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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New Year, New Ideas: 3 Smart Strategies to Jump Start Your Marketing

The beginning of a new year makes everyone feel like a fresh start is possible, and businesses are no exception. Plenty of opportunities exist online if your goals include making improvements or ramping up your marketing efforts in the new year. You know that maximizing your brand’s exposure is the key to gaining new customers or maintaining the base you already have, so when you make your company’s list of new year’s resolutions, make sure to include a commitment to exploring new avenues for marketing on the web. If you feel as though you’ve exhausted all possibilities for online promotion of your business, think again! Numerous options are available that you may not have considered.

1. Expand your social media efforts.

By now, if you don’t have a Facebook page that is frequently updated with new content, you’re way behind in the marketing game. It’s estimated that 15-25 million businesses – both large and small – have a presence on the social media giant. And with 500 million people worldwide using Facebook, a business would have to be crazy not to create a page. So, assuming you’ve already established a Facebook presence, it’s likely you’ve also connected with customers and potential customers through Twitter or LinkedIn, as well. But what about Google+? Or Pinterest? Instagram? In this tech-connected world, it’s essential to not only stay on top of the social marketing trends, it’s also imperative to spread your marketing efforts across many different platforms to reach as many potential customers as possible. So, where to begin? As with any marketing plan, it depends on what services and products you’re selling. It makes sense that a product that has visual appeal would benefit from marketing on a visual social media platform, such as Pinterest, Tumblr, Instagram, or Flickr. Establishing a following on any of these sites literally raises your company’s visibility via images and copy that can be shared and made viral instantly. To add more power to your visual message, establish a YouTube channel and upload short video presentations of what your product can do, or use the Vine app to create looping videos. If your company offers a service, Howcast is a great place to post how-to videos that can be shared across the other social media sites. Building your brand via social media is effective, but only if you update your content frequently; after all, the goal is to maintain your presence. If you find that constant updates are overwhelming or daunting, think about utilizing the services of a website like Hootsuite, which offers a bulk scheduler that can send out up to 350 pre-made messages to the social media sites your company uses. Not only will that free up your time, it can also prevent consumers from being bombarded by your messages – the scheduler can be used to space out your updates.

2. Publish, publish, publish.

If you haven’t already embraced content marketing, now is the time to do so. Content marketing is essentially targeted marketing that doesn’t scream “targeted marketing”. You create content in the form of articles or blog posts that your customers will be most interested in. It should be relevant, purposeful, and considerate of your audience’s needs and intellect. Content marketing takes a step back from in-your-face sales techniques, and instead informs your audience about what you have to offer. Content marketing is highly effective, and doesn’t feel pushy. If you’ve been using content marketing via blog posts, you might want to try to mix it up a little bit – especially if you’re running out of fresh content. One way to spice up your marketing efforts is to add a podcast to your website. A podcast can provide a weekly or bi-weekly bite-sized chunk of information to your customers that won’t require the time it might take to read content. Keeping the podcasts to about a minute in length is enough time to hook listeners, keep them engaged, and possibly leave them wanting to know more about what you have to offer. Perhaps the best aspect of podcasts is utilizing content you’ve already created, thereby opening an entirely new channel of exposure for your product. In recent years, the internet has exploded with blogs by “experts” in nearly every subject. To give additional exposure to your blog or podcast, employ the services of a blogging superstar in your field to provide a guest blog or an interview. You don’t have to limit yourself to bloggers, of course; finding other influencers in your field for “guest” opportunities will not only increase awareness of your company, but also provide an excellent opportunity for SEO leads to your website. The best part of utilizing guest bloggers is that more than likely, that guest blogger will post the blog on their site, which in turn drives even more visitors to your business blog. Cross-referencing is a great click-generator. Keeping your content visually inviting should also be a priority as you resolve to freshen up your marketing efforts. Web visitors love to see visual representations of information, and infographics add spice and interest to any online content. If you deal with technical or difficult-to-understand concepts, adding a visual element such as an infographic can be extremely beneficial. Several apps are available online to create interesting, colorful representations of complex information. Sites such as piktochart.com or infogr.am are easy to use, and free. And best of all, the designing is done for you.

3. Capture customers when they’re searching.

None of these suggestions will work very well if your company can’t be found online, and that’s why you may want to investigate cost-per-click, or SEM (Search Engine Marketing) advertising. One of the largest and most popular online advertising methods is Google AdWords. People worldwide search Google for information a billion times each day. If your business shows up at the top of Google’s search engine, you’re guaranteed to draw in new customers, or at the very least, get more exposure. The key, of course, is to come up with the right keywords to generate the most visits. The AdWords platform allows you to specify what keywords entered by searchers will generate your ad. You can be specific about services your business provides, or you can limit your ad to a particular geographic location. Customization is offered in varying degrees; you can even select your ad to appear on certain days of the week, during specific hours, or even whether the ad is shown on mobile devices only. Cost-per-click works based on what budgetary parameters you set; for example, you set a daily budget, and are only charged when someone clicks on your ad, not every time it is displayed. According to the AdWords website, you specify the maximum amount you're willing to pay for visits to your website. The bid you make determines how high up on the search results page your ad appears. Don’t just limit your efforts to Google, either. Facebook offers a cost-per-click service, as does the Bing search engine. Several other companies provide the service, as well.

