Marketing Against the Tide with Pascale Helyar-Moray, Super Rewards

Michelle Lomas: Now we've loved every person on Flex Your Hustle, but today's guest strikes a real chord with me. The ideological foundation of her business gets to the heart of something I feel very strongly about.

Michelle Lomas: Taking steps towards gender parity, especially when it comes to financial security and independence. Why you ask? Well, here's the facts. Women retire with 42% less super than men. 

Michelle Lomas: The gender pay gap combined with the fact that majority of women will leave the workforce at various times in their life to become caregivers means women have a lot less financial security as they get older. Sadly, that's why the fastest growing segment of homeless people in Australia is older women.

Michelle Lomas: Super Rewards founded by Pascale Helyar-Moray is a cashback rewards program that offers a percentage of cash on every purchase, which goes right back into your Super.

Michelle Lomas: Pascale has over 20 years of financial services, marketing, and brand-building experience. She's a seasoned entrepreneur and startup advisor. She's been the head of marketing for the investment trust and wealth manager, businesses of JP Morgan in London. And she's also held senior marketing roles
at BT Financial Group and BMP Parabas. And to top it all off, she's the current
director of communications for the Australian Gender Equality Council,
an independent national organisation dedicated to achieving gender equality.

Michelle Lomas: This interview ran a little over our usual time for the show, but with an issue this important, we wanted to give it as much air time as we could. Here is Pascale and the Super Rewards story.

Michelle Lomas: In your words, what is Super Rewards?

Pascale Helyar-Moray: Super Rewards is a platform where you earn cashback into your super from your everyday spend.

Michelle Lomas: So basically what everyoneis familiar with the cashback concept. But instead of getting cash immediately, you get cash for retirement.

Pascale Helyar-Moray: Correct, and the hidden beauty of Super Rewards is because it's going straight into your super, and there's no decision making around what to do with it or where it could be directed or how to spend it. It's a form of forced saving, right? And so it's really it's set and forget.

Pascale Helyar-Moray: And just in doing that, you are building your wealth. If I think about other cashback type models where it's coming back into bank, like if you give me a spare 50 bucks, I
can give you five different ways I'm gonna spend it, but I will never ever think even me in doing what I do, I will never think about tipping it into my super. Because the logistics and the barriers associated with that are just mentally too great.

Pascale Helyar-Moray: So the true beauty of Super Rewards is that it's just set and forget. You just do what you normally do and we take care of the rest.

Michelle Lomas: The reason you built this business is very close to your heart. So let's talk about it.

Pascale Helyar-Moray: So let's wind back. 30 years ago superannuation was introduced, let's call it 1992. And what you had at that time prior to superannuation, which is defined contribution. So the user contributes to their super and building up their retirement fund. Prior to that was defined benefit where this person would stay at a company. And then when they retired, the company would pay for them to retire.

Pascale Helyar-Moray: So you had this really quite radical shift from defined benefit to defined contribution. Now let's not forget. And I think this is really important that I think there was one woman in the room when they built the framework of superannuation.

Michelle Lomas: If that! If that!

Pascale Helyar-Moray: Right? So, so you have this, this framework, which is being built by a cohort who's wives and partners or whatever were at home, doing the home making and running the home. And so no one really thought about, well, what happens if you're not in the workforce or..

Michelle Lomas: For an extended period of time.

Pascale Helyar-Moray: For an extended period of time.

Michelle Lomas: Or at all?

Pascale Helyar-Moray: Or at all? So now we fast forward to 20, 25 years time. They're now retiring and they have no super.

Michelle Lomas: Well also they're also divorced and I'm sure a lot of these correct laws were created. With the thought that the traditional couple would stay the traditional couple.

Pascale Helyar-Moray: And it used to be, there was a lot of, you know, marital breakdowns in the early mid-fifties for the couple generally, and this has changed just now. It used to be, he'd say, okay, I'll take the super, you take the house, which is great to an extent, to a certain extent you can't, unless your house is producing some sort of income for you. You can't live on that.

