Officials at Red Lion Hotels Corporation strive every day to personalize its customer engagement.
Red Lion Hotels Corporation transitioned its loyalty program last year from a points-based model (R&R Club) to a recognition-based model (Hello Rewards), which recognizes and rewards members for doing things they already love to do and offers a competitive differentiation in the marketplace.
Today, marketers are tasked to be more data-centric than ever before, yet the challenge of creating actionable insight from data is more challenging than before.
Brigette Pence, RLHC Director of Relationship Marketing & Hello Rewards, explained to Loyalty360 her advice for marketers.
“Most marketers have access to an infinite amount of data and reporting that can be overwhelming and time-consuming to determine how appropriately to utilize the information,” Pence said to Loyalty360. “As marketers, it is our responsibility to align key metrics and organizational goals to market appropriately to our customers using industry and internal benchmarking data to determine campaign success and make future campaign decisions. This require the right data set to see what will make a big impact on results as well as the ability to sift through the noise of data that will make little to no impact on your organization. But it’s important to not overburden our customers. Gone are the days where we ask too much information or impose on customers. For instance, instead of long surveys at RLHC, we’re moving toward dynamic guest surveys that are customized per individual with just a few (3-4) questions with free form text. Symantec technology provides us the customer experience information we need without being intrusive with guests. Next, we then use marketing automation to keep the relationship going. Similarly, we use social media monitoring to listen to guest feedback and quickly analyze what kind of response or action we will take.”
Red Lion Hotels officials realized that loyal customers are easier to sell to, spend more, and make a business more successful. As a result, surprise and delight has moved to the forefront of RLHC’s service promise.