[On-demand webinar] The impact of emotional connection in customer loyalty programs

[Transcript]

Sarah VanDerHart (00:16): 

Welcome everyone to today's Customer Solutions webinar experience. I'm Sarah VanDerHart, Insights and Strategy Leader for Customer Solutions at ITA Group, and I'm excited to guide you through today's session. For those of you who may not be familiar, ITA Group is a global engagement agency dedicated to helping leading brands create lasting connections with their customers. Our customer solutions team is specifically focused on the exciting world of customer loyalty and engagement. We're incredibly proud to present this webinar featuring our research experts within ITA Group, CMB. Now, let's get this chat rolling. If you haven't already, please type in the chat where you're joining us from today. We love seeing the diversity of our customer loyalty and business leadership community, and it's always great to connect and learn from one another during these types of events. As part of today's experience, we'll also be asking you to respond to our community learning question. 

(01:23): 

It's designed to spark dialogue, reflection, and opportunities for us to learn from one another. Now let's display that question and reflect on it for a brief moment. What's a brand you feel a genuine emotional connection with today and what is the reason why? Type your thoughts in the chat at any point to help spark conversation. Also, we hope you'll have some great questions for our speakers. Please use the Q&A function to submit those questions at any time. We'll answer as many as possible at the end of today's session. And now I'm excited to introduce your host, Max Kenkel, who will guide us through today's conversation. Max, take it away. 

Max Kenkel (02:13): 

Thanks Sarah. Hi everyone. I'm Max Kenkel. I'm the Customer Solutions Manager here at ITA Group and I'm going to help guide our conversation today. I've been at ITA Group for about 12 years trying to help brands make data to back decisions about their loyalty programs. And I'm excited to dive into our topic today and I'm delighted to talk shop with the guests that we have who are both genuinely smart about both loyalty and clever about its implementation. Our guests today are going to be Amanda McMahan, Insights Director at our research group CMB and Chris Jones, Ssenior VP of Engagement Solutions. At ITA Group, Chris is passionate about creating emotional connections between brands and customers, and Amanda specializes in transforming data into strategic impact. And together, they're going to walk us through the exclusive findings from the newest research study and show us how emotional connection is the essential driver of visits, spend and advocacy. 

(03:07): 

And in short, Amanda will tell us the “what” and Chris will tell us the “so what.” And so before we kick off, just to really set the table here. So ITA Group and CMB work together to conduct another round of self-funded research and the goal was to uncover what matters in loyalty programs and to really hear directly from customers about what they love and sometimes even hate about the programs they participate in. And so we'll do an overview of the findings today, we'll talk about what it means and more importantly, what you as brands can do about it. These learnings aren't just nice to haves. They're the key to unlocking a new frontier for customer loyalty, for brands who are brave enough to make smart changes or smart enough to make brave changes. And so if we're ready, we'll jump right in. So Chris and Amanda, before we dive into the newest findings, can we briefly recap the key findings from our previous study and how those findings really set the stage for this new focus? Amanda, let's start with the “what.” Can you walk us through this previous research and some of the takeaways and drivers? 

Amanda McMahan (04:05): 

Sure. Thank you, Max. Last year we sampled over 5,000 loyalty program members of 50 brands across several industries, including quick service, restaurant and retail. We filled it in income and click balancing to us representation to ensure true reading of the market and we ensured large enough base sizes for all of the brands to compare by with support from our analysis. We chose NPS at the loyalty program as our key outcome measured in this research because likelihood to recommend reflects both customer attitudes and behaviors that brands can influence. Our data also demonstrated that NPS correlates with satisfaction and feature likelihood to use if those are preferred performance indicators. Importantly, our data showed that customers who are advocates of a loyalty program are six times more likely to visit the brand, spend with the brand and give wallet share. And our key finding is that advocacy is driven by perceived benefit that is customers perceived value and ease of participating in the program. In fact, we benchmarked every brand in our study on the level of benefit perceptions and we ranked all brands against one another and within their industry. So the implications offer a way to build strong benefit perceptions by influencing associations of value and ease. So for brands in our research that want to lift either dimension of perceived benefit, they can consider whether customers feel that their program is worth the time of their members and how easy it is for customers to engage in that program regularly. 