Pascale Helyar-Moray: What we then find is that we have, um, the fastest growing segment of homeless people in Australia is actually the older woman. For all the, for these reasons, because
she had no super, or maybe it was taken as part of the divorce or whatever. And I don't think that for 51% of the population, if you have devoted your life and career to the service of others as a caregiver to others.

Pascale Helyar-Moray: That living in your car or couch surfing permanently is a particularly dignified or elegant or appropriate end of your citizenship as this country. So when I started creating Super Rewards, I was looking at all these facts and stats and, and whatnot. And I just thought, this is crazy. What are we doing?

Pascale Helyar-Moray: We are one of the richest countries in the world, our superannuation system, as much as I've just been sitting here critiquing it is in fact, one of the most recognized on the global stage, we have so much wealth in our superannuation system because everybody has pretty much been giving 10% of their, of their earnings to the superannuation system. And we are the envy of
countries worldwide. We have so much in the way of national resource.

Pascale Helyar-Moray: What are we doing? Why are we letting half our population or putting half our population at risk in this way? So, and I thought it's just, it's just nuts, but women are stuck, right? You can't ask the already working Mum to get a second job or a third job. There are a number of barriers for women who are out of the workforce to come back into work cost of childcare. So the cost of two children in full-time childcare is slightly greater.

Pascale Helyar-Moray: Then the average woman's full time wage. So if you've got two kids and you're doing the maths, you're like, do I wanna be sending the family unit backwards just to go back to work? No, I don't. Well, I'll stay out of the workforce that, you know, just continue raising the kids until they're old enough to be at school. But, meanwhile, her super has taken a hit too.

Pascale Helyar-Moray: You know, I was looking at all these stats. I was director of communications for the Australian Gender Equality Council at the time. And with the council, I was
interacting firsthand with government firsthand, with corporates firsthand with the everyday user. And I just saw how much inaction there was. And it was absolutely mind boggling to me that we, we had arrived at this place, we had let things come to this position for women, and this is how we reward them?

Pascale Helyar-Moray: So I thought there has to be a better way. Women are trapped. They can't get other jobs. They can't contribute to their Super any other way, because they're not earning an income. They're burdened by responsibility, by domestics, by childcare, et cetera. How can we create an income stream into superannuation.

Michelle Lomas: Well, here it is.

Pascale Helyar-Moray: Here it is.

Michelle Lomas: Cashback's been around a few years. Why not do a super reward? It's the same thing. Just goes for your retirement.

Pascale Helyar-Moray: That's right.

Michelle Lomas: Makes a lot of sense and I think for the women out there, maybe, you know, listening, I've got a full time career. My kids are in daycare. We can afford to do this. My, my husband or my wife is also working. We've got two incomes. I guess the thing is this could happen to you, because you might find yourself in your late forties, early fifties, divorced? Looking after elderly parents? Anything can happen in life.

Pascale Helyar-Moray: Yes.

Michelle Lomas: And so it's important to safeguard yourself. How many retailers are you in and what sort of retailers?

Pascale Helyar-Moray: So we have 500 online retailers across every category you could imagine. Ranging from the usual suspects, like home beauty, fashion to marketplaces and various services. So Canva, eBay Catch that sort of thing. We have done really, really well in terms of attracting very strong retailer lineup. I think a lot of people mistakenly think that it's just about fashion and beauty. And of course, yes, we have those retailers, but we also have, you know, Energy Australia.

Pascale Helyar-Moray: Which is your everyday. We have, uh, insurance companies. We have Booking.com, we have Appliances Online, we have The Good Guys. So it's really about everything
for your world, whether it's home, leisure, business, you know, entertainment, whatever we've covered, every category you can imagine.

Michelle Lomas: Amazing.

Pascale Helyar-Moray: Now in terms of the instore lineup, as I was describing, so we've just rolled out instore, and this is a whole different type of retailer. This is really your incidental spend. So this is like your dry cleaners, your take away, your cafes, your restaurants, your so much car money, cetera. And it's you know, $50 here, $80 there doesn't matter. You don't even notice it. Don't think about it.

