I had the privilege to attend the recent 2012 NRF convention and was impressed with the buzz around loyalty marketing and customer centricity. In one session Macy's CMO Peter Sachse stated, "We don't need new customers. We need to keep the ones we have and get more out of them." Simple yet powerful; all marketers should take this approach—and will create more valuable brands as a result. Yet, why do so many companies continue to miss the mark here?

The need to retain customers, and get more out of them, is increasingly apparent in the need for what Loyalty 360 calls expectation matching: building loyalty and engagement by using behavioral insights from customers to meet their expectations. Companies have loyal brand advocates because they "match (and exceed) the expectations" of their brand constituents. They achieve this by using voice of customer (VOC) proactively, and from across all touchpoints, to understand customers…