As more extreme weather events hit cities and towns all around the world, brick-and-mortar retailers are getting hit by lower sales and the reasons are pretty obvious to anyone considering venturing outside. Simply put, driving your...Read More

A successful business is half customer acquisition and half customer retention. That’s because getting a new customer can frequently be a costly affair, involving advertising, promotions, and/or discounts, all of which reduce your overall...Read More

In this industry, the question often arises about how to engage customers who don’t interact with your brand on a regular basis. For every company that has lots of customer interactions—including, but certainly not limited to...Read More

You know you need to make the change from old-school to new-school marketing, but you can’t stop the business while the change takes place. It’s a situation that many traditional marketers find themselves in today as the world goes...Read More

If you’re struggling to understand how a social network can enhance customer engagement, you’re not alone. Since the rise of technology-fueled social networks just a few short years ago, marketers have had a struggle finding a model...Read More

In the world of the marketer, disruption has become the norm. Technology has changed the way marketers do business more than any other role in the organization, and marketers can never seem to know enough to stay ahead of the competition...Read More

The following is Part 1 of a two-part series on driving customer loyalty in a digital world. With so much consumer data and media channels in today’s marketing mix, it’s a real challenge to find an approach that’s narrow...Read More

Christmas is a shockingly short number of days away. Retailers are fully decked out, counting on a holiday giving mindset to drive sales higher, if only for a few weeks. The spirit of the holidays is an excellent example of putting customers in a...Read More

There are only so many engagements you can offer customers via the usual marketing channels. And all too often, you’re just taking a random, shotgun approach — hoping to hit someone with an offer they want at the moment they want it...Read More

If you think 2014 brought great change to the world of marketing, just wait for 2015. Whereas this year’s conversations focused on listening to and knowing your customer, 2015 will pressure marketers to undergo the profound shift toward...Read More

If you’re a retail marketer, you’re constantly being bombarded by messages about how to drive traffic and increase sales. You’re probably being told that each customer contact should be viewed as a marketing opportunity and that...Read More

Zombie marketing is more common that you may think. A zombie marketer is one that thoughtlessly shuffles along with poor visibility into a company’s near- and long-term effectiveness of spend. This “brainless” approach makes them...Read More

Knowing your customer is all about connecting the dots of information that represent your customer’s “footprint” across the digital spectrum. The more dots you have, the clearer the picture of your customer’s historical...Read More

It sounded great when the pitch was made a while back: You signed up for marketing software that would solve all the challenges that were known at the time. But now you’re finding that data silos, changing technology, and slow decisions...Read More

Every single business on the planet is a social network—most companies aren’t organized (yet) in a network like Facebook or Twitter, but are nonetheless a network of people, including employees, suppliers, partners, and customers...Read More

Marketers have been the center of an explosion of technology and consumer expectations that is exciting and career-making. Yet there are plenty of missing parts that are keeping us from doing all we’d like and from meeting customer needs...Read More

There’s no doubt that marketing technology is going through a period of rapid growth. But just as in any other period of increased spending, some investments are smarter than others. Think back to the money that was thrown into sock puppets...Read More

Applying analytics to your marketing is one thing, but utilizing actionable analytics is quite another. Making analytics actionable is a matter of having great segmentation that establishes the playing field for those moments when a marketer needs...Read More

If you think that marketing’s big data mess is related to the volume, velocity, and variety of data (the traditional definition of big data), you’re only partially right. The single biggest data problem that marketers face today is...Read More

Today’s fitful starts at marketing personalization are remarkable for how much they take us back to the future. It wasn’t that long ago when many of us could still remember that a shopkeeper knew every single customer&mdash...Read More

There’s an ongoing, symbiotic evolution of both consumer technology and consumer expectations that leaves marketers struggling to keep up. Adding to the challenge, the ways marketers have responded—by accumulating marketing point...Read More

