# Lee McDermott

Lee McDermott works on mobile wallet marketing for retailers, presenting Apple Wallet and Google Wallet as additional CRM channels for loyalty updates, offers, memberships and customer notifications.

- Profile: https://b2binfluencer.marketing/creators/lee-mcdermott/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lee-mcdermott-a363675
- LinkedIn followers: 9,710
- Based on 13 dated posts, latest 2026-09-17

## Summary

Lee McDermott is most useful for explaining mobile wallet marketing as an added CRM channel for retail loyalty, offers, memberships and notifications.

- Best for: Retail loyalty platform or CRM vendor wanting a co-branded retail engagement playbook.
- Not for: Retailer or consumer brand wanting paid creator campaign judged on measured reach and results.
- Check first: Confirm platform can pass points balances, tier changes and offer data into wallet passes without app download.

### Takeaways

- Wallet is a CRM channel, not a loyalty extra.
- Add a channel rather than rebuild the stack.
- A wallet pass is live state, not a static card.

## Main ideas

- **The wallet is a CRM channel, not a loyalty extra**: McDermott's central claim is that brands are losing the attention contest in the inbox and that a wallet pass restores a direct line to customers. They repeatedly point to three pressures: customers are harder to reach, inbox attention is declining, and apps are expensive to build and even harder to get people to use. The wallet, they argue, acts like a CRM channel — a place to deliver offers, memberships and notifications — rather than a novelty loyalty card.
- **Add a channel rather than rebuild the stack**: The pitch is deliberately additive. Wallet messaging sits alongside existing CRM, loyalty, eCommerce and marketing platforms, launching quickly without changing the customer stack or asking customers to install anything. Framing the channel as an extra layer rather than a replacement keeps the perceived switching cost low.
- **A wallet pass is live state, not a static card**: McDermott distinguishes the channel from a plastic loyalty card by its ability to update itself: points balances move automatically, tier upgrades appear instantly, personalised rewards arrive on the pass, and location can trigger a notification when a customer is near a store. Customers see the current state of their relationship with the brand instead of a card that goes stale.
- **Peak-season attention competition is the argument at its sharpest**: McDermott puts the problem in retail's heaviest trading periods, when every retailer a customer has ever bought from is sending email, SMS and ads at once. The wallet is presented as a way to be present on the phone without asking customers to download anything.
- **Education is the barrier, not interest**: McDermott argues that demand is not the problem. Retailers recognise the symptoms quickly, but still need to learn what the wallet channel is and what it replaces. That diagnosis shapes the writing: plain explanations, objection handling, capability lists and short customer journeys rather than persuasion.
- **Adoption arrives through the partner ecosystem**: McDermott treats platform relationships as a route to market rather than relying on solo selling. The posts document summit attendance, joint capability announcements and event follow-ups with the marketing platforms retailers already buy from, reflecting the view that wallet marketing reaches brands through those ecosystems.

## Work to read

- [What a wallet CRM channel actually does](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/lee-mcdermott-a363675_loyalty-crm-customerexperience-activity-7472615383938666498-07oB)
- [Black Friday as the case for a channel outside the inbox](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/lee-mcdermott-a363675_retail-retailmarketing-crm-activity-7506271045826514944-htuI)
- [The move from email and CRM into mobile wallets](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/lee-mcdermott-a363675_crm-retailmarketing-mobilewallet-activity-7498294835586678784-E9J9)
- [Dotdigital partnership and an innovation award](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/lee-mcdermott-a363675_retailtech-customerloyalty-crm-activity-7482747990521253888-ZvYD)
- [The Ecrebo tie-up and the measurement claim](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/lee-mcdermott-a363675_customerengagement-crmstrategy-omnichannelmarketing-activity-7475808800936132608-OSS1)
- [The Bloomreach agenda: what a partnership conversation covers](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/lee-mcdermott-a363675_bloomreach-partnersummit-partnerships-activity-7465361887845785600-Fv4w)

## Brand relationships

- **Litecard** (employment)
- **Dotdigital** (disclosed_partnership)
- **Ecrebo** (disclosed_partnership)
- **Bloomreach** (mention)

## Partnerships

Lee McDermott's partnership work in the posts here focuses on Litecard's wallet-based retail channel, not personal sponsorship packages. Across seven posts from May to September 2026, they describe working with CRM and loyalty platforms — Ecrebo and Dotdigital named directly, and the Bloomreach ecosystem through its Partner Summit — to add Apple Wallet and Google Wallet as customer engagement channels for loyalty updates, offers, memberships and push notifications. Each collaboration requires a retailer or platform whose existing stack can connect to wallet passes, so campaigns can launch without customers downloading an app or the brand rebuilding its customer stack. They position the wallet alongside email, SMS and CRM rather than as a replacement, and describe education about the channel, rather than buyer interest, as the main constraint. Ask directly about rates, deliverables, payment terms, exclusivity, content approvals and the partnership inquiry route; the posts do not specify them.

## Alternatives

- Tom Peace: Choose Tom Peace when the playbook’s lead argument is why a wallet beats an app, or when the audience is younger retail shoppers. The posts make that case from the customer’s side: the wallet people already carry isn’t the retailer’s app; apps are expensive to build and harder still to get downloaded; and Gen Z manages brand relationships through notifications rather than inboxes. The same post promotes a video conversation with Litecard, so the wallet-versus-app framing has already been delivered in interview form. Peace also brings a usable model, not just an opinion: the Bowtie of Personalisation, introduced in Chapter 6 of Rasmus Houlind’s Hello $Firstname, ties customer insight to content choice. The post argues that first-party and zero-party data matter more than ever in loyalty and CRM. A platform that wants its co-branded asset to open with the channel argument and then explain personalisation would get both from this material.
- Laurent Guinand, Ph.D.: Choose Laurent Guinand when the co-branded asset has to survive a budget conversation inside a retailer, not just a marketing meeting. The two posts target loyalty program managers making the financial case and supply figures with named sources: members who redeem rewards spend 6.3 times more over their lifetime, and 80% of companies report positive ROI from loyalty programs, both from Antavo’s 2023 Global Customer Loyalty Report; Starbucks Rewards generates nearly 60% of company revenue, according to its FY 2025 investor update. The second post frames programs as two engines running at once — retention and efficiency on one side, acquisition and growth on the other — and cites the dual-economics chapter of Guinand’s own book, Strategic Loyalty. If the wallet playbook must be pitched as strategic infrastructure rather than a marketing cost, this framing does work the wallet material can’t do alone.
- Naga Vara Prasad S: Choose Naga Vara Prasad S when the need extends from wallet messaging into retail AI and in-store customer experience, or when the target market is Middle East retail and quick-service restaurants. One post covers KFC in Dubai launching a multilingual AI drive-thru assistant built with Sodaclick and Intel and powered by Americana Restaurants. It reports that 75% of customers accept upsell suggestions, with the system switching between Arabic and English. The second makes the broader operational case for AI in retail — inventory, customer service, supply chain and personalisation — and cites a potential 30% reduction in operational costs. A platform whose wallet product sits alongside in-store redemption or conversational ordering could use this material to extend the playbook beyond the pass itself.

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AI-assisted summary of public posts. Audience demographics are not available. Engagement appears only where we checked recent posts. Method: https://b2binfluencer.marketing/methodology/