Going the Distance: Four Ways to Build a Better Customer Loyalty Program for Your Brand

It’s easy enough for a customer to join your loyalty program, especially when you’re offering an incentive such as discounts. All your customer has to do is give out some basic information, and voila! They’re in the fold, a brand new loyalty member with your company. From there, it’s happily ever after. You offer the perks; they stand solidly by you, bringing you their continued business. Simple. Or is it? In reality, just how many of those customers are act ively participating in your loyalty program? Do you know? Sure, loyalty program memberships are on the rise according to market research company eMarketer, having jumped 25 percent in the space of just two years. However, that figure may be a bit misleading. The truth is that, while loyalty program sign-ups may be more numerous, active participation in such programs is actually in decline. At the time of the study, the average US household had memberships in 29 loyalty programs; yet consumers were only active in 12 of those. That’s just 41 percent. And even that meager figure represents a drop of 2 percentage points per year over each of the preceding four years, according to a study by loyalty-marketing research company COLLOQUY.

When discounts just aren’t enough

So what’s a brand to do? How can you make your loyalty program worth your customer’s while—as well as your own? After all, gaining a new loyalty member doesn’t mean much if your customer isn’t actively participating in your program. Consider this: Does your customer loyalty program offer members anything different from what your competitors are offering? Chances are your program includes discounts. That’s a given. And what customer doesn’t appreciate a good discount? But when every other company out there is providing this staple benefit in comparable amounts, it becomes less and less likely that customers will remain loyal to any one particular brand. Frankly, it’s all too easy for customers to get lost in a sea of loyalty member discounts. They’re everywhere. In fact, just under half of internet users perceive that all rewards programs are alike, according to a 2015 eMarketer survey. The key to success, then, is to differentiate your business from the crowd. If you can offer your customers something unique and valuable beyond the usual discount, chances are they’ll be more likely to stick with your brand. Here’s some inspiration from companies who get it.

Virgin: Reward more purchases with more benefits.

That’s not to say you need to get rid of discounts entirely. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth. Customers still love a good discount. The goal is to be creative in terms of the loyalty perks you offer. Take the Virgin Atlantic Flying Club, for example. As part of its loyalty program, the airline allows members to earn miles and tier points. Members are inducted at the Club Red tier, from which they can move up to Club Silver and then Club Gold. Here, it’s not just a discount. It’s status. And people respond to feeling important, elite. Still, even where the rewards themselves are concerned, Virgin is motivating loyalty customers with some pretty attractive offers. At the Club Red tier, members earn flight miles and receive discounts on rental cars, airport parking, hotels and holiday flights. But as members rise in tiers, they get even more. At the Club Silver tier, members earn 50 percent more points on flights, access to expedited check-in, and priority standby seating. And once they reach the top, Club Gold members receive double miles, priority boarding and access to exclusive clubhouses where they can get a drink or a massage before their flight. Now that’s some serious incentive to keep coming back for more. Discounts are still part of the equation – but they are designed with innovation and personal value in mind, elevating them to more than just savings.

Amazon Prime: Pay upfront and become a VIP.

What if your customers only had to pay a one-time upfront fee to get a year’s worth of substantial benefits? It may not sound like the smartest business idea at first glance. But take a closer look. Amazon Prime users pay a nominal $99 a year to gain free, two-day shipping on millions of products with no minimum purchase. And that’s just one benefit of going Prime. It’s true that Amazon loses $1-2 billion a year on Prime. This comes as no surprise given the incredible value the program offers. But get this: Amazon makes up for its losses in markedly higher transaction frequency. Specifically, Prime members spend an average of $1,500 a year on Amazon.com, compared with $625 spent by non-Prime users, a ccording to a 2015 report from Consumer Intelligence Research Partners.

Patagonia: Cater to customer values.

Sometimes, the draw for consumers isn’t saving money or getting a great deal. The eco-friendly outdoor clothing company Patagonia figured this out back in 2011, when it partnered with eBay to launch its Common Threads Initiative: a program that allows customers to resell their used Patagonia clothing via the company’s website. Why is this program important to customers? And how does it benefit Patagonia? The company’s brand embraces environmental and social responsibility, so it was only fitting that they create a platform for essentially recycling old clothing rather than merely throwing it away. The Common Threads Initiative helps Patagonia build a memorable brand and fierce loyalty by offering its customers a cause that aligns with deep personal values. OK, so their customers get to make a little money, too. Everybody wins.

American Airlines: Gamify your loyalty program.

