Ama­zon Prime Day exhib­it­ed a grow­ing focus among dig­i­tal busi­ness­es for mar­ket­ing ini­tia­tives which looked to build on and reward cus­tomer loy­al­ty. For dig­i­tal busi­ness­es, loy­al­ty mar­ket­ing is enjoy­ing renewed focus as brands com­pete for cus­tomer life-time val­ues and sub­scrip­tions. To gauge the mood and opin­ion of the indus­try momen­tol­ogy asked 12 dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing pro­fes­sion­als for their view on how brands should approach loy­al­ty mar­ket­ing in 2015 and beyond.

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Michela Bax­ter, Sr. direc­tor, loy­al­ty for Hel­loworld

Build­ing brand rela­tion­ships and nur­tur­ing loy­al­ty mat­ters for all busi­ness­es. The foun­da­tion­al ele­ments of loy­al­ty are more impor­tant than ever in under­stand­ing your cus­tomer, build­ing brand val­ue, and dri­ving com­pet­i­tive advan­tage.

While we typ­i­cal­ly think about loy­al­ty in terms of cus­tomer reten­tion, you’ll see loy­al­ty efforts under many ban­ners – rewards pro­grams, dig­i­tal engage­ment, CRM, per­son­al­iza­tion strate­gies, and mobile apps to name a few.

Loy­al­ty efforts like Ama­zon Prime Day can and should serve many roles, touch­ing cus­tomers through­out their entire path to pur­chase. It begins with acquir­ing new mem­bers with the promise of deals, engag­ing mem­bers through a pho­to con­test, dri­ving sales with lim­it­ed quan­ti­ty offers, pro­vid­ing incre­men­tal ben­e­fits to exist­ing Prime mem­bers, and build­ing advo­ca­cy through social cam­paigns that encour­age mem­bers to share Ama­zon Prime sto­ries on Twit­ter and Insta­gram.

Brands that approach loy­al­ty from this holis­tic per­spec­tive, rather than treat it as a sep­a­rate mar­ket­ing silo, can suc­cess­ful­ly reach cus­tomers across their entire brand jour­ney.

While ear­ly results released by Ama­zon speak to peak order rates and thou­sands of items mov­ing off their shelves, buy­ing cus­tomer love with dis­counts isn’t a sus­tain­able mod­el for build­ing authen­tic con­nec­tions and long-term loy­al­ty. Brands that bal­ance their cus­tomers’ need for deliv­er­ing val­ue with engag­ing them beyond pur­chase, main­tain­ing an ongo­ing and per­son­al dia­logue, and adapt­ing strate­gies based on smart busi­ness intel­li­gence will win.

And, as Ama­zon expe­ri­enced, brands bet­ter deliv­er on expec­ta­tions or run the risk of cus­tomer back­lash or, even worse, aban­don­ment.

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Bri­an Carter — author, speak­er and con­sul­tant, Bri­an Carter Group

Loy­al­ty is becom­ing more impor­tant for dig­i­tal busi­ness­es. As com­pe­ti­tion increas­es in all online nich­es, the price of cus­tomer acqui­si­tion increas­es.

For prof­itabil­i­ty, you need to low­er acqui­si­tion costs and increase life­time val­ue. Unless you’re com­pet­ing on price (always a dan­ger­ous idea), you need loy­al­ty in order to keep and increase prof­itabil­i­ty.

Every com­pa­ny is dif­fer­ent, but they all need a map of their mar­ket­ing and sales fun­nel that starts with aware­ness to new prospects and ends with loy­al­ty. Most com­pa­nies do well in some parts of the fun­nel but not all. They need to have that map, and mon­i­tor the KPI’s for each lev­el of the fun­nel.

One of the biggest strengths of con­tent mar­ket­ing and mar­ket­ing automa­tion is that it can cre­ate a brand with emo­tion­al res­o­nance that increas­es life­time val­ue. That means mak­ing sure that you have con­tent for every lev­el of the fun­nel and that is all ties togeth­er into one uni­fied brand expe­ri­ence.

Dili­gence in con­tent mar­ket­ing and fun­nel automa­tion are key. Beyond that, your con­tent needs to have the per­son­al­i­ty to attract and retain cus­tomers. Many com­pa­nies don’t have the skills inter­nal­ly to write com­pelling con­tent, enter­tain, and cre­ate videos and pod­casts. In grow­ing their brand con­tent-wise, they need to build the skills and tal­ent that has tra­di­tion­al­ly only been retained by pub­lish­ers, enter­tain­ment com­pa­nies, and mar­ket­ing agen­cies.

