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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More Than Meets the Eye: Engaging Website Visitors with a Sensory-Rich Experience

We experience the world through our five senses – sight, sound, touch, smell and taste. The more of our senses that an experience engages, the richer and more memorable that experience is likely to be. Visit a nice restaurant, and you’ll see how that establishment works deliberately to engage all five of your senses. The food will, of course, entice your senses of taste and smell, but its presentation on the plate will also play to your sense of sight – as will the lighting and décor. Consider as well the music being played and the feeling of the fabrics and textures on your chair and table: what kind of sensory response do these things elicit? All of these elements work together in synchronicity to define your experience at this restaurant. When it comes to website design, we have traditionally focused our attention on only one of the senses – sight. While sound comes into play on occasion, it is the sense of sight that we tend to think about first and foremost, as websites have long been considered a visual medium, similar to printed content like books, magazine or newspapers. However, one of the most powerful aspects of the Web is the fact that we can, indeed, engage more of the senses than we can with a paper document. With the benefit of today’s technologies and looking ahead to what the future may hold, we see that we can begin creating experiences that stimulate multiple senses to immerse visitors more deeply in our sites, thereby creating more lasting, memorable impressions. Let’s take a look at how we can use our websites to create sensory-rich experiences and how recent advancements in technology are unleashing new possibilities for how we can engage with our users through the Web.

Sight

Let’s start with the primary sense that has long been associated with websites – sight. Yes, the look of a website is important, and its design is meant to captivate a visitor’s sense of sight. But exactly how we use the tools of visual design leaves a lot of room for creative experimentation and variety. Many sites today employ movement and animation in their designs, whether it’s a rotating carousel of images on the home page, buttons that change color or size when a user hovers over them or embedded video. Amazon’s recently announced Fire phone takes the way that a screen can engage our sense of sight to the next level with a feature called “Dynamic Perspective.” This feature allows users to interface with the content on the screen by tilting the phone in different directions. A simple move of the wrist allows access to shortcuts, opens navigation menus or scrolls the page. This technology has the potential to immerse users more deeply into digital environments with a unique perspective that allows them to look under, behind or around elements on the screen. Currently, these perspective features are being utilized as part of the phone’s native operating system and by a few select apps, but how long before other devices introduce similar features and web designs begin creating pages that can take advantage of different perspectives and dimensions? If movement and animation can attract a user’s attention and engage them through their sense of sight, just think about what this dynamic perspective may be able to bring us in the future.

Sound

Today, the most common way that websites engage a visitor’s sense of sound is through video content. The ability to involve multiple senses in a single experience is a powerful thing, and video content is a perfect example of this principal in practice. By combining visual and audio, video content can accomplish important objectives on a website, whether that’s explaining a complex concept or showcasing product features, While videos are a great example of how sound can be used effectively to enhance the user’s experience, there’s also a dark side to sound on the Web, which, if used improperly, can undermine your site’s success. Just as in the restaurant example we cited previously, background music or sound on a website can help to create atmosphere and mood, but if that sound is too loud, inappropriate or obnoxious, the tone it sets will be a very negative one. Soundtracks on websites, a feature that was popular years ago when many companies wanted immersive Flash-based sites, often backfire. Visitors who may be listening to music as they surf the Web, or those who do not want a website to suddenly begin blaring music at them (perhaps because they are at work or in some other environment where being surprised by audio will be an unwelcome experience) are likely to be annoyed if they get audio content that they did not want or need. Unlike the audio associated with a video that helps engage the user, audio added to create “atmosphere” is rarely used effectively, and you should be very cautious if you decide to go this route. For all audio content on your site, whether it’s part of a video or some kind of music or background sounds, be sure to allow visitors to initiate that audio on their own, and do not surprise them with it. The shock of their sense of sound being engaged unexpectedly is what you want to avoid!

