Roz Travers-Hucker – a Loyalty Leader delivering comprehensive business intelligence and growth actions from loyalty program data

For my first 2025 Loyalty Leader interview and #37 in the series, I had the pleasure to chat with Roz Travers-Hucker – Head of Marketing at Canningvale, a pure-play online homewares business.

In her role as Head of Marketing, Roz leads the ecommerce, CRM, customer service, brand, and by her own admission, her passion – the loyalty program ‘Home Lovers Club’

With a palpable enthusiasm for retail, Roz shared insightful views on how important loyalty program data is as a source of business intelligence that cascades throughout the business.

Enjoy!

1. So, who is Roz? (outside of work) + a little on your work biography

I'm originally from Bendigo (Country Victoria for international readers). I moved to Geelong and then to an even bigger town, Melbourne, about 15 years ago.

Some fun facts about me: my comfort movie is 1997’s Spiceworld, and my comfort food is apple crumble with custard!

Oh, and just quietly, a hobby with my husband is trying new Bourbons, more than 50(!) so far - thanks to Dan Murphy’s and our My Dan’s membership. In case you are interested, my current go-to is Angel's Envy.

Professionally, my career has always been related to marketing. I studied marketing and my first job was in marketing for Caterpillar Machinery. From there I did a bit more in B2B and then moved into retail marketing and never looked back.

I absolutely love retail marketing. It’s exciting, fast-paced and dynamic with visibility on what you do and implement immediate. In 2011, I joined Best Friends Pets founded by Andrew Muir of The Good Guys.

This is where my passion for loyalty programs and the power of the data and insights they provide, began. I was there for 9 years where we had double digit growth almost every year, and acquired our competitor My Pet Warehouse, along with a few other smaller players in the pet business.

It was a dynamic and changing category, where each year felt like a new evolution of the business. After I left, Petstock bought the Group for $180m, and then Woolworths bought 55% of Petstock for $586m.?

The changing nature of retail and marketing is perfect for me. It’s great to see what you work on happen, either in store or online, and adding to that to be able to see the data and results, within a 24-hour period, to decide what to do next, I love that!

For the past 3 and half years I have been at Canningvale and as Head of Marketing I manage ecommerce, CRM, brand, customer service, and my favourite - the loyalty program Home Lovers Club.

Now, all of my towels are Egyptian cotton, and my sheets are 1000 thread count!

2. Tell us about Canningvale’s Home Lovers Club

When I started, I was given ‘a blank piece of paper’ to create a new program for our business, which is the dream, right? It was for me!

The club is a three-tier points program, with lots of ways to earn points, and redemption is from our Rewards Store of products and for dollars off your order.

We have a highly engaged member base and what's exciting about the program, from my point of view, is that it's been layered into every single part of the customer experience and our business.

Our Platinum Members have double the annualised lifetime value compared to our Silver Members, and over half of them are engaging with the program by redeeming points.??

For us, a high participation rate which we define as the % of members redeeming points, helps us ensure the program is seen by members as more valuable than our other promotions and codes that are available day to day.

Without this participation rate, I think it’s harder to be sure that the program itself versus the other parts of the customer offer are what’s working.

All the signs of a great program are there, and it’s been exciting to test and learn different activations for our members at all parts of the lifecycle, and to discover what really makes them feel valued as a top tier member.

Because the eCommerce market has been so unpredictable in the past few years, we tend to look at key metrics based on a shorter term trendline, rather than year on year. This makes us nimble and more flexible to change as required.

I think we have a great foundation, and we’ve spent time working on simple messaging and ease of earning and redeeming rewards.

Our next focus is using loyalty data to drive further personalisation on site and across our touchpoints to increase conversion rate.

Better use of our loyalty data and CRM data across all touchpoints is going to take us to the next level in 2025!

3. What is the most unique element of the program?

We believe the value is unbeatable. The ease of earning and value of redemptions (dollars off the next transaction or free products from the reward store) I think is a stand-out in the market.

We've been able to offer this to the customer because the business has a good understanding of the importance of customer loyalty, and its importance long term for the business.

