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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Fantastic Four: Blockbuster Secrets from the Marvel Marketing Machine

Recently, a trailer for the upcoming movie “Avengers: Age of Ultron” was leaked online. Marvel, acknowledging that the trailer was out there, decided to release their official version of the trailer a short time later. Twenty-four hours after the leak first hit the Web, the official trailer had already racked up 34.3 million views on YouTube! Marvel has what we all want – an audience eager to view, share, and discuss their content. The top two-US-grossing movies this year, namely Guardians of the Galaxy and Captain America: The Winter Soldier, are both from Marvel. In 2013, another Marvel movie, Iron Man 3, brought in $409 million while Thor: The Dark World rang up an additional $206 million for Marvel. The year before that was 2012’s Avengers, which was worth $623 million and the number one spot for that year. With that kind of success, it’s amazing to think that Marvel Entertainment Group actually filed for bankruptcy protection less than 20 years ago. How Marvel has gone from the brink of bankruptcy to one of the biggest names in entertainment, with blockbuster movies, televisions programs, video games, toys and, of course, comics, is a great story. There are a number of lessons we can learn from Marvel as we seek to add the same level of superpowers to our own marketing campaigns and websites!

1. Start with great content.

It all begins with content. Marvel focuses heavily in making sure that all their products are top notch. The value of this cannot be overstated. You can market all you want, but if your content (or whatever you are marketing) is mediocre, you will be facing an uphill climb. If your content is great, it will be much easier to find that eager audience. Marvel assembles a team to create their amazing entertainment properties, including actors and actresses, writers, filmmakers, illustrators, and more. While you may not need as large a team for your own efforts, you certainly should not attempt to do it alone. If you have in-house marketing resources, they will obviously play a role in this effort, but you should also look to the subject matter experts in your organization for what they can contribute. Finally, you will want to work with whatever web or marketing agency you partner with to get their expertise added to your campaign plans and help you develop amazing content.

2. Diversify your promotional efforts.

When Marvel is preparing to launch a new movie, they look to the range of channels they have available to them to promote that release. They run ads on their television shows, they release special edition comics meant to raise awareness and excitement for the characters and the film, they even time the release of toys for the film perfectly so that kids see the figures on store shelves and make sure their parents know that they want to see that movie. This multi-faceted approach to marketing is often called “multi-channel marketing.” For websites, multi-channel marketing means using all the appropriate resources at your disposal to connect with an audience and make them aware of, and drive them to, your site and your company. If you are using social media to promote your content, that is great, but you cannot stop there. Email marketing, search engine and other online advertising, and sponsored content are all ways you can reach an audience online. There are also offline options you should consider, from traditional print and mailing pieces, to articles in print publications, to appearances on news or radio. Not all of these may make sense for your campaign, but the point is that all of these, and more, should be considered. This is another thing you will work with your marketing agency on – identifying which channels make the most sense for your particular campaign. Whatever you decide on, however, you are almost certainly going to find that multiple channels will play a part in your eventual plans.

3. Tie it all together.

One of the things that Marvel has done expertly is to tie their properties together to create something that is bigger than just the sum of its parts. The Avengers movies are an obvious example of this since they combine characters from a number of Marvel’s solo-movie projects, including Iron Man, Captain America, and Thor. In addition to the Avengers films, which feature an all-start cast of their characters, Marvel has also made it a point to include ‘teasers’ at the end of their films. These tie-ins create excitement and get people talking not only about the movie they just saw, but also what is coming next. When you are considering your own content and campaigns, you should be thinking about how you can tie things together. This could be something as simple as cross-promoting similar products on an Ecommerce site or adding links to related articles at the end of a blog post. These are both ways that you can tie things together and increase overall exposure. If you are a services driven organization, another avenue you may consider is explaining how those various services you offer tie-in together and complement each other. If you’ve ever told an existing client about another service you offer, only to hear them say, “I didn’t know you did that!”, then you can see the value in cross-promoting your offerings by tying them all in together in some way.

4. Introduce new offerings and embrace new audiences.

As mentioned earlier, this year’s top-grossing movie in the US is Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy. This is notable because, before the movie’s release this summer, few people outside of diehard comicbook fans had ever heard of these characters! Heroes like Iron Man and Captain America were well known prior to their movie debuts, so there was already some name recognition that certainly helped fuel the success of those films, but Guardians of the Galaxy is about as obscure as it gets. Still, this movie has taken in over $738 million dollars in global ticket sales. The reason for this success is because the movie is great, but what is interesting is that, for people to discover how great the movie is, they had to give it a chance. People gave it chance because they trust Marvel. If you are consistent in the quality that you deliver, whether that is in the products you sell, services you offer, or content you publish, then you will build trust with your audience and customers. That trust is critical for when you want to introduce new offerings to help expand your business. Just like movie-goers trusted Marvel enough to give Guardians of the Galaxy a chance, if your customers trust you, they will be more inclined to give your new offerings a chance. If you are following the tips mentioned previously and tying things together, this trust can be doubly helpful as customers will be introduced to new offerings and the trust they have in you will encourage them to give them a shot.

In summary

We may not all be able to release a video and attract 18 million views in 24 hours the way that Marvel has done, but by following some of the same steps that Marvel uses to promote their releases, we can help our own campaigns take off.

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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.

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