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Mark Har­ring­ton, vice pres­i­dent of mar­ket­ing for Clutch

Gen­uine cus­tomer loy­al­ty is becom­ing a fleet­ing advan­tage for many brands. The vast amount of real-time infor­ma­tion avail­able to con­sumers can eas­i­ly dis­rupt a brand’s path-to-pur­chase, which is forc­ing many brands to com­pete on price for short-term vic­to­ries in lieu of long-term loy­al­ty.

In real­i­ty, cus­tomer loy­al­ty is deeply root­ed in the over­all expe­ri­ence with a brand. While pric­ing can be an impor­tant com­po­nent to many con­sumers, there are large seg­ments moti­vat­ed by the over­all expe­ri­ence a brand deliv­ers.

The research on the mea­sur­able val­ue of retain­ing exist­ing cus­tomers is plen­ti­ful; gen­er­al­ly a new cus­tomer costs five to sev­en times more to moti­vate toward a pur­chase than an exist­ing one, and accord­ing to Mar­ket­ing Met­rics, “the prob­a­bil­i­ty of con­vert­ing a cur­rent cus­tomer is 65 per­cent on aver­age com­pared to 10 per­cent for a new cus­tomer”.

On top of this, accord­ing to Gart­ner, the aver­age busi­ness gen­er­ates 80 per­cent of its prof­its from 20 per­cent of its exist­ing cus­tomers and Bain and Com­pa­ny reports that increas­ing cus­tomer reten­tion by a mere 5 per­cent can result in an aver­age prof­it lift of upwards of 40 per­cent for a brand.

Despite all of this, there is still a fun­da­men­tal dis­con­nect with­in most mar­ket­ing teams in that their bud­gets still allo­cate upward of 80 per­cent to cus­tomer acqui­si­tion ini­tia­tives, with gen­er­al­ly less than 20 per­cent focused on the engage­ment and expe­ri­ence to retain exist­ing cus­tomers. This is where many brands are falling down when it comes to deliv­er­ing val­ue to cur­rent cus­tomers in order to earn trust, loy­al­ty, and evan­ge­lism.

To address this the for­mu­la is rel­a­tive­ly sim­ple; busi­ness­es need to first adopt con­sumer man­age­ment tech­nol­o­gy to cen­tral­ize and syn­the­size their dis­parate cus­tomer data streams to iden­ti­fy and under­stand their best cus­tomers. This allows brands to engage con­sis­tent per­son­al­ized engage­ments and expe­ri­ences across in-store loca­tions, ecom­merce plat­forms, email cam­paigns, mobile appli­ca­tions, social net­works, and even direct mail.

Today, accord­ing to a Mar­ke­to sur­vey, near­ly 80 per­cent of con­sumers say they would only engage with a brand’s offer if it was relat­ed to how they pre­vi­ous­ly inter­act­ed with the brand. In oth­er words they expect brands to under­stand them and deliv­er per­son­al­ized expe­ri­ences.

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Anne Janz­er — con­tent mar­keter, and author of Sub­scrip­tion Mar­ket­ing Many mar­keters neglect cus­tomer reten­tion and loy­al­ty efforts, because they are con­stant­ly under pres­sure to gen­er­ate new leads. This is par­tic­u­lar­ly true in busi­ness­es (like soft­ware) that have made a tran­si­tion from tra­di­tion­al pack­aged deliv­ery to sub­scrip­tion-based ser­vices. Many mar­ket­ing orga­ni­za­tions are judged and incen­tivized based on leads gen­er­at­ed and net new sales.

Many dig­i­tal busi­ness­es are now built on a sub­scrip­tion mod­el or depend on recur­ring pur­chas­es. Most sub­scrip­tion busi­ness­es don’t recov­er the cost of acquir­ing and ser­vic­ing the cus­tomer until the cus­tomer has renewed once or twice (if annu­al). In these sit­u­a­tions, cus­tomer loy­al­ty is essen­tial to rev­enues and prof­itabil­i­ty.

Mar­keters in dig­i­tal busi­ness­es must stay involved to look beyond the sale and find ways to add val­ue to the cus­tomer expe­ri­ence so cus­tomers remain loy­al and, in the best cas­es, refer oth­ers.

