Engage People is a technology innovation company with a vision to bring technology to the forefront to enable a better customer experience. The company seeks to leverage today’s technologies to drive improved outcomes for brands while elevating loyalty programs and the member experience.
Jonathan Silver, CEO of Engage People, has worked in the industry for over 36 years. He began his career with Maritz Canada—now Bond—before holding various senior positions in the loyalty sector. Nearly 16 years ago, Silver co-founded the precursor to Engage People before rebranding the company in 2015. Today, his role at Engage People focuses on strategy and sales.
Mark Johnson, CEO of Loyalty360, spoke with Silver about “paying with points” technology, the uChoose Rewards® program managed with partner Fiserv, and making the offer-redemption experience seamless for customers.
A Tale of Two Products
Engage People brings two technology products to the market—a pay-with-points product called Access Plus and a loyalty management software platform called Podium. Podium is a SaaS-based platform designed for loyalty programs ranging from small to enterprise. Most of Engage People’s clients are large enterprises, multinational banks, and other organizations with sizable loyalty programs. The product is designed around the idea of engaging loyalty program members more effectively.
The platform was built to be agnostic with regard to rewards and activities. Engage People focused on using admin panels and existing tools to create a customer segment based on the available data and enable offer creation before sending them out in real-time and tracking outcomes.
“I’ll give you an example,” begins Silver. “We have a customer in Australia who is a healthcare insurance company. Members earn points for physical activities, and points are redeemed to reduce insurance rates. It’s the same idea as loyalty, but there are no merchant gift cards or travel involved. It’s all very much centered around different kinds of activities.”
Nearly seven years ago, Engage People started to consider how people could use their points more effectively and how member engagement could be improved. The idea of “pay with points” was just starting to enter the marketplace. Based on the company’s observations, Access Plus was built.
Access Plus allows a customer to redeem earned points directly at a retail checkout. Examples include shopping on Amazon.com and opting to apply points to pay for an order. If a customer is checking out in a physical store, at the point-of-sale (POS) terminal, a prompt may ask if the person wants to use points to pay.
“It’s about driving member engagement without disintermediating typical activities while delivering a better member experience and improved program benefits,” adds Silver.
A Growing Interest
Paying with points is a newer technology for some brands, and many would like to learn more about the concept. Loyalty360 asked Silver about how industries are embracing the idea.
“It’s interesting,” says Silver. “We’re not quite there, but we’re getting to the tipping point where it’s going to become more and more ubiquitous.”
Engage People’s foray into the pay with points landscape began when financial institutions running credit card loyalty programs indicated they wanted a better way to engage members.
Silver reports that the app is incredibly effective. At the POS, about one in five members take advantage of offers multiple times. Online, Engage People observes people accepting offers at about 3.9 times per year on average. These activities are driving a massive increase in member utilization of the program—which then drives incremental spend on credit cards and higher retention rates. The overall net benefits are significant.
Engage People is also starting to see this behavior expanding into non-credit card loyalty programs.
“This year, when customers belong to traditional loyalty programs, we enable them to use their points on an e-commerce retailer as a form of payment,” shares Silver. “This gets rid of all the operational headaches of running a loyalty program.”
Loyalty professionals and brand marketers working with Engage People learn they don’t need to worry about managing merchandise or gift cards. People redeem directly at the merchant. In a sense, the merchant is fulfilling the redemption; they’re providing the customer service. Engage People is driving those customers back to the brand. It’s a lower cost for all parties and an enhanced customer experience, which leads to a higher engagement score.
“It’s been unbelievably effective,” says Silver. “The technology has reached the point where it’s easier for retailers to come on board.”
Partnerships Leverage the Technology
Another example of paying with points can be found in the uChoose Rewards® Program, which allows bp and Amoco customers to pay with points at the pump. Engage People, in partnership with Fiserv, a global provider of financial services and technology solutions, enables the process.
Silver notes that Fiserv is a great client and partner for Engage People. The uChoose Rewards® Program targets around two thousand small local credit unions under one umbrella program. Engage People provides a way for customers of those credit unions to use their points at Amazon, PayPal, and bp. He also shares that the program is continuously rolling out to more gas stations and retailers, but a big release is coming in the next couple of months.
