Mark Johnson, CEO and CMO of Loyalty360, was a recent guest on the TechnologyAdvice Expert Interview Series. The series, which is hosted by TechnologyAdvice’s Josh Bland, explores a variety of business and technology landscapes through conversations with industry leaders.
In this episode, we discuss the customer experience versus customer engagement, B2B versus B2C loyalty, and The Engagement and Experience Expo.
Below are Mark Johnson’s three biggest insights from the conversation.
1. Understand where your organization lies in the customer journey.
There are a lot of technologies in the marketing landscape right now. So that's where all this confusion comes. It used to be: “I need email, I need direct mail, I may want to use something like a point of sale.” But now everyone's prescriptively selling these brands. The important thing is to know where your company stands in the buyer journey to make the best experience for your audience.
3. With loyalty, it doesn't necessarily start at the beginning.
For instance, if you go to a restaurant for the first time and they slap a $50 bottle of wine on your table, you don't have any long term emotional connection to that brand so you're more than likely not going to come back — especially if they don't address it in that initial engagement.
But as you engage the brand, you have some emotional connection to them. You build that kind of loyalty over a period of time. Engagement builds a strong customer loyalty program — but it's really the kind of experiences that are driving that loyal behavior.
4. Mobile is getting more important than ever to the customer conversation.
Smart phones make it simpler to create that unique one-on-one relationship with the brand. The whole idea traditionally of social media outlets like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn was to drive customers to the community — the brand — so they can engage with that content and become an ambassador.
I think one of the biggest challenges is these marketing programs used to be very autocratic and tied down. What we continue to see from brands is the challenge of actually listening to their customers in an active manner and understanding their needs. You may hear what the customer's saying but to put in place processes and procedures that allow that dialogue — not just the monologue — are challenging because marketing used to just serve as a sounding board for pitching your product. But now there's so much disruption out there in the market, it's challenging. So to be able to have a dialogue, to have that ability to listen to your customers, is a challenge we continue to see.
This podcast was created and published by TechnologyAdvice. Interview conducted by Josh Bland.