2012 Bronze Best loyalty programme or campaign

Client East Coast customers

How did the campaign make a difference? East Coast wanted to launch an online loyalty programme to make the journeys and experiences of their travellers special. The Rewards programme paid for itself within 12 months. The uplift in online loyalty revenue (over the non-contacted control) was 207% and the number of high value bookers grew 27% in 10 months.

What details of the strategy make this a winning entry? Customer feedback and profiling showed East Coast that its old loyalty scheme was only useful to members with a large spend over a restricted period. East Coast Rewards, the new online loyalty programme, is unique within the rail industry as it considers communications and reward messages relevant to all travellers from infrequent to daily. The points value per pound spent changes based on class of travel. Timing and content of communications is oriented around customer life stage, level of points and level of engagement. Attention to detail and a data-driven strategy is the key to success, reflected in the associated penetration into the repeat traveller segments (90%). East Coast has also continually built on and diversified the range of rewards and benefits available, based on enhancing a customer's lifestyle and monitored points spent by segment to inform future selection of rewards partners. This has ensured continued engagement in a way that echoes the enhanced travelling experience.

How did creativity bring the strategy to life? After the initial awareness communications, the next step was to single out those who would really benefit from the loyalty scheme immediately. The concept of phantom points’ began; these are points that a person would've earned and the items they could’ve redeemed. This email campaign included dynamic content which showed the rewards customers could have gained with the number of phantom points they would’ve earned if they had joined Rewards. Engagement and retention include e-newsletter content based on declared or derived home stations, segment and lifestyle. Feedback also stated that booking train travel can be complicated so East Coast worked to simplify both offers, such as flat fare offers, and process, such as a shortened free ticket booking process. East Coast also set up a strategic customer journey, with emails triggered by transactional and behavioural triggers and regularly sends out targeted marketing emails to selected subscribers and prospects.

Results Over 18,000 people clicked and joined within five days. The click-to-open rate was 60%. After only a year the Rewards programme already has over 265,000 members - 17% of the contactable customer base.

Team Jim Muir, Jane Winton, Sally Greenaway