#524: Leaders in Customer Loyalty: Supplier Voices | CarltonOne Helps Clients Build Global Loyalty Programs that are Meaningful

When most people think about loyalty programs, they likely think about the ones that are designed for consumers — gift cards, travel points, credit card rewards, and other perks that brands use to deepen their relationship with their members.  

CarltonOne is a Canadian technology company that provides the platform powering these types of programs for roughly 200 clients in financial services, technology, automotive, healthcare, the restaurant industry and more. But the company also provides the infrastructure for loyalty programs that might sometimes get overlooked: those that are designed to recognize and reward employees.  

Whether it's recognizing employees for years of service, reaching performance goals or other reasons, these programs are vital to helping companies reduce employee churn and increase engagement among their workforce, according to Melanie Corasaniti, Vice President of Client Success at CarltonOne.

Transcript

Welcome And Session Setup

SPEAKER_00 0:04

Good afternoon, good morning. Mark Johnson from Loyalty360. It's a Tuesday. So welcome back to the Leaders in Customer Loyalty Podcast series. Today is Supplier Voices. When it comes to developing the best customer loyalty program, success depends on a few critical factors. Offering compelling incentives, ensuring strong alignment with customer needs, and knowing how to effectively measure and drive impact. Even seemingly small details, such as fulfilling rewards in the country where they're being redeemed, can make a significant difference. In this session, we'll explore some of the best practices as well as some common misconceptions currently in the customer loyalty market. Today we're going to hear from Melanie Corsanidi. She's the vice president of client success at Carlton One. Welcome, Melanie. How are you doing today?

SPEAKER_01 0:55

Hi, Mark. I'm doing great. Thanks.

SPEAKER_00 0:57

Good,

Melanie’s Path And Data Approach

SPEAKER_00 0:58

good. So, first off, uh, for those who may not know you, would like to know a little bit more about you, your role at Carlton One, and maybe a little bit about your background. What what what's your background like? What's your passion?

SPEAKER_01 1:09

Yeah, for sure. I've been at Carlton One for almost a decade now. And prior to that, I was in the loyalty space in Canada at uh Canada's largest coalition loyalty program, Air Miles, that some of the uh American listeners may know about. Um, and prior to that, I started my career in advertising. So way back when I'm probably aging myself, I did launch the first color phone for Motorola. Um so yeah, definitely aging myself with that comment. But uh what uh what I really love is data. Uh I'm big into making sure that the data tells a story and defines what we're doing with any of the programs we're working on and helps us to manage our clients and their businesses.

SPEAKER_00 1:56

Okay. And data can be an interesting topic, right? Now everyone has more data than they know what to do with. And oftentimes brands get told that they need to action on all of it, right? But oftentimes brands may need five, six, seven data points. Do things simply, get some traction, prove some incrementality, and then move. Is it kind of what you see, or should they be looking at kind of larger data sets?

SPEAKER_01 2:20

I think you need to have a question you want to answer. Um, it's really easy to be taking a look at the data and get go down a rabbit hole and and decide that you're gonna take some action and it might not be the right action. I think you've got to look at the data, you've got to talk about the data. In in my role, we will do, we deal with a lot of clients. So talk about the data with the clients and tell the story of the data. You have to use it to help you guide decisions, not make decisions for you.

SPEAKER_00 2:50

That makes perfect sense. So when when you look at uh kind of your background in in advertising, launching uh the Motorola phone, you know, what what have you learned in these past positions that kind of has led to success in this current role?

SPEAKER_01 3:06

Honestly, people. Um, I I've always worked in my whole career, I've been in kind of a client services role. And I think when you have the right people in roles, both both in the company that you worked at yourself, but also working with you at the client side, and you can establish those relationships that really um that really jive well, and not just in terms of work product and the company success, but making sure that you're having fun while you're doing what you're doing. I think that is uh so important. Surrounding yourself with the right people to help you move the business forward, but also that you can have fun with because uh we all live really stressful lives and everybody's getting busier and busier. If you can't have fun while you're working, I don't know. Uh I don't know if it's for me.

SPEAKER_00 3:50

That makes perfect sense. Uh yeah, enjoying company, doing fun things, but uh everyone seems to be uh excessively busy these days, and uh you have to enjoy what you're doing for sure. You do better work product then.

SPEAKER_01 4:03

For sure. Yeah.

