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Recent changes to a significant airline loyalty partnership and payments are tightening the economics behind points. Updates to Qantas Frequent Flyer / Emirates Skywards and interchange reform from the Reserve Bank of Australia mean points are harder to earn and less valuable to redeem. As programs shift from customer-first to margin-aware, success will depend less on currency and more on strategy, customer understanding, and CRM execution.

Most CRM programs aren’t underperforming… they’re being over-credited. Scroll LinkedIn and you’ll see huge claims about email driving revenue. The work often looks great, but most results are built on attribution, not impact. Attribution shows where CRM showed up, not whether it changed behaviour. Incrementality answers that. It measures what CRM actually did and that’s what the business really cares about.

One of the most common questions I get asked is deceptively simple, “How do I know if our CRM program is performing well?” On the surface, it feels like a metrics question. But it’s not. It’s a strategy question. Most CRM teams set objectives. They build journeys. They send campaigns. They report on opens, clicks and revenue. But very few step back and define, clearly and collectively, what acceptable , good and great performance actually look like, what they’re measuring and

Consumer confidence is 68.5. Inflation 3.8%. Rates 4.10%. 3.3M Aussie households have mortgages. Most brands react the same way: more promos, more volume, more urgency. Lazy. When pressure rises, customers don’t stop buying, they get smarter. They scrutinise and trade down. More emails won’t save you. Bigger discounts won’t build loyalty. Shift from growth-at-all-costs to retention. Protect your top 20%. Relevance beats volume. Smart wins.

Anyone who knows me knows that I love cake (gluten free these days, but still cake.) My grandparents, uncles and now cousins have all been involved in building a successful chain of bakeries on the Gold Coast. Oddly enough, I think bakeries provide one of the best ways to explain where CRM and loyalty sit in customer strategy. Running a bakery is a perfect analogy for how customer engagement really works. The Cake — The Core of Your Business The cake itself is the core produc

A loyalty program without CRM is just a database with points. Over the past few days I received emails from Sheridan and Priceline confirming rewards I’d earned and how to use them. Simple, clear and timely. With Australians now belonging to around 10 loyalty programs, customers aren’t logging into apps to check rewards. CRM is what brings loyalty to life, recognising the customer and delivering the right message at the right moment.

I opened my spam folder this week; big brands, serious budgets, sitting in spam. I’m also getting 2:00am emails for offers expiring the same day. That’s not innovation failure, it’s hygiene failure. Before you optimise, sanitise. Deliverability, throttle rate and send-time discipline protect every dollar CRM generates. You can’t optimise what customers never receive. Go check your spam folder.

Interesting recent updates to Qantas Frequent Flyer And Velocity. Velocity has focused on accelerating status earn and rewarding long-term loyalty. In early 2026, Velocity launched one of its largest ever bonus Status Credit promotions, allowing members to fast-track to Gold, Platinum and Platinum Plus. The bigger structural change is the introduction of Forever Gold, recognising sustained loyalty over time. Overall, Velocity’s strategy is about making status more attainable

Every CRM demo now starts the same way. Slick dashboard. Auto-built journey. Subject line in seconds. “Powered by AI.” I’m not anti-AI. The speed gains are real. The accessibility is impressive. But let’s be honest. A lot of what’s now being labelled as “AI” is what we used to call data modelling, predictive analytics, automation logic, segmentation rules, etc. Important? Yes. New? Not entirely. AI is accelerating execution and optimising our resources and time. It’s not rein

Since moving into consulting, I’ve been watching how lots of CRM 'consultants' define “success” and there’s a clear pattern emerging. Big revenue claims, bold percentage lifts, screenshots of attributed sales and increasingly confident statements about AI driving performance gains. But here’s the uncomfortable question that rarely gets asked; was it the investment in AI that caused the uplift, or was it your very hard working undervalued CRM team curating exceptional content?

Most organisations have invested heavily in CRM platforms, data and talent, expecting retention and revenue growth. Yet many still treat CRM as a send button. In reality, CRM sees behaviour shifts, margin erosion and offer fatigue before revenue slows. With AI removing execution limits, the constraint is structural. Used strategically, CRM is commercial intelligence, not a production desk.

Brands who have robust CRM programs deliver the best results. I’ve been refining a simple Customer Engagement Matrix that helps teams step back and ask who do we want to target? with what sort of messaging and offers? how frequently? and what is the end goal of these communications?

Email and CRM aren’t just about flashy percentages or beautifully designed automations. They’re about measurement discipline, commercial reality, and (most importantly) trust! When you work in CRM, you’re not just sending campaigns, you’re managing customer data and brand reputation.

The future CRM practitioner won’t be judged by how quickly they can build a journey, but by whether that journey should exist at all, who it should target, and how its success is measured. AI won’t kill CRM as a profession. But it will kill the idea that CRM is just about building campaigns. And honestly, that’s probably long overdue.

A big tick to THE ICONIC for genuinely lifting their loyalty game 👏 Not long ago, I shared my perspective on a missed opportunity to recognise their most loyal customers. Credit where credit’s due, they’ve well and truly turned that around.

In terms of the basics, like email targeting, it wasn’t up to the standard of what people would expect today. This article demonstrates the true value of apply the "basics of CRM" and what impact it can have to your CRM strategy

Curious to hear how others are thinking about this, are benefits finally about to win, or will discounts always be the fastest lever, even if they’re the most dangerous one?

There’s a meaningful difference between what a brand wants to recommend (sometimes driven by commercial priorities) and what data and algorithms suggest a customer is genuinely likely to purchase next.

Some of the platforms that used to be dismissed as “cheaper, basic alternatives” are now rolling out genuinely industry-leading features (hello AI, production recommendations, etc 👋) that rival and in some cases outperform the traditional big players.