In addi­tion to gen­er­at­ing leads and nur­tur­ing leads, mar­keters need to prac­tice val­ue nur­tur­ing, which includes cus­tomer reten­tion, cus­tomer loy­al­ty, and ongo­ing cus­tomer mar­ket­ing activ­i­ties. These activ­i­ties require mar­keters to work close­ly not only with sales, but also with cus­tomer suc­cess, cus­tomer sup­port, and oth­er groups in the busi­ness.

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Paula Tomp­kins, founder & CEO of Chan­nel­Net

Most CMOs and dig­i­tal mar­keters want more of a focus on the entire cus­tomer jour­ney with the end goal of cus­tomer reten­tion. This is espe­cial­ly true in com­pa­nies that have long sell­ing cycles; the mes­sage is com­plex and they involve mul­ti­ple sales chan­nels.

Mar­keters know loy­al cus­tomers are more like­ly to refer cus­tomers, their sales are high­er and they are more recep­tive to cross-sell­ing pro­mo­tions. They rep­re­sent sig­nif­i­cant dol­lars to any indus­try – an esti­mat­ed 20 per­cent of a busi­ness’s cus­tomer base yields about 80 per­cent of their total rev­enue.

Even though it is com­mon knowl­edge that loy­al cus­tomers dri­ve sus­tain­able, prof­itable growth, the major­i­ty of brand mar­ket­ing ini­tia­tives tar­get­ing loy­al cus­tomers has been tra­di­tion­al­ly under­fund­ed for many rea­sons.

One of the big issues hold­ing back mar­keters is the means to man­age the cus­tomer rela­tion­ship in a holis­tic way has not been avail­able. The good news now is today’s tech­nol­o­gy, cus­tomer data and cloud offer­ings are open­ing the flood­gates for busi­ness­es. Thanks to recent tech­nol­o­gy, man­ag­ing the cus­tomer rela­tion­ship has become more afford­able and eas­i­er to do, espe­cial­ly in the dig­i­tal mar­ket­place.

Online cus­tomers enjoy many options, and they are all just a click away. This means a busi­ness has to earn their loy­al cus­tomers online and on mobile tech­nolo­gies.

Every inter­ac­tion counts. To score repeat cus­tomers, busi­ness­es need pro­vide a per­son­al expe­ri­ence to make a cus­tomer feel spe­cial as well as pro­vide a con­sis­tent user expe­ri­ence across all their chan­nels and pro­vide excel­lent cus­tomer ser­vice.

There are two impor­tant com­pa­ny traits that pre­dict a com­pa­ny’s suc­cess: senior man­age­ment mind-set and a cus­tomer-cen­tric view. If you map the cus­tomer’s jour­ney and lis­ten close­ly, you will reap loy­al­ty and its prof­its in return.

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Tom Edwards, chief dig­i­tal offi­cer, agency for Epsilon

Loy­al­ty has evolved in recent years and it’s now a state of mind that can be ampli­fied like nev­er before. Dig­i­tal busi­ness­es that focus on max­i­miz­ing the post-pur­chase cycle by pro­vid­ing a com­pelling con­sumer expe­ri­ence while empow­er­ing their most loy­al con­sumers have an oppor­tu­ni­ty to cre­ate a val­ue exchange that is mutu­al­ly ben­e­fi­cial.

By lever­ag­ing the net­work effect of a consumer’s var­i­ous dig­i­tal, social, and mobile affir­ma­tions of the brand, dig­i­tal busi­ness­es can extend the post-pur­chase cycle and impact con­sumer dis­cov­ery. Under­stand­ing how to con­vert excel­lent con­sumer expe­ri­ences into advo­ca­cy is where the val­ue will be cre­at­ed in 2015 and beyond.

Reten­tion is a key com­po­nent to max­i­miz­ing the life­time val­ue of a con­sumer. Loy­al­ty pro­grams focused on reten­tion can reduce cus­tomer churn and strength­en the pref­er­ence for the brand.

From a brand mar­ket­ing per­spec­tive, there is a sig­nif­i­cant amount of time and ener­gy spent on acqui­si­tion and aware­ness based ini­tia­tives. This is rep­re­sent­ed by the recent shift toward con­sumer-cen­tric con­tent mar­ket­ing.

