In the current world of customer loyalty, payments and incentives are no longer just transactional, they are foundational elements that shape how customers feel about a brand. For Vince Chiofolo, Senior Vice President of Revenue Strategy at Dash Solutions, the future of loyalty lies in marrying seamless payments with meaningful engagement.
“You can have the best product, service, and price,” Chiofolo explains, “but the payment experience should also be best-in-class.”
Dash Solutions, a fintech pioneer with nearly 30 years of experience, is reshaping how brands deliver rewards and payments. By replacing slow, outdated processes like mailing paper checks with digital, real-time payment options, Dash Solutions makes it easier and faster for businesses to pay customers and employees, while boosting engagement.
“At Dash, our rally cry is ‘make payments mean more,’” Chiofolo says. “We don’t just process payments; we create experiences that motivate behavior and foster loyalty.”
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Good afternoon, good morning, mark Johnson from
Loyalty360.
Hope everyone's happy, safe andwell.
Want to welcome you back to ourLeaders and Customer Loyalty
series.
This is our Industry Voicespodcast.
On this episode we're going tobe hearing from Vince Ciafollo.
He's a Senior Vice President ofRevenue Strategy at Dash
Solutions.
Vince, how are you today?
Speaker 2 (00:23):
I'm doing good.
It's great to be here great.
Speaker 1 (00:26):
Thank you very much for taking the time.
For those who may not befamiliar, can you give us a
brief introduction to dashsolutions, what you guys do, how
you do it?
Speaker 2 (00:35):
sure.
So dash solutions is along-standing company that's
bringing innovation and paymentsto the world of FinTech and
engagement, so we deliverdigital payment and engagement
solutions that help companiessave money and motivate behavior
.
So, for example, we replacechecks with a modern digital
(00:58):
payment vehicle that scales.
We help companies turn rewardsand recognition into something
that people actually care aboutand actually works to drive
engagement.
And, as we say in our rally cryat Dash, we make payments mean
more and we make rewards morerewarding.
Speaker 1 (01:18):
Okay, excellent.
We talked a little bit prior tothis interview about some of
the things that you're doing,some of the kind of changes or
challenges that exist within theindustry.
You talked about kind of thedemise of checks for payments,
potentially incentives or inrecognition programs.
You know what does DashSolutions or how is Dash
Solutions bringing some of thesesolutions on the payment side
(01:41):
to save money and behavior, tohelp those within the industry?
Speaker 2 (01:47):
Yeah.
So we've been working withmajor brands on payments for
more than 30 years and what youstart to see is a company can
deliver a really incrediblecustomer experience.
They can have the best productsat the best price and standout
service.
They can have the best productsat the best price and standout
service and still, you know youcan lose loyalty with just one
(02:08):
bad payment experience, and alot of people would
underestimate that.
It may be, you know, paying outa rebate that's difficult or
confusing to redeem, or it mightbe, you know, a refund payment
that just never shows up becauseit's a physical check going in
the mail.
So what we try to do at Dash isprovide the opposite.
Rather than a poor paymentexperience that can sabotage an
(02:31):
overall customer experience, weprovide an engaging payment and
reward experience to ourcustomers that they can provide
to theirs, and so that meanseverything from businesses
paying people faster and moreefficiently and more flexibly to
powering incentive and rewardprograms that actually drive
results.
So I would say that we crackeda code on how to bring payments
(02:52):
and engagement together in areally meaningful way, and then
we back it up with really greatservice that actually delivers.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
Okay, can you tell us about your role within the
organization?
Speaker 2 (03:03):
Yeah, so for a bulk of my background I've been a B2B
marketer that's been focused onmarketing operations and demand
generation and really thescience behind marketing and
eventually for me that served asa springboard into early
revenue operations as RevOpsstarted to become a thing in
business culture and ultimately,as that, paired with leadership
(03:25):
, the diversity of backgroundreally kind of lent to a role in
just general growth, which iswhat my role is at Dash today is
leading revenue operations andsales enablement and middle
market sales and just overallgo-to-market strategy.
And then, you know, outside ofDash right, I try to serve the
industry how I can.
So I sit on the board of theIncentive Marketing Association
(03:48):
as well as serve as boardpresident of, you know, a group
called the IESP, the IncentiveEngagement Solution Providers,
which is a strategic industrygroup beneath the IMA.
Speaker 1 (03:58):
Okay, yeah, and we saw a press release recently and
you stated that the loyaltymarket is projected to exceed 24
billion by 2030.
You know what key trends ortechnologies are driving this
boom and you know how are brandsadapting and also, maybe, how
are some brands struggling.
Speaker 2 (04:16):
So this was a topic that came up at the Incentive
Marketing Association Summit,which is, just, you know,
earlier this month in Austin,where you know we reveal some
stats where we dug into how fastthe loyalty market is really,
you know, generating and growing$2 billion in market size or
value and more recently hasjumped to about $11.4 billion.
So it's about a 16% CAGR andnow has projections of clearing
(04:46):
$24 billion by 2030.
And that's pulled from crediblesources like Fortune and
Forrester and more.
So, yeah, loyalty is on a nicetear and the growth really isn't
random, right.
We talked about in the meetingis it's being pushed by an
appetite to influence purchasingbehavior through smarter
loyalty infrastructure, right,formal technology and real
(05:09):
platforms and really the scienceand structure behind loyalty.
And all of that appetite isdriving some real, noticeable
shifts, right.
So one key driver ispersonalization, right, making
loyalty work better by making itmore personal.
So companies are leaningfurther into personalization and
(05:31):
leaning further away fromthings like generic discounts,
right, to gain loyalty.
So those types of things arefalling out of favor for more
personalized experience inturning communications more
personal and creating rewardexperience that are tied to the
actual user and their behavior.