Max Kenkel (05:46): 

That sounds awesome and very thorough. Chris, I'll turn it over to you. When we hear the value and effort are so important to creating advocacy, what does that mean for the brands that are trying generate that advocacy? 

Chris Jones (06:00): 

Yeah, sure, Mmax. Well, I think ultimately what we're trying to do through this work and what everybody probably on this webinar is trying to do is to make sure that we can see the impact on these brands and their businesses. And what we've learned over the years we've done the research is that it proves that advocacy generates incremental spend, incremental visits and incremental share brought from competitors. As Amanda mentioned. Now, when we look at what drives advocacy for your loyalty program, we do know that value is more important than ease. And I think partly that's because that's where you can show an immediate and obvious difference for your consumers. They see the value you're putting into the program, but it's also important to keep in mind as we'll show later that you can also impact value in a targeted focused way, maybe more easily than you can revamp the overall mechanics of the program, which might be something you need to improve the ease of your program. 

(06:54): 

I think it's essential. Remember that when we say value, often you think of the discounts and offers, which are an important part of the equation, but we're also talking about information you provide access, exclusivity, recognition, and probably most importantly appreciation of the people in your program. And I think we're learning that the key is to find the right mix for all of those for your brand in your program. Now, for most of the brands, the research would suggest that there are a number of positives that each loyalty program has going for it, but virtually every brand still has an opportunity to continue enhancing their program. Sometimes functionally, but more often it's emotionally, which we'll talk about later. 

Max Kenkel (07:38): 

So what I'm hearing is every brand has an opportunity to do a little better, which is good. So you set this foundation that value and ease are these big drivers and the success of a loyalty program. For this most recent project, what changed? Why do the survey again? 

Chris Jones (07:55): 

Well, we think there's huge value in continuing to do this survey because consumers change, the environment changes and brands and businesses change. But over the years we feel that the research there is really a consistent goal we always have, which is connecting the dots. It's connecting the dots between the desired business outcomes for each of these brands, the behaviors of consumers and the aspects of those programs that drive the behaviors which result in the ultimate business outcomes for those brands. Now sometimes in this research we learn about the features and benefits of the program and sometimes we learn about the emotions that your members have and the feelings they have towards the program. And this year our emphasis was actually on confirming or refuting the idea that both emotional connection and the functional parts of your program drive the business outcomes. And what we've done in this year's research is quantifiably prove that both of them do emotional connection matters. 

(08:49): 

And in fact, some cases it's the amplifier that brings your program to its full potential that you can't have without that emotional connection. So this is an idea that's been central to our approach and probably central to many of the most successful loyalty programs that are out there over time, I think as marketers and people who run loyalty programs and people in professional services who work with loyalty programs, this is an idea that's always been kind of in our gut. But what we're excited about in this research is that we can take it beyond a feeling or a sentiment that we have and really turn it into a proven quantifiable difference that you can include in your loyalty program. Because in every case, we're not just looking for relationships in the data. Amanda and her team actually look for drivers because the drivers are the things that you can change in your program and expect to see the consumer sentiment change and ultimately the business outcomes change. And that's one of the things we're excited about this research. 

Max Kenkel (09:50): 

Well, understandably. So Amanda, your team at CMB use some cutting edge methods and even some AI to uncover these deeper whys behind emotional connection. So could you just touch on and walk us through a little bit the methodology and share the enhanced formula that you've discovered for building emotional connection? 

Amanda McMahan (10:08): 

Sure, absolutely. We maintained our sample methodology and US representation in this year's research. We added some new brands and we trended others and importantly we included new measures of emotion. Some of those are closed ended, some of those were open in the open ended questions. We included an AI chatbot to dialogue with respondents. Our previous research shows that verbatims have statistically higher word count and deeper context with an AI chatbot on an open end than without it Following an evaluation of the loyalty program elements and in engagement and emotional context, we asked customers specifically how that brand's loyalty program makes them feel. And we got some rich readings from the respondents, some of which we shared across the screen at the beginning of this webinar. We also ran additional driver analysis to isolate which emotional measures that we took to this wave most drive loyalty and modeled how they interplay with the elements of perceived benefit. From this, we were able to then prioritize the importance of each component that's driving loyalty. 