“People maintain habits until they don’t.” This quote from American economist Richard Thaler is the customer loyalty marketer’s credo and underpins one of the core ideas of loyalty marketing resource allocation—to...Read More

Marketers shouldn’t spend their customer loyalty budget evenly across all channels or programs. Similar to other aspects of business, there are places where large ROI can be earned by spending disproportionately higher amounts—simply...Read More

Study after study shows that our brains love small, predictable rewards more than occasional, large rewards. This principle is on prominent display in the gaming industry where slot machines far outnumber table games in any casino. Those same slot...Read More

How you define success determines how you evaluate strategy and ongoing operations. This is such a fundamental point that we make it over and over again. It’s that big. Being crystal clear on what matters ensures everyone is...Read More

In a recent post, I talked about the customer marketing lifecycle and the marketer’s most important job—getting customers to the Maintain Phase as quickly as possible and keeping them there as long as possible. Achieving that goal...Read More

When customer loyalty marketing is firing on all cylinders, the effects are indisputable. It is a given that loyalty programs work well, and they work especially well when there is a strong focus on driving specific customer behaviors. Keeping...Read More

Defining customer loyalty success is a critical activity that too often gets overlooked. For those who’ve had the chance to read the post, Why Haven’t You Defined Customer Loyalty Success?, you know that loyalty’s dirty little...Read More

Churn is not as inevitable as you might think. In fact, churn and attrition are preventable problems that require great focus and a carefully-thought-out strategy. After all, the cost of acquiring new customers in the digital age remains...Read More

Omni-channel is a popular term and for good reason. The sources for customer, product, inventory, and many other kinds of data data are exploding, leaving marketers playing catch up with the expectations of their tech-savvy customers. Spreading...Read More

Marketing in the modern digital age has done great damage to the term “good enough.” It wasn’t that long ago when good enough was a quality standard that meant, “This will work well enough and nothing better is needed....Read More

We’re way beyond the point where the world debates whether customer loyalty works.  When we think about customer loyalty’s broad goals, whether the focus is on retention or brand affinity, investments in customer loyalty have...Read More

Customer experience is going through rapid change. At the Forrester East Coast Customer Experience Forum in New York, the hot topic—and even the title of the conference—was “Why Good Enough Is Not Good Enough.” We’ve...Read More

When it comes to marketing, mobile is too often considered a channel—one of several ways to reach the buying public. In reality, mobile is far more than one of many pathways to and from the consumer. Mobile is, in fact, a world apart from...Read More

Christmas is coming. Yes, it may seem a long way off, but if you started with December 25th and worked your way backward, you’d see that for retailers, Christmas is just around the corner. The fact that Christmas is coming is the good news...Read More

Watching the World Cup 2014 in Brazil is an excellent reminder of the power of passion and the role of marketing. World Cup passion is found on the football pitch, in amazing quantity in the stands and streets of Rio, and in pubs and offices...Read More

The time is fast approaching where the stiffest competition for a customer’s wallet share will come from customer experience and the ensuing loyalty. You might think from everything you hear that we’re already there, but we’re...Read More

By Jeanne Roué-TaylorForrester’s Sheryl Pattek wrote a few months back on the hot topic of cooperation between CMOs and CIOs. Summaries of Pattek’s thoughts were captured in this SlideShare.Pattek cites three reasons why these...Read More

By definition, for something to be relevant, it needs to be important to the matter at hand. For marketing, the matter at hand was once simply reaching the public’s consciousness through mass media with hopes that your product would be...Read More

Customer expectations have always been tough to match, but never has the challenge been as great as right now, in our always-on world. CMOs face the daunting task of striking the perfect balance between being relevant and safeguarding a customer...Read More

Just yesterday I was in one of my favorite stores, a nationally known co-op. The benefits of membership at this retailer are very straightforward—the more I spend, the more I can expect to receive back at the end of the year. I happened to...Read More

It would be really hard to overstate the changes happening in marketing as our world is immersed in burgeoning amounts of all types of data. We suddenly have data that allows us to measure marketing performance through platforms that accumulate...Read More