(05:51):
It's also fueled by a lot ofjust platform growth right, like
you heard the numbers before,the number of loyalty platforms
in the market has more thandoubled in the past five years
to more than 350 platforms today.
And so, beyond justpersonalization, right, the
platforms are just makingloyalty smarter with formal
(06:13):
technologies and integrationright.
Smarter, faster, more trackableand, importantly, more easy to
justify investments into loyaltythan it's ever been before.
And then, lastly, I thinkthere's a whole bunch of things
I can mention, but the lastdriver is integration, and I
referenced it a bit earlier.
But loyalty is becoming morepervasive through integration
(06:38):
and more ingrained in justconsumer culture.
And one example is justpayments right, I mentioned
payments before.
We're seeing payments andloyalty blending together in a
more significant way, right.
So loyalty tied directly intothe payment flow, right, things
like co-branded cards, wallets,buy now, pay later, apps,
(06:59):
digital disbursement tools, soit's now more structures that
are starting to bolster loyalty.
And, additionally, we're seeingecosystems where two brands are
working together, integratingtheir loyalty programs together.
So purchasing more Starbucksmay get you more Chase Ultimate
Rewards and taking more Ubersmay get you more Chase Ultimate
(07:19):
Rewards, right, and taking moreUbers may get you more Delta
SkyMiles.
So you know, I saw recently,the average US consumer is now
enrolled in about 17 differentloyalty programs and I think
that number will just continueto rise as the world of loyalty
becomes more integrated, youknow, smarter, better, faster
(07:40):
and just more ingrained into aregular consumer habit and
culture.
Speaker 1 (07:45):
Excellent.
Yeah, it's definitely a veryinteresting time.
Customer loyalty we have agrowing brand membership,
vendors, suppliers, the interestin customer loyalty.
We call it leaning intocustomer loyalty.
The brands that are leaninginto customer loyalty are the
ones that are doing well.
They have different paradigms,they have different reporting
structures, they haveorganizational buying, which can
be a big challenge as well, andone of the things that they are
(08:07):
doing well and I think youtalked about it in a recent
press release is, as they leaninto customer loyalty, it's
really leveraging thatfirst-party data either the
transactional data they have,either the zero they may have.
It's that first party dataengine that is so rich and more
and more CFOs are really seeingthat value.
Can you talk a little bit aboutwhat you're seeing in regard to
(08:28):
how brands may be kind ofadapting or adopting new
processes to look at that dataand frame it?
Speaker 2 (08:37):
Yeah, and I'll actually start by going way back
on this one, right?
So my first brush with workingwith loyalty was actually when I
was 15 years old and was apart-time cashier at a CVS
pharmacy.
And you know, if you've everbeen to a CVS, you know they've
been very big on loyalty andwere, you know, one of the big
early adopters and you know, ofcourse, as one of the youngest
(08:59):
of the teenage staff working atCVS, it consigned me to the cash
register.
So you know, in the time I wasworking there, in three years
I've rung up tens of thousandsof people and every person I
rung up I asked the question,right, that everybody's heard,
if you shopped at a CVS is doyou have an extra care card?
And admittedly, I didn't knowwhy I was really asking the
(09:20):
question.
I was just told to as part ofthe script, but you know, it
took probably more time than Irealized that it wasn't just to
make couponing easier or to handout discounts.
You know I was a party to datacollection, right.
The card wasn't to give awaydiscounts.
Scanning the card was reallyassigning an identity to the
(09:42):
shopping behavior and thenfeeding the loyalty machine.
And in these days, I think moreand more brands have adopted
that type of approach, right?
Loyalty programs aren't justhanding out points and perks
anymore, like a lot of them oncewere.
They're becoming reallyvaluable first party data
engines in a tool stack wherethe consumer data is really born
(10:06):
and then exposed to thebusiness to use in a valuable
way.
And it may seem on the surfacethat that's like a little bit
sinister, right?
Hey, you're collecting mycustomer data, but it's
surprising to see how willingcustomers are to give it up.
So just to cite, you know, theSalesforce study that was run
recently.
It showed 80% of consumers saythat they're more likely to
(10:28):
share personal data with a brandif that means a more
personalized experience and morepersonalized offers.
So that means now loyalty isless about just transactional
rewards and more about buildingthese types of ecosystems where
every scan and every transactionkind of feeds the loop that you
know.
We're collecting data to createmore personalized shopping
(10:50):
experience, to generate moreloyalty.
Speaker 1 (10:52):
And then right back to the beginning, yeah, I think
that that's interesting as well,and one of the biggest
challenges is the training right.
Training is definitely changingwithin those organizations that
are doing customer loyalty well.
It's more of a focus.
They realize it's not, you know, kind of a one-time thing.
During orientation they arefocusing on the kind of
continual training and theimportance of it.
(11:14):
But also they have advocateswithin the kind of the store
systems, either at the storelevel or regional trainers, that
if they're running promotions,if they are rolling out a new
promotion or if they're maybeeven rolling out a new kiosk
which many brands are doing,especially on the grocery side
to combat digital legislationconcerns that are out there they
(11:36):
have someone that's committedto the organization, to the
training around customer loyalty.
And so I think again, thisdichotomy between brands who
truly understand customerloyalty and those who don't,
that's kind of one tellingfactor.
Speaker 2 (11:50):
That's right.
There's an embrace there ofloyalty that there wasn't there
before.
So, more than just it beingpresent, right, it's really
ingrained into more businessculture and operating rhythm
than we've ever seen before.
Speaker 1 (12:03):
Yeah, you have a framework I read about in your
press release talked aboutloyalty engineering, which has
structural, emotional,behavioral pillars.
Can you talk to us a little bitabout that?
Break that down a little bit?
And obviously emotion issomething that brands are
focused on.
Are they over indexing on kindof that emotional focus?
Speaker 2 (12:22):
So likely?
