June 26, 2024 • 24 mins
As a leading digital financial services company, Ally Financial focuses on serving communities and helping customers navigate life milestones and achieve financial goals. From helping customers chart a path to homeownership to planning for retirement, the brand seeks ways to connect with customers in meaningful interactions. Personal finance can be very emotional, and Ally works to balance leveraging customer data while serving as a guide to assist customers in building a solid financial foundation.
Mark Johnson, CEO of Loyalty360, spoke with David Hixon, the Executive Director of Product Marketing and CRM at Ally, about how sports partnerships bring Ally and communities together, using data and insights to support personalization, and leveraging the right metrics to determine success.
Watch the full interview here: https://youtu.be/U5vHWa85-jE
Mark Johnson, CEO of Loyalty360, spoke with David Hixon, the Executive Director of Product Marketing and CRM at Ally, about how sports partnerships bring Ally and communities together, using data and insights to support personalization, and leveraging the right metrics to determine success.
Watch the full interview here: https://youtu.be/U5vHWa85-jE
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
Good afternoon, good morning.
This is Mark Johnson fromLoyalty360.
Hope everyone's happy, safe andwell.
I want to welcome you back toanother edition of our Leaders
in Customer Loyalty series.
In this series, we speak withleading brands about what they
are seeing and hearing on thefrontlines of customer channel
and brand loyalty.
Today we have the pleasure ofspeaking with David Hickson.
He's the Executive Director ofProduct Marketing and CRM at
(00:25):
Ally.
How are you?
Speaker 2 (00:26):
today, david, I'm doing great.
Mark, Thanks for having me.
It's good to be back with you.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
Absolutely Been a while, but looking forward to
the discussion.
For sure we start these on amore personal level.
We'd like to get to know theindividual we're speaking with.
Would love to know a little bitmore about yourself, your
current role at ally and maybe afun fact or passion you have
outside work yeah, I'm as yousaid.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
I'm the executive director of product marketing
and crm at ally.
I've been here for almost nineyears.
My focus is really on ourindividual lines of business and
how we scale them and how wedeepen them.
My background is heavy, heavyanalytics.
Before Ally, I was with amarketing agency, a publicist
agency, leading an analyticsfunction and, like I said, about
(01:12):
nine years ago almost nineyears ago decided to jump over
to client side and have beenloving it over here ever since.
Maybe a fun fact about me I amalso a huge basketball fan.
I am currently the leadstatistician for the NBA's
Charlotte Hornets here inCharlotte, where I'm located.
So I've been with the Hornetsfor about 20 years and manage
(01:33):
all of their in-game databasically for the entire season
each year.
So big, big, fun side hustlegig for me working for the NBA.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
That's awesome.
Who do you think, from astatistic perspective, wins the
NBA championship this year?
Speaker 2 (01:53):
Well, I mean, I think the Celtics win it, but I'd
love to see the Knicks win it.
The Knicks are fun to watch.
This year, a lot of excitementin New York, okay, good.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
Perfect, yeah.
Yeah, you forgot the Nuggets,but we'll let that slide.
Speaker 2 (02:06):
They're fun to watch too.
They're fun to watch too,especially last night.
Yeah, it was a good game lastnight.
Speaker 1 (02:11):
I have to resort to basketball, since my hockey team
is falling apart, but that's awhole different discussion.
Yeah, when you look at customerloyalty, what does customer
loyalty mean to Ally Financial?
How do you define customerloyalty, and what does it mean
to Ally Financial?
How do you?
Speaker 2 (02:26):
define customer loyalty and what does it mean to
your organization?
Yeah, it's a good questionbecause I think it's one of
those things that can beanswered a lot of different ways
and I guess the way I wouldstart is to say we do not have a
formalized loyalty program atAlly.
We have little bits and piecesof things.
We've got a card program that'sa traditional, you know swipe,
the card, gain points, redeemfor statement credits and things
(02:47):
like that.
We also have some relationshipdeepening offers that maybe I'll
talk about as we get deeperinto this, but none of it's
organized into what anybody herewould call a loyalty program.
So for us, I think loyalty ismore about, frankly, the human
side of things, which is moreabout building relationships,
meaningful relationships withour customers, getting to know
(03:11):
them, getting to understand whattheir financial goals are and
then trying to meet those goalsas they grow with us as a
customer.
So it's way more for us.
It's way more emotional than itis, transactional than it is
transactional, absolutely.
Speaker 1 (03:24):
I know you are very focused on partnerships.
Partnerships are a big area andgrowing area of interest for
members of Multi360 and brandsin general.
Nascar is a big partner for youwhere you have specific
initiatives that are focused onthe community and building
fandom across differentaudiences.
Can you talk a little bit aboutyour partnership approach and
(03:46):
maybe even kind of the focus youhave around corporate social
responsibility and how it tiesinto your brand partnerships?
Speaker 2 (03:55):
Yeah, so I think it's not just NASCAR there's a lot
of them.
It's NASCAR, and it's also abig one.
For us down here in Charlotteis the Charlotte FC the team,
the MLS team here, but for usit's really about the
partnerships and how it sort ofconnects to our broad commitment
to economic mobility in general.
Specifically, though, in thehometowns of Charlotte, which
(04:17):
are Detroit, or the hometowns ofAlly, which are Detroit and
Charlotte, and those things cometo life in a lot of different
ways.
But with Charlotte FC we've gota couple of cool programs.
One's called Greater Goals.
It's basically a freeafter-school program for Title I
schools, where you get togetherand play soccer and we're there
and we show up as a brand andsort of help the community that
way.
And another one that's reallycool is called Pitches for
(04:39):
Progress, which is basicallywe're building I think it's 22
pitches across the Charlottearea in high risk communities.
That allows both kids andadults to gather and gives them
a safe space to come and playsoccer and learn the game and
understand who Ally is and whywe're there.