What happens when any customer can find any product in many places, even far away in an entirely other economy; while at home, work, or on the go; and at any hour of the day? What happens when those products can be delivered, for free, as soon as...Read More

It would be easy to think that today’s customer loyalty programs are a recent creation of marketers and advertisers, but they’re actually not. The history of customer loyalty marketing goes back quite far. As far back as the 18th ...Read More

Just one day of shopping proved the high value of strong customer loyalty programs.Spring has come and so has the time to spend my weekends replanting flowers, coaxing the grass back to its summer green, and making the garden a wonderful place of...Read More

The cost of acquiring a new customer is often estimated at five times the cost of retaining the customer you already have. And it isn’t just cost—customer loyalty has a big impact on a brand’s success. A study by Bain and Co...Read More

Let’s face it: There needs to be an entirely new approach to customer loyalty programs if brands are to survive the digital and mobile revolution. While many brands realize the urgency of change, the challenges they face are daunting. For...Read More

We’re months past the winter holidays and sellers have a great chance to think about what we’ve learned, now that the dust has settled. Each holiday shopping season is an intense, focused study in what motivates customers to buy and...Read More

Today’s marketers need to be focused intently on all of the data that can be gathered about their customers. This modern reality means that data’s two dimensions—”what we know” and “when we know it&rdquo...Read More

During a recent trip to the grocery store, I commented at the checkout that I always receive coupons for baby food and diapers along with my receipt. I said sarcastically to the clerk, “You’d think I shop for those things and they know...Read More

Location is an incredibly hot segment of loyalty marketing for a couple of factors. For one, we’ve come a long way from using cell-based and GPS-based services. Today we have location-based services through products like Apple iBeacon...Read More

Business and technology are on a collision course that changes nearly every aspect of the organization. The term being thrown around to describe this is “digital business,” where mobile, analytics, social, and cloud are being married...Read More

Are you on a marketing team that closely plans, tests and measures what it does? Marketing can be a funny thing—a place for people who create perceptions of effectiveness—or it can be quite the opposite, full of people who design...Read More

Make no mistake, there’s a digital revolution happening, and that revolution is completely changing the world as we know it. What’s more, it’s happening with the greatest impact in the way consumers and retailers interact. In a...Read More

We’ve reached a point where marketers agree that the way business is done has fundamentally changed. In almost every case, they’re ready to rethink strategies, tactics and technology, but most are struggling with how to make smart...Read More

To learn more about TIBCO’s Top 10 Marketing Trends for 2014, download the whitepaper and watch the webinar.Read More

Turning customers into fans is more than a catchy phrase; it’s the goal of every marketer to get beyond the next purchase and into the heart and head of the customer. The same rule applies for sports teams—it’s one thing to bring...Read More

Coverage of the Olympic games in Sochi gives us beautiful insight into the future of marketing. This is the first time we’ve seen wholesale use of drones, sequential photography, and the use of virtual leader lines to show how competitors...Read More

There’s a truth in customer experience management brought about by rapidly changing technology—marketers are better off 80% right today than 100% right three months from now. Today’s marketing math delivers better results from...Read More

If you’ve ever flown on Virgin America, you know from the moment you enter the aircraft that you’re in for a different kind of experience. For starters, they have purple lights along the top of the cabin that give off a very soothing...Read More

We’re reaching a point of saturation where the noise of the connected world can easily outweigh the value of listening. As social media use continues to increase alongside constant connectivity, the voices that matter most to us—the...Read More

Getting the basics right in retail means transparent pricing, understandable offers, and good service and product availability. Most retailers have these down by now and are consistent across the web or the store. But competition never lets us...Read More

Customer experience is a hot marketing term, but it has far less meaning if it isn’t connected to a customer loyalty program. The reason is very simple—what customers experience are key to whether or not they feel trust and loyalty to...Read More

