Baesman Group helps brands solve personalized marketing challenges with a strategic focus on loyalty programs. Their team of customer engagement strategists, made up of former brand-side marketers, specializes in helping their clients truly understand their customers’ buying behaviors and mapping that to their overall loyalty journey. Baesman also offers its own customizable loyalty platform, Intuition, or has the ability to integrate and work with any platform on the market. Baesman believes in evolving loyalty programs so loyalty strategy drives the program, rather than technology limitations that can often exist.
The company is an overarching end-to-end partner for brands. The relationship begins with data analysis and strategy to help clients determine what tactics to leverage to engage loyalty program members. Using segmentation and a detailed customer profile analysis, they help clients better understand frequent buyers, lapsed buyers, and even the occasional buyer to maximize customer lifetime value and increase loyalty engagement. From there, the team at Baesman works with clients all the way to program execution by developing the right multichannel marketing approach to reach customers with personalized communications, whether that’s in direct mail, email, SMS, or other channels. Baesman operates mainly in the retail space but also counts clients in financial and healthcare verticals, among others.
Mark Johnson, CEO of Loyalty360, spoke with Kelsey Crookes, Account Management at Baesman. Crookes is a fourth-generation member of the family-owned company—her great-grandfather started the business in 1952. Kelsey is experienced in deriving strategic insights and customer engagement strategies from data to create a more loyal customer. In this interview, Crookes discusses loyalty program differentiation, leveraging “secret” or “unpublished” tiers, and harnessing customer data to create more personalized communications.
Integrating Loyalty into the Brand Strategy
One of the more notable trends Baesman has witnessed is how organizations are realizing they’ve spent much time developing their brands but left their loyalty programs behind. Now, they are seeking to utilize the value of their value proposition to bring that into loyalty efforts.
“When the loyalty program is treated as a silo, or maybe its own channel or tactic, it won’t do as well because it’s not being integrated with the entire brand strategy,” explains Crookes. “The loyalty marketing manager needs to be integrated across the entire brand portfolio and across the marketing team to help make those decisions.”
Efforts need to focus on capitalizing on what the brand is trying to do overall and what differentiated benefits can be pulled out to inject into the loyalty program based on the brand’s purpose.
Showcasing Differences
In a marketplace overflowing with customer loyalty programs, brands want to stand out and showcase what makes them different while proving their value to existing members. Crookes believes they need to build off the overall brand value proposition.
“An example that comes to mind for me is Madewell®,” begins Crookes. “They’re known for their denim, it’s in their brand DNA, and denim perks are specifically part of their loyalty program.”
In Madewell’s® program, members can accumulate extra points on jeans and return old jeans for dollars off the next purchase. This creates a differentiated benefit beyond only buying products and earning points; it serves the lifestyle of members and espouses brand values.
Baesman has also observed brands making a charitable impact within their brand and in their loyalty program. For example, at DSW, customers receive 50 points when they bring back a pair of shoes. Fifty points for this action is equal to spending $50 with the brand. This engagement tactic connects with the altruistic side of loyal brand members. The “feel good” of giving back, coupled with the tangible points offering, connects back to the brand’s mission and also gives the customer that feel good moment. It’s a win-win.
“It’s about thinking what you can offer that’s unique to your brand that no one else can,” says Crookes. “That will help you differentiate.”
Offering a Tiered Loyalty Program
Crookes reminds brands to clearly differentiate tier levels in loyalty programs to avoid member confusion and create incremental value for members who engage more with the brand. Part of a brand’s loyalty strategy should include helping members understand what tier they are currently in and what they are getting “now” that they were not before.
“Providing specific and clear communication about the purpose of a tier and why a member should strive for it is important,” affirms Crookes. She notes that many brands add a tier and hope that’s enough to create desired customer behaviors when, in reality, it’s not. Differentiated benefits at top tiers are key to creating striving and retention behavior among members.