One of the reasons I joined Canningvale is because from the very start, we agreed that the program needs to be meaningful and valuable. I think philosophically too, we see the loyalty program as a way to show our gratitude and loyalty to the customer, versus a way to get the customer to show their loyalty to us.

There's a there's a real spirit of generosity, while of course remaining commercial about the impact of the program.

4. If you had to choose the most important measures of success for your program, what would they be?

Definitely insights into business performance, customer lifetime value and participation rate.?

From a profit point of view, I believe there are always answers as to what's working and not working in a business that can be unlocked with loyalty data. I think the magic really happens with loyalty program data when you are sharing as much of that with internal teams and stakeholders, especially with CX and buying teams.

For the program itself, measures like customer lifetime value at profit level, by tier will keep you on track, and the all-important participation rate mentioned earlier so you can definitively say the program is a significant driving factor.

The quantity of members in each tier and how that's making up your overall revenue is important. Sometimes the lower tier members just don’t generate sufficient value, so looking at acquisition through the lens of your loyalty tiers helps ensure your program is made up of the right types of members.

Then just keep testing and learning to acquire quality over quantity.

5. What are some of the challenges you face on an ongoing basis to keep the program relevant/fresh/thriving (internally and externally) and how do you overcome these?

Retail has been a hard over the past few years and what I am seeing in general, and we went through it, is a technology stack review to allow for flexibility to the changing needs of the business and the program that supports it.

The consolidation of the tech stack and managing onboarding and downtime are some of the challenges we managed during that process and finding a tech partner that can scale up and down to meet changing circumstances is important.

It was also important to commit to tech where we knows there is ongoing investment, and you can have input into the product roadmap.?

6. If you could start again with a blank strategy canvas, what would you do differently?

I think I would take the opportunity to look at the customer experience at every single touchpoint and begin with the end in mind. Where can the loyalty program be embedded to improve performance?

Also, what’s the potential impact of the structure of the program and from a from a tech point of view you need to be able to easily work through all those touchpoints.

For example, for all our product recommendations that were going in emails and across the site experience in the past, didn't talk to loyalty program tiers, whereas now that's connected, and so now, all those different segments can work together and get a better result.

7. What advice would you give to brands thinking about a loyalty program?

I think stakeholder management and engagement is critical to success, especially for omnichannel retailers.

A big part of the program assessing further value, and what can be missed is the value of the data that you could get and what you can do with the insights from that data. I think it’s important to continue to go back to the objectives of the program and why you’re doing what you’re doing, too.?

Consider for example the downstream impact of removing a benefit from a program that has the unintended consequence of reducing member scan rate and therefore reducing data able to be gathered for insights. Identify the balance of the value of losing data and intelligence for the business versus saving money.

Lastly, be cautious but not paralysed by the tech stack that you need to enable the program and find the right tech partner and solution to scale up and down with your business needs and changing economics.

8. What’s the biggest frustration you have with loyalty programs?

As a program member nothing drives me more nuts than shopping in store and the team can't tell me if I have any rewards to use on the day, or they don't ask me if I want to use my rewards.

Witchery is excellent in this area, every single time they tell me my rewards balance and if I'm close to a reward. They make sure they have my birthday, so I get my birthday voucher. Their in-store experience with their loyalty program is fantastic. I’m always confident I’m getting all of my member entitlements.

On the brand side, the biggest frustration is a rigid program. One that doesn't provide the business with flexibility to evolve with both the customer's needs and the business's needs.

I think the loyalty program should be a business driver, and business needs can change and evolve. Brands need to build flexibility into all aspects of the program and be prepared for change.

A great example is many people in eComm seem to be talking about increased shipping costs at the moment, a long-term member benefit like free shipping may not be profitable anymore, and so you need to able to track their impact and offer new and different benefits and evolve the program.?

9. What do you think is creeping up on programs that could disrupt them for better or worse?

I think with the aggressive discounting that’s happening in the market now, brands need to be closely monitoring the value of their program against every day offers from their own trade calendar and the broader market. Is it still compelling and valuable??

Sometimes the member can only redeem one promotion or offer at a time, so are your members constantly choosing general trade offers instead of redeeming loyalty rewards? The participation rate helps answer that.??

