How The Club wins consumers’ hearts with exceptional loyalty strategies

In today’s customer-centric world, brands have shifted their focus to retaining consumers by delivering personalised experiences through loyalty programmes. It applies to The Club, a loyalty programme operated by HKT, which offers variety of benefits, perks and exclusive experiences co-created by partners and affiliates to enhance customer satisfaction and foster long-term relationships. 

That’s why The Club partnered with Agoda and FWD Hong Kong in year 2023 to launch the white-label online travel booking platform and the Club Care online insurance platform respectively, enabling customers to easily book their holidays from as well as apply for insurance online while accumulating Clubpoints to redeem travel and health rewards.  

Club Travel, powered by Agoda, offers more than two millions of hotels, resorts, villas and guesthouses at over a thousand popular destinations worldwide, as well as bookings for more than 200 full-service and low-cost carriers 

The Club Care platform distributes an array of online insurance products from FWD, such as life, medical (including Voluntary Health Insurance Scheme) and accident, on top of arranging and providing promotional offers from time to time. 

The Club Travel and Club Care campaigns have leveraged a holistic lifestyle approach that engaged members in travel and wellness aspects to increase members’ satisfaction and loyalty. It has also extended The Club’s marketing capabilities built in other pillars to provide a cost-effective way to enter new markets. 

These campaigns have won judges’ hearts at MARKETING-INTERACTIVE's Loyalty and Engagement Awards Hong Kong 2024, bagging the silver awards in both the Best Loyalty Programme- Travel and Hospitality categories for Club Travel and the Best Partnership Loyalty Campaign for Club Care. 

During an interview with MARKETING-INTERACTIVE, Clive Chow, chief operating officer, digital commerce of HKT Digital Ventures said the campaign has demonstrated a successful strategy in transforming the loyalty and the eCommerce platform into a lifestyle platform.  

“We are able to integrate a lot of content in different pillars, and engage customers from all walks of life,” he said. 

In terms of marketing strategies, the campaign has utilised The Club’s brand value and awareness to reach a wider audience. It has also captured customers’ interest in the exclusive value proposition and advantages of the new insurance products under The Club. Furthermore, it has boosted customer satisfaction and retention by providing FWD’s smooth and proven portal service and experience to its members. 

These winning strategies have set HKT apart as it leveraged its competitive edge and uniqueness, such as its strong partnerships in the insurance and the travel sectors.  

The campaign has also leveraged PCCW/HKT groups' strength, The Club’s 3.8 million member-base and its data capability to reach a wide audience. Using data analysis, the Club automatically identified high-potential health-conscious members to make wellness offers. 

Chow added, “We were able to enhance the loyalty to become a true engagement strategy through the demonstration of the lifestyle in the wellness and dining experience and reward and shopping, a full-scale approach to reach our customers effectively.” 

Moving on, Chowsaid The Club will focus on the adoption of technology, such as artificial intelligence (AI) and martech, “It is important to look into how we can adopt martech as part of our effective customer journey, to drive productivity, efficiency and marketing strategies in effective way in the future.” 

This article is done in collaboration with The Club.