Yes, I think most brandsdefault to emotion because it's
the most visible, right, andit's the easiest to say
romanticize.
You know it's purpose.
It's storytelling and customerlove, right, it's creating a
vibe for an organization thatmakes, you know, building
affection between brand andcustomer more viable, more
(12:44):
present, and it does right.
I think it is important andthere's a lot of studies that
back that up.
But what I think we see moreand more is that emotion without
solid infrastructure is a houseof cards, right?
So just to shout out a fewbrands right, which you'll
probably be able to see whatthese have in common.
But you know, blockbuster, toysR Us, radio Shack, borders,
(13:07):
right, these are all brands thathave a lot of love and I think
proof is in the pudding thatthey're not around anymore, but
people still romanticize thosebrands and how much they love
them.
I don't think we stopped lovingthem.
We just stop showing up, right?
So the question is, which ofthose really defines loyalty?
Brand love gets you, I think,only so far if it's not both
(13:29):
structured and then does nothave ingrained behavioral habit
formation.
So it gets to.
You know what those threepillars are, right?
In addition to the emotionalloyalty, it's really creating
structural loyalty and thencreating behavioral loyalty in
the form of habit loops, youknow, keep a customer coming
(14:02):
back because maybe it doesn'tmake sense to leave.
Maybe they have points with aloyalty program that if they
walk away they lose those points, or maybe it's, you know,
outside of points.
Maybe it's if I can leave mybank and go bank at another one,
but I've got my direct depositset up with this one, I better
go back.
I got to go to my HR team.
Like all these structurescreate roots and make it a
little harder to leave.
(14:22):
And when you layer in right thelast one of behavioral right,
it's just ingraining a brandinto the day-to-day habits of a
consumer in a way that's reallysimple and easy and frictionless
right.
So I think the prime exampleliterally the amazon prime
example is one click ordering,right.
(14:43):
If it's, if it's just super,super easy to do, that it could
just be part of your seamlessdaily habits.
Um, and there are structuresthat keep you around and you
love the brands, then you've gotthe trifecta and it almost
doesn't make sense for you toeven consider leaving if you
have all three of those things.
Speaker 1 (15:03):
No, absolutely, and I think that's you know.
Another challenge too withemotional loyalty is that, at
least from our perspectivewithin, you know the customer
loyalty.
You know providers.
There's many different ways todo it and you know different
providers have differentprocesses, whether it's status,
half and reciprocity or there'sdifferent pillars, and it makes
it very difficult for brands whohave kind of an interest in
(15:25):
looking at emotional loyalty.
You know be able to compare andcontrast the different
providers.
But you know the processes.
They work if there's commitment.
But, to your point, making surethat there's a focus on
operational excellence in theorganization, having a great
brand and being able to listento and understand their
customers, I think are, you know, kind of table stakes.
And those brands who do thatand do it well, you know have
(15:48):
kind of deeper emotional loyalty.
Speaker 2 (15:50):
Yeah, and I think you know said differently right,
the value is driving the love,right more than maybe a story is
driving the love.
So you know, the two ladderright pillars that I mentioned
the structural and thebehavioral right, if I've got a
lot of good roots in there thatmake it hard to leave and it's
making my life easier and addingconvenience and value that may
(16:13):
make me love the brand andcreate an emotional connection
more than a story or positioningor anything else.
So you know the three really dotruly work together.
Speaker 1 (16:22):
Absolutely.
And a couple of last questions.
You talked about churn.
Churn is a metric that wemeasure every year.
We've done a logometric studyit's going to be three years in
a row for our members and churncan be active, passive, because
often customers will leave andthey won't even tell you right
and understanding if they'reprice sensitive or not.
(16:43):
It's a big piece.
You know how can brands be kindof on point when it comes to
you know, churn and being ableto identify it and being able to
, you know, address it before ithappens.
Speaker 2 (16:56):
Yeah, I mean as far as revenue growth is concerned.
Right, holistically, there'stwo ways to achieve growth in
revenue.
Right, it's adding and winningmore new customers and then it's
keeping the ones you alreadyhave.
Right so there's more cachet.
Of course, in winning newcustomers, it sounds better in
headlines, but fewer, I think,give churn the attention that it
(17:18):
needs.
And you know like the termsilent killer is often aligned
with churn, which I think is areally, really accurate one,
because it ends up sneaking upon brands while they may be busy
celebrating more of the vanitymetrics right on the top end new
signups and new revenue andimpressions.
While the threat of churn, rightit's, it's not a groundbreaking
(17:40):
revelation.
I think everybody understandsthat churn is dangerous, but
when you start to look at thenumbers and how it compounds, it
becomes more significant, right.
So a 5% monthly churn rate,which may sound manageable on
paper and rather benign to abusiness, wipes out 46% of your
customer base within a year,right?
(18:01):
So if you drop that churn downto just 2%, right, it's still
20% that you're wiping out ofthe business, and you know, of
course, that that hurts.
Right, to lose customers.
But it hurts even more when yourealize you have to make up
those customers right, byputting more pressure and cost
on new customer acquisition.
And the reason why it's trulysilent is it often gets masked
(18:23):
in the growth number, right?
So if your churn is embedded ina net revenue retention number
and you're actually winning morecustomers than you're losing,
net revenue retention ispositive.
Right.
So it may look good withoutrealizing like there's a real
leak at the bottom of the boat.
So if it's not optimized, right, that means there's going to be
(18:44):
a lot of cost and pressure andnew resource, right.
Maybe development andpositioning to try to make up
for the hole, just to breakyourself even before you start
to see, to see, growth.
So you know the numbers and thestats are truly staggering in
SAS, right it's.
It's even worse, right.
So the numbers that I've seen.
One study a one% to 2% drop inannual churn in a SaaS business
(19:09):
right.
So a drop in churn, right,improving the rate by 1% or 2%
can increase a company'svaluation by 12% over a
five-year period, right.