Max Kenkel (11:20): 

So you really put the data through the ringer in this situation when you were crunching the numbers from the most recent study, did the formula for advocacy change at all? 

Amanda McMahan (11:30): 

It did. It grew our analysis found that emotional connection co influences advocacy alongside perceived benefit that is high energized feelings of motivation and specific feelings of appreciation, compliment value and ease perceptions to impact customer loyalty. While we learned in last year's study, that is the strongest driver of recommendation, emotional connection, and especially feelings of customer appreciation. They also factor customers who feel emotionally connected show a higher likelihood of recommendation and brand engagement than those who do not. So in our model, benefit explains the most, but connection adds meaningful lift. And the interesting part is how interrelated both of them are. Brands can build strong emotional connection by cultivating those high energy feelings and customer appreciation among their members. 

Max Kenkel (12:30): 

That's awesome. Chris, I'll ask you then. Did this new emotional connection work change your story or did it really reinforce it? 

Chris Jones (12:38): 

Well, honestly Max, one of the things that we spent a lot of time talking about is our solutions help brands connect emotionally with their consumers. And this year's research definitely reinforced our prior learnings. And I would say it also enhanced our understanding. We still know that value is critical to the success of a loyalty program, but emotional connection is an additional critical driver of success. And Amanda and the team as she just mentioned, we're able to not only show that but actually prove it and quantify it. For example, when you think about the perception of benefit among the loyalty program members in a program, that perception of benefit can drive three times the likelihood to visit, to spend or to bring competitor's share to your business for the brand that's running the program. 

(13:28): 

When we went deeper into the research, we actually saw that connection drives four times the benefit and the likelihood to visit spend and bring competitive share. And each of those three times the impact for value and four times the impact for connection are on a standalone basis. But I think where the magic really lies is when you look at the combined impact of value perception, the sense of benefit and connection. And when you put those two things together, you get the strongest outcome and having connection to the program and value in the program, you get eight times the likelihood that consumers in your program are going to visit more often, spend more and bring share from competitive retailers or competitive programs. And so it's important because the value perception and the sense of customer appreciation that Amanda and I have mentioned emerge really as the critical elements to drive the success of loyalty programs. And if you think about that old saying, it's about winning hearts and minds, this research really demonstrates that there is an opportunity for your loyalty program to reach its full potential by winning both hearts and minds. And here you can think of connection, which we'll talk a little bit more about as the heart part and value as the mind part. And together that's how you get the full potential out of your loyalty program. 

Max Kenkel (14:58): 

Wow, man. Talk about a business case for rethinking your loyalty strategy. There's a way to get a material impact it sounds like that brands can recognize by creating a loyalty program that really makes customers experience value and feel connected. Chris, what do you think is stopping brands from just doing this today? 

Chris Jones (15:18): 

Well, rarely is there anything that's standing in the way other than maybe just really acknowledging the opportunity and embracing the difference you can have in your program by one rooting your loyalty program in your brand's point of difference, not just in Word but indeed, but two, also just challenging your assumptions is the value there that you believe there is. Now when we look across the 12 industries we've looked at over the years, there's many similarities across the industries, but also as you'd expect there's some nuances and differences. Now when you look across all the brands, and we've masked most of them here so as not to have anybody feel overly excited or overly disappointed about where your brand might fall, but we'd love to share that with you. Let's take Chick-fil-A. It's one of the perennial top performers. It performs well both on the value dimension and the ease dimension, but most importantly, it also performs well on the dimension of consumer connectedness to the brand. 