What Carlton One Builds

SPEAKER_00 4:05

So for those who may not be feel familiar with Carlton One, uh you guys do a number of great things in customer loyalty, customer experience, brand engagement. Can you talk a little bit and tell us, you know, how Carlton One supports a brand's customer loyalty efforts? I mean a brief overview of what you do and what industries you do it in.

SPEAKER_01 4:25

Yeah. So Carlton One is uh started out primarily as an employee loyalty um company. So we're a SaaS platform. We provide um services in multiple different types of programs. So from consumer e-commerce loyalty to banking loyalty programs, employee recognition and engagement, years of service programs, sales incentive programs, even down to healthy living and kind of market research programs as well. And we we have a very flexible platform. I've had a number of folks over the years tell me, ask me questions, can you do this? Can you do that? And usually the answer is yes, how do you want to do it? Um, and so for us, the key is that our platform is flexible to manage the the multiple demands of all the mini clients we have. With we've it somewhere in the neighborhood of two 200 clients and over 5,000 individual programs running for different use cases. We have to have that flexibility to be able to service the breadth of our of our client base. Um so we've got clients in financial services, some big ones in the technology space, automotive, healthcare, restaurant industry, both quick service and dine-in restaurants. Um we really run the gamut and we have the folks on our team who are subject matter experts in each of those verticals to be able to help build the best loyalty programs.

SPEAKER_00 5:48

Okay. So you talk about differentiation a little bit from uh maybe the competitors. What differentiates you? Is it the people? Is it that you guys all have a great culture with the you know kind of your heritage and lineage in the employee side? Uh you're doing great work, uh, great clients. So what differentiates you from your competitive set?

Local Reward Sourcing That Works

SPEAKER_01 6:08

I definitely think we've got a really strong team of subject matter experts who can dive in and it's not just that they know their stuff, it's that they care. Um, so we've got a great team of people who love to collaborate. Um, we can always draw on anybody internally to jump on a client meeting, have a conversation, ideate with a client. But the other thing that really sets Carlton One apart from who our competitors are in the market space are um is the fact that we global, we are global and we source globally and offer rewards that are sourced locally to members in um all the different countries around the world. We're in 180 plus countries. So the benefit to our partners is that they have a single integration and have access to 180 countries with gift card, um, merchandise, travel, charities, mobile top-up, all kinds of great offerings. And those brands and offerings that we have are gonna have categories and brand names in the gift card space that the people that are participating in the program are familiar with and that they they identify with and that they want to redeem from. The other advantage is when you're sourcing locally and you're shipping in country, if it's an electronic item that has a plug, the voltage is gonna be right for the country. The warranty coverage is gonna apply fully and completely across the whole product should something go wrong with an electronic item. And the other advantage is the sheer time to delivery. So there's a story that goes around from the beginning of our company where we were talking to a prospect and they were saying how a member that was participating in the program in Brazil or a South American country was um had ordered a pen with their loyalty points. And by the time that pen made its way to that member's hands, it cost $150 and took six weeks. Um, and what we do is we cut out all of that time by sourcing in country and shipping in country. So from time of order to shipping, we're typically three days or less. Um, and with couriers doing what they do now, things are in members' hands within a few days as opposed to weeks.

SPEAKER_00 8:28

Excellent. Yeah, having uh the that local uh kind of approach, it makes it better, right? Because the customer service, the the lack of, you know, you don't become ethnocentric from a product perspective, but yeah, having uh the that touch point closer definitely works, especially on the employee side, something to go wrong with it.

SPEAKER_01 8:48

Yeah, it's certainly a fun thing to be uh traveling on my personal travels, and I'll be in a in a country in the Caribbean or something, and I'm like, oh, we have a gift card for that brand in our catalog. And I oh I know that brand of PV or whatever that I come across. It's kind of a neat uh it's a neat thing, and not to mention the fact that coming from working really focused in the Canadian, uh in the Canadian um it's space for the longest time in my career and moving to somewhere somewhere where we are global. Um I could maybe name for you the the currency code for any country around the world. Um, because you it's the things you pick up kind of as you go and names of banks in all kinds of different countries. And it's a it's a it's a neat little niche that we live in.

SPEAKER_00 9:34

That's good, that's good, that's awesome. That's right there. Makes you an expert then.

SPEAKER_01 9:39

I like to think so, but I don't know. Maybe.