Specifically, though, youmentioned NASCAR.
There's a great one there aswell too.
It's called Fueling Futures,which is a partnership with
(05:02):
Hendrick Motorsports.
That basically helps studentslearn the careers that exist in
NASCAR, right?
So it's not just about drivinga race car, it's about how do
you build one, how do you marketthe team, the business side of
things.
So it's an educational seriesabout all of those careers that
are available in that industryand for us it's basically just
(05:24):
an effort to connect thosepartnerships to what we stand
for and who we stand for as abrand.
Speaker 1 (05:30):
Excellent.
And when you look at thepartnerships that you formed
with the partners that you have,what do they mean for Ally and
how do they connect back to thatoverall customer experience,
customer loyalty and engagementefforts that you're focused on?
Speaker 2 (05:46):
Yeah, that's a question we get a lot.
So how do these partnershipslike trickle down to the bottom
line right and impact customergrowth or customer retention?
And we've actually got.
We've seen a lot of successhere and we've got some great
stats around it.
I mean specifically maybe I'llspeak to our commitment to
women's sports, which I think ispretty well known at this point
.
We've done a great job ofgetting out there for Ally among
(06:08):
women's sports fans.
So just for that segment ofcustomers they're choosing Ally
(06:30):
at the top of the funnel.
Go even further.
We've seen that once you reachthat level of favorability, your
conversion rate to becoming acustomer goes up by 6x and your
cost to acquire goes down by 90%.
So think of that as we gothrough the funnel.
We've got you interested in thebrand.
Because you're interested inthe brand, because of the
partnerships that we have, it'sfar more efficient to acquire
(06:52):
you as a customer.
And then even a step further.
We've seen that those folksthat are fans of the sports
teams that we are partnered withare 16 times as likely to stay
versus leave.
So there really is a fullfunnel connection to just real
like hardcore marketing metricsas it relates to the
partnerships that we have in thesports space.
(07:13):
So we've seen a real strongconnection not just to the brand
but to the business metrics aswell.
Speaker 1 (07:18):
Okay, when you look at emotional loyalty, it's top
of mind for many brands today.
How do you define emotionalloyalty?
How do you look at emotionalloyalty?
Obviously, the efforts you havearound women's sports, around
partnerships, can drive asubstantial amount of engagement
and emotional and emotiveappeal.
But what does emotional loyaltymean and how do you foster that
(07:41):
ally?
Speaker 2 (07:43):
So I think it kind of goes back to what I was saying
earlier.
For us, again, loyalty isn'tabout, you know, go swipe your
card and you'll get points.
It's more about building arelationship with your customers
.
I think of it really as theloyalty I have to my friends and
my family.
That's what we aspire to dowith our customers.
So for us, emotional loyalty ismaybe more about celebrating
(08:08):
successes and wins for ourcustomers along the way, and I
think that comes to life in alot of really cool ways for us.
So you know, we have some toolsin our in our tool set for
customers that allows them toshare with us what their
financial goals are and whatthey're saving for, and we pay a
lot of attention to that and wecelebrate with them when they
(08:30):
say they're saving $20,000 for ahome down payment and they get
to $20,000, there's a wholecommunication stream that goes
out to them to congratulate themand celebrate them, much like
you would if your best friendwas saving for something and
they got there, you'd want togive them a high five and
celebrate it.
We also do things like in thatsame scenario where they might
(08:53):
tell us what they're saving forMaybe it's a, maybe it's again a
$20,000 down payment for a homewhen they get to 19,000, we'll
top it off and give them theextra thousand dollars, like a
true friend would, and give thema high five and celebrate, and
then even simple stuff like wedo handwritten thank you note or
, sorry, handwritten happybirthday notes to our customers
on their birthdays, andsometimes we throw a gift
certificate in there.
So I think of emotional loyalty, more so on a human level than
(09:18):
I do on a business level, and ifwe can make it, if we can make
it much like it feels like withyour friends and family, then I
think we're doing it.
We're doing it right.
Speaker 1 (09:26):
And it's interesting, you talk about kind of the
topping off and why don't wereward certain milestones?
There's a book by Adam Graham,I think.
Again he talks about that, howit's an opportunity for brands
to look at things differently,right?
So if you're saving for a home,right and you celebrate that as
an opportunity and do itdifferently from a brand
(09:47):
perspective because that cancreate that emotional loyalty.
But again, it's focused onthinking and doing things
differently and thinking outsidethe box.
But you know, those are verypowerful examples and it's great
to hear.
Speaker 2 (10:02):
Yeah, we've gotten a lot of when we I mean we do that
, all that stuff I just rattledoff, we do that as a rule and
we've gotten a lot of positiveVOC, as you might imagine.
When we do it Because it'sunexpected, it's a surprise and
delight.
We're not asking the customerfor anything, like I said, it's
just a virtual high five and wedo that when you look at
personalization.
Speaker 1 (10:22):
personalization is also very important for brands
today.
They want to engage theircustomers in-store, in-lane,
through customer experience andcustomer loyalty programs.
How does Ally leverage some ofthe data insights that you have
that you're so passionate aboutto strengthen your
personalization efforts?
Speaker 2 (10:42):
Yeah, we do a lot of that.
Like I said, my background isheavy analytics, heavy data.
Part of my team there'sprobably 20 to 25 data analysts
on my team that are in ourcustomer data all day, every day
, and we basically build as manytriggered programs as we can
because they can be sopersonalized and so relevant.
(11:04):
And I could rattle off tons andtons of examples.
But we look at things like youknow.
I mentioned our savings buckets.
When people set up those bucketsand tell us what they're saving
for, they might say they'resaving for retirement and we'll
look at well, what age are youat?
You know, how much do you have?
How can we help nurture youbetter to retirement?
