Category — Loyalty Marketing

Customer service is retail’s greatest missed opportunity. By Spencer L. Hapoienu. Why would anyone who sold products to millions of people through the hazmat-like comfort of a 30-second commercial want to actually engage a consumer one-to-one?

The years between the real Mad Men and 30 Rock have not been kind to mass marketing. One could argue that all marketing men (and women) are mad today because all they talk about is the individual — both retailer and consumer. The new sweet spot is one-to-one … read >>

How good is the customer service at the retail establishments you frequent? An executive summary of a Hub survey. If you are searching for excellence in the retail experience, you likely will lose your way in the customer-service department. According to our latest reader survey, only four out of 23 retailers were rated as “excellent” in customer service by more than 50 percent of respondents. Fourteen retailers languished in single or low double-digits.

We simply asked readers to rate the customer service at each retailer as “excellent,” “good,” “fair” or “poor,” and invited comments. Zappos was most highly rated as “excellent” (68%), followed by Trader Joe’s (58%), LL Bean (58%) and the Apple store (54%). Happy, friendly, knowledgeable and accessible employees were frequently cited as making the difference for these retailers … read >>

Steve Pinetti of Kimpton Hotels & Restaurants wants to put a smile on your face. By Tim Manners. Dog biscuits at the front door. A goldfish in your room. Animal-print robes in the bath. If you’ve ever stayed at a Kimpton hotel, it’s all very familiar. The complimentary wine hour at five. The extra-long bed (if you’re 6-foot-8). The level of personal attention that Steve Pinetti, Kimpton’s senior vice-president of inspiration and creativity, says transcends mere “customer service” and provides “genuine, heartfelt care.”

If you think you’ve never stayed at a Kimpton hotel — or the name doesn’t quite ring a bell — it’s probably because there is no hotel called Kimpton: For the most part, each of Kimpton’s 54 boutiques has its own name. Maybe you’re familiar with Hotel Allegro in Chicago, the Muse Hotel in New York City, or Nine Zero in Boston. All of them are Kimptons … read >>

The retail experience is the epicenter of consumer loyalty. A discussion featuring Terry Sutton of LL Bean, Ruby Anik of JC Penney, Cammie Cannella of Kiehl’s, Russell Winer of New York University and Spencer Hapoienu of Insight Out of Chaos. How does the retail experience influence loyalty? Terry Sutton: I think about this in a couple of ways. One, is it easy to do business with you? Do you remove the friction in the process? Two, as a retailer, do you make the conditions or expectations clear? Are you burying things in fine print or are you making it straightforward and easy to act on the offer that you present?

Finally, and probably most important, do you deliver on your promises? Do you stand by your brand? Do you back up what you promise in the way your brand is communicated and how you execute against it? Everything needs to fall in line, and when it does, it helps build loyalty … read >>

It takes a relationship to build a brand. By Randi Moore. Brand loyalty is defined as a consumer’s preference for a particular brand and a commitment to purchase that brand repeatedly in the face of other choices. But in today’s world, we find ourselves less loyal to the brands we buy and loyal to fewer brands. Our first question is “Do I want or need it?” Increasingly, the answer is: no. Consumers have been stocking fewer brands year over year since 2006.

While it is easy to blame the economy, the real question we need to ask ourselves as retailers, brand marketers and agencies is: Are we being loyal to our shoppers — or only to our shareholders? … read >>

Customer loyalty is the centerpiece of Kroger’s simple path to growth. By Don Henry. Years ago, when Joseph Pichler announced he was leaving the University of Kansas Business School to join Kroger, Dave Dillon — a University of Kansas graduate himself–wrote him a welcoming letter. “Dear Joe,” he recalls writing, “I am so pleased you are going to be here, and we will hopefully learn this business together.”

When Dillon shared this story in a recent Supermarket News article, it revealed a man who valued loyalty in friendship and in work as a hallmark of his career. It’s that kind of loyalty that has led Kroger to impressive growth … read >>

Today’s consumers want to be more than just spectators. By Orit Peleg. We used to think that the world was “flat,” and that all roads led to a transaction. But to achieve loyalty in today’s world, we need to rethink the linear purchase funnel and its string of individual tactics and see our world as a continuous infinity loop, with purchase action at its core and storytelling at its heart.

We all know that shoppers don’t think about channels or marketing disciplines. They are driven by wants and needs for themselves or for others. Their path is always “on” — when and where they want it. They don’t need to be within proximity of a store to morph into shoppers and buyers. Like computers or smartphones, they are just in “sleep mode,” and the right stimulus can instantly awaken their shopper senses and purchase actions … read >>

Brands should give what they get from their loyal consumers. By Beth Ann Kaminkow. When beginning a story about loyalty, one would assume that the beneficiary is the consumer. After all, the consumer is always the object of the “loyalty affection,” right? That is, subject to the perks and privileges bestowed by an appreciative brand. But somewhere in recent history the idea of loyalty has changed, and not for the better — especially when you stop and consider loyalty from the vantage point of the loyalist.