Michelle Lomas:  My husband said to me the other day, he was like, how have we spent so much money this month? And I did a little check. And it's the little coffee here and the dry cleaning and bits, the dog food. And then all of a sudden, we're thousands of dollars into household expenses that we didn't even realize we were making.

Pascale Helyar-Moray: Yes, exactly.

Michelle Lomas: So how great to be able to make a bit of cashback on that and throw it into your super.

Pascale Helyar-Moray: Well, that's right. Retirement. So I think, I, I like to think of it as like less guilt when you spend, because you're actually helping your retirement, but also thanks to compound interest. Right? So a dollar cashback now is not just a dollar.

Pascale Helyar-Moray: So I was looking at my Super Rewards account and obviously I'm a big user of the platform. So let's say I've got, I don't know, $1170 that I earned through Super Rewards just through the online component. That $1,170 translates into a difference of I'm gonna say like $11,700. By the time compound interest over 25 years, based on the average super balance, et cetera, et cetera.

Pascale Helyar-Moray: So that's the other secret weapon of Super Rewards is that it's not just about the dollar now. It's about really 10x-ing for your future. It's really interesting. Even peak COVID the proportion of online sales as a, you know, a component of all retail sales in Australia was only 15%, only 15% even peak COVID.

Pascale Helyar-Moray: But the the way in which the mechanics of online cashback works very different and very streamlined compared to in-store cashback the in-store, uh, arena we'll call it is super fragmented, lots of different ways you can address it mechanically. Um, and I was really ruthless about okay. Whatever solution we find, it just has to be seamless. Mm. It just has to be seamless. We can't have fobs. We can't have receipts. We can't have a special card. We can't have a, whatever it may be. Uh, it just has to be part of everyday life. Yeah.  and it, we just have to remove all barriers and obstacles because there are enough barriers and obstacles when it comes to topping up your super and that's part of the reason people don't top up their super, because you know, there are so many gates, you know, to hurdle.

Michelle Lomas: You would think that it's a no brainer? But it's not for a lot of people. So, so tell me about the challenges you face from an audience perspective. 

Pascale Helyar-Moray: Talking about super to the average person. About as exciting as marketing a dead fish, you know, there's a thousand other priorities right on, on your to-do list.

Pascale Helyar-Moray: And super is one of those things that, oh, I'll get to it. I'll get to it. I'll get to, I'll get to it. The reality is, is that by, you know, by the time you actually, if, if you put it off and by the time you actually get to it, you know, if you're post 40 or mid forties, whatever, by and large, the opportunity to have built a sufficient nest egg has passed you by. Mm. It really is one of those things where if you can be contributing to your super in a meaningful way from, you know, age 20, 21, 25, whatever you, you are going to be on a much healthier path to a happier retirement, um, than if, if you don't. So, the challenges for the everyday user are multi-factored they are numerous, you know, we've got firstly, the language, concessional, non concessional, um, even that kind of language, you know, comes with it as, you know, you need a glossary just for superannuation, right?

Pascale Helyar-Moray:Then there's the fact that in this country, I don't think we've done a good job on financial literacy. 

Michelle Lomas: I agree with that. Yeah. 

Pascale Helyar-Moray: And so by the time, so, you know, your average person kind of wakes up and goes, oh, how much do I need for a comfortable retirement? It's uh, you know, it's quite late on in the piece to be having that conversation. And then we have a government that has made it super complex  and I think we've had something like 110 Royal commissions into superannuations since this advent, 30 years ago, we have constantly changing legislation around superannuation.

Pascale Helyar-Moray: And then if I said to you, Michelle, okay, imagine yourself next week or next month or in six months times you, you can do that. 

Michelle Lomas: Yeah. 

Pascale Helyar-Moray: But in thinking about superannuation, we're asking you to imagine. A time 30 years from now. Can we really wrap our heads around that? Right. And then last, but certainly not least superannuation is intangible. It's not like a house where we can literally touch our asset. Or a, um, a bank account or a share portfolio. Because there's, you know, there's stuff happening in share portfolio on a day to day basis. It's pretty exciting. 10% up, 15% sell it down. They get some cash. It's exciting. That's right. And if you need to, you can redeem or withdraw your funds in case of an emergency, but we can't do any of that.

