How to beat Fly Buys
Only 10 per cent of Loyalty NZ’s Fly Buys users have figured it out, Hamish McNicol reports.
The chief executive of the company that owns Fly Buys, Stephen EnglandHall, doesn’t actually carry a Fly Buys card. It took an ‘‘awfully’’ long time to get any real value from the programme, and the loyalty programme’s 2.5 million members did not game the system enough to find ways of getting more points, either.
Some good honesty from the boss of Loyalty NZ, at the end of what England-Hall said had been an ‘‘extraordinary’’ year.
Of course, his statements speak to bigger points about the future of loyalty programmes: digitisation, integration, simplification, and communication.
Fly Buys has gone through some fairly substantial change this year, both good and bad.
England-Hall said Fly Buys had added 200,000 members, the most for a year in about a decade, and it had more rewards, more points issued, and more redemptions.
An hour before the interview on Thursday, a ‘‘fairly significant’’ statistic came in which said 60 per cent of all retail transactions in the country had Fly Buys connected to it. ‘‘So happy days.’’ But at the same time, there had been a fair bit of confusion generated in the last few months, he said.
The parting of ways between Fly Buys and Air New Zealand’s Airpoints in September was the big one, after Fly Buys’ new ‘‘any seat on any airline’’ strategy caused some friction.
Overall, however, the loyalty sector had never been as active as it was now.
England-Hall said there were a few factors driving it.
On one hand, a lot of people fell into the camp of simply thinking that if they were going to shop somewhere anyway, then why not try get some benefit on the other side.
Another factor was the increased competition this year, which meant businesses had to elevate their game and offer more to customers to get them to participate.
‘‘Competition generates interest which people look at and say, am I getting the right value?’’
England-Hall said he had once received six new pieces of plastic from his competitors in just a week.
‘‘I’ve moved on, I’m 100 per cent on mobile, I don’t actually carry a Fly Buys card.
‘‘I use a digital version because I like the app.’’
This confusion and proliferation in loyalty schemes meant there was ‘‘definitely’’ a risk of customers simply throwing in the towel, he said.
Another challenge was in getting its customers to understand how to ‘‘game the system’’: the hidden side of loyalty programmes.
A couple of years ago, one user had earned hundreds of thousands of points, the most ever, but when Fly Buys rang him up to congratulate him, he was worried he had been found out.
England-Hall said about 250,000 of its users were in tune with how to get the most out of their loyalty, having figured out where to shop on what day and when.
Paper Plus had run a deal this week offering 50 points for every $50 spent, for instance.
‘‘This is the way it’s supposed to work.
‘‘If you really are only collecting a point for every $25 you spend and it’s the only thing you’re doing and you’re doing it on the weekly shop it’s going to take an awfully long time to get any real value.’’
This remained a challenge, however, because while Fly Buys could tell people the best deals, and the business could communicate that as well, neither had as much leverage as a member telling a member how to get the most value.
Competition generates interest which people look at and say, am I getting the right value?