. When you look at it, I mean it's a lot of things but you can make it very, very simple. When you look at it that way and then create a program and that really you know that really works and you know you can implement, they can start seeing the value. Okay.
Speaker 1:When you look at programs out there from a customer loyalty perspective that you think work, being, you know, a steward of the industry the industry what do you like about their offerings? Are there a couple of programs that you think stand out in regard to how they engage the customer?
Speaker 2:Yeah, some of the things in terms of what stands out for me is I'm a big follower of doing things very, very simply, so you do simple things. Great. That's what I like. A couple of programs that I really like is obviously, everyone talks about Starbucks. I like Starbucks simple program stars. I also like Starbucks because they're not afraid to experiment on new things, for example, web3, nfts, stuff like that, so they are the first ones to actually start experimenting on that. So I like that, creating it simple, but at the same time, you're trying to experiment new technologies and if there is a value, you can jump on it very, very quickly. And the other thing I like this uh, you know, because obviously my wife, uh, you know, uses bath and body works and you know simple program a dollar point, right, 75 points.
Speaker 2:You can redeem anything you want. So versus they create all this complexity in the currencies. You've got to obtain a gazillion points to get like a $5 discount. So those things are. You know it's not going to. You know customers are very easily going to switch brands. So I like those types of things you know. That really, you know, stands out for me.
Speaker 1:Okay, great, when you look at what's next for Insira, you know, over the next year or so, any closing thoughts or ideas about where Insira is going to go, how they're going to keep pushing the envelope with regard to driving customer loyalty for their clients? Pushing the envelope with regard to driving customer loyalty for their clients.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so the next thing for you know, the next big thing that I would see is you know, obviously we talked about AI being the next big thing in the industry itself. So as a part of that, you know, what we are trying to do is, you know, leveraging some of this AI ML to make the loyalty program simple. For example, you know if a particular customer is browsing the website sorry, redeeming the points. Why are they redeeming the points? What are they redeeming the points for? So if they're redeeming for an adventure vacation, then we have we collect that information and drive that into the marketing communication to tell them hey, you're close to you know loyalty triggers are always communicated to the customer, but at the same time, you're adding this context to you know why they redeemed previously and then leveraging that information as a part of marketing communication with your loyalty triggers. So using that information in the AI ML part will be a big thing.
Speaker 2:And then I talked about ROI. Roi is a huge thing. You know where, as you're collecting the data as customers are redeeming, you create an accumulated you know savings across your loyalty member base. And then you click a button and you say what is the cumulative savings across all my loyalty member base. Then you get a number. That number is your ROI right. Imagine today if somebody an enterprise wants to get an ROI report, they have to go to the BI team, they have to collect multiple pieces of data, they have to run this, they take weeks to get that information. But instead, if you do it this way, it is very simple. So, making some of those things, leveraging the data, and also we are introducing something called as empathy in AI, so understanding you know customer context, why they're doing what they're doing with your brand, and then leveraging those attributes to communicate to the customers is what we are looking at as next big things for us.
Speaker 1:Perfect. Very interesting to hear the focus you have in Cira, how you're helping brands navigate some of the challenges and opportunities that exist. So looking forward to hearing more and definitely appreciate everything you do for the industry. So thank you very much for sharing that with us absolutely.
Speaker 2:Thank you very much for having me well, we're not finished.
Speaker 1:We have the quick fire question section, which we always love. So, uh, we like a one word or a short phrase answer. I get in trouble with amanda and the content team, which I don't like being in trouble because I always am, but uh, here we go. What is your favorite word? My favorite word is humble. Okay, what is your least favorite word?
Speaker 2:least favorite word is you know, basically it's two words hidden agenda. So I don't, I don't like that Okay.
Speaker 1:What excites?
Speaker 2:you Intellectual curiosity?
Speaker 1:Excellent. What do you find tiresome?
Speaker 2:High maintenance individuals Okay.
Speaker 1:Well, what book do you like to recommend to colleagues?
Speaker 2:It's not very popular, though, but I like this book called no Bullshit Leadership by Martin Moore, so it's very, very good and it's got a lot, of, a lot of you know, implementable nuggets for our day-to-day leadership and management.
Speaker 1:Okay, what profession other than the one that you're currently in would you like to try Teaching? Okay, that's an interesting one. What do you enjoy doing that you don't often get a chance to do?
Speaker 2:Basically, I like playing badminton and golf. I don't get enough time to do that.
Speaker 1:Okay, who inspired you to be the person that you are today?
Speaker 2:Well, basically, actually my wife and daughter. You know, they, they every day, you know, they inspire me and make me to be a better, better me, you know. So that kind of thing.
Speaker 1:Excellent, and what do you think about the at the end of the day?
Speaker 2:I'm just just being thankful for the day, for all the things that I have. I'm very, very thankful every single day. I think about what I have and being thankful for that.
Speaker 1:And last question how do you want to be remembered by your friends and family?
Speaker 2:I want them to remember me as somebody who makes them laugh every day. Okay, good. Just dad jokes is my thing, so I always do that Excellent.
Speaker 1:I actually just got a nice T-shirt that has a dad joke thing on the back my kids, exactly. That's always good, all right. Well, thank you very much again, sukumar, for taking the time to talk to us today. It was great to hear from you and Wynne and from Sira, and look forward to hearing more from you and the team this year.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. Thank you very much, Mark.
Speaker 1:Absolutely Appreciate it. Yeah, and thank you everyone for taking the time to join us today. Make sure you join us again soon for our next edition.