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.

The Good, the Bad and How You Can Do It Better: An Analysis of 8 Great (And Not So Great) Landing Pages

In the world of business promotion and growth, landing pages have a singular purpose: to compel visitors to take a specific action that will further their engagement with your company.

Whether that action is registering for something (an event, an account, a newsletter, etc.), downloading something (a white paper, perhaps) or purchasing something, the goal is to persuade the visitor to complete that action and that action alone – not to tell them everything they could ever want to know about your company, its history and all it has to offer.

A good landing page makes it easy for visitors to understand what you want them to do and why they should do it while simultaneously keeping the process of taking that action streamlined and free of distractions and hassles.

A strong landing page is a critical component of any marketing campaign, whether offline or online. You've convinced someone to take their time to visit the page, so now you need to seal the deal by motivating them to take the next step. While this is no easy task, there are many ways to improve your odds of success.

One of the best ways to understand the dos and don’ts of landing page design is to see them in practice. Here we’ll examine eight very different landing pages and offer our analysis of what they’ve done right, what they’ve done wrong and how you can do it better.

UserTesting.com

The Good: The heading presents a direct, relevant sales message, and the subhead provides excellent support. The copy is clear and to-the-point while the video offer the opportunity for users to learn more without leaving the page.

The "Pricing and Signup" button is very prominent, so visitors know where they need to go next, while the mention of the one-year money-back guarantee provides an important trust-building element to motivate them to take that step.

The Bad: On this site, the landing page is the home page, which is a mistake because there are a number of distractions present that can draw visitors away from the path to conversion.

The navigation elements are too prominent, and the top search bar is completely unnecessary, only providing yet another element of disruption. The display image for the video is a bit cluttered as well.

How You Can Do it Better: When you have a very specific marketing or sales objective to achieve (again, think signing up for your newsletter, downloading free content, launching a new product, etc.), use a landing page.

Your home page needs to serve a diverse array of functions and users. A landing page allows you to provide a completely customized experience focused on helping a more targeted group of users reach one specific conversion point.

Team Treehouse

The Good: This landing page is clean, simple, focused and presents a clear pricing plan right off the bat. The navigation elements aren't so prominent that they distract, but they are definitely easy to find if a user wants to do more research. You know you're getting training videos, but the question remains...

The Bad: What kind of training videos? This landing page took simplicity so far to the extreme that it forgot to tell visitors what they're getting, even if they read all the text on the page. It’s impossible to understand what the offer is without leaving the page, which is a glaring oversight.

How You Can Do it Better: Minimalism is good but only when used within reason.

You must present enough information about your offer on the landing page itself for the user to feel confident in taking the next step. This requires good balance of content and design. It may also necessitate getting a bit creative in how you present your message. Often, a brief demonstration video can take the place of 1,000 words in providing more information about your product or service.

Windows Azure

The Good: Here's a fairly solid landing page. The design is minimalist, the call to action is easy to find and who doesn't like getting something for free?

The heading and description are clear and easy to understand. The superframework (where the logo and log-in links live) is sufficiently muted and out of the way. Overall, the layout is clean and makes it easy for the eye to navigate the page.

The Bad: The main navigation is messy and overly complex. There are two tiers with various buttons highlighted in light blue, which introduces and element of confusion and distraction in an otherwise very clean and streamlined design.

How You Can Do it Better: Navigation is a make-or-break element of every website design, and landing pages are no exception.

When it comes to your landing page, remember that the goal is to persuade the user to take one specific action. Focus on providing them with only the information they need in order to take that action without leaving the page if possible.

If more information is needed than will be effectively served by a single page, keep the navigation streamlined and limited only to those options that serve the landing page’s core purpose.

RightBanners!

The Good: The layout of the page is simple and easy to follow, and the navigation bar is tucked out of the way. The clear pricing structure gives users the critical information they need to know. Plus, the colors are engaging and exciting.

The Bad: The "Submit Your Order Now" heading reads like a button, but it isn't a button at all. Instead, the user must scroll down to create an order – a process that's quite confusing.

There are also too many different sizes of text on the page, which is a direct result of trying cram too much information into the banner area.

This page would work much more effectively if it were broken into a two-step process: a streamlined landing page leading the user to a second page where they could complete their order.

How You Can Do it Better: When it comes to user interface design, the devil is in the details. You must always consider the cues and conventions that users expect when interacting with a page and use those to your best advantage.

For example, navigational buttons are so commonplace that we tend to take them for granted, but they play an important role in your landing page.

Pairing call-to-action statements like “Submit Your Order Now” with a button that performs that specified action is a simple but effective way to provide a familiar interface cue that helps users understand the process that they’re engaging in.

When these things don’t work as expected – as in the example above – it creates confusion and uncertainty that can inhibit the user from taking the action you desire.