So I think folks are getting alittle smarter to it, investors
are getting smarter to it.
Wall Street is kind of wiseningup to looking at, you know,
beyond the high level metricsmore to.
You know the full, the fullequation and you know it's
(19:33):
causing companies to have toreact.
So in the safeguarding againstchurn there's really no silver
bullet, right, like hey, youknow, launch this retention
strategy and it'll work forevery business.
Or, you know, just add thisawesome tool to your tool stack
and you'll start to see churnreduce.
It's really a process flow of assimple as just tracking,
(19:56):
diagnosing and then solving.
So step one in tracking is justvisibility into the business,
track churn and even alongsidechurn, contraction, right,
meaning current revenuescustomers you may not be losing,
but their revenue per customermight be depleting, lower
utility or downgrades.
(20:16):
I think the gold standard forchurn.
It depends on the industry, butin most cases it's kind of
keeping it under 1%.
And if it's up there by 5% andyou're seeing that in your
business, then you realize youmight be unsustainable without
massive costs for acquisition tomake up for it.
So visibility, right, step one.
Step two in diagnosing it is,you know, understanding what the
(20:41):
signals are right and seeinghey, you know we've got this
problem.
It's like going to the doctor,right it's?
They're not just going to giveyou a solution.
You got to kind of track theproblem, diagnose it and then
get a good solution.
That's tied to those things.
So you can look at behavioralsignals and trends you can look
at are there rises in certaintypes of support tickets?
(21:01):
Are there certain specificcustomer segments or
demographics where the churn isconcentrated, where maybe
something's going on in thatsegment?
But if you could pinpoint wherethe problem is, you know it's
the second step to being able tosolve it.
And then when you look to solveit right, that's really step
three.
(21:21):
Once you've pinpointed it, youknow it's.
I always like to preach visionbefore solutions.
Right, it's really hard to comeup with a solution if you don't
have visibility into theproblem.
So good, smart people and theyunderstand what the problem is
and where it is can then startto decide.
You know how do we pull thedifferent retention levers to be
(21:41):
able to solve this Right.
So it might be price sensitivity.
So it might be pricesensitivity.
There might be something aroundmessaging.
So I think it's important tolook everywhere.
It's important to timelineright the business and look at,
you know, was the spike in churnsomething that occurred last
August?
And what happened around thattime?
Did we, you know, increaseprices on customers?
(22:04):
Did we change our messaging orour loyalty strategy and then
you can start to really lean inand solve for those.
But it's very rarely one commonsolution because there's so
many different variables thatcan go wrong.
So it's just running that rightprocess of being a good student
of your own business and a goodanalyst of your own business
(22:26):
and finding where the problemsare and then coming in with a
good, strong solutions to try toovercome them, to get better
attention, better results.
Speaker 1 (22:33):
Absolutely yeah.
Is it definitely looking at theright metrics and understanding
kind of how those metricsimpact the organization?
Is that imperative?
And again, brands are kind ofleaning into customer loyalty.
They're saving the best offers,incentives, communication for
their customers and they realizehow important it is.
And moving away from thatconstant replacement methodology
(22:55):
and acquisition methodology,just how can you get the most
out of your current customer setand how can you maximize that?
I think the brands that aredoing customer loyalty well are
excelling in those arenas.
And last question I have foryou what trends do you think
will continue to game steam forcustomer loyalty, customer
engagement, in 2025?
And what may fade off a littlebit?
Speaker 2 (23:16):
Yeah, I think it's really hard to escape AI, right?
So at the most recent IMAsummit, I moderated a panel on
AI and incentives and engagementand there was a full room and
everybody was interested in itand you know, the most common
interest around AI as it relatesto loyalty programs and
incentive programs is reallyAI-driven personalization,
(23:39):
ai-driven real-time rewards,right.
So if somebody is in a programand you can see from their
behaviors that they tend toredeem for a certain type of
reward, that's very stronginformation that you can have.
Having the data is great, butthen AI helps you to exercise
the data, to be able topersonalize more and tailor and
target more.
(23:59):
You know, paid loyalty tiersdriven by AI, right, is
something that people are reallyinterested in as well.
And then just value-basedprograms that are tied to
sustainability or social impactis just another trend that I
think we were hearing a lotabout, you know, in this past
summit.
(24:19):
Some of the things that arefading are probably all.
The things that have beenfading for a little while now
are just seeing a more steepdecline.
It's things like points forpurchase only, models providing
things like discounts forloyalty versus, you know,
rewards that are a little bitmore engaging and create a
rewarding experience for therecipient.
(24:41):
Any programs or loyaltystrategies that are one size
fits all right, this works forone company, so it's going to
work for another company.
Everything is gettingconfigured and I think you know
machine learning and AI ismaking it even more personal and
configurable, so that'sdefinitely seeing a ramp.
And then any kind of clunkymodels that are difficult to use
(25:03):
, that don't have a great userexperience, things that feel
like it's 2013,.
Right, those are fading really,really fast.
And I think you know B2Bprograms are really starting to
learn from B2C and even B2Cloyalty programs are learning
from other B2C types ofplatforms, because people come,
you know, to these types ofloyalty programs.
(25:24):
They're interested in having itbehave like what they're used
to, which is social media appsor, you know, retail websites or
Amazon.
So you know a lot of platformsand a lot of loyalty programs
are having to adapt very quicklyto, you know, satisfy.
You know those high bars onuser experience and how programs
(25:46):
behave and how personalizedthey are, you know, to keep up
to what they're seeing in other,more retail like experiences.
Speaker 1 (25:52):
Absolutely well, vince, thank you very much for
taking the time to join us today.
It was great getting to knowyou a little bit also.
It was, uh, hearing, great tohear more about some things that
dash is is doing in theindustry to help kind of address
and, you know, promote customerloyalty and kind of engage in
best practices.