SPEAKER_00 9:42

Perfect. So when you look at customer loyalty, uh it's uh growing uh in importance and impact uh for many brands, uh, but kind of understanding what customer loyalty should mean uh to them, to the brand is very important. And we love to get qualitative perspectives from the suppliers and and brands that we talk to. You know, what does customer loyalty mean? How do you define customer loyalty? You know, what does it mean to your organization and to the programs and brands that you support?

Defining Loyalty Through Happy Members

SPEAKER_01 10:11

I mean, loyalty is what our company is built on and why the clients that we have, like the MasterCards, Apple, Dell, and thousands of others choose to partner with us. Are our teams are subject matter experts in the different types of loyalty, whether it's a years of service program that you want to engage your highest serving employees and make sure that there's uh employee churn is is reduced, or a program where you have channel salespeople earning tens of thousands of dollars of a year, uh tens of thousands of dollars a year. We want to make sure that you have the ability to get something that is attainable for you and also something that you want as part of your loyalty program. It's so important to have um not just choice, but breadth of choice, because every person has a different, has a different desire for what it is that they think that they want. But you have to give people things that are going to resonate with them because if I'm making my smoothie with that great Vitamix blender that I redeemed for with my years of service credit, for example, I'm gonna feel great about the place that I work every morning when I'm making my breakfast, um, as opposed to just getting a crystal clock or a watch, kind of the old way that uh those programs used to be run. So loyalty is important, um, but what you have to have is happy members. I don't think it matters what kind of a program you're you're creating or or participating in. If you don't have happy members, you're not going to succeed.

SPEAKER_00 11:38

Yeah, it makes

Attainable Rewards Versus Empty Hype

SPEAKER_00 11:39

sense. And then you talked a little bit about uh kind of some old school methodology or mentality, right? Buying a clock or buying a watch uh that may not work on the employee side, on the brand side. You know, what are some of the common misconceptions that brands have when it comes to building or to redesigning a customer loyalty program, an employee program? You know, what do you see?

SPEAKER_01 12:02

I think you need attainability and you also need some aspirationalness, um, aspirationality, aspirational rewards. Um, you need to have something for people to reach for, but also something that they can get right away. The more that somebody participates in a program, once they redeem or participate in maybe a game that you've got online for a period of time, they're going to be more engaged. They're going to be motivated to go earn more points and participate more in that program. So frequency is important, but unless it's a compelling program and you've got something that the people want to get out of it, then they're not gonna, they're not gonna come. It's not build it and they will come. It's build it and make it something meaningful to them and then they will come. I think that has come with a shift in the loyalty industry over the past 10, 15 years or so, because there's been a saturation and people really are um choosing the programs that they want to participate in as opposed to participating in everything that's presented to them. And they're only going to participate in the programs that resonate with them. Uh, I mean, you've got long-term programs uh like a lot of the ones we participate in here in Canada, like PC Optimum Program, Air Miles, where I used to work. Um, and then you've got the short-term programs like McDonald's, how they do their um Monopoly program, and you've got the roll up the rim type promotional programs at Tim Hortons, and they can drive short-term engagement. And it depends on what you're trying to get out of the program, what you want to do. But um, there's a loyalty program. I'm a mom of two teenage daughters, so we participate in the Sephora loyalty program and we spend more of our disposable income there than I would care to admit. Um, but I do have, as a result, a fairly high balance of points, and I can continually frustrated with that particular program because they release these great rewards, but they'll release one or two and only on a particular time on a particular day. And I'm sorry, but I'm busy. But maybe I do want that thing. So you have to make it so that the people that are participating in your program want to continue to participate because if you're not doing that, then you're not succeeding.

SPEAKER_00 14:11

Yeah, that makes perfect sense. So you talked about some of the misconceptions uh and how to how to look at them. You know, when you look at kind of customer loyalty, customer engagement, you know, what are the biggest challenges, uh, or maybe what what's the biggest opportunity that you see today for brands?

