Jo Allan
Aimia has hired top travel marketer Josephine Allan as director of loyalty design and optimization, where she will work towards reshaping the company’s global loyalty programs.
“Essentially what that means is making sure loyalty programs work, and asking how they need to evolve to address new consumer trends and the ever-changing definition of loyalty,” Allan told Marketing about her new role. “How do we take all those things that, as marketers, we know are important to customer engagement, and weave that into what we traditionally know as loyalty?”
Allan was previously regional VP of loyalty and partner marketing at InterContinental Hotels Group, the parent company of InterContinental Hotels and Holiday Inn. She said her experience in travel marketing, which included a large helping of data analysis, bears a lot of similarity to the data-driven loyalty marketing Aimia is known for. She’s also had past experience working with technology companies like Koodo and Samsung.
Allan will take over from Andrea Forgacs, who is on maternal leave from the company.
Last month Marketing spoke to Aimia’s new Canadian CMO, John Boynton, about how loyalty marketing has moved beyond a narrow focus on using points to drive retention. Boynton said the goal of modern loyalty marketing is creating greater intimacy with the consumer. Allan said she agrees with that perspective, and it’s a big part of what drew her to the company.
“Loyalty has had a very narrow definition. In a lot of people’s minds, you say ‘loyalty program’ and they think points or miles,” she said. “I think we need to broaden that.”
She said the language around loyalty needs to include customer engagement and customer advocacy. “I think what brands are trying to do is capitalize on customers who love the brand so much that they become their marketing engine,” she said. “That’s what CMOs are looking to unlock.”