Dig­i­tal busi­ness­es that under­stand the role that con­tent plays at all phas­es of the cus­tomer jour­ney can cre­ate val­ue and loy­al­ty while max­i­miz­ing reten­tion. The key is to enable the con­sumer to high­light mem­o­rable inter­ac­tions and pro­vide a plat­form for shar­ing or by lever­ag­ing social inter­ac­tions to cre­ate social cur­ren­cy. These inter­ac­tions then become a part of the aware­ness and dis­cov­ery cycle decreas­ing the cost of cus­tomer acqui­si­tion and increas­ing the prob­a­bil­i­ty of cus­tomer reten­tion.

There are five qual­i­ties that should be con­sid­ered when cre­at­ing advo­ca­cy pro­grams to sus­tain loy­al­ty:

• Authen­tic­i­ty is crit­i­cal in a high­ly trans­par­ent dig­i­tal world.
• Cre­at­ing excel­lent cus­tomer expe­ri­ences cre­ates oppor­tu­ni­ties for advo­ca­cy.
• Reci­procity with con­sumers is key and can come in the form of sur­prise and delight trig­gers to show appre­ci­a­tion.
• Empow­er­ing the con­sumer to tru­ly car­ry and own the brand iden­ti­ty dig­i­tal­ly is essen­tial to build­ing strong brand loy­al­ty.
• Final­ly, recog­ni­tion is a pow­er­ful tool that can quick­ly trans­form a loy­al con­sumer into a vocal brand advo­cate.

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Eliz­a­beth Clor, senior direc­tor, con­tent mar­ket­ing for Clarabridge

Look­ing at 2015 and beyond, loy­al­ty is becom­ing increas­ing­ly valu­able for dig­i­tal busi­ness­es. A company’s most loy­al cus­tomers, or “pro­mot­ers” (if you are look­ing at Net Pro­mot­er Score), are more empow­ered than ever to rec­om­mend a busi­ness. On the flip side, “detrac­tors” are also more empow­ered to voice their opin­ions to oth­ers.

Count­less stud­ies have proven the ways in which loy­al cus­tomers impact the bot­tom line. For exam­ple, the White House Office of Con­sumer Affairs found that it is 6–7 times more cost­ly to attract a new cus­tomer than to retain an exist­ing one.

For dig­i­tal busi­ness­es, the impact could be even steep­er. Why? Because con­sumers are more empow­ered and more vocal than ever due to the rise of social net­works and online review sites. If a cus­tomer has a bad expe­ri­ence with a dig­i­tal busi­ness, they may post about it on Twit­ter, Face­book, an online review site, or a blog.

For dig­i­tal busi­ness­es to devel­op loy­al­ty among cus­tomers, they need to ful­ly under­stand these online con­ver­sa­tions and iden­ti­fy the areas of the expe­ri­ence that cus­tomers love and hate. Many dig­i­tal busi­ness­es may feel like they are in less con­trol of their brand rep­u­ta­tion with the rise of social media and online reviews, but these out­lets actu­al­ly pro­vide a fan­tas­tic oppor­tu­ni­ty to improve the entire expe­ri­ence – both online and off.

Many busi­ness­es have invest­ed in tech­nolo­gies to under­stand the dig­i­tal jour­ney and increase con­ver­sion rates. But dig­i­tal behav­ior only tells part of the sto­ry.

For com­pa­nies to remain com­pet­i­tive and tru­ly under­stand the cus­tomer jour­ney, they need to also ana­lyze the cus­tomer voice. Busi­ness­es that ana­lyze social media con­ver­sa­tions, call cen­ter record­ings, inbound emails, sur­veys, online chat, review sites, and oth­er sources of cus­tomer feed­back in aggre­gate gain a clear pic­ture of the dri­vers of cus­tomer loy­al­ty.

Beyond loy­al­ty is prof­itabil­i­ty. Loy­al­ty doesn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly trans­late into prof­itabil­i­ty, accord­ing to Gart­ner Ana­lyst Richard Fouts.

Under­stand­ing the voice of the cus­tomer from all chan­nels and pair­ing that view with pur­chase his­to­ry and demo­graph­ic data can help busi­ness­es deter­mine which cus­tomers are the most prof­itable. When busi­ness­es under­stand the dri­vers of loy­al, prof­itable cus­tomers, they can make mean­ing­ful improve­ments tai­lored to that seg­ment.

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Jenne Bar­bour, mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy at Ter­a­da­ta

Cus­tomer loy­al­ty will always mat­ter, but the approach to loy­al­ty is evolv­ing from the tra­di­tion­al struc­ture. Always-on cus­tomers can eas­i­ly hop to anoth­er option if they aren’t sat­is­fied, or price com­pare with a sin­gle click.