(16:19): 

Now a lot of that means that Chick-fil-A not only has value covered and emotion covered, but they have a great brand and sometimes that's the brand halo affecting the connected feeling. But often it's also specific features of the program that could be counted on like access, exclusivity, shared values as the basis of action. Now, one of the best parts about exploring how you bring your brand to life in the program is that oftentimes the emotional connection is a feature or an attribute of your program that doesn't cost anything extra to add to the program. Like I've said before, it can be about access, exclusivity, the values that you share or feeling that the consumer has made a difference in the world. There's a story I'd like to share about a program that I was involved with during its design and implementation for Casey's General Stores. 

(17:10): 

It's the US' third largest convenience and food and pizza retailer. So as you'd expect, the value in a program like that absolutely comes from the points you earn with purchase, being able to earn free pizza, fuel discounts, that's all kind of the table stakes for a loyalty program. But Casey's is a brand that has over a thousand of its 2,900 stores in communities of 5,000 people or less. And we learned at Casey's that value came from shared values and emotional commitment. So in addition to designing that program with those traditional value drivers, I mentioned points, discounts, free pizza, fuel discounts, we added an emotionally based brand centric aspect to that program and that came in the form of the ability to donate your Casey's rewards points to any local school in your town in the form of a cash donation. So this not only added value in a traditional sense of the program most importantly and made deep emotional connections. And so if your brand is one that doesn't have that aspect of your program that truly stands out as uniquely of and from your brand, that's a great opportunity and we help clients create ideas and sustain ideas like that in their loyalty programs. 

Amanda McMahan (18:30): 

Exactly. Chris programs that fail to evoke that personal meaning they lack both the perceived value and appreciation by their members. Those are two essentials we've defined for customer loyalty and engagement. We know that loyalty grows when customers see themselves in a brand and its community of members without that connection and relevance programs lose personal associations and that membership pride fueling high customer engagement. 

Max Kenkel (18:57): 

Well, I can tell you I had to fuel up this morning and I had Casey's for breakfast. Well, we are getting towards the end here of time and we want to make sure we leave some for Q&A. But before we jump there, let's lay in the plane with some clear practical advice for the brands that are listening today. So based on this research, your combined experience, what are three key focus areas that brands can use quickly to try and shift some of that customer perception and build this stronger emotional bond with their customer base? 

Amanda McMahan (19:27): 

I think we define that functional elements of a program, high perceived value for low perceived effort are foundational with value benefits particularly important to members. I'd say having a loyalty app for customers to use is table stakes. And building a program that is simple and easy to understand, to interpret, to take advantage of will influence high use of the program in every format. But also high value rewards like personalized brand discounts, exclusive member offerings, unexpected rewards to surprise and delight that will feed benefit perceptions as well. 

Chris Jones (20:06): 

Yeah, I think those are good keys, Amanda. I think a couple of things on the other side of our equation, the emotional connection the program offers comes from having a sense, as Amanda mentioned, of motivation and high energy and one consumers feel appreciated. That drives this sense of motivation toward the brand and high energy not only to the brand but to the program itself. What we found is that customer appreciation is actually the more critical dimension for brands to prioritize. And so the thing I would encourage everyone to consider is one or more of your brand's values coming through in a feature element or experience of your program. Like the story I described about Casey general stores where giving a cash donation to your local elementary or high school was really powerful. It connected people to that brand. And ultimately when you have that connection, I think it drives something that's quantifiable as we've shown through some of the research the last few years. But also it drives sentiment, it drives positive equity for your brand and it drives kind of the intangibles around your brand and your program that offers a loan cannot deliver. 

Max Kenkel (21:20): 

Well, Chris and Amanda, thank you so much for sharing these valuable insights today. I know I learned a lot your data-driven perspectives on emotional connection, these new findings, how to apply 'em and just customer loyalty in general have been great to everyone participating in our community. We hope today's conversation offered some fresh ideas and strategies to drive business growth through the engagement. And we should have here plenty of time for some questions. So Sarah, I'll toss it back over to you. 

Sarah VanDerHart (21:49): 

Thank you Max, and a big thank you to Chris and Amanda for sharing such valuable insights. Now it's time to hear from you, our leadership community. If you haven't already submitted your question, this is your chance. Use the Q&A feature below to ask anything you'd like to ask our guests. We have some questions that were pre-submitted in anticipation of this topic, but we would like to get as many of your live questions today as possible, keep the responses coming in the chat. We love seeing your insights and how this community can learn from one another as well as from our featured speakers. Max, I'm going to turn it over to you to lead us through our first question. 

