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Many people begin their new year resolving to be better to others. If you are a loyalty marketer, a good way to be better to others is with pragmatism, partnerships and relevancy.
These are some of the qualities, along with sharing and moderation, that make up effective and beneficial loyalty marketing. So as the sun sets on this year, let us all try to rise to the occasion in the next. My four loyalty marketing resolutions for 2014:
1. Don’t be known as the “Loyalty Guy/Girl”: Let’s extend the effect of our loyalty assets by reaching out to two or three areas of our organizations that never thought of loyalty programs as a resource. Whether it’s using the customer information to view decision-making in a new way, or using the in-house currency as a means to change the way customers interact with our products, moving beyond the loyalty box will be critical to establishing a bigger role for customer loyalty and data within the business.
2. Beat back Big Data with pragmatism: There’s much talk about “big data” these days but maybe 2014 will herald a new approach to this event. We can change the conversation from “big” to “pragmatic” by instead focusing on how data can improve sales and profits in the next 12 months. A good first step – resolve to take three to five basic questions that the company struggles to answer and then apply the customer data to help the rest of the team address these challenges. It’s easy to get lost in too much data, so taking a targeted approach to solving the problems the company faces will raise the value of customer information and the program from which it arises.
3. Pick a new partner to extend your value proposition: In 2014, let’s try to develop one or two new partnerships based on what we know about our customers and what they value. We can often get wrapped up in our own value proposition and forget that we are sitting on a gold mine of customers who may be of interest to other brands. So how about dedicating part of 2014 by extending the brand experience to other companies? If we take the time to think about our customers, how they use our products or services and what could be done to enhance that application, then we will find where these complementary relationships exist. I am certain that great ideas, supported by real data and insights, will make it entirely possible to present an attractive proposition to those brands that add an interesting dimension to our own.
4. In 2014, have the data deliver relevance: This year, let’s resolve to make one or two critical efforts to use the information obtained from our customers to build a more relevant and transparent relationship. We can do this by assuring that customer not only understands that we collect this information, but also how it benefits them and adds value to the brand experience. We should consider what they buy from us, specifically, and then show value by recognizing their purchasing behavior in the offers we make to them through various marketing channels. This is not about how we present ourselves across all customers, but how we appear to the customer on a one-to-one basis.
Let’s all work to make the term loyalty marketer about something that’s much bigger than just a program. All the best for 2014!