If you’re going to offer your customers a loyalty program, why not make it f un? After all, engagement is key to building a strong relationship with your customer. And what better way to achieve that goal than making a game of it. American Airlines had this very thing in mind when it created its AAdvantage Passport Challenge following its merger with USAirways. The goal: find a new way to engage customers as big changes were underway. Using a custom Facebook application, American Airlines created a virtual passport to increase brand awareness while offering members a chance to earn bonus points. Customers earned these rewards through a variety of game-like activities, from answering trivia questions to tracking travel through a personalized dashboard. In the end, participants earned more than 70 percent more stamps than expected – and the airline saw a ROI of more than 500 percent. The takeaway: people like games.

Stand out from the crowd.

Your approach to your customer loyalty program should align with your overall marketing approach. Effective branding is about standing out, not blending it. Being memorable is key. To this end, keep in mind that loyalty programs are no longer a novelty. That means that yesterday’s strategies won’t work moving forward, so look for ways to rise above the noise, setting yourself apart from the cloying drone of countless other cookie-cutter programs.

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20 Questions to Determine If It’s Time to Redesign Your Website, Part 2

Previously we helped you put your website to the test to identify the glaring problems in design and content that might be costing you valuable opportunities to win new customers. However, these variables really only scratch the surface when it comes to the performance of your site. If your website isn’t your number one salesman, there could be less obvious but equally insidious issues lurking beneath the surface that are killing your site’s ability to convert. If you answer “no” to any of the following questions, it’s time to seriously consider a redesign:

1. Is your site free of autoplay gimmicks and pop-ups?

If you want to alienate a visitor immediately, start playing music or have a spokesperson begin talking automatically as soon as they load the site. Uncued audio, video, animations, banners and pop-ups are completely taboo in modern website design. Don’t insult the intelligence of your users by forcing content upon them. It’s the online equivalent of having a pushy salesman pounce on them the minute they walk in the door and hound them into looking at products or services that may not be relevant to their interests at all.

2. Is the navigation intuitive?

When evaluating your website’s navigational structure, don’t look at it through the eyes of your most sophisticated, web-savvy users. Scrutinize it from the perspective of your most reluctant, technology-averse users. Are there an overwhelming number of pathways presented on the home page? Do the options offered in your top-level navigation menus correspond to specific user needs and motivations? How many layers are you asking users to dig through to find the types of information they are most likely to need? Are action buttons styled and positioned consistently so that they’re easy to identify as a user scans and scrolls through your site?

3. Does your site offer a search feature?

Sometimes visitors will arrive at your site with a very specific need or purpose in mind, especially if they are comparison shopping across multiple sites. Don’t force them to sift through layers of navigation to uncover the one piece of information they’re seeking. Provide a search feature in the global framework that lets them bypass the various menus and links and find anything and everything on your site that pertains to their particular interest, whether it lives in your brochure copy, product descriptions, blog posts or news articles.

4. Is your site compatible with small screens?

In today’s 24/7 world of business, the most useful website is the one that can be accessed anywhere, not just at a desk. As a result, it’s critically important to ensure that your site plays well with all mobile platforms and devices, including touchscreens and tablets. Pull your company’s website up on your phone. Then pull it up on your friends' phones. Then pull it up on every modern mobile OS that you can get your hands on. If you can't bring it up, browse through it, view the content and complete core functions effortlessly, then neither can your users. In order to ensure that you’re providing the best possible user experience for those on small screens, you must make sure that your site’s interface is clean and clutter-free so that you make optimal use of the available real estate to allow the most important content to take center stage. Also pay close attention to details such as the amount of time it takes to load your site via mobile networks, the size and readability of typography, the level of contrast between the text and the background, the function of menus and the “pressability” of links, buttons and navigational tabs.

5. Is your site touch-friendly?

With the explosive growth in the adoption of touch-driven smartphones and tablets, the likelihood is increasing with every passing day that customers will be traveling around your website using touching and swiping gestures rather than the clicking and scrolling action of a mouse and keyboard. To create finger-friendly navigation, all links, buttons and menus must be big, bold and obvious and have a buffer around them to allow a greater margin of error. In the world of touch, roll-overs and hover states are non-existent, so replace buttons that require users to mouse over them to get a sense of action with style enhancements that draw attention to them as action elements. Again, the only way to be confident about how your site rates on the touch-friendly scale is to put it through the paces on actual touchscreen devices. If you don’t already own such a device, borrow one or – if all else fails – make a trip to your local retailer and use the display models there. It’s worth a little legwork to ensure that you’re providing the best possible quality experience for the growing legions of touch users. Read more: Is Your Website Ready for the Tablet Revolution?