We mentioned home.
If someone's saving for a home,there's lots and lots of
(11:26):
content that we can help educateyou on how to get there.
We look at life stagemilestones.
You know, when you get married,when you have children, that
all means things in your lifeand your financial life for sure
.
And then, once we have thatdata, then it becomes a question
of where are you in your ownfinancial life?
Do we need to nurture you intothat product or are you already
(11:49):
there and we need to starttalking about conversion.
So we have I mean I would saywe have more than a hundred
individual targeted personalizedcampaigns that go out every
single day based off of triggerslike that that drive those
personalized messages.
That's really the bread andbutter of what we do for our
customers.
Speaker 1 (12:07):
Okay, and how will the brand, or how is the brand
pivoting to meet, you know,customer preferences as they may
emerge over time right Economicconditions, potentially, or as
they move through their lifestages?
How do you, you know, kind ofmeet them where they are in
their journey?
Speaker 2 (12:27):
How do you kind of meet them where they are in
their journey?
Yeah, again, we're reallyfortunate.
We've got a lot of greatfirst-party data that helps us
understand that, and I'll giveyou a very real example again,
looking at homeownership, thesavings bucket tool that we
allow our customers to have andkeep in mind, we have somewhere
north of 3 million depositcustomers that are giving us
(12:48):
this information.
So there's a lot.
But the savings bucket allowsfor you to do three different
things.
One is tell us what you'resaving for, ie a down payment
for a home.
Two is how much you're going toneed.
And three is by when you'regoing to need it.
So you might say I'm saving fora down payment for a home, I
need $20,000 and I hope to closein December of this year.
(13:10):
So if you set that bucket uptoday and you have a hundred
bucks in it, I'm not going totalk to you about conversion.
I'm going to talk to you aboutthe fact that Ally has a lot of
options for homeowners andeducate you really on how to get
there.
What are the types of thingsyou need to do to become a
homeowner?
It would be way toopresumptuous for me to say,
(13:33):
click here to apply for a loan.
That would be silly.
So what we do is we watch thatbucket and as time goes on and
the bucket gets full and thedate gets closer, if we see that
that bucket is getting to thepoint that it's meeting whatever
the monetary goal was, then ourmessaging is going to shift and
start talking more about okay,now it's time to get ready to
start getting yourpre-qualification, or now it
might be time to start applying.
(13:53):
So those buckets really allowus to see yeah, kind of to your
point not just what you'resaving for, but in what stage of
that life cycle of savings areyou, and then the messaging that
we put out mirrors that lifestage.
Speaker 1 (14:15):
Excellent Big push right now at the state level to
adapt data and privacyregulations.
There's a big belief thateventually there'll be a kind of
a national you know regulation,much like they have in Canada
and in GDPR in.
Europe.
How does Ally you knowcommunicate the transparency
around data, data privacy andbeing a steward of that data?
Speaker 2 (14:33):
Yeah, I mean.
So we that's kind of a that's adaily challenge for us because,
right, you want to be, do allthe cool personalized stuff that
I just talked about, but youonly want to be communicated,
you know, through email orthrough direct mail or only
through the call center.
So we definitely offer thecustomer any opportunity to opt
(15:03):
out of these types of things.
And I think I guess the othersort of safe thing that we do is
when we're using these triggersmore, some than others, like
some of the savings bucket stuff, will be pretty overt about it.
But if we're using like lifestage stuff or you know maybe
some of the behaviors of yoursthat we've observed on allycom,
(15:25):
where we like to use this term,coincidentally relevant looking
at our brokerage products, thatwould trigger a marketing stream
.
That's me seeing you raise yourhand for being interested in a
product.
That marketing stream is notgoing to say, hey, mark, I saw
you on allycom yesterday, youmust be interested in a
(15:45):
brokerage account.
That marketing stream is justgoing to talk about the RTBs and
the value props of ourbrokerage product set.
So we try to remove some ofthat for lack of a better word
like creepiness from the data sothat it doesn't come off as big
brother-ish.
So I guess maybe that's howwe're trying to water it down a
little bit.
But, like I said at the top,more than anything we just want
(16:05):
to make sure that we givecustomers the ability to opt out
, should they not be comfortablewith that type of messaging.
Speaker 1 (16:14):
Excellent, and how do you measure the efficiency,
efficacy, return on yourcustomer loyalty and customer
experience efforts?
What KPIs are most important toyou and your brand?
Speaker 2 (16:25):
Yeah, I think there's lots of standard stuff
Engagement in the communicationsthat we send out, open rates,
click rates, all that fun stuffbut I think they all ladder up
for us.
They all ladder up to two bigones.
One is engagement in general,and I don't mean engagement in
the marketing communications, Imean engagement in the products
(16:47):
and the brand of Ally.
We've done just an absolute tonof analysis that shows that our
customers that are using ourtools, that are logging in, that
are transacting with us, thatare just generally engaged with
us as a brand, are far morevaluable customers, both from
lifetime value to attritionrates and all the standard
(17:09):
metrics.
We want as much engagement aswe can get.
So that's one.
And then the other is what we,what we call internally, is a
multi line of business customer.
That's a really big key metricfor us.
So we've got A deposits book ofcustomers is, like I said, north
of three million.
We've got an auto book ofcustomers it's also north of
three million.
(17:29):
We've got an invest book that'sclosing in on three quarters of
a million.
A credit card book that's overa million.
An insurance product, amortgage product all these
individual lines of business andour goal is not to be siloed
lines of business.
Our goal is to be a one stopshop for all of our customers'
financial needs.
So there's quite a bit of crossselling going and we pay very
(17:52):
close attention to the number ofmulti line of business
customers we have, which is nowapproaching a million, and that
would be really like the NorthStar metric for deepening and
loyalty is how many lines ofbusiness are you using with us?
