Too many companies, David Gee says, focus on everything but customer loyalty.
Constantly offering deals to attract new business, they pay little attention to the fact that customers are leaving through the back door.
"Traditional marketing has always been about gaining new market share," said Gee, chief executive officer of Bungee Loyalty Programs, an Elkhorn firm that creates customer loyalty programs.
What some companies are realizing, Gee says, is that it costs five times as much to get a new customer as it does to keep one.
That said, Bungee Loyalty tries to stop the flow of customers leaving a business - whether it's a car dealership in Dubai or a plastic surgeon's office in Toledo, Ohio.
Gee's firm designs and manages loyalty programs so that business owners can concentrate on bringing in new customers and developing new products. His firm does the back-office work that includes managing rewards websites, keeping track of program points and watching what people are spending their money on.
"We develop the marketing to get people into the program, and we can integrate the software into a company's website," Gee said.
The goal is to reduce customer churn and increase customer spending.
"It all comes down to return on investment," Gee said.
Bungee Loyalty spun off from Sales Sherpas, a marketing business that Gee started four years ago with a $200 investment in business cards, pens and sticky notes.
Gee is a former marketing executive from the telecom and health insurance industries. While at TDS Telecom in Madison, he developed a customer loyalty program...
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