“A member goes to the gas station and inserts in any eligible card. When the card at the pump hits us, we check with uChoose to see if the customer’s eligible to pay with points,” explains Silver, describing the process. “If they do, an offer is displayed to them. For example, it might ask if they want to save 50 cents per gallon for X number of points. The member can answer yes or no. It’s that simple.”
It’s worthwhile to point out that this type of program requires no member training, and gas station employees do not need to be trained either. The process works seamlessly with customers at the POS as they follow the offer prompts. It’s a process they are already used to seeing.
When a person indicates that they want to pay with points, Engage People subtracts them from their account, and the discount is then applied at the pump.
An Opportunity for Brands
When Silver thinks about the pay with points network, he sees two sides.
“If I think about a retailer or a partner who’s accepting currency—like bp in the example we discussed—or Amazon or any retailer, there is access to billions of dollars’ worth of currency that typically they have not had access to outside of a gift card program,” says Silver. “Pay with points drives incremental customers, and new customers can be gained.”
Pay with points drives incremental spend, and Engage People has seen around a 15% increase in spend and a 15% to 20 % increase in customer frequency with those using pay with points. It’s a lower-cost transaction than a credit card.
According to Silver, companies and brands participating in pay with points see a huge benefit. Customers are gained through the network, as points earned in one place can be redeemed in another, such as a retailer. That retailer, with its new customer, now “owns” the customer and can begin to engage. If the retailer also runs a separate
loyalty program, it can encourage the customer to become a member.
“It’s free marketing from that point of view,” adds Silver. “It’s a big benefit to the retail partner.”
Citing the Fiserv uChoose Rewards
® Program as an example, Silver explains that the network drives an increase in frequency of redemption as well as increased member engagement—which leads to an increase in spend on their card.
“I can’t share that data because it’s confidential, but it’s a double-digit increase in spend on a card portfolio,” says Silver. “The benefits also include a much lower operational cost for everybody.”
Creating a Seamless Redemption Experience
Since paying with points might involve a partnership between several entities (e.g., a financial institution, brand, a tech partner like Engage People, etc.), certain items must be in place or implemented to provide a seamless redemption experience for the customer or program member.
Silver sees Engage People’s value proposition in the connections the company has on both sides leading to multiple points. For retailers, one connection to Engage People provides access to all customers from the very beginning. For customers in the network, one integration—every time a new retailer is added—provides access to that organization.
“The options for instituting a pay with points program include going direct and doing one-offs. The technology isn’t that complicated anymore,” says Silver. “Or you can come through a consolidator like Engage People. We believe the future of loyalty will end up here.”
Silver nods to Amazon as an example supporting this belief. The online retailer ships products every day, and as an Amazon customer, a person is disappointed or upset if the package hasn’t arrived by the next day. It is difficult for any loyalty program to deliver that level of service with such a breadth of offerings.
If a customer makes a purchase at a clothing retailer, it’s simply impossible to provide the same kind of service inside the old environment. With Amazon, a person can order whatever they need and interact with Amazon’s customer service and expertise.
“This becomes a new form of payment and a new form of driving value across the board,” says Silver. “It’s just choosing the mechanism to deliver the pay with points program.”
Brand Perception and Adoption
Frequently, there is a challenge in the perception of pay with points programs among brands. Loyalty360’s research indicates that brands struggle with understanding disparate technology and securing alignment within the organization to drive investment and change.
Silver agrees. “We’re just at the point where brands understand they need to be in this market.”
While the technology isn’t that complicated, Silver admits the operational side can be a bit more complicated. Brands need to determine how pay with points will be executed, how customers will be engaged, and what the user experience will be like.
From the conversations Engage People has held with brands, it’s been revealed that for many, it’s just finding the technology to use and establishing where it’s going to be added to the technology roadmap. Brands want to make sure the program will be executed effectively. Silver notes that Engage People has certain requirements that it believes drive the best member experience.
“You will start to see more and more brands accepting points as a form of payment over the next five years,” he adds.
Potential Hurdles and Best Practices
Brands can potentially encounter hurdles, so best practices must be considered to ensure the pay with points program is easy for customers, impactful, and engaging.
“The offer/redemption experience needs to be fairly idiot-proof,” explains Silver. “It can’t be complicated at the checkout.”