Touch

Touchscreens have been available for many years now, but until the release of the iPod and iPhone, they were not widely used in consumer devices. Today, touchscreens are everywhere. Not only do we all carry around touch-driven smartphones and tablets, but touchscreens are now readily available for laptops and even desktop computers, too. With the rise in the adoption of touchscreens comes the ability to engage our visitors’ sense of touch, allowing them to interface with our site in a more physical way as opposed to only through mouse clicks. This ability to touch our sites allows us to connect with our audience in a literal sense. While most sites or applications currently focus on gestures and movements to scroll pages or access features and content, there are also organizations working on tactile touchscreens that can make interfacing with screens a completely different experience. Looking again at the new Amazon Fire phone and their Dynamic Perspective feature, I can only imagine how powerful an experience we could create by combining that technology with actual tactile sensations on the screen as people interface with our content. Talk about being pulled into a digital environment!

Smell

You wouldn’t think that the sense of smell could possibly come into play on a website, but emerging technologies hint that this may soon become reality. Harvard scientists recently transferred a scent from Paris to New York using an iPhone app (the smell they sent was “champagne and passion fruit macaroon” – yum!). They did this using a platform called the oPhone, a new technology from a company that is “working to bring olfactory wonder to mobile messaging.” Yes, they can actually send smells. The future is here. While this particular technology, which includes more than 3,000 scents, requires the use of specific oPhone hardware, the fact that innovators are actively advancing the possibilities for integrating the sense of smell into the digital world prompts us to think about the kind of fully immersive sensory experiences that might lie just over the horizon. For example, what if a restaurant could transmit the scents of their food as you peruse their website’s menu page. Or what if you were shopping for scented candles online, and you could actually smell each product just as if you were standing in a brick-and-mortar retail store? What if you could take a video tour of a bakery, see the products as they’re being made, hear about how they’re created and smell the delicious aromas of cakes and cookies baking in the oven – engaging sight, sound and smell all at once. Sound unbelievable? It may not be as far off as you think.

Taste

What about the sense of taste? Will we one day be able to transmit tastes through our websites? It sounds crazy, but then again, the ability to project a smell online seems equally implausible until you hear the story of the oPhone. Who knows, maybe one day soon we will not only be able to send the aroma of a freshly baked cookie but also allow customers to sample a taste of that cookie as well. Again, it sounds incredible, but almost all technological advancements seem like wishful thinking until someone figures out how to make it happen.

Looking ahead

Who knows what the future holds, but I for one am excited to see how we will be able to expand our ability to engage our website visitors’ senses to create more powerful – and certainly more memorable – user experiences.

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Great Content, No Readers: How to Solve Your Subscriber Problem

Hybrid or Hummer: What kind of mileage is your content getting?

Previously, we established that content is the gasoline in your business growth engine. But your job doesn't end when you hit "publish." Promoting your content is just as important as creating it. If content is the gasoline in your business growth engine, then promotion is the difference between putting that gasoline in a Prius versus a Hummer. Even the most value-packed content can’t help your business grow if no one is reading it. For your content to deliver results, you must actively engage in bringing new people to your site.

Here are 12 tried-and-true tactics to boost your readership and maximize the mileage you’re getting from the resources you’re investing in creating great content.

Be a citizen of the web marketing universe.

No website or blog starts out with its own built-in community. However, established communities do exist everywhere around the Web. Identify the ones where the types of people who would be interested in the topics you write about are already hanging out, reading and making connections. Join in the dialog there by commenting on blog posts or participating in discussion forums. Don’t be a shameless self-promoter. Focus instead on adding value to the conversation. If you do a good job, people will be naturally curious to learn more about you, and they’ll seek out your site to see what else you have to say. Just make sure to include a link in your signature so they’ll know where to find you.

Don't beg for links; present win-win opportunities.

Once you’ve earned your stripes as a trusted and valued member of these communities, you can begin reaching out to the other blog owners that run in these circles for opportunities to gain exposure to their readers. But don’t just ask them to link to your site. After all, what do they stand to gain from giving you a link? Instead, frame your request so that it provides benefit to the person on the receiving end as well. For example, invite them to be featured in an interview on your site. Even the most successful and well-established bloggers are always looking for a little added exposure, and they’ll undoubtedly promote their appearance to their fans, too. Or ask if you can contribute a guest post to their site. Most bloggers will be relieved to have one less post to write, and you’ll get the chance to put your own original content in front of their readers, with the added benefit of a link in your bio.

Give links to get links.

