Jeff Nicholson, VP Marketing, Provenir will be the featured speaker in a session at the 7th Annual Loyalty Expo, presented by Loyalty360 – The Loyalty Marketer’s Association. The event will be held March 17-19, 2014, at the Hyatt Regency Grand Cypress in Orlando, Florida.
Nicholson participated in a Q&A with Loyalty360 and offered insights related to his session titled, “The New Look of Loyalty: Digital, Social, Mobile, Real-time Delivers 5X Results.”
Loyalty Expo, an expansive and exclusive loyalty event geared toward building successful and lasting customer relationships, includes three jam-packed days of networking, interactive sessions, and workshops led by several of today’s elite marketing minds. Attendees will meet their peers to discuss pressing marketing challenges, opportunities, and solutions.
Q: Can you tell our audience what you mean by "The New Look of Loyalty"?
The New Look of Loyalty refers to the changing landscape of loyalty programs, as they transform to keep up with the changing profile of consumers. Agencies and brands are faced with the challenge of revamping loyalty programs to meet the needs of today’s constantly connected, mobile minded, and social savvy consumers. To this end, traditional card-based loyalty programs are becoming a thing of the past and are decreasingly popular with the modern day customer. The New Look of Loyalty is all about creating loyalty programs that will effectively reach and engage today’s consumer, through the incorporation of digital, mobile, and social elements – in real-time.
Q: How will this "New Look of Loyalty" impact customers and companies alike?
By making this transition, brands can expect to see an increase in program registrations as well as ongoing participation. Specifically, we’ve see sign-ups increase more than five times the prior performance with one client. Brands will gain further insight on each customer and will be able to produce more relevant, personal and timely offers that drive new revenue. Meanwhile, consumers will appreciate the personalized touch and benefit from the individualized offers that provide immediate savings and greater value.
Q: How will digital loyalty programs work and how will they be unique and attractive?
New loyalty programs will have all customer-facing touch-points, including physical and digital, seamlessly connected and working together in real-time. The most cost effective of these programs will allow the brand to use their existing customer touch points, such as their current POS, email provider, CRM system and web site, without going through the cost, delay and headaches of ripping and replacing them.
Once in place, the “customer journey” across these touch points will be seamless and customers will be able to earn and redeem points in real-time. Brands will understand specifically when individuals are in purchasing mode thus open to potential offers, and are not, allowing them to tailor each interaction for real mutual benefit. The next generation of loyalty programs will be able to understand their average basket size, compare it to their current state and current purchases, and decide in real-time whether it might be beneficial to present a “nudge” offer to the individual. As an example, “Because of your last purchase, you’re only 5 points away from earning an award. Why not try product X.”
The more inventive programs are also tying in social media now, in a way that is individually focused. For example, when a customer enters their twitter information at sign up, they can then be rewarded with loyalty points for any positive interactions on social media – all automatically. These are the sorts of features that consumers are beginning to both want and expect from brands today in relation to their loyalty programs.
Q: How can companies best tap into real-time marketing?
The examples I’ve mentioned show how modern loyalty programs are a great way for companies to tap into the potential of real-time marketing. The challenge, however, is that most business are saddled with disconnected data, systems and touch points that were never designed to work together – let alone to function as one, in real-time. On the other side, customers expect immediate gratification and expect their loyalty points to be available immediately. In our session, we will be discussing new emerging approaches at that are helping brands get beyond this, so they can “just get on with it.” If done right, real-time marketing techniques can be applied to customers that are not (yet) loyalty program members and can then help convert that one-time customer to a life-time, loyal customer.