PSD2HTML

The Good: This is an excellent landing page. The call to action is clear, and the message is concise. Overall, it's easy to tell what you're getting and where to go next.

The Bad: The page is a bit cluttered, which leads the eye away from the primary point of focus.

How You Can Do it Better: As always, whitespace is your friend.

If the design is cramped, the page will seem visually intimidating to your user. By contrast, allowing the elements on the page room to breathe makes it easier for the user to draw distinctions between different types of information.

DealFuel.com

The Good: Deal Fuel pulls off the home page/landing page combo successfully because it's designed first and foremost to be a landing page.

The design is clever, and the value proposition is prominent. Navigation elements have been scaled way back to allow the header section where the call to action lives to take center stage. Pricing information is easy to find, and the layout of the page helps guide the visitor through the information presented in a logical order.

The Bad: The description paragraph is too long; it's just too much information to include in a call to action area.

Also, the color of the "Buy Now!" button should also be different than the brown used in the gas pump because it fades into the background.

How You Can Do it Better: Never underestimate the importance of color in website design. Color and contrast play a very important role in directing the user’s attention to key elements and establishing a hierarchy of information.

For example, on the DealFuel.com page, simply swapping the colors on the "Today's price" banner and the "Buy Now!" button would create better cohesiveness within the design and make the call to action button more prominent.

AppSumo

The Good: This is a unique landing page that offers a the user a chance to win a prize in exchange for giving the company their contact information.

The call to action button is impossible to miss, and the process draws you in because it's so easy to answer the (very obvious) question and fill out the form.

The Bad: The design is cluttered and the message is difficult to find right away. The heading says "Win the Top 40 Books...", but you don't know why or how immediately. The description that follows is difficult to read because there’s not enough contrast between the color of the text and the background.

Also, putting the books on the left side of the page (where the eye naturally goes first) is distracting. These should be positioned either to the right or below the call to action in this example.

It's also a mistake to offer a reward at such a superficial level of engagement. Users can provide their contact information and enter the contest without knowing anything about AppSumo or what they offer. The brand would be much better served if the page included even a short, single-line description of AppSumo's value proposition.

How You Can Do it Better: Before you create a landing page, you must clearly define the business growth objective that you want it to serve, and then you must decide how best that objective can be achieved in a way that delivers value for both your brand and your customers.

In the AppSumo example, the engagement between the visitor and the brand is fleeting and shallow. While AppSumo does gain the benefit of the user’s information, there’s nothing to qualify this user as a potential customer and no motivation for the user not to simply unsubscribe when they start receiving communication from a company that they still know nothing about.

While capturing a user’s contact information is a legitimate and useful business growth goal, it would be better achieved by offering the user something of greater value in return than simply a one-in-many-thousands chance of winning a prize.

Instead, think of a way to structure the exchange that promotes greater long-term engagement between your brand and this user, whether it’s a providing free white paper that showcases your expertise or offering a free trial of your services.

TemplateSOLD

The Good: The design is modern, and the colors are interesting and engaging. The bold, concise heading makes the purpose of the page very clear. Prices are displayed upfront, so there are no surprises when the user moves to the next step.

The Bad: What is the next step, exactly? There's no one clear call to action. Instead, there are a LOT of calls to action here that muddy the design. The page wants you both to "Signup Now" and to "Download" the themes. There are also a number of different prices displayed on the page, each of which acts as a call to action in its own right.

Last but far from least, there's a major conflict in messaging. While the bold text claims to sell $40,866 worth of themes for just $59.95, the fine print cites a 50 theme limit. This type of marketing gimmick only serves to create confusion and make potential buyers wary of what they're really getting into.

How You Can Do it Better: Whatever you do, never, ever use any kind of gimmick or trickery in your presentation. No matter what action you want your users to take, they’re not going to do it if you don’t first establish a foundation of trust.

Instead, go above and beyond in your efforts to reduce the user’s perceived risk for taking action. When possible, offer a money-back guarantee or free trial period. Make sure you address potential sales objections, and provide social proof to reinforce believability and trust.

Parallax Scrolling 101: The Good, The Bad and The Beautiful

One of the hottest trends in website design is parallax scrolling. First employed by Ian Coyle on the Nike Better World site in 2011, this is a special scrolling technique wherein background images move by the camera – or in this case, your computer screen – more slowly than images in the foreground, thereby creating an illusion of depth in what is in reality a two-dimensional environment on your screen.

With its explosive popularity, you have likely seen this effect in use but may not have known exactly what it was or how parallax scrolling is reshaping the landscape of today’s Web. But just like any trend or technique, parallax scrolling is not the right fit for every site, and it does have a few drawbacks. To help you decide whether this is a bandwagon you should jump on, let’s dive in and take a look at parallax scrolling from every angle – the good, the bad and the beautiful.