For all that’s been said about customer experience management, customer loyalty, and engagement, there’s a simple statement that explains what’s happening today that’s so different from the past:The customer is becoming...Read More

We have arrived on the final step in the journey to loyalty marketing nirvana. Hopefully our series has helped you develop or bolster your customer loyalty initiatives. Before you rush off to form a new program, however, it’s important...Read More

The new year is an opportunity for a torrent of predictions of what will happen in the days to come. There’s no shortage of opinions, but most look a lot more like trends than solid prognostications. That’s because trends are easier to...Read More

We all want to achieve the highest level of success possible, and with loyalty marketing initiatives requiring significant planning to complete the journey, each step is critical. Missing a step could mean failure, but hitting your stride as you...Read More

When launching new customer loyalty initiatives, it’s easy to start imagining how new efforts will improve your marketing results, and ultimately, the bottom line. But for the desired results to occur, your retail loyalty program will need...Read More

On the fourth day of loyalty marketing nirvana, we strive to determine our pre-nirvana state. After all, how can we truly know how successful our loyalty and customer retention efforts are unless we know where we’re starting?Satisfied, loyal...Read More

You didn’t think you could achieve loyalty marketing nirvana without ideating, did you?Thinking is exactly what we’re doing on Day 3 of loyalty marketing nirvana—ideating and validating for effective event-driven marketing...Read More

“On the first day of loyalty marketing nirvana, my loyalty marketing mentor gave to me…”It’s not a partridge in a pear tree. What does one do with a partridge in a pear tree, anyway? Partridges, pear trees, partridge...Read More

The holiday season is upon us. It’s the time of year to give thanks and celebrate with those we hold dear.So how does this translate to loyalty marketing?For loyalty marketers, the customer is the person we hold dear. We know that...Read More

Marketing is going through a time of significant change as it embraces a new form of customer loyalty driven by right-time marketing. Few people tell the story better than our own David Rosen. Rosen is particularly good at articulating how today...Read More

We spent the past two weeks in Peru and had a great chance to go back in customer experience time. For people accustomed to shopping, traveling and searching for information (often while shopping and traveling), Peru was a stark contrast to what...Read More

Customers are rarely a homogenous group. They differ greatly in revenue potential, levels of loyalty, and frequency of contact. What makes loyalty work, therefore, is an ability to segment your customers using powerful analytics. Segmentation...Read More

by Jeanne Roué-TaylorForrester updated its view into Customer Experience Management (CEM) earlier this year, with very interesting survey data. Retail continues to score highest among consumers and airlines stayed near the bottom. That...Read More

We’ve spent most of our lives hearing about the law of supply and demand. Brands create supply through manufacturing and the building out of service capabilities. Through marketing, quality, and some amount of skill and good fortune...Read More

In a recent post, 3 Reasons Loyalty Programs Aren’t Optional, I pointed out why loyalty programs are a critical part of customer engagement. A sudden surge in tablets and smartphones, the phenomena of Big Data, and the need for customer...Read More

How well do you know your customers? While most brands would say they know their ideal shopper, how many can break down their customer engagement into finely tuned segments based on analytics? Some can, but too many are still behind the...Read More

There’s an enormous amount of buzz in the marketplace around loyalty. But how many of the conversations make the distinction between the two kinds: one of them that’s good for the moment and the other that’s good for the long...Read More

By Jeanne Roué TaylorIf you happened to be at TUCON 2013, TIBCO’s user conference, you heard about Turning Customers into Fans from Head of Client Technical Services Wen Miao. In Miao’s words, “It is no longer acceptable...Read More

Would you associate loyalty marketing with Halloween? You will when you finish reading this.When we were kids we headed each October to the local farms to find the perfect pumpkin for Halloween. The biggest constraint was the size of the pumpkin...Read More

If you happened to be at TUCON 2013, TIBCO’s user conference, you heard about Turning Customers into Fans from Head of Client Technical Services Wen Miao. In Miao’s words, “It is no longer acceptable to have only a transactional...Read More