Pascale Helyar-Moray: And we feel, um, distance from it. I've actually had to answer the question a few times. Oh, is my superannuation mine. I'm like, wow. Yeah. Um, Super it's your own asset. Wow. So it's very, uh, complex. It seems to be something that only experts can talk about. Um, and I think the Australian people is very disconnected from their superannuation. Yeah. So therefore with that background, trying to talk about it in an engaging fashion is like, uh, trying to tackle Mount Everest. Yeah. Um, and so what we've found in our marketing of, uh, Super Rewards is that the people for whom Super Rewards was designed are the people who are the least interested in it, Super Rewards was designed to help close the gender super gap.

Pascale Helyar-Moray: Which is where women retire with roughly 58% as much superannuation as men. Yep. We all love a stat, but what does that actually mean? It means that women retire with only enough, um, retirement money is to live on for six years on a budgeted income. Huge, but then live another 14 after that. 

Michelle Lomas: Yeah. 'Cause women what live longer. We work less than men, we earn less than men. Yes. And so our potential to actually earn a decent amount of super for our retirement is extremely challenged.

Pascale Helyar-Moray: Correct? Yes. And it's not that we work less, we work less in paid employment. Yes. Thank you for that correction. 100%. Damn we work hard. That's right. 

Michelle Lomas: But we work yeah. Less maybe years because of the time we take to exactly. Children be caregivers. 

Pascale Helyar-Moray: Correct. Look after elderly parents. 

Michelle Lomas: Exactly. 

Pascale Helyar-Moray: All those sorts of things. Yeah. So when I started out this journey, I was. Fascinated, fascinated to learn that if you think about the cohort of women in that accumulation age of their life. So age 18 to 64, there are 7 million women who fall into that category in Australia. 40% of them are not in the workforce at any one time. And that was just head scratching for me. I was, well, if 40% of women aren't in the workforce, then how are they earning super? And the answer is that they're not.

Pascale Helyar-Moray: So, Super Rewards was created to help close that gender super gap. All right. Where the woman who's the caregiver or looking after the screaming toddlers or, you know, looking after her elderly parents or whatever, who's actually still doing work, you know, still doing the shopping, coordinating payment of bills, et cetera, you know, caregiving, et cetera, is actually still being remunerated for her efforts into her superannuation for doing so.

Pascale Helyar-Moray: But, weirdly, well, perhaps not unsurprisingly that those sorts of people, whether it's, you know carers of Australia or national Alliance of single women or single mothers, whatever it may be, they are the cohorts of people who care about super the least. From interactions I've had with various of these groups, it's simply because they can't see past the next month, six months, year let alone children 25 years into the future. What we found though, is that the corollary is true. People who need Super Rewards, the least actually use it the most. 

Michelle Lomas: Yeah. Those like managing a self-managed Superfund tapped into their finances. 

Pascale Helyar-Moray: They really appreciate what Super Rewards brings. They love the kind of set and forget aspect of it. 

Michelle Lomas: How do you get through to the ones that really need it? 

Pascale Helyar-Moray: Look, we have tried and we have tried and we have tried and we have tried. Mm. Um, what we have found is, is actually partnerships with the super funds that are the most effective for us. What we've found is that in partnerships with the superfunds, our conversion rate is anywhere between 15 and 20 times that direct to consumer play.

Michelle Lomas: Amazing. 

Pascale Helyar-Moray: Which is huge. Right.  

Michelle Lomas: Kind of makes sense, though. 

Pascale Helyar-Moray: It does make sense. And the analogy I like to use is that it's like, if I hear, I should take 10,000 steps. I'm just, it's in one ear out the other. 

Michelle Lomas: Yes. Yeah. 

Pascale Helyar-Moray: If I go to my doctor and my doctor says, take 10,000 heads, you're like, okay, you're gonna have lot of attack on it. OK. I'm I'm gonna do this. The same is true of the Superfund partnership because it's the, the Superfund saying to its members. You want more super? Here's how you earn more super. Yeah. Through our, you know, trusted provider, Super Rewards. That's that's when people really sit up and pay attention. 

