Business Context
The Pulse Program was Afterpay’s first global loyalty program launched in 2020 with the mission of rewarding responsible spending and on-time payments. Encouraging healthy financial behavior in an industry that is often criticized for glamorizing debt? Great in theory.
In practice, it struggled to deliver. New customers weren’t showing up. Existing customers weren’t sticking around. And churn was very much churning.
For a loyalty program, it wasn’t exactly building loyalty.
My Role:
Product Strategy & Insights Lead (turned Product Manager)
Step-by-Step
Current State Assessment
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Analyze internal data - user acquisition, engagement, churn, conversion, risk.
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Deep dive into other loyalty and rewards programs - in and outside of fintech to identify opportunities.
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One hour, one-on-one user testing among existing loyalty members (range in tiers, region, etc.) to assess how current members are using the Pulse program.
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Ran sessions with key stakeholders - across product, design, engineering, marketing, sales, analytics, risk - to understand their perspective on the loyalty program - i.e., what works well, what doesn’t work so well, how does it serve their team KPIs?
Strategic Development
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Conducted workshops with cross-functional teams on a new vision and features.
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Spec out new program vision and features - prioritizing those in MVP vs. future state.
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Develop the product roadmap, identify short and long term milestones, and OKRs.
Product
Build
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Wrote a lot of documents to spell out the product requirements - i.e., overall program structure, individual reward benefits/features, sunsetting current program.
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Built the prototype in close collaboration with engineers and design.
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Pressure tested the prototype internally and also with Afterpay users, fine tuning the use cases and identifying edge cases.
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Sunset the existing program across multiple phases. Worked closely with engineering to shut the program & its features down. Collaborated with legal, compliance, marketing, and CS to ensure proper client communications were in place.
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Rolled out the first version of the rewards program, and ramped up across several weeks.
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Reviewed product performance based on established OKRs and via event tracking.
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Fully ramped up the product and marketed it a lot.
Product Launch
What Pulse Program Was
Tiered Structure
3-tiers with users leveling up based on the # of on-time payments made, along with some additional rules such as penalties for late payment or tier expiration dates.
Bit of a black box, really.
Points-based
Users earn points per on-time payment, which can then be redeemed for retailer offers. However, the offers were costly for Afterpay and customers didn’t feel like the earn-and-burn was easy nor compelling. A lose-lose.
To make things more tangled, the same on-time payments were used to determine both tier status and reward eligibility. Two separate outcomes riding on one behavior.
Additional Benefits
To offer more tier differentiation, upgrading tiers unlocked additional financial benefits, And while these were enticing, they felt misplaced. Ultimately, these efforts only backfired.
Gating gift cards behind higher tiers limited revenue. Exclusive offers were so exclusive, they was rarely available. And the most prized perks - No Payment Up Front and Change Payment Dates should’ve been tied to risk, not tier.
What The Rewards Program Became
Spoiler, the loyalty program was scrapped.
A new program was re-envisioned, one that focused on rewarding customers.
What was removed
Customer-facing tier structure
Points based on on-time payments
Gift cards were moved out of the program
What was added
Internal facing “tiers” based on risk criteria for financial perks (e.g., NPUF, change payment date)
Integrated ad partners to add compelling offers and rewards, better offers for customers, and a new revenue stream for Afterpay
Set up an offers management process and armed sales team with compelling offer performance data to build pipeline for fully-merchant funded offers
Built notifications, directing customers to exclusive offers/deals