By Jeanne Roué TaylorThe sheer number of marketing applications offered as downloads or services is exploding. Everyone wants in on the real-time marketing game, likely because as the U.S. and the world come out of an extended economic...Read More

By Jeanne Roué Taylor How much does customer loyalty bring your business to your stores, site or app versus how often you seek out the customer? If you’re achieving meaningful customer engagement and your loyalty programs are...Read More

By Jeanne Roué Taylor You run a successful business, your customers are primarily repeat offenders, and your marketing department is giving you everything you ask for. Why would you care about doing more around customer engagement and...Read More

By Ted Rubin All of your employees work in the marketing department, at least to some extent, and they need to understand the role they play. But to create a strong foundation for customer loyalty management, there are a few departments...Read More

By Jeanne Roué Taylor Few things hold more promise right now than Big Data, mobility, social platforms, and cloud computing. Their impact on brand loyalty and customer engagement management is enormous. The reasons aren’t that...Read More

By Jeanne Roué Taylor Apple gave customer engagement management a tremendous boost with its release of the iPhone 5S and iOS 7, and most people don’t even realize it. While much of the world is talking about the smartphone’s...Read More

By Jeanne Roué Taylor Customer engagement involves having access to the information that allows right-time marketing to happen, based on interaction channel, context, and customer’s preferences. For some, this is the definition of...Read More

By Jeanne Roué Taylor There are few topics hotter than Big Data. There are few professions being transformed by Big Data more than marketing, with the conversation rapidly shifting to customer engagement through loyalty programs; these...Read More

By Jeanne Roué Taylor There’s so much customer data around us, and it gets richer and faster each and every day. People are talking non-stop about Big Data and its many uses in various parts of the market. But what’s not...Read More

By Jeanne Roué Taylor Beaches, believe it or not, are a fantastic way to analogize customer engagement, Big Data and right-time marketing. Everyone loves the beach and its complex interaction of soil, wind, sea, geography, and...Read More

By Jeanne Roué Taylor It wasn’t long ago that marketing was all about the art of segmentation, message and ad spend. For some it still is, but for some clever marketers, the dark art days of marketing are over, replaced by customer...Read More

The enormous amount of ink being spilled around Big Data often includes the phrase “amazing insights.” At the same time, there’s plenty being said about the need to know and respond to your customers in the timeframes that...Read More

By Jeanne Roué Taylor It would be hard to overstate the level of attention being given to Big Data over the last several years. Is it really what The Economist calls a “data deluge,” and is Popular Science accurate when they...Read More

We hear those words constantly in conversations about customer engagement.  There’s a broad perception that changes in technology, and buying patterns have upset any previous balance in brand loyalty.  Nowhere is this greater...Read More

By Jeanne Roué Taylor Today, I found out that a major electronics retailer no longer considers me a high-value customer. As I left the register, they reminded me that I had 15 days to return my items, a significantly shorter period than...Read More

By Jeanne Roué Taylor Recently, I had a great bad experience in brand social media use. It was great as a timely reminder of the danger of impersonal customer engagement, especially for someone who works in customer loyalty. It was bad...Read More

The science and art of customer loyalty are changing rapidly, and that’s not much of a surprise to most. As customers, we show our retail loyalty when bookmark our favorite brands and use our favorite retailers’ apps on our...Read More

Amazon, Walgreens, eBay, and Netflix—you know these companies. And if you’ve done business with them, or visited their websites, they know you, too. Not everything, of course—that would be creepy.  But they probably know...Read More

Forrester’s Emily Collins recently published Build a Road Map to Intelligent Loyalty - a report that spotlights three maturity stages which clearly define the challenges of today’s customer loyalty programs. For those in the...Read More

The loyalty marketing industry is under enormous pressure to react to changing customer preferences and behaviors and the speed at which data about both is accumulating. It’s becoming a customer-driven world, making that data ever more...Read More