A sol­id prod­uct is still imper­a­tive, but arguably even more impor­tant is the cus­tomer expe­ri­ence. Is it real­ly the minute dif­fer­ences in the pair of san­dals you’re buy­ing online that keeps you com­ing back, or is the ease with which you “flag them for lat­er,” view every­thing from the sole to the buck­le, one-click pur­chase them, and get your ques­tions answered when an issue aris­es?

A con­sumer these days is finicky. Cus­tomer loy­al­ty still exists, but we’ll have to change our under­stand­ing what cre­ates loy­al­ty in order to achieve that repeat buy­er.

Address­ing cus­tomer needs in real-time is essen­tial to earn­ing repeat vis­its. Indi­vid­u­al­ized insights have become the cen­ter of this effort.

Mar­keters know that reten­tion is a top pri­or­i­ty – long-term cus­tomers tend to be more prof­itable, and increased cus­tomer reten­tion direct­ly trans­lates to a decrease in a busi­ness’ costs. But we have a ways to go to per­fect this prac­tice.

Con­sid­er­ing the cus­tomer jour­ney and its com­po­nents – like brand aware­ness and acqui­si­tion, reten­tion and growth – should guide the marketer’s approach. Again, it’s data and data-dri­ven insights that will be key to keep­ing cus­tomers around. Col­lect­ing the right data is step one, but using it – and using it cor­rect­ly – is where a dif­fer­ence will be made.

Dig­i­tal chan­nels sup­port growth and reten­tion, and along with mobile, present an oppor­tu­ni­ty for mar­keters to pro­vide rel­e­vant and use­ful inter­ac­tions with cus­tomers at the times that mat­ter most – mak­ing it easy for cus­tomers to stick around.

If brands have a hope of cul­ti­vat­ing loy­al cus­tomers they’ll need to be good lis­ten­ers. Lis­ten to the insights you’re col­lect­ing from your cus­tomers, make adjust­ments accord­ing­ly, and com­mu­ni­cate those improve­ments back to your cus­tomer base to rein­force your ded­i­ca­tion to their needs and feed­back.

A recent Har­vard Busi­ness Review study found that cus­tomers who have expe­ri­ences that meet or exceed their expec­ta­tions will spend 140 per­cent more than those who have neg­a­tive expe­ri­ences. The oppor­tu­ni­ty is huge for those who are pay­ing atten­tion. Take advan­tage of the data-dri­ven insights at your dis­pos­al to cre­ate an inter­ac­tion that is acces­si­ble, use­ful, and pos­i­tive for the cus­tomer.

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Julie Gero­la, SVP, mar­ket­ing & rewards for Vig­gle

Loy­al­ty ini­tia­tives play a key role for dig­i­tal busi­ness­es for a num­ber of rea­sons Fos­ter­ing a grow­ing pop­u­la­tion of reg­u­lar cus­tomers is the first and most obvi­ous moti­va­tion.

In addi­tion, by con­sis­tent­ly attract­ing a spe­cif­ic key demo­graph­ic or mul­ti­ple key demo­graph­ics, cus­tomer infor­ma­tion can be col­lect­ed and ana­lyzed. For exam­ple, know­ing the age, loca­tion and spe­cif­ic prod­uct pref­er­ences of these cus­tomer sec­tors allows the busi­ness to more accu­rate­ly refine its offer­ings and ensure they are being tar­get­ed cor­rect­ly – which strength­ens the cus­tomers’ sense of loy­al­ty fur­ther. Per­haps more impor­tant­ly, this infor­ma­tion can be shared with cur­rent and poten­tial adver­tis­ers, who can like­wise ensure that their mes­sages are being placed in front of the right eye­balls.

In 2015 and beyond, more and more indus­tries will be incor­po­rat­ing loy­al­ty pro­grams into the mobile mar­ket­ing mix. For exam­ple, until the Vig­gle app debuted, there was no way for con­sumers to be reward­ed for watch­ing tele­vi­sion – an indus­try where the con­tent is avail­able on many plat­forms and the audi­ence is very frag­ment­ed. To max­i­mize expo­sure, mar­keters in the future are like­ly to ally with mobile plat­forms that incor­po­rate rewards pro­grams. Such alliances are even more effec­tive for mar­keters if con­sumers are will­ing to share key data – includ­ing their age, ZIP code, and product/entertainment pref­er­ences – when sign­ing up for a rewards pro­gram.