Obviously, we've got ourdeposits book, which is the
traditional bank, but we alsowant those guys to invest with
us.
We want you to have your homeloan with us.
Speaker 1 (18:12):
We would love for you to have your auto loan with us.
And so those folks that areusing multiple lines of business
are our best customers?
Absolutely yeah.
Are there reward programs inmarket that you admire from not
a functional perspective butalso the way it engages with you
, and are there things that youwould like to potentially take
(18:34):
from that reward or customerexperience program or process to
ally?
Speaker 2 (18:41):
Yep, yeah, I have a couple of examples here, so I
think some of it may be obviousto me, obvious to maybe a lot,
but what I think of istraditional loyalty programs
like American Airlines.
I love the American Airlinesprogram.
I travel a pretty good amount,so I'm always racking up miles
and I love to board a littleearly and maybe get upgraded
(19:04):
from time to time and maybe eventake a free trip from time to
time.
But I will say, that program tome is, as you know, back to
some of the stuff you and I'vebeen talking about very, very
transactional and veryunemotional.
Like it does you know, likeanybody can join it's, it's a
you do this, you get that typeof relationship.
(19:25):
I love the functionality of it,but it doesn't feel like an
emotional connection to me.
There are others, though, thatare less traditional in my mind.
I think of things like the Nikesneakers app.
So I'm a, I'm a big sneakerhead, and if you're familiar
with the sneakers app, it's a.
It's basically a, an offshootof the traditional Nike app that
(19:47):
does sort of exclusive shoedrops and things like that.
It is not a loyalty program.
I'm not part of anything that Isigned up for, but I know that,
based off of the transactionsthat I have with them, I get
exclusive access to shoes thatother people might not get, and
I've got friends on the teamthat you know I'll come running
in.
Did you see these that justdropped and they're like no, I
(20:07):
didn't see them, I didn't getthat.
I know that I'm getting it,probably because I spent too
much money with them, which mywife would say but it feels good
, it feels like I'm special andI get to have access to that
shoe and then even more so kindof again back to this whole
human, emotional element of itall.
To me, the best loyalty programsagain is not a program but it's
(20:28):
, I think of, like a favoriterestaurant or something like
that.
I have a favorite restauranthere in Charlotte that my wife
and I go to almost every weekendand certainly they don't have a
favorite restaurant here inCharlotte that my wife and I go
to almost every weekend andcertainly they don't have a
loyalty program.
But the bartenders know me andthe waiters and waitresses know
me and they know what I'm goingto order and the food's really
great and the service is reallygreat and oftentimes they'll
(20:49):
give me, you know, a freedessert to take home to my kids
just because they are loyal tome and because of that I am
loyal to them and honestly,that's the type of connection
that I would aspire to build forour customers, where there's
almost like an unspoken valueexchange, not one that I have to
sign up for and swipe my cardfor.
(21:10):
That feels more like true loyalto me versus like an American
Airlines program.
So I know that that's kind ofethereal and sort of in the
clouds a little bit, but that'swhat we would aspire to build.
That's awesome, Okay.
Speaker 1 (21:23):
Excellent and last question what can loyalty 360 do
to help you and your team withyour customer experience,
customer loyalty efforts?
Speaker 2 (21:34):
I mean I think probably just more like more
things like this.
Like it's always good, I pay alot of attention to the stuff
that you guys put out and Ithink it's just good to
understand what other companiesand brands like ours are doing
what's working, what's notworking.
I'm always me personally.
I'm looking for differentiatorsin the space.
Like I said, I don't want tojust go build a points program
(21:56):
like everybody else has.
I want it to be somethingdifferent.
So really, just what you guysdo in terms of socializing what
brands are doing, is superhelpful and the more the better.
Speaker 1 (22:05):
Absolutely Well.
Thank you very much for that.
Definitely make sure we'regetting the content out that you
seek.
But the community is.
It continues to grow and brandscontinue to share, so it's
great to get feedback fromorganizations like yourself how
we can add to some of thatbenefit.
Speaker 2 (22:20):
So thank you, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (22:23):
And now we have our quick fire question segment.
We ask the individual we'reinterviewing to keep the one
word or short phrase answer.
So I don't get in trouble withthe content team.
The first question we have iswhat is your favorite word?
Speaker 2 (22:44):
I didn't look at these, by the way.
So this is true quickfire I Ithink my favorite word would
probably be helpful, maybebecause that's what I want to be
seen as and that's what I.
That's the type of people Iwant to be surrounded by.
Helpful, okay excellent.
Speaker 1 (22:56):
What is your least favorite word?
Speaker 2 (23:00):
Maybe can't or not.
What excites you, buildingthings and achieving goals?
Speaker 1 (23:09):
What do you find tiresome Politics?
Is there a book that you'veread that you're a big fan of,
that you recommend to colleaguesor people in the industry?
Speaker 2 (23:20):
Yes, it's called Be when your Feet Are.
It's amazing, okay yeah.
Speaker 1 (23:25):
What profession, other than the one you have now,
would you currently like toattempt?
Speaker 2 (23:30):
Easy General manager of an NBA basketball team.
Speaker 1 (23:33):
I was going to say NBA somewhere.
That's good.
Speaker 2 (23:44):
What do you enjoy doing that you don't often get a
time to do.
Go away with my wife and nokids, but without them it's fun.
Who inspired?
Speaker 1 (23:58):
you to be the person that you are today, my family,
my, my family, for sure uh, whatdo you typically think about at
?
the end of the day, all thatneeds to get done tomorrow.
And last question how do you be, how do you want to be
remembered by your friends andfamily?
Kind?
That's awesome.
Well, david, thank you verymuch for taking the time to
speak with us today.
It was great reconnecting withyou and reconnecting with Ally,
(24:20):
looking forward to hearing morefrom the brand over the next
year and again, veryinspirational discussion about
everything you're doing in thecustomer experience but, more
importantly, the CSR and thesustainability efforts you have.