Learn more in our upcoming webinar, Real-Time vs Right-Time Marketing, on 7/18. It’s clear that in the past few years we’ve “discovered” loyalty programs all over again. Once the stuff of hotels, airlines, and some...Read More

Marketers talk about their customer loyalty programs as though getting someone to raise their hand and join the loyal crowd is the moment that matters. Frankly, gaining a customer’s trust through loyalty programs is no different than...Read More

Marketers have a challenge on their hands: The public that they need to reach and convince to buy is increasingly using PCs and laptops, mobile devices, and social platforms to decide when and where to shop. That puts enormous pressure on brands...Read More

by Jeanne Roué-Taylor These days, customer loyalty is far more than points and rewards. In fact, true loyalty is about earning trust in a way that allows that customer relationship to be managed toward greater value like any other...Read More

I was surprised today when I discovered that a choice of reward for my credit credit card loyalty program was credit toward shopping on Amazon.com. When I made the choice, I found out I had credit on the retailer’s site, available to be...Read More

Could it be that retailers are finally figuring out how to sell through mobile devices? Since the dawn of the smartphone, the world has predicted that mobile technology would change the retail landscape. Instead, there’s been very slow...Read More

Loyalty is a red-hot topic for many industries, but unlike cloud, social, or mobile, loyalty programs have been around for decades. Still, many are simply not delivering what they should. If not dynamic and individualized, they are very likely...Read More

by Jeanne Roué-Taylor Let’s face it: The vast majority of today’s customer loyalty programs involve earning points through purchases in what can best be called transactional rewards. From a member perspective...Read More

There are two things we can expect every morning when we wake up. The first is that the sun has returned from the other side of the world and the second is a queue of loyalty program emails waiting in our inboxes, screaming of discounts and one...Read More

Indoor mapping of consumer location is the latest arrow in the quiver of the retail marketer. When marketers know where things are happening, they can develop interesting patterns for where to put resources like people, signage and information...Read More

by Ted Rubin Real-time marketing is all the rage, though as TIBCO Loyalty Lab’s David Rosen is quick to point out, brands really need to be focused on right time marketing. “The speed and reaction of marketing needs...Read More

The remarkable amount of change in the consumer world is ushering in a new definition of loyalty. What have long been static programs of points and plastic cards are becoming dynamic, individualized and much, much more engaging. The old way of...Read More

by Jeanne Roué-Taylor Travel and other loyalty programs are going through challenging times. Programs that floated along for decades, blissfully counting up points based on spend, transactions, nights or miles are suddenly finding...Read More

by Jeanne Roué-Taylor We’ve all heard the phrase, “Better to beg forgiveness than ask permission” used as an excuse to move forward without the official nod from the higher ups. While there are situations where that...Read More

Everyone wants to categorize and define the increasingly fast evolution of how businesses sell and their customers buy. Getting ahead of the trend is everyone’s goal, but we know intuitively that some will prosper and others will be in...Read More

Personalization is the new black. The marketing and selling story of today involves knowing and seeing your customer the moment they arrive on your physical or virtual doorstep, and being able to provide differentiated service based on their...Read More

The world of B2C marketing is changing quickly, rendering most one-size-fits-all applications obsolete in a couple of years if not months. Changes in how, where, why and when consumers make choices and interact with brands are evolving at a rate...Read More

There are still marketers today who think of their mission as traditional advertising, direct mail, loyalty programs and the like. Defining marketing solely in those terms made sense just a few years back, but makes increasingly less sense today...Read More

The ability to catch the consumer’s eye has become far more than flashy neon and holiday sales. As consumption becomes more digital and discerning, targeted offers to calculated demographics become so 2012. Getting and holding the consumer...Read More

Loyalty benefits are often thought of as offers that kick in before the shopping trip and discounts which are taken at the register. Rarely are they thought of as being delivered in the midst of the shopping experience. These days, there’s...Read More

