Airline reward programs make money when people earn and spend points. So they constantly bombard their members with information on how they can earn and spend points.

Airline and vacation deals, app launches, shiny new websites, bonus offers, perks, redemption deals, bank deals, deals, deals. Where to earn points, here, here, here, there! It’s overload. And the result is plummeting customer engagement rates.

We needed a way to reach our members and inform them of the countless ways they can all earn and spend points. What’s more, we needed to prove that Velocity Points are easier to earn than ever before. In fact, you can pretty much earn them anywhere you spend money.

Most brands employ the use of influencers - people with millions of followers that get paid fortunes to promote a brand or product. Problem is, influencers aren’t authentic, engaging and they don’t necessarily promote a brand because they believe in it. Furthermore, word of mouth and customer endorsements are 64% more trustworthy than pure brand messages (Nielsen).

So rather than paying one person with millions of followers lots of money, we converted our marketing budget into points and offered millions of people, with a handful of followers, millions of points.

Simply put, we created a new word, and subsequently our most powerful marketing tool - Earnbassadors.

It wasn’t just a marketing shift, we reshaped the entire business model and innovatively used Points to pay our members to promote us to their followers, not simply to reward members for shopping with our partners.

The Earnbassadors democratised the frequent flyer points category, allowing regular people to earn more points than influencers and rich people who earn points on their big expensive credit cards. Which meant more regular people were able to fly around the world for free.

A ‘Call to Earns’ video launched the new platform, asking real members (who actually use the program) to create content about points, for points - an epic product demonstration of the power of Velocity Points.

We put 12-months of briefs online and let members choose what they promoted - our new app, 15% transfer bonus offers, and countless more ways to earn and spend frequent flyer points .

The more creative, authentic and educational the content was, the more points they received, regardless of how many followers they had.