The Risk Of Devaluing Points

SPEAKER_01 14:29

I think that you you really have to know who your audience are. Um, you have to understand your customer, you have to understand your employee and what they want. And I think right now you have to be the program that people want to want to participate in. There are so many in the marketplace. You don't have um, we don't have enough uh space in our wallets or time in our brains to focus on programs. I mean, even think about the the airline loyalty space and all the websites and bloggers and influencers that are out there talking about how you can get your first class ticket to Japan uh for a song after you transfer your points 16 times. And the average person doesn't have time to focus on that. And so you need to give them something that they want. And I think also there's been a trend to devaluing, particularly in the consumer loyalty space, devaluing the value of a point. So you come in and you launch this great war rewards program, and all of your um customers are excited about it, they start participating, and then as a company, you realize the cost of that. And you have to consider always the benefit on the other side of that cost. And and what it comes down to in a lot of companies is you have you have that cost, and you're thinking, oh my God, I need to reduce costs, so I'm gonna cut my loyalty program benefits, or I'm gonna devalue those points. And then you lose customers faster than you gain them in the first place. You really have to carefully manage and consider that loyalty program not to be a cost, but something that drives incremental benefit for you.

SPEAKER_00 16:07

Yeah, and that that's uh something we're hearing more and more about. And we have a couple of sessions at the conference that's gonna talk about this this divide between the CMO and CFO, right? Where uh the CFO may not understand the program, they're very focused on costs, right? And and if you end up going and cutting the program, devaluing the program, oftentimes RANs will even not not mention it right, or they will give you uh, you know, a free dog or you know, something that you may not want necessarily kind of sleight of hand, Jedi mind trick, like, oh don't worry about it, your points are worth a fifth of what they were. We're gonna give you a free cup of coffee every day or every every birthday. And well, that's not what I wanted. And I I I often think that in brands think that they can kind of get away with it. But you're right, that long-term lack of engagement, there's a cost of that, like goodwill on the balance sheet, it can be very impactful. And and brands can say, oh, holy cow, my I lost so much engagement on my program. And I think we need to make uh you know, talk about that more and bring it front and center because the the the customers that do well, they're continuing to invest, right? They have an approach, they have that organizational alignment, but that CMO CFO to buy it's kind of a thing right now.

SPEAKER_01 17:18

It really is, yeah. Well, with the economy being what it is, uh everybody's got to cut costs somehow. Um, it's just, I don't think it should be in your loyalty program because especially if you have high participation rates and they're and you're driving frequency, uh, you need to keep that going right now in this in the economic situation we're currently in.

SPEAKER_00 17:38

Yeah, absolutely.

AI Personalisation And KPI Focus

SPEAKER_00 17:39

So when you look at some of the new technologies out there, everyone's talking about AI. It's been in the news uh last couple of you know, last week or so, some of the new models that are out there, gamification, zero party, first party data. You know, what do you think is kind of the biggest thing that's gonna happen for the rest of 26? Uh, you know, is it AI? Is it gamification? What do you think?

SPEAKER_01 17:59

Everybody talks about AI, but I don't think anybody has really, really um hit the nail on the head yet. Um, we're working on a lot of AI initiatives on our side and and how to how to put the right rewards in front of the right member at the right time so that you increase their satisfaction, cut down on their time shopping, um, try to shift people to rewards that are the things that are going to leave that lasting impression, like the smoothie I talked about a little bit earlier, where I'm making my smoothie in the morning, I'm happy about my employer. Um I think that's the that's the place where AI is gonna do its best in in our ecosystem, is using it as an engine to decide what is going to be best to put in front of people. Leveraging AI for incremental search technology. How do you make sure that you're giving people in a rewards program where I've got millions of rewards, I want to be able to present people things that are attainable and things that they might want to put on their wish list for once they get that next year's anniversary influx of points, for example. So definitely personalization, driving more um engagement by putting things in front of people at the right time is I think what AI is going to do. It then presents what you talked about a little bit earlier, is so much data. And you have to decide what you want to focus on. So I think determining what your KPIs are and what your objectives are for a program is so key because you have to focus what you're doing. Otherwise, you can go off track.

SPEAKER_00 19:39

Excellent. So on the flip side of that, are you think there are some technologies or buzzwords or euphemisms that are out there right now regarding customer loyalty, customer experience that may be overhyped, that uh that may be kind of overvalued?

SPEAKER_01 19:54

I think AI, actually. Um, everyone's talking about it, and I have yet to see really, really solid use cases of people using AI to really drive behavior within a loyalty program. I also think gamification is a word that's thrown around a lot too. It's something that isn't um it works really well. So I talked about the Monopoly program at um at McDonald's and also Tim Horton's roll up the rim. Both of those are excellent uses of gamification physically in the store. Um I don't I I don't know that I've yet seen a really good use of gamification to drive behavior within a loyalty program that hasn't been short-term. I'd love to see that happen and actually try to influence behavior using those games. There's games and some of those games are great. Don't get me wrong. Like there's a Starbucks Christmas game that I like to like play around with. Any game that comes up, I'll go check it out. But I don't know that it really necessarily drives the engagement that you're looking for long term or becomes or makes that person become a sticky customer.