The good

The obvious benefit of parallax scrolling is its undeniable visual wow factor. Even though this technique has become very popular of late, it is still not so overdone that it has become commonplace. This means that any site that uses this approach well will make a lasting impression on its visitors. In a world where every company and organization is looking for a way to stand out from the crowd, this can be a powerful advantage.

The bad

While the bold visual impact of parallax scrolling is hard to beat, there is a downside to all that eye-popping punch: due to the weight of these graphic-intensive designs, these sites generally take a bit longer to load. In our modern age of impatience, this could potentially be a deal-breaker. Many people will not wait more than a few seconds for your site to load, so if your awesome parallax scrolling means that you have a 20-second load time (which is not unheard of), that is a big problem.

The reason that parallax sites take longer to load is due to the size of the images that must be used to create this style of presentation. As a result, you must be cautious in how you implement this technique. It's easy to overdo it, thereby making your site so large and cumbersome that you’ll turn away customers who aren’t inclined to wait for the page and its images to load.

If you are considering incorporating a parallax effect on your site, be sure to consider performance and work with your web development team to ensure that all images are optimized so that your site not only looks great but also loads as quickly as possible.

The beautiful

Let’s look at a few examples of parallax scrolling that really amp up the wow factor:

Life Of Pi

The website for the movie Life of Pi illustrates the incredible journey of not only the characters in the film but also of the filmmakers who took on this challenging story.

Through the use of numerous still images taken from the film and pieced together, the implementation of the scrolling technique here gives the illusion of video content, providing an element of motion that really enhances the presentation.

Other effects used include images that start out black and white or as sketches and are colored in as you scroll down the page, as well as content that appears from the sides of the screen. In this way, the site is the perfect reflection of a film that relies heavily on visual effects, recreating that feeling of “movie magic” on the screen for its visitors.

Rimmel London

Rimmel London's site uses a traditional parallax effect, where images of the company's products appear in the foreground and scroll at a different rate than those in the background. This gives the site a sense of visual interest and perception of dimension that you simply would not get with flat, static photographs.

Parallax.js

This site, which is a sandbox aimed at web developers, has an incredibly complex and layered implementation of the parallax effect.

The scene depicted has multiple layers of ocean waves that move at different speeds and patterns along with a lighthouse that bobs up and down to give the illusion of an undulating seascape. For added effect, users on mobile devices equipped with a gyroscope can use the orientation of the device to manipulate the way the page moves and flows.

As this intricately layered demonstration of the parallax scrolling effect shows, with so many layers and axes of motion at your disposal, there is a mind-boggling array of possibilities for the kind of experience you could design for your visitors.

Make Your Money Matter

The purpose behind this website is to illustrate the difference between putting your money in a bank versus a credit union.

As you scroll down the page, a series of whimsical illustrations are layered into the page to tell the story of “where your money really goes” when you put it in a bank. In doing so, a topic that is fairly dry and serious becomes much more engaging and approachable through the strength of its presentation. The end result is much more powerful than it would be had the site’s owners simply published a flat page of content and bullet points relating this same information.

Sony

In much the same way as the site for Life of Pi, Sony uses a series of photographic images strung together to create the sensation that the visitor is watching a video in motion, as Sony’s products – ranging from a 4k television screen, speakers, a smartphone and more – appear to assemble themselves right before their very eyes.

This is a very cool presentation technique that far surpasses what traditional still photography alone could capture. Even a video of the product assembly process would not be nearly as engaging, because here, there is the added element of surrealism where the user’s scroll is what controls the build of the products.

TEDxGUC

The site for TedxGUC is far less intricate than others covered so far, but it’s still a great example of how parallax scrolling can deliver a narrative via the Web.

Using nothing but elementary illustrations and some well-written copy, this approach conveys its intended message much more effectively than it could through a few paragraphs of text alone. In fact, the strength of this site is in its simplicity, which goes to show that you do not need to be as over-the-top as the Life of Pi or Sony examples in order to use make effective use of the parallax scrolling technique. Sometimes, less is, in fact, more.

But does it convert?

The million dollar question is whether parallax scrolling has any measurable impact on the power of a website to convert leads and customers. While the results are still hazy on that front, a Purdue University study from 2013 did find that “although parallax scrolling enhanced certain aspects of the user experience, it did not necessarily improve the overall user experience.” This is, of course, just one attempt to evaluate a relatively new technique, but it is noteworthy.

That being said, this particular study did not take into account the memorability of the sites included. The ability of parallax scrolling sites to make a lasting impression is one of their key benefits – one which could theoretically have a very real effect on the site’s ability to capture and convert customers.

In summary

While the business benefits of parallax scrolling are yet to be fully determined, the visual wow factor of this technique is very appealing and is one of the main reasons it has become such a popular trend. In the end, like any element of web design and marketing, parallax scrolling is something that you and your trusted web development team will need to decide whether or not it is a fit for your brand and your website.