KeyBank earned significant recognition at the inaugural Loyalty360 Awards held at the 7th Annual Loyalty Expo, presented by Loyalty360 – The Loyalty Marketer’s Association.
The KeyBank Relationship Rewards loyalty program secured the following awards: Best Reward Program, Gold Winner; and the 360-Degree Award, Bronze Winner.
Natalie Treibatch, KeyBank Product Manager for KeyBank Relationship Rewards, participated in an engaging Q&A with Loyalty360 to discuss the highly successful program.
Q: How has the measurement of your program changed today versus three to five years ago and how does the challenge of new technologies and ROIs play into this?
KeyBank Relationship Rewards was enhanced in 2011 from a rewards program, awarding only for debit card transactions, to now awarding for a variety of banking activities as well as credit card. We continue to explore ways to enhance our program with the new technologies available. We have recently completed an in-depth analysis of our program. Previously, we would have only reviewed ROI on debit card activity. With our most recent review, we focused on the benefits from engagement, profitability of the checking account, retention, and cross-sell instead of before focusing on interchange from debit card as the benefit.
Q: The challenge with many loyalty programs today is the complexity and multichannel integration can be significantly more expensive and more difficult to implement than traditional programs. How challenging was that to sell internally or has the investment in your program increased in line with return?
KeyBank wants to serve our customers via the channels they prefer, including how our customers access our rewards program. There was more expense in some of the integration of digital channels, but it was investment that made sense because it reinforces our commitment to an omnichannel approach. Although there is more expense in some of the integration with digital channels, we see that as the way of the future. It is important to make the program easily accessible and available in the channels that the customers find most useful. We need to consider what is important to customers and where they see value in the program or we will not get our return on investment.
Q: How much of the evolution, design or redesign of the program driven is by competitive pressure, voice of the customer, or internal interests? Which of the three has had the most “impact” on your program (based on your internal metrics)?
Voice of the Customer is very important to Key. We continuously review feedback from our customers and employees to find ways to continue to improve and expand our program. Competitive pressure also influences our considerations to help keep the program differentiated.
Q: What role does personalization play in your strategy? How important do you think it is to nail personalization for a successful loyalty program?
We are not doing a lot of individual personalization, but will be presenting rewards recommendations that a customer qualifies for and are relevant based on their point threshold. Personalization is important when it comes to displaying rewards details on the rewards site. In addition, being able to reward customers regardless of which payment product they choose to use, more of a focus on relevance than personalization.
Q: If you had to narrow it down to one thing, what do you think has led to your program’s success?
We have a strong relationship approach across checking, debit card, and credit card and rewards customers for opening other products and services. One thing that has led our program's success is that we have a rewards program that expands across our checking account, debit cards, and credit cards. Our customers can access one rewards site to view and redeem from all of the points earned. We have one comprehensive program that rewards customers for all different ways they bank and transact with Key.