Loy­al­ty can be huge­ly valu­able asset to a brand. The abil­i­ty to inspire long-term engage­ment and pur­chas­es from cus­tomers is just as impor­tant as the aware­ness gen­er­a­tion and nur­tur­ing stages of the pur­chase fun­nel. In many ways it com­pletes the process: loy­al­ty inspires brand advo­cates to re-engage and act as a cham­pi­on for a brand, which can be a pow­er­ful source of influ­ence. How can brands win that kind of loy­al­ty?

StrongView have released their 2014 Brand Loy­al­ty Sur­vey. The ques­tions explored the moti­va­tions and demo­graph­ics of those loy­al to brands. Some of the results may sur­prise you.

The sur­vey asked more than 2,200 online U.S. adults across major indus­tries about their feel­ings on brands and the way they inter­act­ed with them between March and April of this year.

Brand loy­al­ty among con­sumers could not be pre­dict­ed by age or income — with those extreme­ly loy­al to par­tic­u­lar brands being from a range of back­grounds, accord­ing to the find­ings.

Instead, the main dri­ver for brand loy­al­ty seemed to revolve around the per­cep­tion of how much val­ue brands were able to pro­vide.

7 Key Takeaways from StrongView’s 2014 Brand Loyalty Survey

1. Just over one-fourth of con­sumers stood out as brand enthu­si­asts:
   • 41 per­cent had annu­al house­hold incomes less than $50,000.
   • 67 per­cent of loy­al cus­tomers made $75,000 or less annu­al­ly.
   • Of upper income earn­ers, only 5 per­cent of con­sumers with $150,000 in annu­al salary were loy­al to a brand, com­pared to 29 per­cent of shop­pers with an annu­al salary between $25,000 and $50,000.
2. Loy­al­ty was spread even­ly across all age brack­ets, mea­sur­ing from 17 to 19 per­cent of adult online shop­pers between the ages of 18 and 54.
3. Brand enthu­si­asts were near­ly 4x more like­ly to spend sig­nif­i­cant­ly more with brands in the future.
4. That fig­ure rose to 8x more for brand enthu­si­asts with 10+ brand inter­ac­tions.
5. Near­ly twice the num­ber of brand enthu­si­asts report­ing that loy­al­ty played a part in their last pur­chase, com­pared to non-enthu­si­asts sur­veyed.
6. Email con­tin­ued to be the most effec­tive method for dri­ving action with all cus­tomers:
   • 51 per­cent of brand enthu­si­asts report­ed that their last pur­chase for a brand was prompt­ed by email com­mu­ni­ca­tion.
   • 45 per­cent of non-enthu­si­asts report­ed that their last pur­chase for a brand was prompt­ed by email com­mu­ni­ca­tion.
7. Cus­tomers report­ed they were more like­ly on a scale from 1 to 10 to buy when they received a mar­ket­ing mes­sage that:
   • Matched the customer’s expec­ta­tions of the brand – 8.7.
   • Matched past inter­ac­tions with the brand – 8.6.
   • Was rel­e­vant to the customer’s needs – 8.6.
   • Was received at the right time – 8.4.
   • Was help­ful or use­ful in aid­ing the customer’s deci­sion to buy – 8.4.

Why Brand Loyalty Matters

In a press release from StrongView, Shawn Myers,VP of Mar­ket­ing for StrongView, explained how the brand loy­al­ty dynam­ic can be so valu­able to a brand:

“These days, cus­tomers and brands are engaged in two-way con­ver­sa­tions that go far beyond mar­keters sim­ply push­ing out prod­uct or ser­vice offers. These dynam­ic inter­ac­tions require a greater under­stand­ing of a customer’s cur­rent con­text and needs with­in the engage­ment life­cy­cle. Mar­keters have known for a long time that retain­ing a loy­al cus­tomer is much cheap­er than cap­tur­ing a new one, but now we know that keep­ing them loy­al comes down to engag­ing them with con­tex­tu­al­ly rel­e­vant infor­ma­tion, which ulti­mate­ly leads to addi­tion­al rev­enue.”

Conclusion

The study shows that sus­tained cus­tomer loy­al­ty is best achieved by pro­vid­ing true val­ue for con­sumers, rather than by pro­mot­ing goods and ser­vices via adver­tis­ing.

Brand enthu­si­asts sur­veyed by StrongView con­firmed that these days, brands can add val­ue to their cam­paigns with con­tex­tu­al mar­ket­ing, with enthu­si­asts report­ing they were more like­ly to buy after receiv­ing time­ly com­mu­ni­ca­tions that are “rel­e­vant, help­ful and con­sis­tent with their expec­ta­tions.”

Above all, the study shows how real­ly con­nect­ing with con­sumers, and under­stand­ing the way they behave can inspire con­sumers to become loy­al to your busi­ness. By doing good work to con­nect with con­sumers on the cus­tomer jour­ney, brands can reach valu­able touch points, facil­i­tate engage­ment, and dri­ve sales.