Bryan Pearson's Blog, page 42

Retail Today: Same Difference

See retail in any country across the world, and you realise that consumer challenges are local, even when they are global

One recent story I read detailed the issues Indonesian merchants face in trying to maintain loyalty at a time when consumers collect loyalty cards as if they are coupons. The customers have learned to use different programmes at different times, depending on the offer or price promotion.

What these savvy customers are doing, of course, has nothing to do with loyalty. Any sharp loyalty programme operator should recognise this fact before even attempting to change behaviour. To gain dedicated customers – not bargain hunters – marketers must first address the underlying problem, which points to a lack of engagement. Temporary solutions, such as occasional sales or discounts, may be born of good intentions, but they aren’t designed to fulfill the ultimate goal: enduring customer loyalty.

Read the full story here.

October 9: Loyalty Links & Likes

Here are a few loyalty links that caught my eye this week.

1. 2013′s 4 Biggest Loyalty Trends – PYMNTS.com

The PYMNTS.com staff has put together its list of the top loyalty industry trends for 2013.

2. Pound Signs Over Hashtags – COLLOQUY

New research reveals word-of-mouth marketing on social media is on the rise, but traditional channels still have the advantage.

3. Becoming Disloyal: 6 Reasons to Quit a Loyalty Program – Fox Business

Story shares ways customers can evaluate the worth of their rewards program memberships.

4. Toys “R” Us Outlines Plans to Recover from 2012 Holiday Missteps – RIS

The retailer is looking to its loyalty program to improve holiday sales from last year.

5. McDonald’s Stores Trying Loyalty Program – Bloomberg

More on how the fast food chain plans to appeal to younger customers with a digital loyalty program.

American Express: Turning the Corner Store into a National Movement

Provided by Mbooth & Associates

When I was a college student I ran a small business painting houses. It only lasted a couple of summers so it never required a line of credit or even a credit card. But if it did, I’d likely go with American Express OPEN, the division of American Express dedicated to small business owners.

Why? Largely because its innovative approach to helping small businesses grow. Among these initiatives is its Small Business Saturday, introduced in 2010. I wrote a case study about it in my book, The Loyalty Leap for B2B. Here’s the distilled version of the initiative’s story.

It was 2010, at the height of the recession, and American Express’s small business customers were hurting for customer traffic. With the holidays approaching, there was little time to waste. Looking at the calendar, American Express saw the solution on the Saturday following Thanksgiving, the day after Black Friday and before Cyber Monday.

As Susan Sobbott, president of American Express OPEN, put it: “We wanted to ride the wave of this November shopping weekend, to capitalize on a new event focused on small businesses.”

The result, launched November 27, 2010, was Small Business Saturday; a movement that encouraged Americans to shop with independently owned businesses.

To get the word out, American Express initiated a campaign on Facebook with a dedicated Small Business Saturday Fan Page. Through charitable donation programs, a multimedia advertising strategy and free Facebook advertising, the Small Business Saturday page attracted more than 1.4 million fans. Factor in all the friends of those fans, and the Small Business Saturday message reached more than 100 million people.

Meanwhile, in the store, American Express rewarded consumers for their participation, giving a limited number of $25 credits to card members who registered and shopped at an eligible merchant on Small Business Saturday. To help small businesses identify themselves, American Express offered free, downloadable signage and promotion material from its website.

The program continued, and in the years that followed it tapped into the public’s social consciousness. Hundreds of partners worked together to get the word out. In some towns, Small Business Saturday has been parlayed into community-wide events. Communities in South Africa and Canada have started programs.

Essentially, American Express created a new marketing wave that small businesses could ride. By concentrating the initiative’s focus to a single movement in a narrow timeframe, and through one program, a network effect resulted. The more who joined the movement, the more effective and beneficial Small Business Saturday became for everyone.

In 2012, American Express operated its Small Business Saturday initiative for the third consecutive year, and it again beat expectations. According to American Express’s research, surveyed consumers who said they were aware of Small Business Saturday spent a combined $5.5 billion with independent merchants, surpassing the projected $5.3 billion. More than 150 corporations, including FedEx, Twitter and Clear Channel, banded together to promote shopping at small merchants for Small Business Saturday.

American Express’s Small Business Saturday movement is an example of an initiative that worked because it followed several of the steps to a successful B2B initiative. First, it took care to define the small businesses it would target – one hundred or fewer workers and $10 million in revenue. American Express knew, by using its data to score customers, that it had substantial upside opportunities in small businesses.

Next, it set up relevant touch points by providing its small business customers free marketing resources, while rewarding consumers for participating in the program.