Max Kenkel (22:32): 

Alright, well I give everyone a second to populate a few questions in there for Chris and Amanda, I actually have one that I would like to ask. So hearing this discussion today and understanding now the importance of value, how redemption plays into that, this feelings of appreciation and emotional connection and knowing that this idea of devaluing loyalty programs is kind of a big topic right now. A lot of brands are trying to make decisions on whether to keep the value the same, lower it and make those decisions. I guess Chris, I'll ask you, what would you say to brands who are thinking about or attempting to devalue their program right now? 

Chris Jones (23:09): 

Well, I'd say the first thing is take a look at this research and recognize the importance of value. It's a cornerstone of your program and how consumers will engage and stay with your program and more importantly with your brand. But then I also appreciate the practical realities that businesses and brands get faced with, which is we've got to find some savings here. We've got to find some savings there. So what I would suggest is that if you're going to change some aspect of your program that we'll be perceived as a reduction in the value and it might be frequency of offers or depth of offers or the number of points required to redeem for free goods in a program. I would say it's a really important time to make sure you pair that structural change with adding something in that has additional value. And remember we talked earlier that those things that show customer appreciation, that bring the values of your brand to life often don't cost anything, but they can be perceived as important and motivating by the participant in your program. So if you've got to pull something back, think about how you can add in something new, new functionality, new access, new insights, new appreciation at the same time. And hopefully you'll get sort of a net zero or net positive benefit. But I would say start with the point that says value is the cornerstone of your program. And I'd say tread lightly. 

Max Kenkel (24:29): 

Right. All right, so we've got a couple questions here in the Q&A section. So the first one looks like it would be for you, Chris. So how is it determined that awarding the points back to the local schools was the optimal solution for Casey's? 

Chris Jones (24:44): 

Great question, Bridget. Thanks for asking it. Well, we did it in a couple of ways leading up to the creation of the program, we really repositioned the brand. So we had a lot of depth of insights from Casey's consumers to act on. And in fact, that research was done by CMB, believe it or not, back in 2018. And so when we learned that, we then said, well, what's unique about the brand? And a lot of the consumers said, the fact that I'm here in this small town and you Casey's are here in this small town is something we have in common. And so we then dug just a little deeper through the research to say what does it mean to be a vital member of a small town? And time after time people said, our school is the thing that unlocks the potential of our community for the future. So we knew that was a great place to go with connecting schools and the role it played in those communities to our program. Thanks for asking. That's a great question. It's a really fun story. It does bring a real value, the brand and an element of the brand to life. 

Amanda McMahan (25:46): 

I love that. I love that you tap into the identity of the community and you also instill that brand trust by building that sort of membership within the community. I love that. 

Max Kenkel (25:58): 

Yeah, it just goes to show you don't have to guess. You could do research and you can figure out most of the answers. We've got another question in here. This is from John. Can you share more examples or ideas of how brands can show customer appreciation? 

Amanda McMahan (26:14): 

Showing customer appreciation's going to look a little bit differently I think depending on your loyalty program structure, what industry you exist in, but really it's about creating some kind of connection emotionally to your customers. So how do you tap into a relationship that's enduring, that's meaningful, that's personal, that resonates with your membership community? I think appreciation can have a lot of different flavors. It can a lot of functional utility, but what really is going to drive it home is making sure that it speaks to your customers and that your customers feel seen in the appreciation that you're offering. 

Max Kenkel (26:58): 

Chris, anything you'd add? 

Chris Jones (27:00): 

Well, I think those are great ones. I'm excited to get on to Joseph's question, which I think is the next one if you want to share that one. 

Max Kenkel (27:07): 

What are some effective non-monetary ways to build value with an audience of a loyalty program? 