When you’re composing your posts, there’s no need to pretend that you’re the one and only person who’s ever had anything of value to say on your chosen subject matter. Link to other articles and experts who’ve either offered great insights on that topic or taken an opposing point of view, if you want to refute their claims. When you publish your article, shoot the person whose blog you’ve linked to an email or a direct message on Twitter. It will definitely get you noticed and will more than likely get you either a retweet or a link in return.

Leverage the connections you already have.

Don’t assume that everyone who follows you on Facebook or Twitter also reads everything you post on your site. Every time you publish a new article, make sure you extend that content to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and any other social media platforms where you are active. Instead of simply posting a link to your article, a great trick is to turn your headline into a question. Open-ended questions leave people craving an answer, which will prompt them to click through to satisfy their curiosity. If you’re using this tactic on Twitter, remember to keep your post to 120 characters or less (link included) in order to allow for retweets.

Extra! Extra! Let them read all about it.

Create a weekly or monthly email newsletter that’s a digest of your most recent posts. Enhance the value of this newsletter by incorporating a few bite-sized tips or links to other interesting articles from around the Web. You might be surprised at the number of new readers the “forward to a friend” button might bring you.

Don’t be shy.

Opportunities to subscribe to and share your content should be omnipresent. Put your email subscription offer either in the header or the sidebar of your site so that no one who visits can miss it. Add extra incentive to join your list by offering a freebie at sign-up, such as an e-book, checklist or audio download. Be sure to present the chance to subscribe to email updates at the end of every article as well. If the reader liked what they read, that’s the best time to get them to sign on.

Give them options – lots of options.

Email addresses are pure marketing gold, but don't be so laser-focused on building your list that you only offer email updates. Let your readers consume your content in the way they most prefer, whether that’s by subscribing in an RSS reader, via StumbleUpon or through the social media channels where you post links to your latest articles.

Be attentive to your readers.

When someone reaches out to you – whether by leaving a comment on an article, sending you a direct message on Twitter or dropping you an email – respond. Making them feel like a part of a community whose members are truly valued will motivate them to spread the word about you and encourage others to join the party.

Create content that sparks conversation.

The real holy grail of promotion is not generating two-way conversation between you and your readers. It's the multidimensional communication that occurs when your readers start interacting with each other as well. That's when suddenly you make the leap from publishing content to building community. The key lies in how you craft your content. While it's important to write with authority and demonstrate your expertise, don't make the presumption that you have the final say. One of your most important jobs as a creator and promoter of content is getting the ball rolling on conversation and debate. Ask for input and advice. Solicit dissenting opinions. Encourage your readers to share their own personal experiences that relate your topic. Great conversation is magnetic. It will keep your current readers coming back again and again, and draw new visitors in when they see the lively interactions that exists around your content.

Find the right balance.

Remember that you don't have to post every day or even every week if that's not realistic for you. It's better to find a comfortable rhythm that will allow you to maintain a steady pace of both creation and promotion. It’s better for someone to come to your site and see that you post one must-read article every month than to see unpredictable fits and starts of activity.

When you find something that works, stick with it.

In the game of promotion, there’s no magic formula for success. It may require a lot of trial and error before you find the right combination of tactics that work for your audience and your schedule. When you do uncover a particularly effective strategy, mine it for all it’s worth. If you write a guest post that gets a lot of attention, find out if there might be an opportunity for you to become a regular contributor on that site. If you get a significant proportion of traffic from one of the sites or forums where you’re a regular participant, by all means, keep it up. If you write a post that gets more traffic, more retweets or more comments than average, continue to develop other articles around that topic. When people tell you what they want, give it to them.

Slow and steady wins the race.

If this sounds like a lot of work, it is. Community building requires time, patience and persistence. There are plenty of articles out there with enticing headlines like “How I got 10,000 subscribers with one post!” This probably won’t happen for you. That doesn’t mean your efforts aren’t worthwhile. Don’t risk becoming a pariah by being overtly pushy and self-serving in your methods. Instead, tread carefully and treat everyone you encounter in the blogosphere – readers, commenters and fellow content creators alike – with respect. As always, follow the rules of trustcasting and allow your community to grow organically in breadth and depth as you cultivate your reputation as a credible and authoritative source of information. Over time, you’ll build a robust, thriving community of people who will not only consume your content voraciously but will ultimately become customers and evangelists for your brand.

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