Michelle Lomas: Let's dive back in with the next question. I know you've been working with the Commission Factory team. Yes. For a little while. Yes. Um, how did that relationship come about? 

Pascale Helyar-Moray: I  had a previous eCommerce business, which worked with Commission Factory, but as an advertiser and so I was aware of the affiliate space. And so when I was coming up with a Super Rewards idea and thinking, okay, how can we create an income stream into super, how can we get cashback into super, I thought I know just the people to reach out to and so, off I trotted.

Michelle Lomas: To Zane and the team.

Pascale Helyar-Moray: To Zane and Sophie.

Pascale Helyar-Moray: Yeah. And I talked very passionately for about 45 minutes about the challenges facing women and super et cetera, et cetera. And they just said, "we love it", "no one's doing this", "let's go". And that was awesome. And so having that support from day one was fantastic and they got us set up really quickly and just their ongoing support. They help us with exposure. I've done team briefings. They've had their various account managers look at our account and say, okay, you could be doing this better, that better. Have you thought about X, Y, Z. So they've been a real partner in this journey, but I think probably the most crucial thing that they could have done was say "yes" in the beginning.

Pascale Helyar-Moray: And maybe they knew they were onto something because when we launched, it took us nine months to build the Super Rewards platform and it was brand new to market launch. We had a hundred retailers on the platform. Day one and not just X, Y, Z retailer, but we had some amazing retailers like Catch and Iconic and yeah.

Pascale Helyar-Moray: And Best & Less and like awesome brand names. We were the first to market on this and had a unique proposition. And I think retailers can see the resonance because we say, well, we are designed for women open to any gender, but it's women making 80% of household spending decisions. And I think retailers just went "oh, yes, okay, great". So we had 100 retailers now we're north of 500. And then in addition to that, we've got our, uh, 300 and something. In-store retailers, individual brands, which represent over 1000 stores nationally. So we are coming up to 1500. 

Michelle Lomas: Wow. Well, the, the team speaks so highly of you, and it's nice that you've built such a really good and trusted partnership with the team.

Pascale Helyar-Moray: Yeah. Yeah. And you know, they've been there the whole way.

Michelle Lomas: So what has that done for your, your marketing efforts then? 

Pascale Helyar-Moray: So we focus almost exclusively on partnerships with funds partnerships, with wealth groups, because that's where we see the return on our effort and time. Right. We've tried Facebook advertising. We've tried Google Ads. How dismal. I mean, let's not even talk about the CAC associated with that. 

Michelle Lomas: But we can, that's what this podcast is all about.  

Pascale Helyar-Moray: I remember we trialed a new campaign across Facebook and Google AdWords. Google AdWords was more effective for us. But it was still coming in at 4x what we needed it to. However, the Facebook campaign analysis was hideous and it came in the CAC was like 6x what we needed it to a lot and had the side effect of making me go white on the spot that these results. Luckily we'd, you know, we were onto it sort of a week or two after, so quite soon and I was just like, stop, stop at all this campaign right now.

Pascale Helyar-Moray: Yeah. We need to just stop, regroup, reassess and revisit. So what we do focus on in terms of a marketing perspective is partnerships with the super funds partnerships with wealth creators, the only activities that we will invest our time and resources in, in, in direct marketing are things where we're given a bit of a platform to explain what it is and what we do. Because with Super Rewards, we have, we're trying to triple educate. Right. Sometimes we have to explain what super is. 

Michelle Lomas: Crazy as that is. That is a problem in this country. 

Pascale Helyar-Moray: It is a problem. Yeah. And we also have to explain why it's important. Why you should care. But sometimes depending on the, the audience in the channel, we have to explain what is cashback. And so historically we have faced challenges around cashback into super, and we've had some users say, I'm not giving you my Superfund details. You're going to rob me. And we, apart from, so this is the moment that I need to jump in and say that we author operate as a corporate authorized representative under an Australian Financial Services License.