Chris Jones (27:15): 

I'll just jump in here and Amanda, feel free to add in anything you'd like to share. But I would say in the support of this idea of appreciation that Amanda's shown is so critical, sometimes it sounds funny, but if you say, I used to have offers that were available to everybody, and if you take some share of those offers or incentives or information and you enable your participants to unlock those through an action, it doesn't cost you anything because you haven't added any new offers or any more cost to your program. But what you've done is you've added a sense of discovery, you've added a sense of exclusivity, and you've added a sense that there's something special for certain members in your program. And whether you do truly do that only for a subset of your members, if your technology and your program enables you to do that, or if you really just make it available to everybody, but you give them the sense that they're unlocking it, I think it makes people say, oh, I've got access to something new, something special. 

(28:11): 

Obviously I'll say personalization, but you've only heard that on every discussion you've ever had about loyalty. So I don't want to call that insightful, but I would say that not only making sure that people are spoken to by their name, but you have not only first party data about what they bought, but you've got zero party data about what their preferences are, what's motivating to them, give them a chance to tell you their preferences and then respond to those preferences. That doesn't cost anything, but it makes people feel, as Amanda said, seen in your program and appreciated individually even though today's technology enables you to really do personalization at a mass scale. So hopefully there's a couple of ideas you could consider. Thanks for the question, Joseph. 

Max Kenkel (28:56): 

Somewhat related to that, Tanya asked then how would you create a loyalty program that doesn't necessarily drive more purchases but focuses more on increasing engagement with content and a membership model? 

Chris Jones (29:09): 

Yeah, I'd say our business has, today we're talking about B2C consumer loyalty, but we have a deep experience in B2B loyalty and with what we call an engagement solution. And think of an engagement solution as a loyalty program that doesn't have points. It actually is ways that we increase the desired outcomes, the desired behaviors by those consumers. Kind of the way you're describing increases engagement and confidence in your membership model. So it might be providing information, it might be when take advantage of a certain service that's provided, you're acknowledging you're communicating. We do a lot of programs where people don't necessarily earn points along this engagement program, but they might get a surprise and delight gift or access to an online experience. And these are all things that just reinforce that those people who are in your membership model are taking the right steps, whether it's explicit or implicit in the interactions you have with them. And so like I said, we would probably, we generally call that an engagement solution. And the difference is just if you don't necessarily need to award points for each step, but you can acknowledge and communicate and appreciate for the desired steps along the way, that can work well in a membership model like you're asking about.

Amanda McMahan (30:23): 

I would imagine that that's actually going to increase that inspiration, that motivation, those high energy feels, if it's not just a simple one note in terms of points gathering or gamification, if there's multiple touch points, multiple through lines in terms of how you're communicating with your members, that's going to inspire high energy and motivate them to participate. 

Max Kenkel (30:45): 

Yeah, it sounds like it'd be great for brands that have a long sales cycle where you still want those people to be connected, but they may just not be in the purchase mode right now. So that's great. We've got another question here from Tim. For organizations looking to make a change in their program to increase adoption and usage, where would you recommend starting as a first step to ensure that the value of the program is connecting properly for all audiences? 

Amanda McMahan (31:12): 

Doing some good research to find out where you stand is a good start. We're glad to help you with that. Benchmarking yourself amongst your competitive sets, very important for the top of funnel measures. Understanding how you function within your industry and your main competitors locally, globally. That's really an important first step. Understanding how people perceive you, how trusted your brand is by your customers, by your members. That's also a really good reading that will help guide decisions that you make to sort of dial up tactical levers and also how you might want to participate in play around with some additional emotional connection levers that we've talked about. 

Chris Jones (31:52): 

Yeah, I think that's right, Amanda. I think obviously research and primary research is always a great place to go. I would say that one of the things we've done with clients is we've taken the brands that are in the study that we're talking to you about today and in prior years, and we actually can do a relatively quick deployment of the same survey. If your brand wasn't in this study, we can then to Amanda's point, get that benchmark for your specific program and your specific brand. So that's something we've done in a few instances with clients as well. So those are all just ways I think to make sure in that benchmark along with potentially the primary discovery with your specific consumer audience or customer audience are really the two best ways to know how you stand up to the competition and to the expectations of your members. And then we can go from there. 