An effec­tive loy­al­ty pro­gram is clear­ly designed not only to attract new cus­tomers but to retain them over long peri­ods of time.

In the case of some busi­ness­es, includ­ing Vig­gle, we have built our entire brand around the con­cept of loy­al­ty – it is why new users sign up to use our app in the first place (i.e., to earn points for watch­ing their favorite TV shows and lis­ten­ing to their favorite songs, there­by earn­ing points that can be redeemed for a vari­ety of rewards).

Loy­al­ty, reten­tion, life­time val­ue, and brand aware­ness are all dif­fer­ent sides of the same coin. Any busi­ness that focus­es on one of these goals at the expense of the oth­ers is clear­ly drop­ping the ball; they all have to be con­sid­ered togeth­er.

A sen­si­tiv­i­ty to evolv­ing cus­tomer tastes and a recog­ni­tion that every­one needs moti­va­tion to stay loy­al. For exam­ple, by reg­u­lar­ly mod­i­fy­ing our selec­tion of loy­al­ty rewards (which we recent­ly expand­ed to ebooks and audio­books) – and by offer­ing a unique and fun selec­tion of oppor­tu­ni­ties to win more rewards tied to big events (e.g. the Super Bowl, the Oscars, the NBA play­offs, etc.) – Vig­gle has main­tained and built loy­al­ty among its devot­ed users.

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Erwan Pac­card, direc­tor of mobile and omni-chan­nel strat­e­gy, Dyna­trace In today’s web and mobile world, cus­tomer engage­ment and loy­al­ty are dri­ven by their sat­is­fac­tion with each of their dig­i­tal inter­ac­tions. This new par­a­digm – dig­i­tal per­for­mance – is now the key to suc­cess in 2015.  We know this first­hand, because Dyna­trace works with thou­sands of com­pa­nies around the world to help them improve dig­i­tal per­for­mance and cus­tomer expe­ri­ences both to increase their organization’s com­pet­i­tive­ness and to strength­en their rela­tion­ships with cus­tomers.

In a dig­i­tal world where cus­tomers are frus­trat­ed by every delay, CMOs need to make sure their web and mobile apps are deliv­er­ing supe­ri­or expe­ri­ences.  And if they aren’t, they need to know imme­di­ate­ly so they can respond on a dime to save cus­tomer rela­tion­ships and trans­ac­tions, and fix iden­ti­fied issues quick­ly in col­lab­o­ra­tion with devel­op­ment and IT oper­a­tions teams.

Busi­ness teams demand real-time insight into user expe­ri­ence, not just bina­ry pass/fail met­rics or page views. Col­lect­ing data from every dig­i­tal trans­ac­tion and using it to refine buy­er per­sonas and tru­ly under­stand user jour­neys across web and mobile apps used to be near­ly impos­si­ble, but it’s not any­more.

Dig­i­tal per­for­mance plat­forms are now avail­able to ana­lyze every sin­gle cus­tomer inter­ac­tion, com­pile them into vis­it pro­files, and deliv­er easy to under­stand dash­boards that track user expe­ri­ence in real time.  This ‘Dig­i­tal Expe­ri­ence Cock­pit’ approach enables mar­ket­ing to tru­ly under­stand deliv­ered dig­i­tal expe­ri­ences, and react swift­ly and col­lab­o­ra­tive­ly with oth­er tech­ni­cal teams to keeps users hap­py, build loy­al­ty – and increase rev­enue.

Focus­ing on dig­i­tal per­for­mance should be a best prac­tice approach for mar­keters now and in the months and years ahead.  To put it sim­ply: those who adapt to the new dig­i­tal age and best serve the new gen­er­a­tion of dig­i­tal cus­tomers will suc­ceed, and those who don’t will per­ish.

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Todd Scholl, direc­tor of mar­ket­ing for Cer­tona

A loy­al cus­tomer is sig­nif­i­cant­ly more valu­able than a new cus­tomer the brand hasn’t built a rela­tion­ship with yet. Loy­al­ty is built over the long-term but once it’s formed, that cus­tomer can pos­i­tive­ly affect the brand’s rev­enue and rep­u­ta­tion through word of mouth mar­ket­ing or repeat sales.

We see more and more busi­ness­es shift their atten­tion to their dig­i­tal assets in an effort to engage their loy­al buy­ers, reward them for their busi­ness, and keep them com­ing back for more.

