Bill Hanifin
view more articles
There has been a LinkedIn discussion ongoing for several weeks that, if you care about customer marketing, causes you to stretch your mind a bit.
The question? “Can you use ONE WORD to describe the biggest challenge for Loyalty professionals?”
I read the litany of responses and found it worth documenting what keeps loyalty and database marketing professionals up at night. The answers that popped up with highest frequency fall into 2 categories and provide insight into the macro themes we are confronted with these days to build long term sustainable customer loyalty.
Core Challenges:
These one-word descriptions describe the challenges we have faced in loyalty marketing from the outset in the early 80’s. We’ve got to start with objectives to reach a good result and we are continually challenged to be financially accountable to project stakeholders.
- Accountability
- Budget
- Commitment
- Creativity
- Education
- Knowledge
- Objectives
- ROI
Loyalty Futures:
Now that we’ve mastered the art of enrollment, we are challenged to increase and maintain consumer engagement with loyalty programs. We need to do a better job using the massive stores of data we already possess as well as carefully enhancing it with more preference data to enable personalization.
We also need to move beyond traditional models and embrace ways to capture the attention of Consumer 2.0, an increasingly powerful population segment in the US and beyond. All of this needs to be accomplished in an environment of withering patience, both from corporate management and in terms of consumer attention span.
- Data
- Differentiation
- Evolution
- Engagement
- Non-conformity
- Patience
- Relevance
- Stickiness
The term most often suggested to define the biggest challenge for Loyalty Marketing professionals was Relevance, indicating a self awareness of our need to make program offers meaningful, transparent and “real”. In turn we must communicate offers more effectively via preferred channels. It might also give a hint to the importance of including local merchants in loyalty programs to bring value to consumers on a daily basis.
Two other one-word answers to the question emphasize the changing nature of customer loyalty: Groupon and QR Codes. Translated, there are two distinct challenges to wrestle with here.
- How to position traditional loyalty economics against the simplistic allure of deep-discounted daily offers
- Whether and how to incorporate social and mobile communications channels into existing programs
The (r)evolution known as Social Loyalty has begun and the new e-Book from Hanifin Loyalty of the same title will be released in January 2012. In the book, we’ll address the nature of the changes underway and shares strategies that you can use to remain relevant with Consumer 2.0 in 2012 and beyond.
Stay tuned.