We saw last year’s Black Friday sales become Black November/December, and Boxing Day sales are starting earlier each year.

?So, my advice is brands need to ensure their programs are always giving Members the same offers plus better deals, versus non-members, and putting the best available offer in front of them.

It’s a terrible experience for a top tier member to realise that their member perk was a worse deal than other promos available to everyone else.

10. What’s the most underestimated force behind a program’s performance?

Absolutely it’s the data that you get.?

From my experience in a previous role, we tracked 95% of sales to loyalty member, which provided many rich insights for the entire business.

For example we knew which categories of product were from first orders and which influenced the lift in frequency of purchase.? From these insights we tailored our customer acquisition campaigns to focus on those products.

That also helped to prioritise where to invest with Google ads because we knew what products were being purchased by first-time customers and the future value of those customers.

It also helped provide a better understanding of the risk of making changes to our customer offer, for example 20% of members generated 60% of the revenue, so it was important we looked at loyalty insights when considering changing anything that those 20% were purchasing.

11. What are three important skills a loyalty program marketer needs?

1.????Commercial understanding.

2.? ? ? Stakeholder management

3.? ? ? Test and learn attitude.

I think good loyalty program marketers should realise how their program interacts with every part of the business and it's important to understand each team's goals and KPIs and share as much data and insights with them as possible to improve decision making and overall business performance.

12. If we are chatting again in (say) 2 years’ time, what do you predict would be the hot topic related to loyalty programs?

Retail media is hot right now and I think in two years’ time brand’s media and buying teams will be reviewing their rate cards through a loyalty lens and maximising that revenue stream by doing more targeted campaigns based on loyalty insights and segmentation.

Also, with such a tough market the last few years, I think many brands are guilty of leaning heavily on the ‘money’ side of the offering and the discounting has been significant.

I think we will see a many brands to re-balance and start looking at the emotional connection (the ‘love’ side), and tapping into what their brands stand for, and then embedding that into their program.

13. Leave us with a lasting loyalty thought

Summary

The more I read this interview with Roz, the more diamonds I find.

The four quotable quotes that delighted me are:

“From a profit point of view, there are answers as to what's working and not working in a business that can be unlocked with loyalty data, slice and dice that data and review that with all the different drivers of a business”

“I think the magic really happens with loyalty program data when you are sharing as much of that to internal teams and stakeholders.”

“Also, when you are assessing the value of the program and the cost of the program, consider the value of the data that you could get. Consider the downstream impact of removing a benefit from a program that has the unintended consequence of reducing member scan rate and therefore data gather for insights. Identify the balance of the value of losing data and intelligence for the business vs saving money.”

“With ecommerce the customer can often only use one discount at a time and so I think it is a terrible experience for a top tier member to realize that their member perks was a worse deal than other promos available to everyone else”

Thanks Roz!

The Point of Loyalty specialises in customer loyalty and Joyalty* program strategy, design and deployment, advising brands on how to achieve long-term loyalty from 'The triple bottom-line of loyalty program success?'.

1. Business: Profitable and sustainable for your business

2. Customers: Meaningful and desirable for your customers

3. Team: With belief and buy-in from your team

Enabled by fit-for-purpose technology + data analysis and insights for action + dynamic personalised member dialogue.

Founder of The Point of Loyalty,?Adam Posner is a customer loyalty specialist and is author of the annual benchmark customer loyalty and loyalty program research study - For Love or Money? now in its 17th edition.

He has developed the Loyalty Program Experience Index SPVx, a rating of a loyalty program by its members based on their experience with the program weighted against three key variables of how Simple (S), Personal (P) and Valuable (V) the program is to them.

Adam also created the 'Six Currencies of Collection Loyalty Program members care about' now available as a SPECIAL EDITION of For Love or Money? and the?'Four Factor Quality Program Proposition' framework?to increase member activity.

Adam has been involved in the design and deployment of loyalty and rewards programs and loyalty research across industries including entertainment, education, pharmacy, hotels, trade and various retail sectors.

The contents of this article are the opinion of the author. No responsibility for loss occasioned by any person acting or refraining from the action as a result of the material in this article can be accepted by the author.