Keep in mind that busi­ness­es have more data on their long-term cus­tomers than they do their new ones. That data is what informs them about what prod­ucts, mar­ket­ing cam­paigns or con­tent res­onate with the cus­tomer. These cus­tomers are also the ones that will advo­cate the brand’s prod­ucts or ser­vices to their social net­works and peers. That word-of-mouth mar­ket­ing alone is invalu­able to busi­ness­es.

If mar­keters aren’t focus­ing on reten­tion, they’re miss­ing out and los­ing cus­tomers. We’ve seen many busi­ness­es fall short due to their inabil­i­ty to see cus­tomers’ life-time val­ue.

There are sev­er­al ways to acquire, grow, and retain cus­tomers. Ana­lyz­ing data such as point-of-sale data, brows­ing his­to­ry and num­ber of clicks can trans­late into mean­ing­ful insights for a busi­ness. It also reveals a lot about the cus­tomer, what he wants and where he spends most of his time.

As cus­tomers pass through dif­fer­ent stages across their life­cy­cle, a brand must engage them accord­ing­ly. Once they ini­tial­ly make a pur­chase, it’s crit­i­cal they per­son­al­ize their offers, con­tent, and prod­ucts to that indi­vid­ual and cap­i­tal­ize on that rela­tion­ship vs. more cost­ly acqui­si­tion pro­grams.

Cus­tomer loy­al­ty depends heav­i­ly on know­ing your cus­tomer and then deliv­er­ing the con­tent, ser­vices, or offer­ings that mat­ter most to them. Big data is the foun­da­tion for every busi­ness. Brands can ana­lyze his­tor­i­cal, behav­ioral or con­tex­tu­al data to glean insights about what mat­ters most to that indi­vid­ual. From there, brands can deter­mine where to invest their resources, whether it be hyper-per­son­al­iza­tion, more prod­ucts, or a less cum­ber­some check­out process.

Loy­al­ty starts with know­ing the cus­tomer at a deep lev­el and it grows with the cus­tomer expe­ri­ence. Brands must focus first on learn­ing what cus­tomers want and desire, and then find ways to over deliv­er on those desires and expec­ta­tions.

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John Kusovs­ki, direc­tor of dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing for Tenet Part­ners Dig­i­tal affords cus­tomers a world in which choice is ubiq­ui­tous. As mar­keters, it’s our respon­si­bil­i­ty to rec­og­nize that when work­ing in dig­i­tal, we’re only ever one click away from los­ing busi­ness to a com­peti­tor. It’s this unprece­dent­ed lev­el of access to the mar­ket­place that makes loy­al­ty such a valu­able com­mod­i­ty in the dig­i­tal space, and its impor­tance con­tin­ues to grow as more busi­ness­es ­ and busi­ness mod­els ­are being upend­ed by dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tions.

For­tu­nate­ly for mar­keters, the same dig­i­tal tools that offer con­sumers a world of pos­si­bil­i­ties can pro­vide us with con­ve­nient meth­ods to build that loy­al cus­tomer base. Mar­ket­ing automa­tion, CRM tools, and social media can be used to imple­ment a cus­tomer loy­al­ty strat­e­gy that com­ple­ments every step in a cus­tomer’s jour­ney ­from that ini­tial sign-up for more infor­ma­tion, to specif­i­cal­ly tar­get­ed and time pro­mo­tions designed to nur­ture a first-time cus­tomer into a repeat one.

It’s impor­tant to rec­og­nize that these dig­i­tal tools don’t make it eas­i­er to build loy­al­ty. Rather, they pro­vide mar­keters with more ways to deliv­er and mea­sure the effec­tive­ness of their loy­al­ty pro­grams.

Loy­al­ty-ori­ent­ed brands must be also be will­ing to make adjust­ments in how they oper­ate, and the way in which they present them­selves in the dig­i­tal space. I believe it’s vital for a brand to focus more on rela­tion­ship build­ing, rather than on sell­ing.

This change in think­ing gives brands the oppor­tu­ni­ty to exude char­ac­ter­is­tics like hon­est­ly, gen­eros­i­ty, and atten­tive­ness ­traits that show cus­tomers their busi­ness is appre­ci­at­ed. This behav­ior, in turn, engen­ders a foun­da­tion of trust and shows a brand to be one that pro­vides val­ue to to its audi­ence.

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