Running Product Through a Year of 30% Growth at Blue Light Card

The Challenge

Blue Light Card is the UK’s discount service for emergency services, NHS and armed forces staff, with over four million members. After a private equity acquisition, a newly appointed Chief Product Officer needed senior cover while the product function scaled, in the middle of a replatforming of the member website and app.

I joined in October 2023 as interim Head of Product, reporting to the CPO. What was meant to be a short cover engagement ran until December 2024.

My Approach

I ran two of the product squads day to day, alongside another product manager who ran the rest, and later handed one squad to a new product manager as the team grew. That meant the roadmap for my squads, prioritisation on data and member insight, and alignment across engineering, marketing, member services and operations. With the CPO I helped introduce agile delivery across the squads, oversaw my teams through the replatforming, and integrated third-party marketing tools with sales and marketing so that growth could be run as experiments.

The piece I am proudest of is the redemption funnel. Members find an offer, copy a code and hand off to a partner’s checkout, and every step lost people. I led a series of A/B tests on that journey, each measured as conversion uplift against a control, and the winning changes went live one at a time.

I also gave the direction for a browser extension that surfaces discounts while members shop.

Results

Membership grew 30% year on year over the period, a figure Blue Light Card has published. The CPO led that growth; my job was to help the product function deliver it, and the funnel work is the largest measured revenue improvement I have led.

“Rob was great at helping us build understanding in a 360 way. His partnership with the engineering team let us deliver against the roadmap and level up the experience for our members.” Ianina Lucca, Chief Product Officer, Blue Light Card.

Key Outcomes

• Two product squads run through a replatforming and a year of 30% membership growth
• A/B tested redesign of the offer-to-redemption funnel, with a measured revenue uplift
• Agile delivery established across multiple product squads
• Marketing technology integrated to support experiment-led growth
• Browser extension for discovering discounts launched