This is the beginning of our blog series on loyalty for SMBs. We spend a tremendous amount of time with owners of small to medium sized businesses – restaurants, pharmacies, retailers – discussing how to build loyalty. One of their...Read More

 There is a significant blurring of the line between marketing and customer relationship management.  This blurring has enormous impact on the way we operate our businesses and engage with our customers. We need to stop thinking about...Read More

Social media is quickly becoming a way of life… and a way of business as more and more companies are realizing they need to integrate social media into their marketing strategies. We can’t, however, expect to do “business as...Read More

As technology expands rapidly to manage customer experience, a subtle shift is under way in who gathers and uses loyalty and other data to manage the customer relationship. No one needs to remind us how quickly the nature of shopping and...Read More

Not so long ago, businesses didn’t care about information outside the normal structure of trusted outlets like print media, trade journals, academic research and other trusted system-generated information. In fact, I would go so far as...Read More

Many made predictions as 2013 kicked off, but one caught my eye. Forrester’s Nigel Fenwick called this new year the Year of Digital Business. As Fenwick points out, there has been a communications evolution that has many retailers...Read More

The concept of “sense and respond” has been around for years, but it’s a relatively new concept for marketers. Times are changing very rapidly, and the rise of mobile, social and far faster cache memory applications gives the...Read More

Real-time means something a little different to everyone. The term is too-often used to describe getting information on what happened up to the moment, a rolling report of the history of something – like customer purchases, staffing...Read More

Retailers have gone miles beyond the traditional print, TV and radio marketing of the Mad Men era, for sure, but even the more recent digital campaign-based marketing isn’t the best way to gain loyalty while maintaining profitability. I...Read More

Last week, Michael Greenberg, Loyalty Lab’s director of global solution strategy, penned an article in DM News about the holiday season. A veritable Superbowl for loyalty marketers, the holidays are, as Michael puts it, the time to &ldquo...Read More

In our third segment looking at David Rosen’s webinar, The Power of Analytics to Drive Loyalty, we’re exploring Rosen’s, and Loyalty Lab’s, move away from some of the more traditional approaches to loyalty marketing...Read More

Last week, we gave you an overview of David Rosen’s webinar focusing on The Power of Analytics to Drive Loyalty. This week, we would like to dive a little deeper into one of the most interesting and pressing topics he discussed: segmentation...Read More

TIBCO’s David Rosen recently presented at the Loyalty 360 Engagement Expo on a topic that we at Loyalty Lab find to be undeniably essential in today’s loyalty marketing landscape: the importance of analytics, and the ways in which...Read More

Loyalty programs are changing faster than ever. Here are my top 10 cool things you need to think about in 2013 when putting together a loyalty program:10. Big is Good…Bigger is BetterIf you are going to launch a loyalty program, go for the...Read More

“Going social” no longer seems like an optional component of the loyalty marketer’s arsenal. Whether you’re engaging with your customers on Facebook, Tweeting out exclusive offers to your followers, or simply promoting...Read More

We’re heading into Columbus Day Weekend in the U.S., giving us a great chance to look at the fundamental changes that technology is bringing to retail. The new game is event-based marketing.Big Sale! A quick look at the LA Times...Read More

In our back-to-school with loyalty series, we’ve covered college and loyalty in a number of ways. First, we took a look at the students themselves, and examined both how they can benefit from joining top-notch loyalty programs, and how...Read More

This week, we’re turning our back-to-school thinking around, on the universities themselves. While there’s plenty to be learned at these fine institutions, we believe that colleges could take a lesson from loyalty programs when it...Read More

Ah, September. The leaves begin to change, the air grows crisp, and there’s an electric crackle of anticipation as the kids head back to school. For some, that means yellow school buses and lockers; for other it means a cross-country...Read More

We have seen the changing face of airline loyalty, discussed the benefits of service-minded loyalty and dove into the lack of industry-wide wireless loyalty, but we have not yet touched on an industry that...Read More