It was great to hear aboutthose for sure.
So, thank you, yeah, happy tobe here.
Speaker 2 (24:36):
Thank you for having me for sure.
So thank you, yeah, happy to behere.
Speaker 1 (24:37):
Thank you for having me Absolutely and thank you
everyone for taking the time tolisten.
Make sure you join us back foranother edition of loyalty life
soon and until then, have awonderful day.
Good afternoon, good morning.
This is Mark Johnson fromLoyalty360.
Hope everyone's happy, safe andwell.
I want to welcome you back toanother edition of our Leaders
in Customer Loyalty series.
In this series, we speak withleading brands about what they
are seeing and hearing on thefrontlines of customer channel
and brand loyalty.
Today we have the pleasure ofspeaking with David Hickson.
He's the Executive Director ofProduct Marketing and CRM at
(00:25):
Ally.
How are you?
Speaker 2 (00:26):
today, david, I'm doing great.
Mark, Thanks for having me.
It's good to be back with you.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
Absolutely Been a while, but looking forward to
the discussion.
For sure we start these on amore personal level.
We'd like to get to know theindividual we're speaking with.
Would love to know a little bitmore about yourself, your
current role at ally and maybe afun fact or passion you have
outside work yeah, I'm as yousaid.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
I'm the executive director of product marketing
and crm at ally.
I've been here for almost nineyears.
My focus is really on ourindividual lines of business and
how we scale them and how wedeepen them.
My background is heavy, heavyanalytics.
Before Ally, I was with amarketing agency, a publicist
agency, leading an analyticsfunction and, like I said, about
(01:12):
nine years ago almost nineyears ago decided to jump over
to client side and have beenloving it over here ever since.
Maybe a fun fact about me I amalso a huge basketball fan.
I am currently the leadstatistician for the NBA's
Charlotte Hornets here inCharlotte, where I'm located.
So I've been with the Hornetsfor about 20 years and manage
(01:33):
all of their in-game databasically for the entire season
each year.
So big, big, fun side hustlegig for me working for the NBA.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
That's awesome.
Who do you think, from astatistic perspective, wins the
NBA championship this year?
Speaker 2 (01:53):
Well, I mean, I think the Celtics win it, but I'd
love to see the Knicks win it.
The Knicks are fun to watch.
This year, a lot of excitementin New York, okay, good.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
Perfect, yeah.
Yeah, you forgot the Nuggets,but we'll let that slide.
Speaker 2 (02:06):
They're fun to watch too.
They're fun to watch too,especially last night.
Yeah, it was a good game lastnight.
Speaker 1 (02:11):
I have to resort to basketball, since my hockey team
is falling apart, but that's awhole different discussion.
Yeah, when you look at customerloyalty, what does customer
loyalty mean to Ally Financial?
How do you define customerloyalty, and what does it mean
to Ally Financial?
How do you?
Speaker 2 (02:26):
define customer loyalty and what does it mean to
your organization?
Yeah, it's a good questionbecause I think it's one of
those things that can beanswered a lot of different ways
and I guess the way I wouldstart is to say we do not have a
formalized loyalty program atAlly.
We have little bits and piecesof things.
We've got a card program that'sa traditional, you know swipe,
the card, gain points, redeemfor statement credits and things
(02:47):
like that.
We also have some relationshipdeepening offers that maybe I'll
talk about as we get deeperinto this, but none of it's
organized into what anybody herewould call a loyalty program.
So for us, I think loyalty ismore about, frankly, the human
side of things, which is moreabout building relationships,
meaningful relationships withour customers, getting to know
(03:11):
them, getting to understand whattheir financial goals are and
then trying to meet those goalsas they grow with us as a
customer.
So it's way more for us.
It's way more emotional than itis, transactional than it is
transactional, absolutely.
Speaker 1 (03:24):
I know you are very focused on partnerships.
Partnerships are a big area andgrowing area of interest for
members of Multi360 and brandsin general.
Nascar is a big partner for youwhere you have specific
initiatives that are focused onthe community and building
fandom across differentaudiences.
Can you talk a little bit aboutyour partnership approach and
(03:46):
maybe even kind of the focus youhave around corporate social
responsibility and how it tiesinto your brand partnerships?
Speaker 2 (03:55):
Yeah, so I think it's not just NASCAR there's a lot
of them.
It's NASCAR, and it's also abig one.
For us down here in Charlotteis the Charlotte FC the team,
the MLS team here, but for usit's really about the
partnerships and how it sort ofconnects to our broad commitment
to economic mobility in general.
Specifically, though, in thehometowns of Charlotte, which
(04:17):
are Detroit, or the hometowns ofAlly, which are Detroit and
Charlotte, and those things cometo life in a lot of different
ways.
But with Charlotte FC we've gota couple of cool programs.
One's called Greater Goals.
It's basically a freeafter-school program for Title I
schools, where you get togetherand play soccer and we're there
and we show up as a brand andsort of help the community that
way.
And another one that's reallycool is called Pitches for
(04:39):
Progress, which is basicallywe're building I think it's 22
pitches across the Charlottearea in high risk communities.
That allows both kids andadults to gather and gives them
a safe space to come and playsoccer and learn the game and
understand who Ally is and whywe're there.
Specifically, though, youmentioned NASCAR.
There's a great one there aswell too.
It's called Fueling Futures,which is a partnership with
(05:02):
Hendrick Motorsports.
That basically helps studentslearn the careers that exist in
NASCAR, right?
So it's not just about drivinga race car, it's about how do
you build one, how do you marketthe team, the business side of
things.
So it's an educational seriesabout all of those careers that
are available in that industryand for us it's basically just
(05:24):
an effort to connect thosepartnerships to what we stand
for and who we stand for as abrand.
