Kampgrounds of America, Inc. (KOA) has been a leader in outdoor hospitality for more than 60 years. As the world’s largest system of privately owned, open-to-the-public campgrounds, the KOA network consists of more than 500 franchised and owned campgrounds. Founded in 1962, the brand has made it possible for friends and families, camping enthusiasts, and outdoor adventurers to connect with the outdoors and each other, creating memories to last a lifetime.
KOA was a finalist for the 2024 Loyalty360 Awards at this year’s Loyalty Expo in Orlando, FL, in the Corporate Social Responsibility and Loyalty and the Brand-to-Brand Partnerships categories, taking home Gold in the former and Silver in the latter.
Mark Johnson, CEO of Loyalty360, spoke with Michael Peters, Director of Corporate Partnerships at KOA, about the brand’s success at the Loyalty Expo. During this interview, Peters shared more about the Get Out There Adventure Bag initiative launched with community partners, why corporate social responsibility (CSR) must align with what’s meaningful to customers, and why brand marketers and loyalty professionals must “get out of their heads” to understand what customers truly want.
Can you give us a brief overview of your brand and your winning Loyalty360 Award entries from the 2024 Loyalty Expo?
Peters: We do so much with corporate social responsibility, and at the Loyalty Expo, we focused on one initiative. Last year, we launched the Get Out There Adventure Bag program. The purpose was to deliver outdoor equipment to those who needed it. We learned through research that not having equipment was a hurdle and a barrier for many kids. They felt they didn’t have the right gear, and we realized we could help with that.
We have partnerships and people we could leverage to make kids feel safe exploring the outdoors. We could provide bug spray and first aid kits—whatever a person might need to be more comfortable. It wasn’t our intention to try to get people on a KOA campground. Obviously, that’s who we are, but we were just trying to get more kids outdoors.
For this particular entry—Corporate Social Responsibility and Loyalty—we concentrated on that program. We worked with a lot of partners. We leveraged the Boys and Girls Club located in the tristate New York area, working in partnership to get adventure bags into the hands of kids.
We see this as playing into our loyalty program (KOA Rewards). Corporate social responsibility and loyalty go hand in hand. It speaks directly to your customer base.
For the Brand-to-Brand Partnerships entry, my role at KOA is Director of Corporate Partnerships, and we see partnerships as a key part of our business strategy. Moreover, KOA fits in with RV, outdoor, and travel industries. We want to align with them. We’re all targeting the same customer—just in different verticals. Why not work together and talk to each other? We’re not threatened by each other; we play off each other. If someone is booking a trip or going on a weekend getaway, they will access components across these industries.
Part of the entry we made at the Loyalty Expo was to speak to how we’ve brought partners together and how we overlap with them in our customer base.
Aside from receiving recognition for your success, what are one or two things you’re most proud of when it comes to your brand’s corporate social responsibility efforts?
Peters: First, I’m proud we understand that corporate responsibility impacts loyalty. People want to be part of brands that care about what they care about, and they see those brands in action, doing things in the community. A key component to growing your loyalty program and growing loyal customers is that you must have a strong CSR program that actually speaks to what matters to them.
The other part is that KOA has its hands in so many different areas because we’re an outdoor brand and we’re in the travel industry, too. We also dip a little bit into automotive because we have so many RVs that visit us.
On the corporate social responsibility side, we do so much with environmental protection and conservation. We have a program called Kamp Green that leans into that area. And again, with some of the community initiatives we launch, we can get youth into the outdoors and get them excited about camping or about going outside in general. I’m proud that KOA sees how those two aren’t in conflict with each other and works to lean into both ends, as well as how it affects the customer.
What’s one piece of advice you can share with a similar brand or someone who seeks to expand their customer loyalty program through brand partnerships?
Peters: It might be a little cliché, but understanding what the customer wants. I think it’s easy for us to get into our corporate world or office headspace. So often, we’re looking through the filter of our business model, our bottom line, or what’s revenue-generating—especially on the marketing team, where the tendency is to focus on how an initiative or program is converting to reservations.
When we think about a customer loyalty program and brand partnerships, how do we step back and see what customers want? What do they care about? If a family is running to the store, creating a weekly schedule, and planning a trip, what are their concerns on a much more granular level? What are their fears? What are their hangups, pain points, and stressors? Is it inflation and the economy? As a brand, we need to be more price-conscious of those things. If customers don’t want to travel far, we need to figure out how we can leverage promotions.
I advise brand marketers and loyalty professionals to get out of the office—out of the business side of things and look at it from a much more granular customer-centric perspective. What’s going to make customers’ lives easier, more efficient, and better in the long run? It’s not necessarily going to drive more traffic or business to your bottom line. But learning what’s needed or seeing what customers’ stressors are—that’s what you can play into. Find a benefit or a perk that can be put in a rewards program that will speak to their needs.
Briefly, what is the next exciting step KOA plans to make in strengthening its overall customer loyalty strategies?
Peters: In short, advancement in technology. We see what AI is doing. How can we leverage technologies for reward and loyalty members so they can redeem a reward faster and maybe even outside of our system? We can take care of the ones inside our system, but if members are redeeming some kind of reward that’s related to a third party, how do we make that action cleaner, faster, and more efficient? Then, if we find those collaborative partners, how can we integrate our membership profiles so that we can do more together?
For example, I look to our fuel partners. Many of them use a customer’s phone number to provide additional cents off per gallon when paying at the pump. That’s great! KOA has customer phone numbers, too. How can we match those together? KOA can send a text message to those phones announcing a free bag of ice with a fill-up. In other words, as soon as they punch in their phone number, they get an alert from KOA or vice versa. It’s loyalty programs talking to each other through advanced technologies.
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To learn more about Loyalty360’s 2024 Loyalty Expo, the Loyalty360 Awards, and other award-winning programs, please visit LoyaltyExpo.com. Sign up to be notified of the next Loyalty360 conference by visiting: https://loyalty360.org/subscribe