It’s a tale of unrequited love. Take a moment to think about most loyalty programs today. They seem designed to benefit the brand, the manufacturer and the retailer more than the consumer. Many of these programs are evolving into schemes hatched to gain critical personal data and insight … read >>

Re-thinking our post-recession landscape. By Lee Aldridge. I would wager that, within 24 hours of reading the words “loyalty” and “program” in this article, you will independently hear “sustainable” emoted at work. Hypothetically, I’d like to build a construct for you that puts these words together to build something more meaningful: “earning sustainable loyalty” or more properly “sustainably building loyalty.”

A really important part of this will be to execute on the idea using our current talent pools — that is, the people we have on hand. First, let’s take a cook’s tour of where we are now and how we got here … read >>

Cultural values are now critical to consumer loyalty. By Robert Rivenburgh. The advent of social media, social responsibility, personal interests in causes beyond oneself — and just, generally, care for others — has suddenly and dramatically catapulted the whole subject of loyalty to a new and significantly more important plateau.

Few would argue that “loyalty” has been more than overworked: as of this writing, a Google search turns up more than 6.5 million pages on the subject of brand loyalty and Amazon lists more than 600 books on the subject. However, no one has come close to equaling or bettering Frederick Reicheld’s brilliant foundational trilogy on loyalty, beginning with The Loyalty Effect, in 1996 … read >>

Does your brand speak for itself? Building loyalty requires it. By Jayne Eastman. A “small-boy story” is a marketing positioning that is so complicated you need to send a small boy along to explain it. It’s lazy marketing — filling up the consumer’s time with so much information and so many product signals that you are essentially asking them to do the hard work of understanding what really is important about your brand and why they should care about it.

Small-boy stories are often the result of a lack of clarity about what is truly important to your target consumers, what will firmly attract and then attach them to your brand, versus what is irrelevant. We have become victims of too much information. We have learned so much about a market, a consumer, a need or a brand’s equity that it all ends up getting jammed into the positioning … read >>

Emotional connections stir brand passions and seal consumer loyalties. By Brad Bryen. We all know the value of a loyal customer. We also know the 80/20 rule — marketers invest heavily in their most-loyal customers, who in turn drive up to 80 percent of their brand’s value. As a recent Conference Board survey of top CEOs confirms, driving brand loyalty has never been more important. According to the survey, CEOs see brand loyalty ranking first among management concerns.

Why? Because increasing the size of a typical brand’s top-tier customer base by just five percent can drive a 25 percent to 100 percent increase in profit. Increasing a brand’s base of loyal consumers requires brand commitment — the engaged, active selection and re-selection of your brand by consumers. Committed consumers will go out of their way to find your brand. They are less price-sensitive when given the choice between your brand and others … read >>

Keep customers faithful with the best total brand experiences. By Allen Adamson and Katie Ryan. We’re not sure if it’s the era in which we live, but we have more respect than ever for the folks whose automobile bumper stickers proclaim, Semper Fi. For those who may not know, it’s a shortened version of the United States Marine Corps motto, Semper Fidelis, which is Latin for “always faithful.”

Obviously, while the stakes here are not nearly as high, the holy grail of marketers has always been brand loyalty, or keeping customers always faithful. We’re not referring to the quasi loyalty that’s engendered by cash-back incentives, coupons, or discount promotions, but rather the always faithful — come hell or high water or whatever the competition may promise — kind of loyalty … read >>

The table stakes of loyalty are higher than ever. By Lauren de Simone. The other day, I found myself asking a friend a question I’ve asked before … with no good answer: “What do you do with OpenTable reward points?” She just looked at me blankly. “I don’t know,” she said, “but I have a million of them.” Me too. “You think I’d get some special treatment or something but I don’t … at least none that I’ve noticed,” she added. Me too.

As a marketer, this troubles me. Here’s a brand, with a database of engaged consumers of some discretionary means, and their loyalty program is unclear, unrewarding and leaves at least some of its “loyalists” feeling unappreciated … The fact is, there are two types of loyalty: 1) brands you love and 2) brands that love you — or want something from you. The former is the kind of brand loyalty you feel and the latter is a loyalty program you’ve paid for … read >>

Tide invites loyalty with a better retail experience. Granted, providing good service is not necessarily mandatory for some brands. Does anyone really need a help line for toothpaste or paper towel? Probably not.

But to the extent that every product — no matter how commoditized it may be — ultimately is sold in some kind of store suggests that some version of customer service could make a difference, especially where brand loyalty is concerned …
read >>

Which brands have won your loyalty? Which have lost it and why? An executive summary of a Hub Magazine reader survey. Yes, we have no loyalty. That would be the overarching result of our latest reader survey, in which we asked respondents to declare their allegiances between two top brands in a range of categories. Colgate or Crest? Verizon or AT&T? Costco or Sam’s Club?

We also provided the option to choose “neither” or “both” (when you think about it, “both” is not much better than “neither”). Perhaps it comes as little surprise that not a single brand in our survey attracted loyalty from more than 45 percent of respondents — and only two came close to that mark. Most were in the 30 percent range … read >>