Speaker 1 (05:30):
Excellent.
And when you look at thepartnerships that you formed
with the partners that you have,what do they mean for Ally and
how do they connect back to thatoverall customer experience,
customer loyalty and engagementefforts that you're focused on?
Speaker 2 (05:46):
Yeah, that's a question we get a lot.
So how do these partnershipslike trickle down to the bottom
line right and impact customergrowth or customer retention?
And we've actually got.
We've seen a lot of successhere and we've got some great
stats around it.
I mean specifically maybe I'llspeak to our commitment to
women's sports, which I think ispretty well known at this point
.
We've done a great job ofgetting out there for Ally among
(06:08):
women's sports fans.
So just for that segment ofcustomers they're choosing Ally
(06:30):
at the top of the funnel.
Go even further.
We've seen that once you reachthat level of favorability, your
conversion rate to becoming acustomer goes up by 6x and your
cost to acquire goes down by 90%.
So think of that as we gothrough the funnel.
We've got you interested in thebrand.
Because you're interested inthe brand, because of the
partnerships that we have, it'sfar more efficient to acquire
(06:52):
you as a customer.
And then even a step further.
We've seen that those folksthat are fans of the sports
teams that we are partnered withare 16 times as likely to stay
versus leave.
So there really is a fullfunnel connection to just real
like hardcore marketing metricsas it relates to the
partnerships that we have in thesports space.
(07:13):
So we've seen a real strongconnection not just to the brand
but to the business metrics aswell.
Speaker 1 (07:18):
Okay, when you look at emotional loyalty, it's top
of mind for many brands today.
How do you define emotionalloyalty?
How do you look at emotionalloyalty?
Obviously, the efforts you havearound women's sports, around
partnerships, can drive asubstantial amount of engagement
and emotional and emotiveappeal.
But what does emotional loyaltymean and how do you foster that
(07:41):
ally?
Speaker 2 (07:43):
So I think it kind of goes back to what I was saying
earlier.
For us, again, loyalty isn'tabout, you know, go swipe your
card and you'll get points.
It's more about building arelationship with your customers
.
I think of it really as theloyalty I have to my friends and
my family.
That's what we aspire to dowith our customers.
So for us, emotional loyalty ismaybe more about celebrating
(08:08):
successes and wins for ourcustomers along the way, and I
think that comes to life in alot of really cool ways for us.
So you know, we have some toolsin our in our tool set for
customers that allows them toshare with us what their
financial goals are and whatthey're saving for, and we pay a
lot of attention to that and wecelebrate with them when they
(08:30):
say they're saving $20,000 for ahome down payment and they get
to $20,000, there's a wholecommunication stream that goes
out to them to congratulate themand celebrate them, much like
you would if your best friendwas saving for something and
they got there, you'd want togive them a high five and
celebrate it.
We also do things like in thatsame scenario where they might
(08:53):
tell us what they're saving forMaybe it's a, maybe it's again a
$20,000 down payment for a homewhen they get to 19,000, we'll
top it off and give them theextra thousand dollars, like a
true friend would, and give thema high five and celebrate, and
then even simple stuff like wedo handwritten thank you note or
, sorry, handwritten happybirthday notes to our customers
on their birthdays, andsometimes we throw a gift
certificate in there.
So I think of emotional loyalty, more so on a human level than
(09:18):
I do on a business level, and ifwe can make it, if we can make
it much like it feels like withyour friends and family, then I
think we're doing it.
We're doing it right.
Speaker 1 (09:26):
And it's interesting, you talk about kind of the
topping off and why don't wereward certain milestones?
There's a book by Adam Graham,I think.
Again he talks about that, howit's an opportunity for brands
to look at things differently,right?
So if you're saving for a home,right and you celebrate that as
an opportunity and do itdifferently from a brand
(09:47):
perspective because that cancreate that emotional loyalty.
But again, it's focused onthinking and doing things
differently and thinking outsidethe box.
But you know, those are verypowerful examples and it's great
to hear.
Speaker 2 (10:02):
Yeah, we've gotten a lot of when we I mean we do that
, all that stuff I just rattledoff, we do that as a rule and
we've gotten a lot of positiveVOC, as you might imagine.
When we do it Because it'sunexpected, it's a surprise and
delight.
We're not asking the customerfor anything, like I said, it's
just a virtual high five and wedo that when you look at
personalization.
Speaker 1 (10:22):
personalization is also very important for brands
today.
They want to engage theircustomers in-store, in-lane,
through customer experience andcustomer loyalty programs.
How does Ally leverage some ofthe data insights that you have
that you're so passionate aboutto strengthen your
personalization efforts?
Speaker 2 (10:42):
Yeah, we do a lot of that.
Like I said, my background isheavy analytics, heavy data.
Part of my team there'sprobably 20 to 25 data analysts
on my team that are in ourcustomer data all day, every day
, and we basically build as manytriggered programs as we can
because they can be sopersonalized and so relevant.
(11:04):
And I could rattle off tons andtons of examples.
But we look at things like youknow.
I mentioned our savings buckets.
When people set up those bucketsand tell us what they're saving
for, they might say they'resaving for retirement and we'll
look at well, what age are youat?
You know, how much do you have?
How can we help nurture youbetter to retirement?
We mentioned home.
If someone's saving for a home,there's lots and lots of
(11:26):
content that we can help educateyou on how to get there.
We look at life stagemilestones.
You know, when you get married,when you have children, that
all means things in your lifeand your financial life for sure
.
And then, once we have thatdata, then it becomes a question
of where are you in your ownfinancial life?
Do we need to nurture you intothat product or are you already
(11:49):
there and we need to starttalking about conversion.
So we have I mean I would saywe have more than a hundred
individual targeted personalizedcampaigns that go out every
single day based off of triggerslike that that drive those
personalized messages.