Very informative interview andthank you very much for taking
the time to join us today.
Speaker 2 (26:13):
Appreciate you having me.
Speaker 1 (26:15):
Absolutely, and thank you everyone for taking the
time to listen.
Make sure you join us everyTuesday for the next edition of
our Leaders in Customer Loyaltyseries on the industry voices
side.
Until then, have a wonderfulday.
Good afternoon, good morning, mark Johnson from
Loyalty360.
Hope everyone's happy, safe andwell.
Want to welcome you back to ourLeaders and Customer Loyalty
series.
This is our Industry Voicespodcast.
On this episode we're going tobe hearing from Vince Ciafollo.
He's a Senior Vice President ofRevenue Strategy at Dash
Solutions.
Vince, how are you today?
Speaker 2 (00:23):
I'm doing good.
It's great to be here great.
Speaker 1 (00:26):
Thank you very much for taking the time.
For those who may not befamiliar, can you give us a
brief introduction to dashsolutions, what you guys do, how
you do it?
Speaker 2 (00:35):
sure.
So dash solutions is along-standing company that's
bringing innovation and paymentsto the world of FinTech and
engagement, so we deliverdigital payment and engagement
solutions that help companiessave money and motivate behavior
.
So, for example, we replacechecks with a modern digital
(00:58):
payment vehicle that scales.
We help companies turn rewardsand recognition into something
that people actually care aboutand actually works to drive
engagement.
And, as we say in our rally cryat Dash, we make payments mean
more and we make rewards morerewarding.
Speaker 1 (01:18):
Okay, excellent.
We talked a little bit prior tothis interview about some of
the things that you're doing,some of the kind of changes or
challenges that exist within theindustry.
You talked about kind of thedemise of checks for payments,
potentially incentives or inrecognition programs.
You know what does DashSolutions or how is Dash
Solutions bringing some of thesesolutions on the payment side
(01:41):
to save money and behavior, tohelp those within the industry?
Speaker 2 (01:47):
Yeah.
So we've been working withmajor brands on payments for
more than 30 years and what youstart to see is a company can
deliver a really incrediblecustomer experience.
They can have the best productsat the best price and standout
service.
They can have the best productsat the best price and standout
service and still, you know youcan lose loyalty with just one
(02:08):
bad payment experience, and alot of people would
underestimate that.
It may be, you know, paying outa rebate that's difficult or
confusing to redeem, or it mightbe, you know, a refund payment
that just never shows up becauseit's a physical check going in
the mail.
So what we try to do at Dash isprovide the opposite.
Rather than a poor paymentexperience that can sabotage an
(02:31):
overall customer experience, weprovide an engaging payment and
reward experience to ourcustomers that they can provide
to theirs, and so that meanseverything from businesses
paying people faster and moreefficiently and more flexibly to
powering incentive and rewardprograms that actually drive
results.
So I would say that we crackeda code on how to bring payments
(02:52):
and engagement together in areally meaningful way, and then
we back it up with really greatservice that actually delivers.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
Okay, can you tell us about your role within the
organization?
Speaker 2 (03:03):
Yeah, so for a bulk of my background I've been a B2B
marketer that's been focused onmarketing operations and demand
generation and really thescience behind marketing and
eventually for me that served asa springboard into early
revenue operations as RevOpsstarted to become a thing in
business culture and ultimately,as that, paired with leadership
(03:25):
, the diversity of backgroundreally kind of lent to a role in
just general growth, which iswhat my role is at Dash today is
leading revenue operations andsales enablement and middle
market sales and just overallgo-to-market strategy.
And then, you know, outside ofDash right, I try to serve the
industry how I can.
So I sit on the board of theIncentive Marketing Association
(03:48):
as well as serve as boardpresident of, you know, a group
called the IESP, the IncentiveEngagement Solution Providers,
which is a strategic industrygroup beneath the IMA.
Speaker 1 (03:58):
Okay, yeah, and we saw a press release recently and
you stated that the loyaltymarket is projected to exceed 24
billion by 2030.
You know what key trends ortechnologies are driving this
boom and you know how are brandsadapting and also, maybe, how
are some brands struggling.
Speaker 2 (04:16):
So this was a topic that came up at the Incentive
Marketing Association Summit,which is, just, you know,
earlier this month in Austin,where you know we reveal some
stats where we dug into how fastthe loyalty market is really,
you know, generating and growing$2 billion in market size or
value and more recently hasjumped to about $11.4 billion.
So it's about a 16% CAGR andnow has projections of clearing
(04:46):
$24 billion by 2030.
And that's pulled from crediblesources like Fortune and
Forrester and more.
So, yeah, loyalty is on a nicetear and the growth really isn't
random, right.
We talked about in the meetingis it's being pushed by an
appetite to influence purchasingbehavior through smarter
loyalty infrastructure, right,formal technology and real
(05:09):
platforms and really the scienceand structure behind loyalty.
And all of that appetite isdriving some real, noticeable
shifts, right.
So one key driver ispersonalization, right, making
loyalty work better by making itmore personal.
So companies are leaningfurther into personalization and
(05:31):
leaning further away fromthings like generic discounts,
right, to gain loyalty.
So those types of things arefalling out of favor for more
personalized experience inturning communications more
personal and creating rewardexperience that are tied to the
actual user and their behavior.
(05:51):
It's also fueled by a lot ofjust platform growth right, like
you heard the numbers before,the number of loyalty platforms
in the market has more thandoubled in the past five years
to more than 350 platforms today.
And so, beyond justpersonalization, right, the
platforms are just makingloyalty smarter with formal
(06:13):
technologies and integrationright.
Smarter, faster, more trackableand, importantly, more easy to
justify investments into loyaltythan it's ever been before.
