How The Club wins the hearts of consumers with exceptional loyalty strategies

In today’s customer-centric world, brands have shifted their focus to retaining customers by offering personalized experiences through loyalty programs. This is also the case with The Club, a loyalty program operated by HKT that offers a variety of benefits, perks and exclusive experiences developed jointly with partners and affiliates to increase customer satisfaction and build long-term relationships.

That’s why in 2023, The Club has partnered with Agoda and FWD Hong Kong to launch the white-label online travel booking platform and online insurance platform Club Care, respectively, allowing customers to easily book their holidays and purchase insurance online while collecting Club Points to redeem travel and health rewards.

Club Travel, operated by Agoda, offers more than two million hotels, resorts, villas and guesthouses in over a thousand popular destinations worldwide, as well as bookings for more than 200 full-service and low-cost airlines

The Club Care platform distributes a range of FWD’s online insurance products, such as life, health (including voluntary health insurance) and personal accident insurance. In addition, special offers are arranged and provided from time to time.

The Club Travel and Club Care campaigns use a holistic lifestyle approach that engages members in travel and wellness aspects to increase their satisfaction and loyalty. In addition, the club’s marketing capabilities anchored in other pillars have been expanded to provide a cost-effective way to reach new markets.

These campaigns won the hearts of the judges at MARKETING-INTERACTIVE’s Loyalty and Engagement Awards Hong Kong 2024, winning silver in the categories of “Best Loyalty Program – Travel and Hospitality” for “Club Travel” and “Best Partnership Loyalty Campaign” for “Club Care”.

In an interview with MARKETING-INTERACTIVE, Clive Chow, Chief Operating Officer for Digital Commerce at HKT Digital Ventures, said the campaign hadhas demonstrated a successful strategy in transforming its loyalty and e-commerce platform into a lifestyle platform.

“We can integrate a lot of content into different pillars and appeal to customers from all walks of life,” he said.

In terms of marketing strategies, the campaign leveraged The Club’s brand equity and awareness to reach a wider audience. It also generated customer interest in the exclusive value propositions and benefits of The Club’s new insurance products. In addition, it increased customer satisfaction and loyalty by providing its members with FWD’s smooth and proven portal service and experience.

These successful strategies have enabled HKT to differentiate itself from the competition by leveraging its competitive advantage and uniqueness, such as its strong partnerships in the insurance and travel sectors.

The campaign also leveraged the strength of the PCCW/HKT groups, the club’s 3.8 million members and its data capacity to reach a wide audience. Using data analytics, the club automatically identified health-conscious members with high potential to offer them wellness offers.

Chow added, “By demonstrating the lifestyle in wellness and dining, as well as rewards and shopping, we have been able to expand loyalty into a true engagement strategy – a comprehensive approach to effectively reach our customers.”

In further steps, according to Chowsaid, the club will focus on adopting technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) and Martech: “It is important to explore how we can use Martech as part of our effective customer journey to effectively drive productivity, efficiency and marketing strategies in the future.”

This article was created in collaboration with The club.