The big Aussie rewards disruption

It is the age of the disruptor, and no brand is safe.

At least these are the sentiments of the latest companies to take on the big guns of aviation, with AirAsia and local marketing business Rewardle teaming up.

With the goal of shaking up traditional big league loyalty initiatives such as Qantas Frequent Flyer and Virgin Velocity, the marriage will take your trips to the butcher, grocer or local café, and turn them into AirAsia flights.

Rewardle’s founder and managing director Ruwan Weerasooriya said members will have the opportunity to collect AirAsia gift vouchers that could take them anywhere on the AirAsia network.

“Rewardle is on a mission to provide local businesses with digital customer engagement tools and business intelligence typically only available to large enterprises,” Weerasooriya said.

“While airline points have become an established loyalty currency, in building Rewardle we saw a huge opportunity to develop a local equivalent where points could be earned and rewards redeemed from the amazing local businesses that service our local communities.”

Simply put, Rewardle has given the traditional “buy 9, get 1 free” paper punch card a digital makeover, extending its utility by adding mobile ordering, payments and social media integrations.

Merchants place a customer facing Rewardle tablet on their counter that acts as a kiosk. During visits, customers check-in on the tablet using a card or the Rewardle smartphone app to collect points and redeem rewards during daily transactions at their favourite places.

“We’ve reimagined membership, points, rewards and payments taking into account the growing impact that social networks, cloud computing, big data and smartphones is having on how we connect and transact. Our partnership with AirAsia will allow us to overlay flight rewards, that are synonymous with leading loyalty programs, while maintaining our uniquely local approach,” Weerasooriya said.

AirAsia’s head of commercial in Australia and NZ Stuart Myerscough said with Rewardle’s increasing profile and growth, there was a strong opportunity to disrupt the multi-billion dollar Australian points and rewards landscape and place the brand at the forefront of Aussie consumer minds.

“Rewardle is generating spectacular growth. In a very short time they have established a network that is connecting around 4000 local merchants with almost 1,000,000 members,” Myerscough said.

“Rewardle has amassed a merchant footprint that is more than 4 times that of McDonalds and their membership growth is outpacing Virgin’s Velocity program without a cent being spent on advertising. With stats like this they certainly got our attention.”

According to Weerasooriya, Rewardle’s growth is powered by a network effect that sees one user of a good or service as having an impact on the value of that product to other people.

Over time, the ‘network effect’ can create a bandwagon phenomenon as the network becomes more valuable and more people join, moving the project from disruptive to dominating.

He describes Rewardle as a social network that connects consumers with their favourite businesses based on transactions.

“The dynamics of a social network are much better aligned to meet what today’s connected consumers are looking for and this insight has shaped how we’ve gone about developing Rewardle. Our model is very similar to other social networks such as Facebook or LinkedIn, but we are based on commerce and have a point currency baked in.”

“Our intention from the outset has been to unionise independent local businesses and consumers onto a single marketing and transactional platform. Our view was that once critical mass was achieved we could leverage the collective scale for the benefit of our merchants and members by engaging brands with the Platform.”

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Email the Travel Weekly team at traveldesk@travelweekly.com.au

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