And then, lastly, I thinkthere's a whole bunch of things
I can mention, but the lastdriver is integration, and I
referenced it a bit earlier.
But loyalty is becoming morepervasive through integration
(06:38):
and more ingrained in justconsumer culture.
And one example is justpayments right, I mentioned
payments before.
We're seeing payments andloyalty blending together in a
more significant way, right.
So loyalty tied directly intothe payment flow, right, things
like co-branded cards, wallets,buy now, pay later, apps,
(06:59):
digital disbursement tools, soit's now more structures that
are starting to bolster loyalty.
And, additionally, we're seeingecosystems where two brands are
working together, integratingtheir loyalty programs together.
So purchasing more Starbucksmay get you more Chase Ultimate
Rewards and taking more Ubersmay get you more Chase Ultimate
(07:19):
Rewards, right, and taking moreUbers may get you more Delta
SkyMiles.
So you know, I saw recently,the average US consumer is now
enrolled in about 17 differentloyalty programs and I think
that number will just continueto rise as the world of loyalty
becomes more integrated, youknow, smarter, better, faster
(07:40):
and just more ingrained into aregular consumer habit and
culture.
Speaker 1 (07:45):
Excellent.
Yeah, it's definitely a veryinteresting time.
Customer loyalty we have agrowing brand membership,
vendors, suppliers, the interestin customer loyalty.
We call it leaning intocustomer loyalty.
The brands that are leaninginto customer loyalty are the
ones that are doing well.
They have different paradigms,they have different reporting
structures, they haveorganizational buying, which can
be a big challenge as well, andone of the things that they are
(08:07):
doing well and I think youtalked about it in a recent
press release is, as they leaninto customer loyalty, it's
really leveraging thatfirst-party data either the
transactional data they have,either the zero they may have.
It's that first party dataengine that is so rich and more
and more CFOs are really seeingthat value.
Can you talk a little bit aboutwhat you're seeing in regard to
(08:28):
how brands may be kind ofadapting or adopting new
processes to look at that dataand frame it?
Speaker 2 (08:37):
Yeah, and I'll actually start by going way back
on this one, right?
So my first brush with workingwith loyalty was actually when I
was 15 years old and was apart-time cashier at a CVS
pharmacy.
And you know, if you've everbeen to a CVS, you know they've
been very big on loyalty andwere, you know, one of the big
early adopters and you know, ofcourse, as one of the youngest
(08:59):
of the teenage staff working atCVS, it consigned me to the cash
register.
So you know, in the time I wasworking there, in three years
I've rung up tens of thousandsof people and every person I
rung up I asked the question,right, that everybody's heard,
if you shopped at a CVS is doyou have an extra care card?
And admittedly, I didn't knowwhy I was really asking the
(09:20):
question.
I was just told to as part ofthe script, but you know, it
took probably more time than Irealized that it wasn't just to
make couponing easier or to handout discounts.
You know I was a party to datacollection, right.
The card wasn't to give awaydiscounts.
Scanning the card was reallyassigning an identity to the
(09:42):
shopping behavior and thenfeeding the loyalty machine.
And in these days, I think moreand more brands have adopted
that type of approach, right?
Loyalty programs aren't justhanding out points and perks
anymore, like a lot of them oncewere.
They're becoming reallyvaluable first party data
engines in a tool stack wherethe consumer data is really born
(10:06):
and then exposed to thebusiness to use in a valuable
way.
And it may seem on the surfacethat that's like a little bit
sinister, right?
Hey, you're collecting mycustomer data, but it's
surprising to see how willingcustomers are to give it up.
So just to cite, you know, theSalesforce study that was run
recently.
It showed 80% of consumers saythat they're more likely to
(10:28):
share personal data with a brandif that means a more
personalized experience and morepersonalized offers.
So that means now loyalty isless about just transactional
rewards and more about buildingthese types of ecosystems where
every scan and every transactionkind of feeds the loop that you
know.
We're collecting data to createmore personalized shopping
(10:50):
experience, to generate moreloyalty.
Speaker 1 (10:52):
And then right back to the beginning, yeah, I think
that that's interesting as well,and one of the biggest
challenges is the training right.
Training is definitely changingwithin those organizations that
are doing customer loyalty well.
It's more of a focus.
They realize it's not, you know, kind of a one-time thing.
During orientation they arefocusing on the kind of
continual training and theimportance of it.
(11:14):
But also they have advocateswithin the kind of the store
systems, either at the storelevel or regional trainers, that
if they're running promotions,if they are rolling out a new
promotion or if they're maybeeven rolling out a new kiosk
which many brands are doing,especially on the grocery side
to combat digital legislationconcerns that are out there they
(11:36):
have someone that's committedto the organization, to the
training around customer loyalty.
And so I think again, thisdichotomy between brands who
truly understand customerloyalty and those who don't,
that's kind of one tellingfactor.
Speaker 2 (11:50):
That's right.
There's an embrace there ofloyalty that there wasn't there
before.
So, more than just it beingpresent, right, it's really
ingrained into more businessculture and operating rhythm
than we've ever seen before.
Speaker 1 (12:03):
Yeah, you have a framework I read about in your
press release talked aboutloyalty engineering, which has
structural, emotional,behavioral pillars.
Can you talk to us a little bitabout that?
Break that down a little bit?
And obviously emotion issomething that brands are
focused on.
Are they over indexing on kindof that emotional focus?
Speaker 2 (12:22):
So likely?
Yes, I think most brandsdefault to emotion because it's
the most visible, right, andit's the easiest to say
romanticize.
You know it's purpose.
It's storytelling and customerlove, right, it's creating a
vibe for an organization thatmakes, you know, building
affection between brand andcustomer more viable, more
(12:44):
present, and it does right.
I think it is important andthere's a lot of studies that
back that up.
But what I think we see moreand more is that emotion without
solid infrastructure is a houseof cards, right?
