Leaders in Customer Loyalty, Powered by Loyalty360

Epizode

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  #540: Leaders in Customer Loyalty: Brand Stories | How TGI Fridays Has Rebuilt its Digital Experience for the Modern Age 06.08.2026 25min

  Send us Fan Mail Since joining TGI Fridays in January 2025 as Director of Global Marketing, Christopher Houston has made it one of his priorities to ensure that the company’s digital platforms serve as a conduit for the brand, rather than a barrier. Houston is focused on innovating to create a digital guest journey that is streamlined not just for TGI Fridays’ current guests, but also the next digital-first generation. This means making sure all the digital touch points reflect the ene...
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  #539: Leaders in Customer Loyalty: Supplier Voices | Why Hightouch Thinks AI Should Transform Marketing Workflows, Not Just Campaigns 04.08.2026 22min

  Send us Fan Mail When Anthony Chiulli talks with lifecycle marketing teams, he rarely hears marketers having a shortage of campaign ideas. Instead, he hears about the campaigns that never get the chance to launch. According to the Product Marketing leader for lifecycle at Hightouch, marketers don't struggle with creativity. They struggle with the lengthy workflows, approvals, and handoffs required to turn ideas into customer experiences. "The workflow itself was the problem. ," Ch...
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  #538: Leaders in Customer Loyalty: Brand Stories | How Catalyst Brands Is Building a Connected Retail Ecosystem Through Customer Loyalty 30.07.2026 37min

  Send us Fan Mail Catalyst Brands is redefining what it means to build a modern retail portfolio. Formed in early 2025 through the merger of JCPenney, Aéropostale, Brooks Brothers, Lucky Brand, and Nautica, the company has spent the past 18 months bringing together five iconic brands with distinct customer bases and rich histories. Now, the focus is shifting from integration to growth, with loyalty, customer insights, and personalization playing a central role in that strategy. For Mar...
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  #537: Leaders in Customer Loyalty: Supplier Voices | Why Group O Thinks Loyalty Programs Should be Built to Pivot Quickly 28.07.2026 24min

  Send us Fan Mail When Paul Flemr is asked about the advice that he would give brands looking to improve their customer loyalty experience strategy, the Senior Vice President of Incentive Marketing Solutions at Group O has a simple message for them. “Engage with passion and purpose,” Flemr said. The way Flemr sees it, engagement is the strength of loyalty, the thing that will drive the program’s success. This requires brands knowing their end goals and objectives and building that...
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  #536: Leaders in Customer Loyalty: Brand Stories | How SIXT Has Used AI to Put Personalization at the Core of its Loyalty Program 23.07.2026 43min

  Send us Fan Mail With more than 30 years of experience in the travel industry—including five years as CFO of Hertz and another five as CFO of Hilton Worldwide—Tom Kennedy brings a deep understanding of traveler expectations and the evolving needs shaping the industry. And so, when Kennedy became President, North America of rental car company SIXT nearly six years ago, he was focused on improving the customer journey. He had seen firsthand how slowly the car rental industry had modernized. T...
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  #535: Leaders in Customer Loyalty: Supplier Voices | As Loyalty Programs Go Digital, MTL Card Still Sees Physical Cards as an Important Customer Engagement Tool 21.07.2026 16min

  Send us Fan Mail Brands have understandably been focused for years now on improving the digital experience of their loyalty programs by launching or redesigning their apps, recognizing how much customers prioritize convenience today—and how convenience often means being able to do everything on their phones. However, Sallie Williams, Sales and Marketing Director of Gift and Loyalty at MTL Card, thinks the brands creating the best loyalty programs are not choosing between digital and phy...
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  #534: Leaders in Customer Loyalty: Brand Stories | How Scene+ Curates its Loyalty Ecosystem to Fit Member Needs 16.07.2026 38min

  Send us Fan Mail When Candice Troupe, the Senior Vice President of Marketing & Partnerships at Scene+, assesses the loyalty space in Canada, one word comes to mind: crowded. She notes that the average Canadian has about 15 loyalty cards in either their physical or digital wallet. While this growth in loyalty is a welcome development for Canadians, an increasingly crowded marketplace can also make things a little more complicated for consumers to find the rewards and benefits that f...
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  #533: Leaders in Customer Loyalty: Brand Stories | How Food Lion is Evolving Without Sacrificing Emotional Loyalty 09.07.2026 19min

  Send us Fan Mail Before Nicole Hulstein began her role as Loyalty Campaign Development Manager at Food Lion, she worked in category management for the grocery chain, primarily focused on produce. And while there might not seem to be a very close connection between loyalty programs and produce, Hulstein sees her former role with the company influencing her approach to her current role. "That background really helped shape how I think about loyalty today,” Hulstein said. “The experience i...
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  #532: Leaders in Customer Loyalty: Supplier Voices | AI Has Created an Inflection Point for Loyalty. Are Brands Ready for it? 07.07.2026 26min

  Send us Fan Mail Platforms such as Spotify, Amazon, and Netflix have not only innovated how people consume music, shop for everyday items, and watch movies and television—they have also permanently transformed the relationship that consumers have with brands. By training consumers to expect experiences tailored to their preferences, these platforms have made personalization, convenience, and seamless omnichannel experiences increasingly non negotiable features that brands are expected ...
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  #531: Leaders in Customer Loyalty: Brand Stories | How SECU Built Trust With its Members Before Launching its Loyalty Program 25.06.2026 21min

  Send us Fan Mail For most financial institutions, launching a new rewards credit card means explaining the benefits to customers. For the North Carolina State Employees’ Credit Union (SECU), it meant starting much closer to home. When SECU introduced its new rewards card portfolio last year, the credit union wasn't simply adding another product. It was introducing an entirely new rewards ecosystem to members and employees who had little familiarity with reward cards. Moving from a singl...
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  #530: Leaders in Customer Loyalty: Brand Stories | ButcherBox’s Customer-Obsessed Values Are Driving its Loyalty Program 18.06.2026 20min

