It has been a while since I have posted here on a regular basis. I wanted to share an update with you and reconnect with a fresh perspective.
The original inspiration:
I started the Loyalty Truth blog in 2006 for multiple reasons, the most obvious being that I wanted to have a voice and compete well in a crowded customer loyalty market. Having just launched my strategic marketing firm, Hanifin Loyalty, I was competing with a small group of monolithic loyalty providers and consulting groups. I could not follow their path, but had to create a new one. A friend told me I needed to start a blog and open a Twitter account. I’m highly teachable, so I took the advice, but with a high degree of skepticism.
Loyalty Truth has developed to become a medium for connection between myself and the marketplace. Writing about customer loyalty forced me to deepen my thinking on interesting topics of the day. Instead of reading an article in my morning newsfeed and filing it away, writing about it helped me deepen my understanding, connect some dots, and develop strategic points of view that I hope have been helpful to many of you. I also have a passion for writing and want to do my part to preserve the nearly dying art of the written word.
Take a second and remember what business was like in 2006:
At that time, creating a website that effectively communicated your brand online was about as far as most organizations had toed into the internet waters. For the most part, business development was fueled by traditional means.
The concept of “social media” was in its infancy. There were virtually no “executives” with an online presence, with most of the early noise being made by people selling their personal brand and trying to drive traffic by posting to their “food feed” and whatever else they could conceive to stimulate clicks and generate followers.
“Millennials” was a term that was just being seeded in the market, not the mainstream topic that we can’t hear enough about today. In fact, I remember giving a lunchtime presentation on Millennial Marketing at the first or second Loyalty Expo in 2006. Those were very early days for many topics we consider old hat today.
Think about the state of the internet and internet marketing in 2006:
MySpace and LinkedIn were launched in 2003. Facebook was launched in 2004, followed by Reddit in 2005, Twitter in 2006, and Tumblr in 2007. When I started writing at Loyalty Truth and posting on its Twitter account, I was investing time at the beginning of a growth cycle with no idea how it would turn out.
The game has changed and will continue to change for content to be noticed, consumed, and valued. Fortunately, high quality <grin> content is gaining equity.
The past 3 years:
Since a group of people including myself purchased the Wise Marketer in 2015 and launched the Loyalty Academy shortly thereafter, we have been dedicating lots of time to building that business.
Our motivation is the belief that the customer marketing industry deserves a “higher-ground” platform to ensure the brightest minds can express their unique point-of-view and be recognized for their talent, vision, and client success. We’re responding to broad-based industry demand and are committed to amplifying the importance of the customer marketing industry to global brands.
Drawing from several sources, we can triangulate a global annual revenue value for the industry in excess of $40 Billion in the North America alone. Extrapolate that number on a global basis and $200 Billion is a conservative estimate.
An industry of this scope and magnitude merits at least one, probably several, sources of credible journalism. One goal of the Wise Marketer group is to be recognized as the most valuable source of news, insight, education, and research in the customer marketing field, and to do that on a global basis. It’s a big vision, but we’ve got an energetic group of talented people pulling together towards a shared goal. Based on the support received from brands and loyalty providers so far, we have strong validation of demand for the services we provide through the Wise Marketer and Loyalty Academy.
As you can see, my interest and commitment to customer loyalty remain as strong as ever, but over the past year, I encountered the reality that there is “only so much ink in the pen” or, should I say, only so much “time at the keyboard” to generate meaningful content. That is why I’ve been a little quiet at this site of late.
So, what should you expect from LoyaltyTruth.com in the future?
Though my writing efforts for the media will be published on TheWiseMarketer.com, I want to continue to share personal thoughts on Digital Customer Marketing, the discipline formerly known as “Customer Loyalty”, on this site.
Consider the Loyalty Truth as the voice of Bill Hanifin. I plan to share a practitioner’s point of view. We’ll talk about strategy and vision, but also the nuts and bolts of bringing digital customer marketing efforts into the market and making them work effectively. That means we’ll talk about data analytics, marketing technology, campaign execution, reward choice, payments, and performance measurement.
You will also see Loyalty Truth become more closely aligned with Hanifin Loyalty. I’ll be sharing case studies that illustrate the impact that well conceived and executed Digital Customer Marketing programs can create. I’ve always believed that a practitioner’s view is highly valuable and that shared experience makes us all better, therefore I’m looking forward to sharing my experiences with you.
Consider us reengaged as of this moment.
I’ve got so many thoughts to share as we examine, dissect, and analyze the domain of Digital Customer Marketing, and I want to engage discussions with each of you on these topics.
A complete site relaunch is in the works, and at that time, I’ll probably open the comment stream again to generate discussion. In the interim, I’ll also post key articles on my personal LinkedIn feed to spark discussions in that channel. As our conversations develop, please let me know where you want to have these discussions and what works best for you. We are a community pulling in the same direction and I want to spark the growth of that community like never before.
I’m back. That’s it. Let’s start the discussion.
Yours in Loyalty,
Bill Hanifin