Max Kenkel (32:39): 

So that makes me think of another question that I'll ask. So with that research focus and thinking about those customer-centric research that helps tell that story, and this is probably more a question for you Chris, but what if I'm struggling to get my own people in the brand or the business to see the value of this emotional connection? How would I sell this internally to help make these changes if I'm at a brand and trying to get the most out of my loyalty program? 

Chris Jones (33:12): 

Yeah, I think we work with clients who have sort of different parts and pieces of this that they work on independently and they work on collectively. And so a lot of our work in the loyalty space is brand or business to the consumer, but a lot of the work we do in the employee engagement space is from the company or brand to the employee and then translating what the employee does to how the consumer experiences at where you have frontline workers on your brand, for example. So I think both of those elements are critically important and so we definitely work with clients to make sure that they've got both parts and pieces of that equation covered. And then I think it really comes down to the customer experience you deliver. And we would say that this loyalty program or a loyalty or an engagement program, whether it's for consumers members, B2B, B2C, it really comes down to it's part of your customer experience. It's not all of your customer experience. And so working through the journey map of your consumer experience and saying what are all the touch touchpoints, including the loyalty program, is a nice way to think broadly about how that shows up for your consumers. 

Max Kenkel (34:21): 

Yeah, that's awesome. That's good guidance. I think there's probably a lot of brands that are struggling with that right now. So we got time here just for maybe one or two more questions. So this one, Amanda came through to me on text. It says, what was the biggest surprise or counterintuitive finding that you had either in the research or just on emotional connection in general from this most recent study? 

Amanda McMahan (34:43): 

That's a good one. I think the most interesting finding was when we modeled all of these components, value, ease, motivated, appreciated, and how they're driving loyalty either independently or together. It was really the combination of value and appreciation rising to the top value might seem a little bit more intuitive as a driver of loyalty, but appreciated feelings, feelings of a customer appreciation sort of indicate very strongly that personal tie, that tether to the member and the brand and the loyalty program engagement. So I think that was a really interesting finding in terms of how those two pieces unfold and how they mediate one another to drive customer loyalty. And I think it's an insightful finding. I think that it's actionable and it's inspiring to think that we can talk about emotional connection with brands, with our customers and build those relationships. And I want that to really come through. 

Max Kenkel (35:45): 

That's awesome. So I think one more question we'll do, and I'll start this one. So what I want each of you to do is just if you could have everyone take away one thing today, what would that be? And I'll start. What my takeaway is is basically I'm hearing if you treat your customers like the way you would treat your friend, you'll build a relationship with 'em. And that not everything has to have a string attached. So that's going to be my takeaway. But Chris, Amanda, if you could have everyone take one thing, what would it be today? 

Amanda McMahan (36:18): 

I think membership identity is a really important component. Community element within members and that relationship that you have to a brand are all really critical components to think about. 

Chris Jones (36:32): 

I think I'd probably just try and put a bow on this conversation by saying, as you work on your loyalty program to increase its effectiveness, increase its impact, increase its relevance, make sure you're looking at both parts of the equation is the value. But sometimes we spend all our time or too much time only on the value part. And if you spend equal time on the connection part, you can actually in a very cost effective and potentially long-term impact sort of way, drive your program to new heights. So I think those are some key takeaways I would share. 

Max Kenkel (37:07): 

Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah, kindness doesn't cost anything. Right. Well, awesome. Well thank you two for walking us through this today. Sarah, I'll toss it back to you to close this out. 

Sarah VanDerHart (37:20): 

Thanks Max. Thank you for the questions and the engagement throughout this session, and a huge thank you to Chris and Amanda for their insights and to all of you for being engaged participants. As a webinar attendee, you will receive a copy of our study findings via email when published in just a few weeks. If you'd like to get in touch with our team to further discuss our study findings or how your brand benchmarked, please scan the QR code on your screen and our team will connect with you. Lastly, we invite you to continue exploring our content by scanning the QR code on your screen or visiting itagroup.com/insights and clicking on Customer Engagement. Again, thank you for joining us and we'll see you next time.