Engage People provides limited ways to make an offer. If a customer is in-store, the prompt should only need the customer to respond with yes or no. A lengthy set of prompts at the POS during the holiday season will slow the checkout line.
“If it’s a microtransaction and the customer has enough points, it’s a yes or no answer to accept the offer,” says Silver. “If it’s a larger transaction, the prompt might ask:
Do you want to save $50? Do you want to save $20 on this item? Yes, or no?”
In-store, Engage People has streamlined the process down to a yes or no decision. Online, the prompts could require more interaction because it’s easier in that environment. The prompt might ask,
How many points do you want to use? The customer has time to consider and answer.
“Those are examples of some of the best practices,” shares Silver.
Engage People won’t let clients use pay with points as a loss leader. The offer needs to be of equal value. Otherwise, according to Silver, it’s a bad experience for all parties. The key is to ensure the value proposition for retail partners is consistent throughout and that no organization is using its brand as a loss leader to drive value to another company or retailer.
“We’re protective of everybody in the network,” he affirms.
Ultimately, using pay with points as a loss leader devalues the retailer. For example, if a retailer has made the effort to establish a pay with points program, it does not want to create a situation where a customer might see their points as being worth more at a different retailer.
Next Generation Customer Loyalty
Silver points out that another technology leap is taking place, impacting many industries. While brands believe artificial intelligence (AI) will help in their customer loyalty and customer engagement efforts, they are still learning about its capabilities.
“How do we use technology to get better at what we’re doing and at a lower cost?” asks Silver.
One of Engage People’s retail partners—the company manages the retailer’s points issuance and point redemption—was interested in forming a partnership with another retailer in the network. The retailer wanted to explore a points exchange so that customers could use the points at both retailers.
“We realized we built a quasi-coalition for a promotion because both retailers are on the network on both sides. We didn’t need to go through the effort and mess of creating technology alignment,” explains Silver.
Tech stacks allow Engage People to be more creative. When the company looks to the future, it considers the different technology stacks available and asks how they can be used to provide better member experiences, more personalization, and improved results for everybody while keeping the
customer experience and the customer benefit whole.
“We’ll see what AI does. Everyone is playing with machine learning (ML), and it will have an impact,” says Silver.
Loyalty Program Observations
From a personal point of view, Silver’s engagement with different loyalty programs varies.
“Air Canada is a good example of a loyalty program I use,” shares Silver. “I live on the road, so having my Super Elite Status is important. It’s not about the status, per se—it’s the benefits of a dedicated phone number and the concierge service, which is unbelievable.”
From Silver’s perspective,
Air Canada gets it right. The program understands that there are travelers who “live” on a plane, and it seeks to make their lives as easy as possible.
He also highlights transactional loyalty with some good offers, but Silver doesn’t have the same emotional attachment. He admits it’s only his personal experience, noting that for some, there is increased loyalty around cosmetic purchases, and he has seen customers express more
emotional loyalty in that industry.
“At the end of the day, if we can create an emotional connection to the customer, that is where you are going to win,” says Silver.
Looking Ahead
Engage People’s major focus is network expansion. The company has good penetration on the financial institution (FI) side and is now improving penetration with non-FI loyalty programs. Engage People seeks a greater number of distribution points for people to use their earned points. Silver reports that the company is fairly tactical and strategic when onboarding new organizations.
On the platform side, Engage People plans to engage members better and is exploring what it can do with card-linked offers, points transfer, and other redemption options.
“We have new tech stacks coming out in the next year that will help us drive better member engagement as well as give our sponsors the ability to be more targeted and quicker with promotions and offers while being able to track and adapt in real-time,” finishes Silver.
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Quick-fire Questions
What is your favorite phrase?
Let’s get it done.
What is your least favorite phrase?
It is what it is.
What excites you?
Making a difference.
What do you find tiring?
Redundancy and boredom.
What book do you like to recommend to colleagues?
The Hard Thing About Hard Things, by Ben Horowitz.
What profession other than your own would you like to attempt?
I always wanted to be an astronaut.
What do you enjoy doing that you don’t get to do often?
Travel.
What inspired you to become the person you are today?
Just my family. It wasn’t an individual.
What do you typically think about at the end of the day?
All the stuff I didn’t get done during the day.
How do you want to be remembered by your friends and family?
Being dependable and solid.