My most recent column at Chief Marketer.
I’m finding more and more of our new clients and current prospects would benefit from additional insights into basic loyalty strategy, which prompted this most recent column.
My latest article at Chief Marketer.
The gist of it is a series of non-obvious benefits to loyalty marketing:
Loyalty programs can be very cost-effective, especially after breakage.
Loyalty programs get you more e-mail addresses of buyers.
Points programs let you promote without actually lowering prices.
Loyalty programs build lock-in, especially important for easily substituted businesses.
Loyalty programs improve the customer tracking rate.
Loyalty programs make it easier to reward nonpurchasing—but valued–behavior.
Loyalty programs let you give status to your best customers.
Loyalty programs greatly increase the likelihood of a message being read.
Surprise and delights appeal on a very deep level.
Loyalty programs tend to attract those who are most likely to respond to them.
The details of each of these points are discussed at Chief Marketer. Enjoy.
OK, I have to admit I did not pick the title…my editor at Chief Marketer did.
But here’s my latest article. My main point is that marketers should focus on improving their ability to deliver relevant products and messages to an increasing number of smaller customer segments. Its based on individuality trends that are unlikely to reverse in the coming years. Enjoy.
I’ve been lucky enough to moderate a number of webinars on the subject of implementing loyalty and relationship marketing programs. There are two interesting ones on my company’s website.
Keith Lauver, a tech entrpreneur turned artisan food CEO who is the star of the July webinar, is particularly interesting to listen to, as he has the entire perspective from high level strategy to doing the implementation work himself. I think the most interesting point he makes in this webinar is that sucess can be traced back to the fact that he chose open and extensible systems to run his operations. This made it easy to attach new systems without requiring custom development and integration. (Visit his company at www.montanalegend.com. Good stuff. Disclosure: Yes, they are a client.)
In this Web 2.0 world, integrability is becoming more and more important to the long term success of an organization, especially one that needs to use disparate data sources to understand the whole picture of customer relationships. Stay tuned.
I grew up on the East Coast, and have lived on the West Coast for 18 years. So when I spent 2 1/2 years commuting to Indiana, it was a great experience for a marketer to see another view of the American consumer. I was left with a greater appreciation for the role of Wal-Mart in the typical consumer’s life, as well as a deep appreciation for the diversity found in my current city of residence, San Francisco.
Why the reminiscing? Because I just spent an hour wading through marketing materials from the Fred. Newell CRM Conference that took place earlier this month. Suddenly all of the database marketing/email/campaign management providers sound very, very similar, all promising more loyalty, more sales, higher ROI, more insight, etc. It reminds me of the ads for apartment buildings in Indiana, where everything had a pool, workout facility, clean units, a new kitchen, parking, and easy access to freeways. You had to filter based on location, then visit everyone in a region to figure out the differences. I quickly began using price as a proxy for quality to cut through the clutter.
Clearly there is a major challenge for marketing execs at retention marketing solutions (i.e. me) to better differentiate from competitors. Feel free to comment or send me feedback directly on the topic.
Here’s an excerpt from my latest article for Chief Marketer. The article in its entirety is here.
Quick, list the objective for the next marketing dollar you spend. Is it quantifiable and time-bound? Is it something other than “increase revenue”? I talk to dozens of companies about improving their business through relationship marketing and find that developing clear financial and marketing objectives is the most productive step in the discussion.
Read more.
There is an outstanding discussion between Vinton Cerf and Esther Dyson at wsj.com that is definitely worth reading.
The fascinating part is their discussion of attention. If there truly is an emerging shift in how individuals value themselves (Adults define themselves by what they own and wear, Kids by who pays attention to them), there are staggering changes to the concept of brands and brand relationships on the horizon.
It’s not difficult to envision a world 20 years from now where individual expression is everything, and conformity is nothing. Functional and performance brands will still thrive, but attitudinal brands will become niche-oriented to survive.
The relationships that brands have with their customers will become even more important, since holding on to core customers will be an absolute requirement for survival.