So just to shout out a fewbrands right, which you'll
probably be able to see whatthese have in common.
But you know, blockbuster, toysR Us, radio Shack, borders,
(13:07):
right, these are all brands thathave a lot of love and I think
proof is in the pudding thatthey're not around anymore, but
people still romanticize thosebrands and how much they love
them.
I don't think we stopped lovingthem.
We just stop showing up, right?
So the question is, which ofthose really defines loyalty?
Brand love gets you, I think,only so far if it's not both
(13:29):
structured and then does nothave ingrained behavioral habit
formation.
So it gets to.
You know what those threepillars are, right?
In addition to the emotionalloyalty, it's really creating
structural loyalty and thencreating behavioral loyalty in
the form of habit loops, youknow, keep a customer coming
(14:02):
back because maybe it doesn'tmake sense to leave.
Maybe they have points with aloyalty program that if they
walk away they lose those points, or maybe it's, you know,
outside of points.
Maybe it's if I can leave mybank and go bank at another one,
but I've got my direct depositset up with this one, I better
go back.
I got to go to my HR team.
Like all these structurescreate roots and make it a
little harder to leave.
(14:22):
And when you layer in right thelast one of behavioral right,
it's just ingraining a brandinto the day-to-day habits of a
consumer in a way that's reallysimple and easy and frictionless
right.
So I think the prime exampleliterally the amazon prime
example is one click ordering,right.
(14:43):
If it's, if it's just super,super easy to do, that it could
just be part of your seamlessdaily habits.
Um, and there are structuresthat keep you around and you
love the brands, then you've gotthe trifecta and it almost
doesn't make sense for you toeven consider leaving if you
have all three of those things.
Speaker 1 (15:03):
No, absolutely, and I think that's you know.
Another challenge too withemotional loyalty is that, at
least from our perspectivewithin, you know the customer
loyalty.
You know providers.
There's many different ways todo it and you know different
providers have differentprocesses, whether it's status,
half and reciprocity or there'sdifferent pillars, and it makes
it very difficult for brands whohave kind of an interest in
(15:25):
looking at emotional loyalty.
You know be able to compare andcontrast the different
providers.
But you know the processes.
They work if there's commitment.
But, to your point, making surethat there's a focus on
operational excellence in theorganization, having a great
brand and being able to listento and understand their
customers, I think are, you know, kind of table stakes.
And those brands who do thatand do it well, you know have
(15:48):
kind of deeper emotional loyalty.
Speaker 2 (15:50):
Yeah, and I think you know said differently right,
the value is driving the love,right more than maybe a story is
driving the love.
So you know, the two ladderright pillars that I mentioned
the structural and thebehavioral right, if I've got a
lot of good roots in there thatmake it hard to leave and it's
making my life easier and addingconvenience and value that may
(16:13):
make me love the brand andcreate an emotional connection
more than a story or positioningor anything else.
So you know the three really dotruly work together.
Speaker 1 (16:22):
Absolutely.
And a couple of last questions.
You talked about churn.
Churn is a metric that wemeasure every year.
We've done a logometric studyit's going to be three years in
a row for our members and churncan be active, passive, because
often customers will leave andthey won't even tell you right
and understanding if they'reprice sensitive or not.
(16:43):
It's a big piece.
You know how can brands be kindof on point when it comes to
you know, churn and being ableto identify it and being able to
, you know, address it before ithappens.
Speaker 2 (16:56):
Yeah, I mean as far as revenue growth is concerned.
Right, holistically, there'stwo ways to achieve growth in
revenue.
Right, it's adding and winningmore new customers and then it's
keeping the ones you alreadyhave.
Right so there's more cachet.
Of course, in winning newcustomers, it sounds better in
headlines, but fewer, I think,give churn the attention that it
(17:18):
needs.
And you know like the termsilent killer is often aligned
with churn, which I think is areally, really accurate one,
because it ends up sneaking upon brands while they may be busy
celebrating more of the vanitymetrics right on the top end new
signups and new revenue andimpressions.
While the threat of churn, rightit's, it's not a groundbreaking
(17:40):
revelation.
I think everybody understandsthat churn is dangerous, but
when you start to look at thenumbers and how it compounds, it
becomes more significant, right.
So a 5% monthly churn rate,which may sound manageable on
paper and rather benign to abusiness, wipes out 46% of your
customer base within a year,right?
(18:01):
So if you drop that churn downto just 2%, right, it's still
20% that you're wiping out ofthe business, and you know, of
course, that that hurts.
Right, to lose customers.
But it hurts even more when yourealize you have to make up
those customers right, byputting more pressure and cost
on new customer acquisition.
And the reason why it's trulysilent is it often gets masked
(18:23):
in the growth number, right?
So if your churn is embedded ina net revenue retention number
and you're actually winning morecustomers than you're losing,
net revenue retention ispositive.
Right.
So it may look good withoutrealizing like there's a real
leak at the bottom of the boat.
So if it's not optimized, right, that means there's going to be
(18:44):
a lot of cost and pressure andnew resource, right.
Maybe development andpositioning to try to make up
for the hole, just to breakyourself even before you start
to see, to see, growth.
So you know the numbers and thestats are truly staggering in
SAS, right it's.
It's even worse, right.
So the numbers that I've seen.
One study a one% to 2% drop inannual churn in a SaaS business
(19:09):
right.
So a drop in churn, right,improving the rate by 1% or 2%
can increase a company'svaluation by 12% over a
five-year period, right.
So I think folks are getting alittle smarter to it, investors
are getting smarter to it.
Wall Street is kind of wiseningup to looking at, you know,
beyond the high level metricsmore to.
You know the full, the fullequation and you know it's
(19:33):
causing companies to have toreact.
So in the safeguarding againstchurn there's really no silver
bullet, right, like hey, youknow, launch this retention
strategy and it'll work forevery business.
