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Hal Brierley, Chairman & CEO of eMiles
As advertisers find it more difficult to penetrate their target markets with the development of filters, ad blocking, TiVo, etc., a pioneer in loyalty rewards creates a new program that connects willing consumers and advertisers.
e-Miles offers a link between advertisers and consumers that matches common interests. Not only are the consumers, referred to as members, interested in the type of product or service the advertiser offers, but they have agreed to watch advertising messages and provide feedback to the advertisers for a reward of airline or hotel points.
Here’s an example of how the program works:
e-Miles asks the member after viewing a message to answer 4 or 5 questions about their reaction to the message, whether they found the message interesting, if there’s interest in the advertiser, and whether or not they bought or plan to buy from that advertiser. If the member doesn’t complete the questions, the loyalty points are not awarded. When the member completes the marketing message, points are automatically added to their desired loyalty rewards program. Once an account is created, each member has his or her own portal. during enrollment, the member selects his or her areas of interest, which is used to connect audiences to advertisers that match.
For advertisers, the benefits lie within the feedback obtained through the post-message inquiries. The advertiser gets the undivided attention of a consumer whose demographics are highly attractive. Instead of the marketing message hitting the consumer at any random time, the member selects when to view the message at time that is convenient for them. Unlike traditional advertising programs, advertisers are getting the direct attention of the consumer that fits their market demographics. Plus, there’s an added value component in the e-Miles program that is very unique: advertisers only pay if members fully participate in the viewing of the entire message and complete the interactive response after the message.
Hal Brierley, Chairman and CEO of e-Miles, predicts “We are entering an incentive-based society. The next battle ground for loyalty is a reward for time.” Hal believes e-Miles is at the forefront of this battle. There are programs that offer rewards based on email contact but it is mostly used for online research. Rewarding people for watching advertising is still in its infancy. The e-Miles response rates are consistently high. In fact, 88% of members with a stated interested in receiving messages from a specific retailer watched the commercial and interacted to get the 5-mile thank you reward. This type of response rate is exciting for the industry and offers valuable feedback for the advertiser.
In response to some advertising agencies that are skeptical of the e-Miles program, Hal explains “Time is our most valuable resource and often it gets taken for granted.” This scenario reminds Hal of 25 years ago when he was launching airline programs when airline executives squirmed about the loyalty program. Now, the world has changed. Hal adds, “Consumers will change their behavior if they are offered an incentive. The key is offering the right incentive and offering it to the right person.” e-Miles helps by connecting interested consumers to companies who sell products or services that fit within the members’ interest.
In the past two years, e-Miles has run more than 1500 promotional programs and enrolled 1.5 million members in the program. Hal says one of the challenges is to get advertisers to share their results and use it to promote the program to other advertisers but so far, advertisers are hoarding the response rates.
The program is proving to be an excellent advertising channel for non-profits to solicit new donors. A forest service organization participated in the e-Miles program with 400,000 members stating they had an interest in receiving public service messages. 30% of these members opened the message and as a result, signed up 66,000 new members of their “Friends of the Forest” campaign over a weekend. In the first month these members received the forest newsletter. An astonishing 86% of those people read the newsletter and answered the five questions that were provided in the newsletter. Eighteen months later, half of this group is still opening and reading each monthly newsletter, for 5 airline miles.
When designing the program, e-Miles asked people how much time they were willing to spend – 4-5 minutes a day – which at 5 miles/participation equates to one free airline ticket per year. In this program, it’s easy to see how both consumers and advertisers get something valuable.
Consumers that want to sign up for the e-Miles loyalty rewards.
Advertisers that want to participate
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Jennifer L. Taylor dba The Word Tailor
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