6. Is it Flash-free?

The mobile Web is officially a hostile environment when it comes to Flash. Apple’s iOS does not – and probably never will – support Flash. Android does support Flash, but the performance of Flash content on Android devices thus far has been less than ideal. If you have Flash anywhere on your site – whether it’s in the introduction, your navigation framework or video – get rid of it now, or else most mobile users will be plagued with problems. Today there are better, more lightweight and touch-friendly options available, such as HTML5 and JavaScript, that can replicate the same effects that once required Flash.

7. Is your site supported by a content management system?

Publishing unique, high-caliber content to your site on a regular basis is a crucial element of today’s marketing that is integral to helping your company conquer many key business growth objectives. The only way to achieve this efficiently and cost effectively is to have a content management system behind the scenes of your website that allows designated administrators within your own company to create and post certain content types – such as blog posts, company news, event information and press releases – within the existing framework of your site. A solid, robust content management system will make it easy and intuitive for almost any user to publish sophisticated, engaging content that includes photos or videos and follows graphical style conventions that maintain a cohesive look and feel with your site as a whole.

8. Is there a way for users to subscribe to receive updates?

It takes a lot of effort to find and entice new qualified visitors to your website, but the greatest payoff comes when you can grab these users and convince them to come back again and again. Don’t put the burden on them to remember to check in every so often to see what’s new on your site. Make sure they have the option to subscribe to receive updates either by RSS feed or email so that when you publish a new blog post or send out your next e-newsletter, you’re in their feed reader or inbox, prompting them to click through and dive into your latest content.

9. Is your site free of black-hat SEO techniques?

If your website has ever been in the hands of a less-than-reputable developer or SEO “expert,” there may be dangerous black-hat SEO tactics in play that are putting your site’s performance in organic search results in serious jeopardy. Black-hat tricks like keyword stuffing and invisible text are the crutches often employed by snake-oil SEO practitioners to artificially improve the position of a website in search engine results pages for specific terms or phrases. However, the problem is that all of these illegitimate methods are condemned by the major search engines, which are programmed to weed out and penalize imposters. While these techniques might provide a temporary boost, when they are uncovered by the search engines (and they inevitably will be), your site will be blacklisted, and you’ll be off the map completely when it comes to organic search. There’s no short-term benefit that’s worth the cost of such a great potential risk.

10. Do you have tools to track the metrics on key conversion points?

Where do visitors to your site come from? What keywords are they using to find your site? Which pages do they visit most often? Which pages might be turning them off and sending them elsewhere? How many visitors leave after viewing only one page? How long do visitors tend to spend on your site? The answers to all of these questions are critical to helping you shape your site and adapt your online marketing efforts to maximize conversions. However, unless you have the required tracking code in place in the underpinnings of your site to tie into a metrics toolset like Google Analytics, you’ll find yourself with major gaps in the information you need to make crucial decisions that affect the growth of your business.

How did your site rate?

If you’ve answered “no” to several of these questions, it’s time to move overhauling your site to the top of your business growth priorities list. By partnering with a top-notch website design firm, the initial investment required to redevelop your site to meet these criteria will be returned to you many times over in the lifetime value of the new customers you’ll be able to capture with a site that offers a powerful and engaging experience to users on any and every platform and device.

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The Who, What, When, Why and How of Successful Email Marketing, Part II

Email marketing: it’s not the newest, shiniest weapon in your business growth arsenal. But there’s no denying that it’s still a highly efficient and cost-effective way of communicating with your existing customers as well as new prospects. But don’t let the low barrier to entry lull you into a false sense of security. There are certain fundamentals you must follow if you want to create a campaign that captivates and motivates versus one that is ignored and condemned to the trash folder. In part one of this series (http://www.famefoundry.com/11041/the-who-what-when-why-and-how-of-successful-email-marketing-part-i/), we examined the quality of the recipients to whom our campaigns are sent and solidified a strategy for when and why to send them to ensure that we do not overwhelm those recipients with messages that are unimportant or unnecessary. Now, we’ll turn our focus to the remaining two fundamentals of email marketing success: what we will say and how that message will be delivered.