Or, you know, just add thisawesome tool to your tool stack
and you'll start to see churnreduce.
It's really a process flow of assimple as just tracking,
(19:56):
diagnosing and then solving.
So step one in tracking is justvisibility into the business,
track churn and even alongsidechurn, contraction, right,
meaning current revenuescustomers you may not be losing,
but their revenue per customermight be depleting, lower
utility or downgrades.
(20:16):
I think the gold standard forchurn.
It depends on the industry, butin most cases it's kind of
keeping it under 1%.
And if it's up there by 5% andyou're seeing that in your
business, then you realize youmight be unsustainable without
massive costs for acquisition tomake up for it.
So visibility, right, step one.
Step two in diagnosing it is,you know, understanding what the
(20:41):
signals are right and seeinghey, you know we've got this
problem.
It's like going to the doctor,right it's?
They're not just going to giveyou a solution.
You got to kind of track theproblem, diagnose it and then
get a good solution.
That's tied to those things.
So you can look at behavioralsignals and trends you can look
at are there rises in certaintypes of support tickets?
(21:01):
Are there certain specificcustomer segments or
demographics where the churn isconcentrated, where maybe
something's going on in thatsegment?
But if you could pinpoint wherethe problem is, you know it's
the second step to being able tosolve it.
And then when you look to solveit right, that's really step
three.
(21:21):
Once you've pinpointed it, youknow it's.
I always like to preach visionbefore solutions.
Right, it's really hard to comeup with a solution if you don't
have visibility into theproblem.
So good, smart people and theyunderstand what the problem is
and where it is can then startto decide.
You know how do we pull thedifferent retention levers to be
(21:41):
able to solve this Right.
So it might be price sensitivity.
So it might be pricesensitivity.
There might be something aroundmessaging.
So I think it's important tolook everywhere.
It's important to timelineright the business and look at,
you know, was the spike in churnsomething that occurred last
August?
And what happened around thattime?
Did we, you know, increaseprices on customers?
(22:04):
Did we change our messaging orour loyalty strategy and then
you can start to really lean inand solve for those.
But it's very rarely one commonsolution because there's so
many different variables thatcan go wrong.
So it's just running that rightprocess of being a good student
of your own business and a goodanalyst of your own business
(22:26):
and finding where the problemsare and then coming in with a
good, strong solutions to try toovercome them, to get better
attention, better results.
Speaker 1 (22:33):
Absolutely yeah.
Is it definitely looking at theright metrics and understanding
kind of how those metricsimpact the organization?
Is that imperative?
And again, brands are kind ofleaning into customer loyalty.
They're saving the best offers,incentives, communication for
their customers and they realizehow important it is.
And moving away from thatconstant replacement methodology
(22:55):
and acquisition methodology,just how can you get the most
out of your current customer setand how can you maximize that?
I think the brands that aredoing customer loyalty well are
excelling in those arenas.
And last question I have foryou what trends do you think
will continue to game steam forcustomer loyalty, customer
engagement, in 2025?
And what may fade off a littlebit?
Speaker 2 (23:16):
Yeah, I think it's really hard to escape AI, right?
So at the most recent IMAsummit, I moderated a panel on
AI and incentives and engagementand there was a full room and
everybody was interested in itand you know, the most common
interest around AI as it relatesto loyalty programs and
incentive programs is reallyAI-driven personalization,
(23:39):
ai-driven real-time rewards,right.
So if somebody is in a programand you can see from their
behaviors that they tend toredeem for a certain type of
reward, that's very stronginformation that you can have.
Having the data is great, butthen AI helps you to exercise
the data, to be able topersonalize more and tailor and
target more.
(23:59):
You know, paid loyalty tiersdriven by AI, right, is
something that people are reallyinterested in as well.
And then just value-basedprograms that are tied to
sustainability or social impactis just another trend that I
think we were hearing a lotabout, you know, in this past
summit.
(24:19):
Some of the things that arefading are probably all.
The things that have beenfading for a little while now
are just seeing a more steepdecline.
It's things like points forpurchase only, models providing
things like discounts forloyalty versus, you know,
rewards that are a little bitmore engaging and create a
rewarding experience for therecipient.
(24:41):
Any programs or loyaltystrategies that are one size
fits all right, this works forone company, so it's going to
work for another company.
Everything is gettingconfigured and I think you know
machine learning and AI ismaking it even more personal and
configurable, so that'sdefinitely seeing a ramp.
And then any kind of clunkymodels that are difficult to use
(25:03):
, that don't have a great userexperience, things that feel
like it's 2013,.
Right, those are fading really,really fast.
And I think you know B2Bprograms are really starting to
learn from B2C and even B2Cloyalty programs are learning
from other B2C types ofplatforms, because people come,
you know, to these types ofloyalty programs.
(25:24):
They're interested in having itbehave like what they're used
to, which is social media appsor, you know, retail websites or
Amazon.
So you know a lot of platformsand a lot of loyalty programs
are having to adapt very quicklyto, you know, satisfy.
You know those high bars onuser experience and how programs
(25:46):
behave and how personalizedthey are, you know, to keep up
to what they're seeing in other,more retail like experiences.
Speaker 1 (25:52):
Absolutely well, vince, thank you very much for
taking the time to join us today.
It was great getting to knowyou a little bit also.
It was, uh, hearing, great tohear more about some things that
dash is is doing in theindustry to help kind of address
and, you know, promote customerloyalty and kind of engage in
best practices.
Very informative interview andthank you very much for taking
the time to join us today.
Speaker 2 (26:13):
Appreciate you having me.
Speaker 1 (26:15):
Absolutely, and thank you everyone for taking the
time to listen.
Make sure you join us everyTuesday for the next edition of
our Leaders in Customer Loyaltyseries on the industry voices
side.
Until then, have a wonderfulday.
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