Stay the course

No matter what new ideas for marketing your business and products you choose to explore in the new year, the most important element in your endeavor is to stay consistent. If you start out the year with a focus on making changes, stay committed to maintaining those changes. Your customers will expect you to follow through, and your success may depend on it.

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Mythbusting Google’s “Mobilegeddon"

Back in December, we published an article called “Another Google Game-Changer: How Going Mobile Friendly Will Boost Your Search Visibility” that addressed the new “mobile friendly” designation that the search engine was adding to websites that had been optimized for mobile devices.

At the time, Google said that they saw “these labels as a first step in helping mobile users to have a better mobile web experience.” They went on to say, “we are also experimenting with using the mobile-friendly criteria as a ranking signal.” Many people speculated that it would only be a matter of time before Google started rewarding sites that were mobile friendly, and thereby penalizing those that were not. That day has come.

In a recent announcement, Google clarified their intentions for this mobile friendly label, stating that “starting April 21, we will be expanding our use of mobile-friendliness as a ranking signal. This change will affect mobile searches in all languages worldwide and will have a significant impact in our search results.”

If your site is not mobile friendly, Google has been quite clear in the fact that that site will no longer be given the same consideration that sites that are responsive and mobile friendly will be given. If you haven’t yet made multi-device support a priority on your website, now is the time to do so!

In prestigious company

Creating mobile friendly websites that are built with a responsive approach is not a new idea. The article that introduced this term to the industry was published in 2010 and it has been a best practice for years with Google recommending it as their preferred solution for multi-device support for quite some time. Still, even though responsive web design has been an important part of the Web industry for a while, there are many companies that have not yet implemented these best practices on their own site. If you are one of the companies that has thus far eschewed this approach to multi-device support, rest assured that you are in prestigious company.

A recent article by TechCrunch found that 44% of websites for Fortune 500 companies failed when using the Google PageSpeed Insights API. This tool shows if a site is, indeed, mobile friendly. The findings of this report show that the failure to go responsive is not always due to financial reasons. The prestigious companies on the Fortune 500 list can certainly afford to redesign their websites to add a mobile-friendly experience. So why haven’t they done so then? Oftentimes, when a company fails to go responsive and create a site with an optimized experience for all screens and devices, it is because they do not fully understand the importance or benefits of doing so.

Mobile expectations

Google’s changes to their algorithm show that they expect more from websites and the experience they deliver to mobile devices. This makes sense, because web users as a whole have begun to expect more from mobile websites.

A short time ago, Google conducted a survey of website users and their opinions on the mobile web experience. They found that “72 percent of mobile users say it’s important to them that websites are mobile-friendly, yet 96 percent have visited a site that doesn’t work well on their device.”

The survey, and resulting report, went on to state that “users are five times more likely to abandon the task they are trying to complete if the site isn’t optimized for mobile use, with 79 percent saying they will go back to search and try to find another site to meet their needs.”

As these numbers show, the expectations for mobile websites are rising and the patience to deal with non-mobile friendly sites is greatly diminishing. Because of this, the “do nothing” approach to multi-device support is simply no longer an option.

The “do nothing” approach

The “do nothing” approach to mobile web support is pretty easy to accomplish, because, as the name suggests, you do nothing to your website and allow a layout that was intended for large screen, desktop monitors to display on all devices and screen sizes – mobile included. Before the rise in popularity of mobile devices, this is how all websites were built. As such, when people first began using those mobile devices to access websites, they accepted the fact that sites were difficult to use on those devices. They had to “pinch and zoom” to read content or tap links that were meant to be clicked with a mouse, not touched with a finger. Once responsive design took hold, however, and as more and more sites integrated this approach and improved their mobile experience, expectations from customers were raised.

In short order, the “do nothing” approach went from an unfortunate, yet acceptable, solution to a sign that your site was behind the times. Now, with Google’s changes to their search algorithm and their clear stance that the “do nothing” approach is no longer acceptable, this approach will not only show you are behind, it will also hurt your site’s overall SEO. If you have not yet made your site mobile friendly, and you are not planning to do so now, expect that your site will fall further and further behind the times and lower and lower in Google’s search engine rankings.

The case for mobile-friendly

Google’s algorithm changes are the final piece that many companies may have needed to finally take the steps to make their site mobile friendly – but maintaining quality rankings is not the only reason to use this approach. There are a number of benefits to going responsive on your website, including:

Customer service – since customers expect a website that works well on all devices, from desktops to tablets to phones and beyond, by delivering a quality experience on all these devices, you present a better overall customer service experience

Business development / customer retention – as the Google report shows, customers who visit a site on a mobile device and find it not optimized for that device are likely to leave the site and seek out an alternative for the products or services the need. This is lost business for you! A site that works well on all devices ensures that the traffic you get is the traffic you keep!

Content consistency – with a responsive website, you have 1 website to maintain and manage, as opposed to separate sites for mobile versus desktop users. That one site will dynamically reflow its layout based on a user’s screen size. This means that while the look of the site may adjust for different users, the content will remain the same, ensuring that the right message is always delivered regardless of the device being used to access the website

Take the leap.

Expect search engine rankings to change dramatically after April 21st as Google begins using mobile friendless as ranking criteria. If you are not ready for this change, speak to your web or marketing team immediately and get the ball rolling on plans that will bring mobile support to your website and have your business ready for the increasing mobile-centric future of the Web.

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