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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Five Tips to Fuel Your Next Launch From the Coolest Cooler's Record-Shattering Kickstarter Campaign

62,64 backers. $13,285,226 dollars. 26,570% of the fundraising goal met. By any count, these are staggering figures – even more so when you discover that they all pertain to a cooler. Specifically, we’re talking about inventor Ryan Grepper’s Coolest Cooler, a high-tech party-on-wheels that boasts fun-inducing features such as a built-in blender, speakers, USB charger and much more. It has also surpassed other headline-grabbing Kickstarter campaigns, including the Pebble smartwatch and the Veronica Mars Movie Project, to become the site’s most funded campaign ever. Perhaps the most surprising fact about this record-smashing campaign, however, is that Grepper’s first attempt at funding the Coolest Cooler through Kickstarter failed less than 12 months ago. So what were the sparks that set the second campaign ablaze? And how can you apply these lessons to ignite your next marketing campaign or product launch? Let’s take a look:

What was different this time around?

Before we look at the exact lessons that this campaign can teach us, it is helpful to consider what was done differently on this second, wildly successful campaign versus the first one which did not meet its funding goal.

• The campaign was launched during the summer months, rather than the winter.
• The design of the Coolest was revamped and updated.
• The funding goal was lowered.

In addition to these changes, the second campaign also benefited from supporters who backed the idea the first time around. That first campaign fell short of its goal of $125,000, but it did generate $102,188 in pledges from 279 supporters – and those supporters were first in line when the second campaign launched. So what lessons do these changes, and the success resulting from those changes, teach us?

1. Timing is key.

The first time this campaign was run, it was in December. This time, it was done in the summer, when trips to the beach and having an amazing cooler are much more in people’s minds. As the Coolest’s inventor told Geekwire in a recent interview, “launching a product when backers are most likely to be receptive makes a difference.” This same principal holds true for any marketing campaign. You need to launch your campaign when the time is right. For instance, take the week of Thanksgiving. The company that I work for does no marketing pushes during that week. This is because we are a B2B company, and the customers we work with are either off during the week of the Thanksgiving holiday or, if they are in the office, their mind is certainly not on making new business technology decisions or purchases. For a B2B company, this holiday week is not good timing for a campaign. If, however, you are a B2C business, this week is golden! The day after Thanksgiving, commonly known as Black Friday, is one of the biggest shopping days of the year, followed a few days later by the similarly popular Cyber Monday. This entire holiday weekend is filled with ads and promotions for B2C companies, because their customers are in the mindset to buy during that time. Timing is important, and the exact timing that will work for you may be different than what will work for other companies. You need to think about your audience and what their mindset is and you need to consider your product and whether or not there is a specific time when it will most resonate with potential buyers. You likely even have some offerings that make sense at certain parts of the year and others that are most suited to different time periods. Kicking off a campaign at the right time can be the different between success and failure, as shown in the two different campaigns for the Coolest Cooler.

2. Design matters.

Another change that was made to the Coolest for this second campaign was the product’s design. The new design is much more vibrant and exciting than the first. With sleeker lines and a bold, orange color that really stands out, as well as better integration of the component parts, the improvements to the design of this product played an important role in the amazing success that it has seen on this second go around. Design is important; yet it is often one of the first things to be compromised on when budgets are being reviewed. Using pre-built templates as opposed to hiring a design professional to craft a look and feel unique to your needs and ideas is an option that too many companies bypass in order to save some money, but as we have seen with the Coolest, design absolutely matters. Skimping on design is the same as skimping on success. If you are going to launch a campaign, do it right and give it the best chance to succeed by investing in design.

3. Set a realistic bar for success.

Whenever you initiate any kind of marketing or sales campaign, you will have a goal that you are trying to achieve. If you are promoting an event, you will have a certain number of attendees you hope to attract. If you are selling a product, you will have a set number of units you may seek to move. In the case of Kickstarter, there is a “funding goal” that is trying to be reached. While the Coolest’s first campaign came close to that funding goal, the organizers of this campaign decided to drastically lower their goal on the second go-around, from $125,000 to $50,000. For crowdfunded campaigns, there is wisdom in having a lower threshold for success. Backers are often more likely to contribute to a project if it is close to meeting its goal or if it has already met that goal, which guarantees that the project will move forward. The backers who pledge to a project that does not meet its goal are not charged their pledge amount, so it is not like they are out any money if a campaign fails, but people who back a crowd funded campaign are likely to be excited about that campaign and the “rewards” that their pledge will bring them. If they know that the success of a campaign is all but guaranteed, they are apt to jump in and join the fun instead of waiting by to see what happens. By lowering your threshold for success, you actually encourage people to contribute earlier in the campaign! In business, having a realistic measurement for success means that a campaign can be seen as positive – and if a campaign yields positive results, it is more likely that you will be able to do other campaigns in the future! On the flip side, if you are unrealistic in your goals for what a campaign will produce, you will be disappointed when the results fall shy of what you were aiming for, even if the numbers you end up with are totally respectable. Set a realistic bar for success and give yourself the momentum to kick off future campaigns that can build on that success!

4. Passionate customers are like gold.

When the second campaign for the Coolest was kicked off, it already had a few hundred passionate supporters – those who had supported the first campaign. These backers helped spread the word on the Coolest, and coupled with the lower funding goal, positive results were seen very quickly (the funding goal was reached in less than 36 hours)! The passion of those initial backers was contagious, and once the campaign started rolling, the success was amazing, and it all started with help from some passionate and vocal supporters. Having customers who are passionate about your company is one of the best ways to help spread the word on what you have to offer. You can promote your offerings on social media as much as you want, but it often just comes across as a company pitching their products. When a person who is not connected to your company does this, it is received very differently. Customers who love your company and evangelize to others in their social circles hold weight with their connections that you do not possess. If a company says that they have “the best prime rib in the state”, that is seen as marketing copy, but if a friend of yours updates from a restaurant that they “just has the best steak I’ve ever had!”, you view that message much differently. It is not seen as marketing, it is seen as a recommendation from a trusted source, a friend whose opinion you may value. While the marketing speak may not get you to try that restaurant, your friend’s recommendation likely will. This is why passionate customers are like gold. They will help spread the word on your business to people who trust them. In turn, you then have the chance to “wow” new customers and create new referral sources that can result in amazing business success, just like what we see with the Coolest campaign.

5. Ask for help.

The final item we will point out actually happens at the end of the video introducing the Coolest. Not content to hope that people will share the information on the campaign with other in their social circle, the video ends will an actual request for those share. Arrows point to the social sharing button on the page, directly underneath the video, prompting viewers to click a link and share that video. Over 350,000 share of that video have been done on Facebook alone (compared to a little over 700 on the first video/campaign). Yes, part of this success in social sharing comes from the overall success of the campaign itself, but you cannot discount the power of asking people for help! Making social sharing buttons available is step 1, but if you want people to use them, ask them to do so! Sometime, making a simple request is the difference between a person clicking that link, and sharing your content, and bypassing that option altogether.

In summary

The campaign for the Coolest is obviously not typical. You should expect to achieve the same, incredible level of success (remember, set those realistic expectations!), but by following some of the principals that we see at play in this products second campaign versus its first one, we can absolutely find more success in our own campaigns and online initiatives.

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