That's really the bread andbutter of what we do for our
customers.
Speaker 1 (12:07):
Okay, and how will the brand, or how is the brand
pivoting to meet, you know,customer preferences as they may
emerge over time right Economicconditions, potentially, or as
they move through their lifestages?
How do you, you know, kind ofmeet them where they are in
their journey?
Speaker 2 (12:27):
How do you kind of meet them where they are in
their journey?
Yeah, again, we're reallyfortunate.
We've got a lot of greatfirst-party data that helps us
understand that, and I'll giveyou a very real example again,
looking at homeownership, thesavings bucket tool that we
allow our customers to have andkeep in mind, we have somewhere
north of 3 million depositcustomers that are giving us
(12:48):
this information.
So there's a lot.
But the savings bucket allowsfor you to do three different
things.
One is tell us what you'resaving for, ie a down payment
for a home.
Two is how much you're going toneed.
And three is by when you'regoing to need it.
So you might say I'm saving fora down payment for a home, I
need $20,000 and I hope to closein December of this year.
(13:10):
So if you set that bucket uptoday and you have a hundred
bucks in it, I'm not going totalk to you about conversion.
I'm going to talk to you aboutthe fact that Ally has a lot of
options for homeowners andeducate you really on how to get
there.
What are the types of thingsyou need to do to become a
homeowner?
It would be way toopresumptuous for me to say,
(13:33):
click here to apply for a loan.
That would be silly.
So what we do is we watch thatbucket and as time goes on and
the bucket gets full and thedate gets closer, if we see that
that bucket is getting to thepoint that it's meeting whatever
the monetary goal was, then ourmessaging is going to shift and
start talking more about okay,now it's time to get ready to
start getting yourpre-qualification, or now it
might be time to start applying.
(13:53):
So those buckets really allowus to see yeah, kind of to your
point not just what you'resaving for, but in what stage of
that life cycle of savings areyou, and then the messaging that
we put out mirrors that lifestage.
Speaker 1 (14:15):
Excellent Big push right now at the state level to
adapt data and privacyregulations.
There's a big belief thateventually there'll be a kind of
a national you know regulation,much like they have in Canada
and in GDPR in.
Europe.
How does Ally you knowcommunicate the transparency
around data, data privacy andbeing a steward of that data?
Speaker 2 (14:33):
Yeah, I mean.
So we that's kind of a that's adaily challenge for us because,
right, you want to be, do allthe cool personalized stuff that
I just talked about, but youonly want to be communicated,
you know, through email orthrough direct mail or only
through the call center.
So we definitely offer thecustomer any opportunity to opt
(15:03):
out of these types of things.
And I think I guess the othersort of safe thing that we do is
when we're using these triggersmore, some than others, like
some of the savings bucket stuff, will be pretty overt about it.
But if we're using like lifestage stuff or you know maybe
some of the behaviors of yoursthat we've observed on allycom,
(15:25):
where we like to use this term,coincidentally relevant looking
at our brokerage products, thatwould trigger a marketing stream
.
That's me seeing you raise yourhand for being interested in a
product.
That marketing stream is notgoing to say, hey, mark, I saw
you on allycom yesterday, youmust be interested in a
(15:45):
brokerage account.
That marketing stream is justgoing to talk about the RTBs and
the value props of ourbrokerage product set.
So we try to remove some ofthat for lack of a better word
like creepiness from the data sothat it doesn't come off as big
brother-ish.
So I guess maybe that's howwe're trying to water it down a
little bit.
But, like I said at the top,more than anything we just want
(16:05):
to make sure that we givecustomers the ability to opt out
, should they not be comfortablewith that type of messaging.
Speaker 1 (16:14):
Excellent, and how do you measure the efficiency,
efficacy, return on yourcustomer loyalty and customer
experience efforts?
What KPIs are most important toyou and your brand?
Speaker 2 (16:25):
Yeah, I think there's lots of standard stuff
Engagement in the communicationsthat we send out, open rates,
click rates, all that fun stuffbut I think they all ladder up
for us.
They all ladder up to two bigones.
One is engagement in general,and I don't mean engagement in
the marketing communications, Imean engagement in the products
(16:47):
and the brand of Ally.
We've done just an absolute tonof analysis that shows that our
customers that are using ourtools, that are logging in, that
are transacting with us, thatare just generally engaged with
us as a brand, are far morevaluable customers, both from
lifetime value to attritionrates and all the standard
(17:09):
metrics.
We want as much engagement aswe can get.
So that's one.
And then the other is what we,what we call internally, is a
multi line of business customer.
That's a really big key metricfor us.
So we've got A deposits book ofcustomers is, like I said, north
of three million.
We've got an auto book ofcustomers it's also north of
three million.
(17:29):
We've got an invest book that'sclosing in on three quarters of
a million.
A credit card book that's overa million.
An insurance product, amortgage product all these
individual lines of business andour goal is not to be siloed
lines of business.
Our goal is to be a one stopshop for all of our customers'
financial needs.
So there's quite a bit of crossselling going and we pay very
(17:52):
close attention to the number ofmulti line of business
customers we have, which is nowapproaching a million, and that
would be really like the NorthStar metric for deepening and
loyalty is how many lines ofbusiness are you using with us?
Obviously, we've got ourdeposits book, which is the
traditional bank, but we alsowant those guys to invest with
us.
We want you to have your homeloan with us.
Speaker 1 (18:12):
We would love for you to have your auto loan with us.
And so those folks that areusing multiple lines of business
are our best customers?
Absolutely yeah.
Are there reward programs inmarket that you admire from not
a functional perspective butalso the way it engages with you
, and are there things that youwould like to potentially take
(18:34):
from that reward or customerexperience program or process to
ally?
