NRMA drives record member growth as it eyes national footprint

The NRMA set out to boost awareness of its travel and rewards program and wound up with record growth and engagement.

A still from NRMA's 'We're For' marketing campaign created by Saatchi & Saatchi.

The NRMA has reported a surge in new memberships across its roads and rewards brands off the back of its “We’re for” brand platform as it chases national growth.

The 105-year-old brand has ­experienced record acquisition numbers with a 17 per cent surge in NRMA Roadside Assistance memberships year-on-year, while the NRMA Rewards program, which offers members benefits and discounts, has delivered +34 per cent on its budget.

The organisation now boasts 3.4 million members, predominantly hailing from its strong hold in NSW but with growing share across the country as the business looks to expand its national footprint.

NRMA Rewards is a key lever for that growth, says NRMA chief membership officer Victoria Doidge. The former David Jones and Sydney Opera House marketer believes the rewards business has huge potential to unlock growth through its ability to partner with and leverage other brands.

“Even though we are the National Roads and Motoring Association, historically our members have come from NSW so the growth for us has to go broader across Australia. I think growth will come from our national footprint, and it’ll also come from partnering with other businesses and have them use NRMA Rewards as their program. So B2B is a big growth lever for us as well.”

NRMA Rewards is the loyalty program for Engie Energy, and is keen to partner with more brands. However, the challenge for these brand alignments, and growth in general, is awareness.

While the travel and rewards business is responsible for more than 70 per cent of NRMA’s EBITDA, its awareness among consumers is low.

While the objective of the “We’re for” brand platform was to bolster awareness of the NRMA Rewards brand, which operates as a separate membership program to the roadside assistance membership, the business also wanted to evolve from a heritage service brand to a modern experience company, Ms Doidge said.

“NRMA is known for roadside assistance and it has 90 per cent brand awareness, but we knew that awareness of our travel and our rewards offering was low. We wanted to evolve the brand platform and then go to market with a ­campaign that started to build a connective tissue across the many different ways we show up for Australians.

“We’ve got roadside assistance, but we’re also building the biggest EV charging backbone in Australia, and we also own six car rentals. In travel, we might be known for our holiday parks, but we’re also a massive cruising business and we run lodges – we’re in over 70 travel destinations.”

NRMA worked with its agencies Houston for branding, Saatchi & Saatchi for advertising and marketing and UM for media to define the brand platform and create and launch the ad campaigns, which kicked off in November.

“The NRMA brand really stands for life’s freedoms. If you think about why NRMA was created, it was to get Australians out and about on the road. Many people don’t know that Ampol was created by NRMA.

“We created the first holiday parks, so we’ve always been a brand that is about getting people out and about. So freedom, and life’s freedoms, in particular, was really important.

“We wanted to bring that to life through these campaigns and create something that would be a connective tissue across all the different ways we showed up. So we came up with ‘we’re for’, because we’re for all Australians.”

Ms Doidge said the campaign resonated with consumers and with members, driving the surge in new customer acquisitions, as well as awareness. Correct brand attribution for the NRMA Rewards brand among members has leapt from 35 per cent to 70 per cent, since the launch of the campaign.

“To set record acquisition numbers for a 105-year-old legacy business is extraordinary. And it wasn’t through any discount offering or through linking the two programs,” Ms Doidge said.

The NRMA Rewards app boasts one million sessions each month, which Ms Doidge said highlighted the traction and engagement the brand has captured.

The app’s features include the Roadside Assist service, which now accounts for 25 per cent of all roadside jobs – which is significant given the Roadside Assistance business turns up to help a member every 30 seconds. The app also has a real time fuel-tracking feature, which enables users to find the best value fuel. The feature is a result of NRMA’s partnership with Ampol, which also provides members with discounts on fuel.

“It’s about building functionality that is useful across the country,” Ms Doidge said.

“The brand needs to continue to work in service to Australians and we need to think about how we’re going to do that.

“I say to the team ‘if you can only do one thing, get people in the app’. Because it’s where we can help Australians most.”

Ms Doidge said the marketing campaigns showcased the importance of storytelling and the role emotional connections can play in delivering both short-term and long-term benefits for a brand.

“The campaign was driven around acquisitions but what we saw was app sessions went up, email opens went up, and web traffic went up. So it had this incredible corollary benefit that it drove member engagement. We didn’t intend for that; the key performance indicators we gave were much more about ‘we want this to be an acquisition campaign’, but actually the benefit it had was that it drove engagement.

“I think sometimes we get very laser-focused on acquisition, but for brands that are trying to drive engagement with a product or a service, advertising has a really powerful role to play as well. It’s a combination of getting your data and your digital ecosystem and your personalisation all really working for you.”