SPEAKER_00 21:05

Absolutely. Yeah. So why don't you think gamification has? Just because you know, gamification can be uh attaining zero-party data, right? To get that you're you're talking about just games themselves, right? Playing Monopoly, playing uh Candy Crush phone. Yeah, okay. That makes perfect sense.

Partnerships Plus A Smarter Wallet

SPEAKER_00 21:23

Uh what about partnerships? You know, what role do partnerships uh play in kind of helping brands create more effective, efficient customer loyalty programs, engaging with their customers in a in a different, hopefully unique way. What do you see with partnerships?

SPEAKER_01 21:39

One I've read about recently is uh Tim Hortons and Canadian Tire, two iconic, iconic Canadian brands that have decided to join forces uh and and leverage their their power to become greater together. So they're working on um consolidating their programs and and Cross collaboration, which I think is great. But and that's that's a great example of inside a loyalty program collaborating. I think also for us, we have partnerships with a number of brands who supply us with great um uh great brand name items. So Apple, as an example, we get direct from Apple as part of our C1 uh partnership uh partnership ecosystem. And uh that allows us to have great conversations with prospects. It also allows us to work really well and get those products again in the hands of those members as quickly as possible. Um, I also think outside of loyalty industry, partnerships do a lot too. So if you look at other collaborations, Target often does uh collaborations with designers or with women-owned businesses or BIPOC-owned businesses that help to drive awareness through Target's power of some smaller businesses that maybe um would be less well known and help to drive help to drive business to some of those folks. But also, I think that there is um there's a lot to be said about Target's other collaborations with larger designers. So where they're driving, I think a couple of years ago, they did a collab with Kate Spade, for example. So you can, as a person who shops at Target, attain a Kate Spade bag for much cheaper than you would if you were going to buy it directly from Kate Spade. So I think there's again attainability and accessibility, and then also um helping to drive business for smaller businesses using the power that you have. I think from an ecosystem standpoint, having the ability to um easily shop and shop without losing things and problems. So we've recently launched a wallet within our ecosystem that allows you, as you redeem for gift cards, to deposit those into your wallet. So you're not gonna lose them. They're not gonna be buried in your email, they're not gonna be in a screenshot on your phone. Um, and so you can leverage new ecosystems and new processes to help drive better behavior. And all we're doing with that wallet is making it easier for members to use their points and to use what they've received with their points and not lose it. And then again, you've got happy members and we've got happy clients.

SPEAKER_00 24:23

That makes perfect sense. And when you look at uh Carlton One, what's on the horizon for you and your team?

Roadmap Highlights And Closing Thanks

SPEAKER_00 24:30

Uh, you know, what are we gonna see going out and going through 26 and then 27 from the Carlson One team?

SPEAKER_01 24:35

We've got a very, very full roadmap. Um, we're working to uh create our data lake with Snowflake and leverage data and that analytics through Sigma. We are driving deeper Google Analytics um data data analysis. We are starting on our own, like I said, AI personalization journey. We're launching a wallet where you're gonna have your gift cards and your prepaid cards available to be redeemed with some bonus affiliate marketplace um connections as well. Uh, we're launching a brand new promotional portal that will allow our partners to get earlier and better notification of when things are going on a promotion or being featured or on sale so that they can go that go get those in front of their members who can receive those items at a lower cost to them. Tons of new self-serve tools for our partners. Um there's no end to the list of things that we've got going on.

SPEAKER_00 25:34

Melanie, thank you very much for taking the time to speak with us today on the Leaders in Customer Loyalty Podcast. Uh, it was great to hear your perspective on customer loyalty, the role of AI, the importance of offering the right reward incentives. We appreciate your insights and the opportunities to look ahead at some of the things that Carleton One is focused on in 2026.

SPEAKER_01 25:53

Thanks so much for taking the time, Mark.

SPEAKER_00 25:55

I also want to thank everyone for taking the time to tune in today to our Leaders and Customer Loyalty Podcast. If you haven't already, please subscribe to the Leaders in Customer Loyalty Podcast. Follow us on YouTube and LinkedIn. The links are provided below.