Speaker 2 (18:41):
Yep, yeah, I have a couple of examples here, so I
think some of it may be obviousto me, obvious to maybe a lot,
but what I think of istraditional loyalty programs
like American Airlines.
I love the American Airlinesprogram.
I travel a pretty good amount,so I'm always racking up miles
and I love to board a littleearly and maybe get upgraded
(19:04):
from time to time and maybe eventake a free trip from time to
time.
But I will say, that program tome is, as you know, back to
some of the stuff you and I'vebeen talking about very, very
transactional and veryunemotional.
Like it does you know, likeanybody can join it's, it's a
you do this, you get that typeof relationship.
(19:25):
I love the functionality of it,but it doesn't feel like an
emotional connection to me.
There are others, though, thatare less traditional in my mind.
I think of things like the Nikesneakers app.
So I'm a, I'm a big sneakerhead, and if you're familiar
with the sneakers app, it's a.
It's basically a, an offshootof the traditional Nike app that
(19:47):
does sort of exclusive shoedrops and things like that.
It is not a loyalty program.
I'm not part of anything that Isigned up for, but I know that,
based off of the transactionsthat I have with them, I get
exclusive access to shoes thatother people might not get, and
I've got friends on the teamthat you know I'll come running
in.
Did you see these that justdropped and they're like no, I
(20:07):
didn't see them, I didn't getthat.
I know that I'm getting it,probably because I spent too
much money with them, which mywife would say but it feels good
, it feels like I'm special andI get to have access to that
shoe and then even more so kindof again back to this whole
human, emotional element of itall.
To me, the best loyalty programsagain is not a program but it's
(20:28):
, I think of, like a favoriterestaurant or something like
that.
I have a favorite restauranthere in Charlotte that my wife
and I go to almost every weekendand certainly they don't have a
favorite restaurant here inCharlotte that my wife and I go
to almost every weekend andcertainly they don't have a
loyalty program.
But the bartenders know me andthe waiters and waitresses know
me and they know what I'm goingto order and the food's really
great and the service is reallygreat and oftentimes they'll
(20:49):
give me, you know, a freedessert to take home to my kids
just because they are loyal tome and because of that I am
loyal to them and honestly,that's the type of connection
that I would aspire to build forour customers, where there's
almost like an unspoken valueexchange, not one that I have to
sign up for and swipe my cardfor.
(21:10):
That feels more like true loyalto me versus like an American
Airlines program.
So I know that that's kind ofethereal and sort of in the
clouds a little bit, but that'swhat we would aspire to build.
That's awesome, Okay.
Speaker 1 (21:23):
Excellent and last question what can loyalty 360 do
to help you and your team withyour customer experience,
customer loyalty efforts?
Speaker 2 (21:34):
I mean I think probably just more like more
things like this.
Like it's always good, I pay alot of attention to the stuff
that you guys put out and Ithink it's just good to
understand what other companiesand brands like ours are doing
what's working, what's notworking.
I'm always me personally.
I'm looking for differentiatorsin the space.
Like I said, I don't want tojust go build a points program
(21:56):
like everybody else has.
I want it to be somethingdifferent.
So really, just what you guysdo in terms of socializing what
brands are doing, is superhelpful and the more the better.
Speaker 1 (22:05):
Absolutely Well.
Thank you very much for that.
Definitely make sure we'regetting the content out that you
seek.
But the community is.
It continues to grow and brandscontinue to share, so it's
great to get feedback fromorganizations like yourself how
we can add to some of thatbenefit.
Speaker 2 (22:20):
So thank you, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (22:23):
And now we have our quick fire question segment.
We ask the individual we'reinterviewing to keep the one
word or short phrase answer.
So I don't get in trouble withthe content team.
The first question we have iswhat is your favorite word?
Speaker 2 (22:44):
I didn't look at these, by the way.
So this is true quickfire I Ithink my favorite word would
probably be helpful, maybebecause that's what I want to be
seen as and that's what I.
That's the type of people Iwant to be surrounded by.
Helpful, okay excellent.
Speaker 1 (22:56):
What is your least favorite word?
Speaker 2 (23:00):
Maybe can't or not.
What excites you, buildingthings and achieving goals?
Speaker 1 (23:09):
What do you find tiresome Politics?
Is there a book that you'veread that you're a big fan of,
that you recommend to colleaguesor people in the industry?
Speaker 2 (23:20):
Yes, it's called Be when your Feet Are.
It's amazing, okay yeah.
Speaker 1 (23:25):
What profession, other than the one you have now,
would you currently like toattempt?
Speaker 2 (23:30):
Easy General manager of an NBA basketball team.
Speaker 1 (23:33):
I was going to say NBA somewhere.
That's good.
Speaker 2 (23:44):
What do you enjoy doing that you don't often get a
time to do.
Go away with my wife and nokids, but without them it's fun.
Who inspired?
Speaker 1 (23:58):
you to be the person that you are today, my family,
my, my family, for sure uh, whatdo you typically think about at
?
the end of the day, all thatneeds to get done tomorrow.
And last question how do you be, how do you want to be
remembered by your friends andfamily?
Kind?
That's awesome.
Well, david, thank you verymuch for taking the time to
speak with us today.
It was great reconnecting withyou and reconnecting with Ally,
(24:20):
looking forward to hearing morefrom the brand over the next
year and again, veryinspirational discussion about
everything you're doing in thecustomer experience but, more
importantly, the CSR and thesustainability efforts you have.
It was great to hear aboutthose for sure.
So, thank you, yeah, happy tobe here.
Speaker 2 (24:36):
Thank you for having me for sure.
So thank you, yeah, happy to behere.
Speaker 1 (24:37):
Thank you for having me Absolutely and thank you
everyone for taking the time tolisten.
Make sure you join us back foranother edition of loyalty life
soon and until then, have awonderful day.
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