The How

No matter which email marketing platform you use to create and send your campaign, all include templates that provide designated areas for content that can be easily edited. The issue with these templates, of course, is that they are, well, templates. As a result, when you use them, you run the risk that your emails will look nearly identical to others that your customers receive, and simply adding your logo is not enough to create real differentiation. As a result, used as-is, they can make your marketing campaigns look cheap and unprofessional. This is why customization is a must. All of these email templates are built with HTML, the same programming language used to construct websites. Behind the scenes are code and images that can be edited to create a more custom-tailored look and feel. Due to the highly technical nature of making modifications within the HTML code, this is probably not something you should DIY but rather entrust to your web development team. They can shape and refine these pre-existing templates or even create a completely unique template design from scratch that integrates seamlessly with all elements of your brand’s visual identity (i.e., your website, printed materials, etc.) and sets you apart your competitors. Whichever approach you choose, this represents a relatively small one-time investment that will pay great long-term dividends as you use your branded templates time and time again. Ideally, you’ll want to establish a few different email layouts that can be used for various purposes, such as newsletter-style content, major announcements and perhaps service alerts or other time-sensitive notifications. The template formats you require will of course depend on your business needs, but by having a few on-hand to choose from, you can ensure all of the email communication that you send reflects well upon your brand.

The What

Subject, subject, subject

No matter how beautifully designed your email might be, that design isn’t worth the pixels it’s transmitted on if your message goes straight to the trash unread. Your subject line is the make-or-break factor that will determine whether the recipient will grant you even just a few seconds of their precious time and attention. A line that’s boring and unimaginative provides zero motivation for them to give your message a second glance. One that’s too over-the-top screams “SPAM!” and is just as likely to be ignored. Subject lines that are too long, written in ALL CAPS, filled with exclamation marks or intentionally deceitful (e.g., including “Re:” to make the email appear as if it’s a direct reply to a message from the recipient) are guaranteed to work against you, so avoid them at all costs. Effective subject lines are neither vague nor dull. If you received an email with the nondescript subject line “News Update,” would you read it? Neither will your customers. Similarly, the subject line “April Customer Newsletter” explains what the email itself is, but it offers no insight into the content of its message. For my own company’s email newsletters, we have eschewed these types of easily disregarded subject lines in favor of more descriptive ones that tease the content. In doing so, we have achieved much better open rates. One way to boost the success of your subject line is to frame it in the form of a question, such as “Are you considering a move to the cloud for your business?” or “Do you know the reasons companies usually struggle with a move to the cloud?” Those two subject lines are ones I actually tried recently along with a more straightforward one – “Challenges of Moving Your Business to the Cloud”. While all three saw relatively good open rates, the two that posed a question to the recipient well outperformed the other. Start paying attention to the emails that land in your own inbox. Which subject lines catch your eye? Which do you gloss over without a second thought, and which ones prompt you to hit the “delete” button immediately? Soon you’ll begin to discern which types of lines are most effective, and you can apply these techniques to your own campaigns.

Inform, don’t overwhelm

Now that you’ve formulated an attention-grabbing subject line that will motivate your recipient to open your email, the next challenge you must conquer is the content of the email itself. All too often, companies try to communicate too much via their emails, with the end result being that the recipient is too overwhelmed to fully process and take action on the information being conveyed. Many email newsletters fall into this trap, with company announcements, blog articles, product highlights and more crammed into a single message. In an attempt to make sure the recipient has access to every piece of information that could possibly be of value to them, the e-newsletter becomes a scattered mess that lacks organization and direction. Additionally, this information is usually presented in full within the body of the message itself, instead of prompting the reader to click a link to access the full text via a web page. As a result, the number of ideas coupled with the depth of their presentation spells doom for the campaign. A quick scan of the message is enough to turn the recipient away because they have no desire to invest the time necessary to sort though the barrage of content to find the one or two bits of information that might be of use to them.

Be a tease

Avoid this “much too much” trap by editing and teasing your content. Include no more than three key ideas per newsletter. Sure, you may have more than three things to say, but you must be ruthless in your selection process, and save the rest for another missive or another medium. Next, present those three (at most!) ideas in the form of short teasers. A title, a short intro to the news item or article being highlighted and an accompanying image are all you need to pique your reader’s interest – along with a link prompting them to read more on your company’s website. By doing so, you’ll ensure that your email newsletter offers a clean, visually appealing presentation that can be scanned and processed in a matter of mere seconds. If a reader is interested in one of the three key ideas you’ve presented, they have the option to easily obtain more details for themselves. Of course, this approach has the added benefit of driving users to your website and increasing that site’s exposure to new audiences. When I suggest this “click to read more” approach, the reaction I most often receive is that readers “don’t like to click a link” but rather want to read the article in their email message. I have no idea where this belief came from, but it is false. Users are more than comfortable with clicking links, especially if it comes from a trusted source (see Part I for the benefits of using a carefully curated email list of customers who know who you are already). The Internet is driven by clicks, so do not be afraid to embrace this behavior! By mastering these five fundamentals of successful email marketing – the who, what, when, why and how – you can help to ensure that your messages are a welcome presence in your recipients’ inboxes, that they are read and, most importantly, that they motivate your customers and prospects to take the action you desire.

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