yuu Rewards Club's new CEO on the future of loyalty programmes in Singapore

Loyalty programme yuu Rewards Club by technology venture minden.ai has named Chen Peng as its new CEO, as confirmed by the company to MARKETING-INTERACTIVE. He will report to minden.ai’s board of directors in his new role. 

Peng brings to the team a career of expertise. He was previously with Mastercard as its vice president of product sales, a role he held for three years. Prior to that, Peng helmed the role of regional vice president at SessionM. He set up SessionM's APAC business prior to it being acquired by Mastercard in the three years that he spent there. 

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MARKETING-INTERACTIVE sat down with Peng shortly after his appointment to find out more about how he plans to shape yuu's plans for the coming year in his new role as well as to find out more about the loyalty programme scene in Singapore. 

"I’m excited by the opportunity to further develop yuu Rewards Club because of its immense growth potential. Coalition loyalty programmes are something all consumers desire, but that are extremely hard to create and sustain," Peng said. 

He explained that the first wave of loyalty programmes started in the 1970s with a pure focus on points and rewards. About 15 years ago, “data is the new oil” was gaining popularity and a lot of brands started to run loyalty programs to collect data and drive personalisation.

In the last five to 10 years though, digitalisation started becoming the frontier for loyalty competition, points, cashback, payment and offers with businesses converging into the same space. 

"At the moment, there is a huge wave of consolidation and ecosystem play in the loyalty industry. Closed loop programmes are losing popularity, and all loyalty programs are doing partnership and integration into a wider ecosystem to enrich their value proposition," he explained. 

Saying that, Peng said that data has shown that Singaporean consumers are still highly interested in loyalty programmes, with 70% of them being enthusiasts of these promotions when buying products. In the APAC region, 72% of consumers are loyalty programmes enthusiasts, with Australia having the highest percentage of 79%.

"In the current loyalty landscape, an average Singaporean participates in 16.6 loyalty programmes but this is not ideal nor meaningful as consumers have their points spread out across 16 programmes and have to receive marketing communications from 16 parties. With their personal data being held by that many companies, they also face a
greater risk of having their data being compromised," said Peng. 

He explained that a good coalition loyalty programme is a win-win for both brands and consumers because it streamlines the loyalty experience for customers and allows them to earn more points and utilise points while shopping at a variety of brands. At the same time, participating brands reduce costs, and increase sales and touchpoints.

"What yuu Rewards Club then aims to do is to consolidate a multitude of loyalty programmes from the most popular brands into one currency and programme so that from a consumer perspective, they would be able to accumulate a meaningful quantity of points, rebates, and rewards," said Peng. 

He added that from a retailer’s perspective, the consolidation is more cost-effective for businesses as they do not need to invest heavily in in-house loyalty programmes or on a system and data analysts.

"This creates a win-win scenario for both consumers and retailers when they tap into yuu Rewards Club where consumers are rewarded in savings and exclusive benefits while retailers may leverage on cross-promotion opportunities across various verticals while enhancing their sales and customer base," he said. 

He explained that as good as the programme is, yuu is always looking to grow its brand database but that it has to be cautious as it expands that the brands add value to members.

He added that yuu was launched in Singapore with an ecosystem of brands across different verticals that are well known and loved by Singapore consumers which is what has made its initial success so prominant. "Even as we welcome three new partner brands at our one-year mark, we are still working on bringing in even more like-minded brands across even from more verticals such as specialty retail that members frequent daily," he said.

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