Trending worldwide on Twitter right now: “Two ways to fix customer loyalty programs.”
The lede:
“Consumers aren’t as loyal to loyalty programs as they used to be.
Since 2008, the number of consumers who feel that such initiatives don’t offer any real value jumped by 50%,according to a study by Forrester Research. The same study also found that almost one-third of consumers say that loyalty programs don’t influence their purchase — that’s up from 22% in 2008.
Why the dissatisfaction? Let’s call it the Groupon factor. Since 2008, there have been a flood of daily dealmerchants, like Groupon and LivingSocial, that have filled customers inboxes with irrelevant offers. (Groupon itself has recently employed a Pandora-like “thumbs up, thumbs down” rating system to tackle this problem, which is best illustrated by the example of middle-aged men getting offers for bikini waxes.)”
The answers they propose are crap, however. The answer is not “better targeting” of customers. The answer is not “mobile payments.”
The answer is making the customer a full participant in the process. Start here.
If you want more customer loyalty, give them a real reason to be loyal! The whole point of getting a customer loyalty card is so you can reap the benefits of being a repeat customer. Does your loyalty program actually reward your customers? And in ways that the average customer can’t get?