SuccessfulWorkplace

Beaches, believe it or not, are a fantastic way to analogize customer engagement, Big Data and right-time marketing. Everyone loves the beach and its complex interaction of soil, wind, sea, geography, and physics. It has a course-grained scale like wave breaks and dunes, and is also very discreet at the level of drops of water and […]

It would be hard to overstate the level of attention being given to Big Data over the last several years. Is it really what The Economist calls a “data deluge,” and is Popular Science accurate when they say, “Data is Power”? It would be completely understandable to be cynical of the hype driven by analysts, journalists, and a myriad […]

We hear those words constantly in conversations about customer engagement. There’s a broad perception that changes in technology, and buying patterns have upset any previous balance in brand loyalty. Nowhere is this greater than in retail loyalty marketing, where an explosion of mobility and the growth of social media have blown away any short-lived loyalty […]

Today, I found out that a major electronics retailer no longer considers me a high-value customer. As I left the register, they reminded me that I had 15 days to return my items, a significantly shorter period than the last time I shopped. Surprised, I asked what had changed, and the clerk said, “Let me […]

Recently, I had a great bad experience in brand social media use. It was great as a timely reminder of the danger of impersonal customer engagement, especially for someone who works in customer loyalty. It was bad because that lesson came at the expense of hours wasted at the airport. The Story My husband and I flew […]

Forrester’s Emily Collins recently published Build a Road Map to Intelligent Loyalty - a report that spotlights three maturity stages which clearly define the challenges of today’s customer loyalty programs. For those in the right-time marketing business, intelligent loyalty is the secret to significantly better customer engagement. Foundational Planning – Setting in place the building blocks of loyalty that involve identifying […]

Anyone paying attention realizes we’ve “discovered” loyalty programs all over again over the past several years. Once the stuff of hotels, airlines, and some retailers, loyalty seems to have no boundaries today as everyone gets into the game. But like many things that become ubiquitous, the original meaning and value gets lost in the rush to look […]

Marketers talk about their customer loyalty programs as though getting someone to raise their hand and join the loyal crowd is the moment that matters. Frankly, gaining a customer’s trust through loyalty programs is no different than in “real life,” where it only takes a moment or a misstep to turn loyalty into disappointment. What’s worse is that […]

Marketers have a challenge on their hands: The public that they need to reach and convince to buy is increasingly using PCs and laptops, mobile devices, and social platforms to decide when and where to shop. That puts enormous pressure on brands to understand the changing nature of exactly why, where, and how customers make […]

Are you looking at your customers as an opportunity to put cash in and get cash out of the investment in marketing? Are you talking about return on investment in your loyalty program? If so, you should take a new look at what true relationship means and how the inputs and outputs can be very […]

I was surprised today when I discovered that a choice of reward for my credit credit card loyalty program was credit toward shopping on Amazon.com. When I made the choice, I found out I had credit on the retailer’s site, available to be used immediately. Before I made this simple discovery, I thought I had to […]

It’s starting to look like brands and retailers are finally starting to understand the mobile device. It’s about time. Since the dawn of the smartphone, the world has predicted that mobile technology would change the retail landscape. Instead, there’s been very slow progress and an unfulfilled prediction. But we’re turning a corner, and reports are […]

Loyalty is evolving quickly with the help of cloud, social, and mobile, but many loyalty programs have been around, unchanged, for decades. These programs are simply not delivering what they should. If not dynamic and individualized, they are surely suffering from diminishing returns and getting lost in the noise of ubiquitous loyalty programs. While ubiquity is an […]

As customers we all know the difference between a financial transaction and a shopping experience. Even though retailers understand this, the vast majority of today’s customer loyalty programs involve earning points through purchases in what can best be called transactional rewards. From a member perspective, they are undifferentiated and become just a kaleidoscope of plastic cards which […]