Whether it’s tangible discounts, free shipping, or choice benefits and branded/experiential moments, brands are getting creative and adding benefits that drive top customer behaviors among moveable members in the program.
Brands can make tiers work well for the program when customer data is harnessed and leveraged to understand which members are likely to move up.
“We call that ‘moving the moveables.’ Through deep analysis of your customer file, Baesman helps brands determine segments within the file that show promising engagement with the brand and could be incentivized to move up to higher tiers in the program. From this deeper analysis, brands can determine where people are within tiers and what type of specific offers can drive them to a higher tier,” elaborates Crookes. “Members are not going to seek another tier unless the benefits are differentiated and the tier achievement level feels within reach.”
With secret and unpublished tiers, brands can leverage special communication opportunities to recognize their most valuable customers. These types of tiers are often used by luxury brands, but they can be used by a variety of brands within different industries.
“When we think about the various fundamentals of loyalty, one of the big ones is member recognition,” says Crookes. “Having a secret tier is the ‘top of the top’ when it comes to making customers feel ‘known’ by the brand.”
The Attraction of Brand Partnerships
Partnerships continue to be an attractive option for many brands when seeking to expand the efficacy and efficiency of their customer loyalty efforts. Partnerships might also be leveraged to offset the costs of adding benefits or perks to an existing loyalty program.
Baesman loves brand partnerships, as they ultimately create more value for the customer and enable loyalty to be a bigger part of the overall brand strategy. A partnership could be something basic, like a product collaboration that names both organizations.
When brands form partnerships, they are working to help customers achieve their goals in additional ways. It’s a way to facilitate a more holistic customer experience versus only showcasing what one brand can offer. Consumers are looking for brands that share their values, and partnerships open up opportunities to serve their customer’s lifestyles in ways they may not be able to do effectively on their own within their niche market.
In discussions with brand members at Loyalty360, many marketers and loyalty professionals have shared that they are seeking to increase their partnership programs to encompass more than only point “earn and burn” opportunities. They look to establish partnerships that align with organizational values to create memorable experiences through program integration. However, this can be quite challenging, especially when more than one brand is involved in marketing the partnership and benefits to program members of both brands.
“This is an opportunity for brands to communicate that they want to engage with program members beyond just the transaction,” says Crookes. “This also keeps the brands top of mind.”
From Crookes’ perspective, when program members and customers are engaging with the product differently, they’re thinking about the brands involved in the partnership more than they otherwise would.
Next Generation Customer Loyalty
In the current macroeconomic environment, Crookes notes that brands should focus on returning to the fundamentals of their loyalty programs to ensure the value proposition is aligned with loyalty efforts. By becoming the customer, brands can better understand the whole experience.
“Many brands assume that everything’s running smoothly,” says Crookes. “If there are issues with the customer experience, customers will go elsewhere.”
Crookes also advises brands to balance their file to ensure that new customers are coming in alongside current ones. Data can inform
acquisition campaigns to build a more complete customer base and secure a larger loyal customer base in the coming years.
Next in 2024
Baesman plans to focus on more
personalization efforts and opportunities, helping brands move to more of a one-to-one communication model. This starts with getting a handle on your data.
“We’re helping many brands deliver more personalized journeys instead of continuing mass broadcast email campaigns,” finishes Crookes. “Once someone is engaged with your program or your brand, what other types of communication should be triggered for them? We can help with an audit and create the strategy—informed by customer data.”
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Quick-fire Questions
What is your favorite word?
Perfect.
What is your least favorite word?
Curse words.
What excites you?
A good thriller book.
What do you find tiresome?
Commuting.
What book do you like to recommend to colleagues?
Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action, by Simon Sinek.
What profession other than your own would you like to attempt?
I love baking.
What do you enjoy doing that you don’t get to do often?
Skiing.
Who inspired you to become the person you are today?
My parents.
What do you typically think about at the end of the day?
I have a seven-month-old baby, so probably: is he going to sleep tonight?
How do you want to be remembered by your friends and family?
My loyalty.