What are consumers missing about loyalty programs?
Through a special arrangement, what follows is a summary of an article from COLLOQUY, provider of loyalty-marketing publishing, education and research since 1990.
Celebrating its 25th anniversary, COLLOQUY gathered a select group of loyalty leaders and visionaries and asked them to share their own insights into the loyalty industry's evolution. One of the topics explored was: "What do you think consumers miss/don't see regarding the well-connected brand loyalty relationship?"
Here, a few of the responses:
Caroline Larson, director of customer engagement and loyalty, Caribou Coffee: Many consumers don't realize how complex systems are required to be to do a good job of engaging, recognizing and rewarding guests. They think that all systems are built, integrated and easily flowing with information from one place to another. In reality, most systems are created piece by piece, over time, and sometimes in silos.
Roger Dow, president and CEO, U.S. Travel Association: Trying to join every program in a segment—spreading out their purchases vs. concentrating their spending on one or two, to gain the benefit of "high spender" points/miles accelerators.
Photo: COLLOQUY
Bryan Pearson, president and CEO of LoyaltyOne, author of "The Loyalty Leap": How much they can influence change and improve the role that loyalty marketing serves. Just consider the potential power of a well-connected brand ambassador—just Google "I Love IKEA" or "I Love Southwest." What many companies miss is the opportunity to give their budding ambassadors a platform.
Simon Uwins, author of "Creating Loyal Brands," former chief marketing officer of Tesco UK, Fresh & Easy: Once customers share data with you, they assume you know everything about them, and that you have the intention and the capability to personalize their experiences. But you can never perfectly know everything about them, or personalize everything. So it's essential for the marketer to develop a proper two-way relationship with the customer to both manage expectations and maximize value.
Don Peppers, customer relationship expert, author, founding partner of Peppers & Rogers Group: They may think of (loyalty) as a company's effort to secure their continued patronage, but I also think that consumers, unless really emotionally involved with the brand, are mercenary. They're making economically rational decisions, and a lot are suckered into making loyalty program decisions based on upfront promotions.