Aimia makes business more personal for clients — much like a small-town shopkeeper who knows their loyal customers’ tastes and preferences, and who can offer recommendations based on that knowledge, said Marshall Stanton, the company’s senior vice president of customer loyalty.
“When you start to scale that to the likes of some of these massive companies, whether it is in financial services or consumer packaged goods or retailers, each one of those has a pretty difficult challenge making that connection and making it feel real to their end consumer,” said Stanton, who is based at Aimia’s U.S. headquarters in Minneapolis.
Aimia partners with companies to provide the technology and services to launch and manage their loyalty programs. Such programs allow companies to identify loyal customers and offer rewards when they identify themselves by using a retail loyalty card, mobile application, coupon redemption, or by checking in or commenting on social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter.
Stanton said loyalty programs help companies “make more money, keep their customers from going elsewhere, and find more customers that look like their best customers.” In addition, companies can use customer data to better understand and operate their businesses, he said.
The number of loyalty-program memberships in the U.S. reached 2.65 billion in 2012, a 32 percent increase from 2 billion in 2010, according to global loyalty marketing industry research firm Colloquy.
Colloquy attributed that growth to existing loyalty programs attracting more satisfied members, as well as new programs being introduced by companies in sectors that haven’t traditionally run loyalty programs and are now joining the industry.
Aimia was founded in 1984 by Air Canada as Aeroplan, an incentive program for frequent fliers. In 2002, the firm was spun off as a separate company and diversified into non-flight rewards. The company went public in 2005 with an initial valuation of $2 billion.
Aimia now serves the airline, automotive, consumer packaged goods, financial services, health care and pharmaceuticals, retail, technology, telecommunications, and travel hospitality industries.
In 2012, Aimia acquired Dayton-based Excellence in Motivation for about $28 million. EIM, a provider of employee performance incentives and business-improvement strategies for companies, has since rebranded as Aimia.
The Dayton office is home to Aimia’s business-to-business loyalty programs, which is a “very important part of our company,” Stanton said.
In addition, the Dayton office houses Aimia’s travel incentive, event management and technology businesses, as well as the company’s U.S. region call center operation.
Dayton supports about 60 client programs, said Richelle Taylor, Aimia’s director of marketing.
“When we got acquired it actually rounded out our services quite nicely because we were able to add on the consumer aspect of the business,” said Taylor, who is based in Dayton.
Local employment typically ranges between 150 and 200 workers, including some contractors, and is scaled according to clients’ peak seasons, which vary by industry, she said.
Stanton said Aimia is committed to the Dayton office and has renewed its PNC Center lease through 2016.
“We are adding customers all the time, and when we have a match for the skills that we have down there, and/or a geographical proximity opportunity — because that also is quite important to us, we like to put our people where our customers are — we are definitely going to look to Dayton for opportunities,” he said.
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