  Send us Fan Mail When Reba Hatcher, Chief Commercial Officer for ButcherBox, looks back on the origins of her company’s loyalty program, she sees it being driven in part by the fact that she’s a self-proclaimed “data nerd.” Before becoming Chief Commercial Officer, Hatcher served as chief of staff to ButcherBox co-founder and CEO Mike Salguero and also led the company’s data analytics platform. And as she began looking at the data in 2018, Hatcher could see that ButcherBox was falling i...
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  #529: Leaders in Customer Loyalty: Brand Stories | Inside WestJet’s Strategy to Keep Loyalty Simple in a Crowded Market 11.06.2026 35min

  Send us Fan Mail As one of the pioneers of loyalty and rewards programs, the airline industry has long known the value these programs bring when it comes to customer engagement and retention. But in the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic—which ground travel to a halt—airline rewards programs became arguably more important than ever, as airlines across the world sought to get people flying again. But according to Byron Kelly, Director of Loyalty at WestJet, the Canadian airline was gett...
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  #528: Leaders in Customer Loyalty: Brand Stories | How Nothing Bundt Cakes Turned a Dormant Rewards Program into an Award Winner 04.06.2026 30min

  Send us Fan Mail When Jenn McMillen began her role as Vice President of Guest Loyalty and Insights at Nothing Bunt Cakes in November 2024, she was tasked with the enormous responsibility of jumpstarting a loyalty program that was essentially dormant. Launched nationally two months earlier in tandem with the launch of the company’s new app, Bundt Rewards was a loyalty program in name only, as McMillen describes it. “We went national in September of 2024, but we literally didn't hav...
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  #527: Leaders in Customer Loyalty: Brand Stories | How Wyndham Hotels & Resorts is building customer loyalty beyond hotel stays 28.05.2026 29min

  Send us Fan Mail Wyndham Hotels & Resorts, which was founded in 1981, has become one of the world's largest hotel franchising companies with over 8,000 properties across 100 countries and over 20 brands across the world. But competition remains fierce in the travel hospitality industry, even for a company like Wyndham that has built a massive global footprint. As the competitive landscape continues to change and grow, Wyndham remains successful by staying focused on two core constit...
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  #526: Leaders in Customer Loyalty: Supplier Voices | How FIS is Helping Brands Build Loyalty in the Agentic World 26.05.2026 24min

  Send us Fan Mail The advent of artificial intelligence is expected to create significant opportunities for brands to connect with consumers through AI-powered loyalty programs that become increasingly more efficient and personalized. But Jakob Harrison, Head of GTM for Payment Networks at fintech company FIS, notes that just like all new technology, AI will also bring new challenges for brands. This is especially true as agentic commerce grows more prevalent and transforms how consumers...
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  #525: Leaders in Customer Loyalty: Brand Stories | How Firehouse Subs’ Mission Has Strengthened Emotional Loyalty With Its Guests 21.05.2026 23min

  Send us Fan Mail Companies often speak of their mission as a core business purpose centered around the primary products or services that it is producing to serve its customers and create value. But for Firehouse Subs, its mission is twofold: One is serving its customers the hot subs they crave, and the other is serving first responders across the country. The company, which was founded in 1994 by brothers Chris and Robin Sorensen, takes this mission to help first responders personally....
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  #524: Leaders in Customer Loyalty: Supplier Voices | CarltonOne Helps Clients Build Global Loyalty Programs that are Meaningful 19.05.2026 26min

  Send us Fan Mail When most people think about loyalty programs, they likely think about the ones that are designed for consumers — gift cards, travel points, credit card rewards, and other perks that brands use to deepen their relationship with their members. CarltonOne is a Canadian technology company that provides the platform powering these types of programs for roughly 200 clients in financial services, technology, automotive, healthcare, the restaurant industry and more. But the ...
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  #523: Leaders in Customer Loyalty: Brand Stories | How SharkNinja Drives Customer Loyalty through Customer Engagement 30.04.2026 28min

  Send us Fan Mail Even as SharkNinja has grown into a home goods behemoth with a market cap over $17 billion, the fundamental expectations of its customers have remained the same: They want to see the company deliver the same value it has always provided them. Known for its Shark vacuums and its Ninja blenders among other products, SharkNinja still focuses on one consumer at a time. Or to put it another way, CEO Mark Barrocas has often said that the goal is to build the business one fiv...
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  #522: Leaders in Customer Loyalty: Supplier Voices | Bringing Data Together: Why a Modern Tech Stack is Crucial to Personalizing Customer Journeys 28.04.2026 37min

  Send us Fan Mail One of the challenges that brands can often face when implementing a loyalty program is getting key stakeholders on the same page about the value of the initiative. More specifically, a chief financial officer and a chief marketing officer might have very different views of the program, with the former seeing it as a cost center while the latter sees it as a growth engine. A CFO could focus on economics over perks by looking to add expiration policies or increasing red...
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  #521: Leaders in Customer Loyalty: Brand Stories | How Schlotzsky’s Deli is Returning to its Roots While Also Focusing on the Future 23.04.2026 33min

  Send us Fan Mail It was in McAllen, a small town just over 300 miles from Austin, where Donna Varner had a revelation about her new employer. Varner had been hired by Schlotzsky's Deli as Chief Brand Officer, and one of her first tasks was to lead the deli franchise through a rebranding effort. While trying to get back to Schlotzsky’s home base in Austin one day, a storm in Texas led to canceled flights, and so Varner and a handful of other people decided to carpool there together inst...