Connecting over 12 million members worldwide and 30,000 offers
Running a great rewards programme means balancing the needs of both members and partners with enticing offers and incentives that make everyone feel like they came out a winner.
An emphasis on outstanding member experience is one of the reasons that Asia Miles is known as a leading travel and lifestyle rewards programme in Asia. Established 21 years ago, Asia Miles is a subsidiary of Cathay Pacific that connects its over 12 million members around the world with 30,000 deals from more than 800 partners, including hotels, restaurants, shops and dozens of airlines.
“As a loyalty programme, we don’t have physical shop fronts,” says Michael Yung, Head of Digital Product and Technology for Asia Miles. “Members access all of our services and products through phones, catalogues or websites. Today, the majority of our members want to reach us across digital touchpoints, so it’s essential for us to continually transform our digital platform and take advantage of new technologies.”
To become the type of world-class rewards program that attracts top partners, Asia Miles needs to excel in Customer Experience Management (CXM). In particular, the company wants to make sure that each member receives the personalised offers that he or she wants across preferred communication channels—no small feat considering the size of membership.
Asia Miles decided to transform its digital marketing capabilities using Adobe Experience Cloud. The company uses metrics to understand members and create segmented audiences and then uses that information to create personalised marketing campaigns and digital experiences that guide members to relevant partner offers.
“We ran a detailed study on digital marketing solutions. We selected Adobe not only because the products are so feature rich, but also because it integrates so well as part of a larger ecosystem,” says Yung.
Next-generation blockchain marketing
As part of its digital transformation, Asia Miles is embracing technologies such as propensity models and blockchain to help reach members more effectively in the digital era.
Propensity models help marketers quickly analyse member data such as behaviours and interactions from Adobe Analytics and determine how to create high-impact member journeys. For example, marketers can more easily identify members with a high likelihood of planning a holiday so that Asia Miles can send them details about partner travel deals. Look-alike modelling in Adobe Audience Manager also helps marketers determine what types of perks might encourage a prospective member to sign up.
Asia Miles has started incorporating blockchain marketing technology into its stack since 2018. Typically, members receive bonus Miles at the end of a promotional campaign. The “Unlock More Miles” campaign used blockchain technology to remove that delay. Members who ate at partner restaurants would see bonus Miles credited to their account the very next day on mobile app. With shortened Miles crediting lead time, members had immediate satisfaction through a gamified Miles earning journey. Members love seeing bonuses rack up, but employees also benefit as they no longer need to spend time reconciling the bonus Miles to each account at the end of the campaign.
The “Unlock More Miles” campaign was a huge success, increasing the number of dining transactions by 80% and new mobile app downloads by 30% during the first four weeks of the campaign. Asia Miles also earned several awards for this innovative use of technology, including Best Use of Technology at The Loyalty Magazine Awards and Best Use of CX Technology at the Customer Experience (CX) Asia Excellence Awards. The campaign was so successful that Asia Miles has extended the blockchain initiative to retail.
NPS reaches new heights
One of the most important ways that Asia Miles measures success is member satisfaction through the net promoter score (NPS). Asia Miles developed a number of initiatives aimed at improving NPS by connecting members with fantastic deals. Marketers created new campaigns and promotions aimed at attracting members’ attentions. Asia Miles also celebrated its 20th anniversary in style with a series of exciting anniversary celebrations in 2019, including Member-Exclusive Flights, KAWS: Holiday HK with a series of exclusive activities dedicated for Asia Miles members.
An increased focus on personalisation played a role in helping marketers connect these dynamic initiatives with the right audiences. Asia Miles has a wealth of information about its members based on the type of travel activities they engage in and preferences when earning or redeeming Asia Miles. The integrated marketing platform helps marketers pull together all of this information into one location to get a better understanding of members. Then marketers use this information, along with Adobe Target, to intelligently connect members with content and offers that they will enjoy the most.
“Our NPS score continues to improve, so we know that members are liking the content, deals and service that they’re getting from Asia Miles,” says Yung.
Personalisation and returns soar
One of the most significant personalised communications from Asia Miles is the monthly balance statement sent to each member. Each statement is filled with recommended offers based on where a member lives, as well as the member’s social demographic, number of accumulated Miles and many other criteria. An active member with a huge balance of Miles may see offers to redeem Miles for an exotic holiday, whereas someone with a low balance may get directed to learn more about ways that he can earn double Miles.
Creating these personalised statements once took marketers a lot of time to set up every month. Now segmented audience information feeds into Adobe Campaign, which simply pulls appropriate deals from an offer matrix.
“The monthly statement is consistently a strong performer,” says Igor Lau, Digital Experience & Member Engagement Head at Asia Miles. “Working with Adobe Experience Cloud, we’ve reduced the lead time to deliver this highly personalised communication by more than 30%.”
Teams works faster, smarter
The monthly statements aren’t the only area where marketers see productivity gains. Marketers could previously spend weeks developing a single campaign. Now, campaigns are often released in days.
Automation also dramatically improves marketing productivity. Many email campaigns around the member lifecycle, from onboarding new members to engaging non-active members, are completely automated.
“With Adobe Experience Cloud, our team spends much less time crunching numbers,” says Yung. “They are spending more time talking to partners and creating new communications without increasing resources.”
Even complex projects see a much shorter time to market. As part of its efforts to personalise its website, Asia Miles consolidated partner assets, offers and creative onto Adobe Experience Manager Sites and Assets. This allows teams to manage daily updates to partner offers across the Asia Miles website, app and external channels to deliver personalised offers to members. Despite the complexity of the project, Asia Miles went live with its personalised website experiences just three months after developing the first iteration.
“We need to keep improving our loyalty programme and adding new features to stay at the top of the market, so we empower our staff with the latest technologies to deliver new experiences,” says Lau. “Having everything running on an integrated platform simplifies training and encourages employees to imagine complex use cases that create memorable experiences for members and partners.”