We work with a number of clients who inspire us. Earlier this week, we spoke about Pharmaca’s new-and-improved approach to the pharmacy and health experience — a focus on natural products, a pleasant environment, and their Feel ...Read More

If anything has become depersonalized these days, it’s the pharmacy experience. You can fill your prescriptions online, or on your phone; a trip to the pharmacist’s counter is automatically accompanied by the inherent dread of...Read More

Loyalty programs are nothing new. If anything we are approaching an era where loyalty stretches far beyond traditional rewards and offers. We have seen the new and innovative ways companies like Virgin America are rewarding customers...Read More

It all started with a ski trip. I was up at Heavenly in the Sierra Nevada Mountains with a group of friends, getting set for a day of shredding the slopes and carving out some powder. It was snowing that day, seemingly harmless little flurries...Read More

When it comes to loyalty programs, it seems like a no-brainer that a mobile provider would want to reward its loyal customers. Because these days, it’s basically a given that everyone has a cell phone. And in the U.S., going the pay-as-you...Read More

Having spent this week talking about Virgin America and their stellar Elevate program, we want to step back a little and take a look at the airline loyalty space at large. What we’ve noticed across the board: considering this has been an...Read More

I once somewhat jokingly referred to flying Economy class as “flying steerage.” Sure, it’s a dramatic description, considering air travel doesn’t exactly include the perils of traveling by boat in unsanitary conditions...Read More

At Loyalty Lab, we’ve been lucky to work with some of the most interesting and innovative clients around. We’d like to showcase what makes them, and their loyalty programs, unique. Kicking things off is Virgin America and their Elevate...Read More

The classic corporate marketing view of loyalty is very long term – acquisition, conversion, retention – and is very different from the customer view.  For consumers, every decision is independent.  Brand loyalty will have...Read More

According to the Aberdeen report Customer Loyalty 2012: Enabling Technologies for Customer Engagement, Conversion, and Retention, the top strategic action identified by omni-channel Leaders (top 30% of performers*) is expanding their...Read More

by Chris Taylor – TIBCORetail has gone through enormous stresses in the past decade, with more to come. Just the normal ups and downs of local and global economies, supply chains and personal taste are a huge challenge. Add to...Read More

In the world of customer engagement, analytics are paramount. But how? It’s important to pay close attention to preparation, reporting and methods for continuous improvement. First, understand how to “Prepare”: How does your...Read More

My local Safeway isn’t what I would call a very modern store. And the employees are either high-school kids bagging groceries and collecting carts, or middle-aged cashiers, bakers and butchers. It was a big step forward a few years ago...Read More

The U.S. market for health and wellness products is growing at a rapid pace and is expected to reach $170 billion by the end of 2012. Companies competing in this space will strive to boost consumer spend at each visit by providing a one-stop...Read More

Professional sports teams, from the 49ers to The Golden State Warriors, are releasing mobile apps for sports fans. Basic apps include player stats, game schedules and promotional offers. But, to build real fan loyalty, the apps...Read More

The hybrid distribution strategy for consumer brands is extremely common.  80-90% of total sales might be sold on a wholesale basis through traditional retail channels, while 10-20% might be sold direct to the consumer.  These direct...Read More

It’s a common fear in social media – dissatisfied customers taking over social media conversations to bash the brand. The fear is real, but whether you are in charge of your social media or not, negative comments going to occur. That...Read More

Once marketers have information about their customers, they need to market to them in a far more relevant way. Previously, CPGs and consumer brands were able to target very much en masse. They were able to target the TV shows consumers watched...Read More

CPG companies and other brands that sell through retailers desperately want to have a consumer relationship. We are lucky enough at Loyalty Lab to be working with two of the largest, best marketers in the world to help them forge those...Read More

This is the first in a series of blog posts on Loyalty trends outside of the U.S. I just returned from nine days in Australia and Asia. Based on conversations with a dozen companies and many individuals, it’s clear that mobile has become...Read More