Pascale Helyar-Moray: So A) we can't because we're very heavily compliance and monitored, but B) my goodness, if this was a fraud or a scam, this would be the longest dated fraud or scam. Ever. Yeah. Um, because no one can access anybody else's super until they retire. But because of all these educational type challenges, plus, you know, a bit of, uh, concern from the public around what is cashback and super, and we tend to stick with the places and the channels where we are given an opportunity to explain.

Pascale Helyar-Moray: Right. So those tend to be things like digital print, um, TV, radio podcasts. We love podcasts webinars and those sorts of things. So even though we play in the eCommerce space, so for example, on the Super Rewards platform, you'd be sent off to a Country Road website or Witchery, or, you know, The Iconic, et cetera, et cetera.

Pascale Helyar-Moray: We are a facilitator, right? And we are sending traffic to those eCommerce platforms, but the marketing rules and framework of an eCommerce platform doesn't apply to us. If that makes sense. So, for example, Country Road and The Iconic, they're on Facebook, they're on TikTok, they're Insta wherever, and those are, are good channels for them to be. But because they're promoting a lovely red blazer or, you know, cute little black dress, whatever that works, but we are promoting Super. And only cashback into super.

Michelle Lomas: It's almost like an tangible service as well. So, then not only are you educating, you're having to build trust in that service yes. Understanding, yes. That sort of quick fix, um, that, you know, social offers or, you know, even search, you need to know what you're searching for. 

Pascale Helyar-Moray: That's right. 

Michelle Lomas: To be discoverable. 

Pascale Helyar-Moray: That's right. 

Michelle Lomas: So I can see why that's been potentially a challenge for you and why you've had to go down a different path. How long did it take you to discover that? 

Pascale Helyar-Moray: It took us a solid 18 months! We tried a whole raft of different direct to consumer marketing activities. We tried some, uh, Instagram influencers, reasonable success. Um, we tried Facebook, we tried Google. We tried Instagram advertising after all of those things didn't work we thought, you know what TikTok's not gonna work either. Let's just, let's just park that one. Yeah. Um, and so, but at the same time, we were seeing a huge amount of success from these other channels. We started off marketing to the people who need Super Rewards the most, so single carers of Australia or whatever - crickets.

Pascale Helyar-Moray: Absolute crickets. A lot of these groups are very political. I mean, they're NFP's, um, or associations and very political it's real fiefdom. Right? So they're, they're really trying to protect their own interests. They it's, nothing happens very fast. So we moved on from that promoting Super Rewards to women's groups, to mum's groups, to some retail audiences.

Pascale Helyar-Moray: So. After the retailers, then we moved on to the funds themselves. And just the results from when the funds do promote us to their base is phenomenal. Like if I think about our, our very first pilot with one of the biggest super funds in the country, they promoted us to I, 100,000 members in their base.

Pascale Helyar-Moray: They, they created this incredibly, uh, unfriendly user experience for the, these audience members whereby they, there was an EDM where nothing was personalized or prepopulated  their, their members had to go to their internal landing page. Before they could then come over to ours. 

Michelle Lomas: Oh, great. Yep. 

Pascale Helyar-Moray: Or the members in this particular audience were, um, you know, they would have some government, uh, email addresses of course. So firewalls were preventing so many people from actually seeing us and, and being able to access our site. It was, it could not have been. There could not have been more obstacles in this user journey. Yeah. Um, particularly from just a signup perspective, oh, they have to enter their Superfund details when they sign up.

Pascale Helyar-Moray: And we just said, okay, we'll do it with the first wave. We'll see how we go, unsurprisingly. No one knew their super details. Then we removed that blocker. And so despite all these, we still had this unbelievable conversion rate of over 5%, which was incredible, but then not only did all these people sign up, they then started spending, hand over fist, right? And of course it's not with Super Rewards. It's not enough to sign up. That's the act of signing up will not earn you super. You need to come through, you know, use one of our retailers, in order to actually earn the super. So, um, what we found was that these, um, these members from this Superfund were spending it around twice.

Pascale Helyar-Moray: What we see direct to consumer rates. And earning two and a half times rewards. So that was for the first time when we understood the power of the Superfund partnership.