Lastly, American Express implemented benchmarks and measured against them from the first year. Based on the program’s performance, it made modifications and the program flourished.

American Express’s OPEN program succeeds because it uses its data to understand the ambitions and needs of small business owners, from the independent housepainter to the family restaurant. This makes the next step – to provide a way to help them realize these aspirations – a sure-footed one.

October 2: Loyalty Links & Likes

Here are a few loyalty links that caught my eye this week.

1. Fascination, Football and Theater Take Front Row at Loyalty Summit – COLLOQUY

Coverage from last week’s COLLOQUY Loyalty Summit and Awards featuring Sally Hogshead, Coca-Cola, FedEx and MasterCard

2. McDonald’s Testing Rewards Program for Customers Using Mobile Devices – The Consumerist

The fast food chain has adopted a mobile rewards program targeting younger customers.

3. Walgreen’s Profit Rises 86% as Loyalty Cards Boost Sales – Bloomberg

The drugstore retailer is attributing its fourth-quarter profit growth to its loyalty program, which helped the store tailor its merchandise.

4. CIBC Launches Enhanced Travel Rewards Loyalty Program – Financial Post

The bank has upgraded its Aventura Travel Rewards Program to let customers purchase tickets for any airline.

5. Go Mobile and Drive Engagement With Your Loyalty Programme – ITWeb

Story shares why marketers should tailor loyalty program messaging to meet mobile platforms.

Transparency as a Service Requires Role of the Consumer

If “transparency as a service” is the new buzz term in marketing, we should remember there is such a thing as bad service.

We all know the clichés: Cat food coupons when we only own dogs. Diaper offers when our children are in college. Plus-sized clothing promotions to someone who wears petites.

So now some companies are opening the vault, and inviting consumers to peek at their own data. Most recently, the company Enliken is planning to launch a transparency platform, to be used by data collectors, which will give consumers more privacy controls over the data they share with businesses. Enliken shares demographic categories, shopping categories and other data, following a trend that is being seen among other data providers.

I do like the idea of transparency as a service and exploring what the added value is for marketers and consumers. But I can’t help but think there is a role for the consumer in the process. This looks to me like a great opportunity to encourage an open dialogue and further deepen customer connections.

We certainly shouldn’t expect to do it all ourselves. Sure, marketers today are basically engineers of engagement. We’ve devised elaborate mathematical models, into which we feed historical consumer behavior, and they metabolize the information into a variety of consumer segments. In short, they analyze the behavior, they grade the data and they place the consumers into different segment models.

But for those of us who are practitioners, one question always lingers: Are we getting it right all the time or are we misreading the signals? A propensity model is just that, the likelihood that someone would fall into a certain action, class or segment. And, as pointed out in a recent column by George Anderson, editor-in-chief at RetailWire, there can be a lot of inaccuracies. He found several about himself on AboutTheData.com.

“Household information relative to number of children was off by three kids. Occupation (craftsman/blue collar) gave me a giggle especially considering when my wife and I married she was the one who brought a toolbox to the union. Political affiliation was wrong as were a couple other minor points,” he wrote.

Which takes us back to the gnawing question: What might happen if we created a more open, transparent model, one where the machines did the work but there was a supplemental conversation with the customer to ask, “Hey, did we get it right?”

Transparency as a service is like data sharing – it only serves the customer well if the customer has an active and understood role. I suspect that increased transparency of this sort could lead to improved accuracy and happier folks all around the table.

September 25: Loyalty Links & Likes

Here are a few loyalty links that caught my eye this week.

1. 2013 COLLOQUY Awards Recognize Eight Companies Worldwide – COLLOQUY

An overview of the winners featuring some of the most clever and effective loyalty strategies in practice.

2. Qantas Loyalty Eyes B2B Market to Build Business – AdNews

The Australian company plans to offer loyalty and data services to the B2B space.

3. Richard Branson on Building Brand Loyalty – Entrepreneur

How companies can foster a culture based on customer service.

4. Fast Feeders Moving Slowly Into Mobile Payments and Ordering – Ad Age

Quick service restaurants are testing mobile technology that has loyalty implications.

5. How Are Your Employees Affecting Your Brand – Huffington Post

Customer loyalty starts from within, this story shares data points to support the statement.

The Blurred Line to the Consumer’s Heart

As the plane leveled above the clouds and turned towards Dallas, I took note of how far I could see. This is an old habit. Marketers like to have a clean line of sight – to their consumers, their prospects, their goals. En route to attend the 2013 COLLOQUY Summit, such thoughts were natural.

But these days, the lines have never been less clear.

And that’s the irony. Technology enables us to gather data so we have a more complete picture of our customers, but technology also empowers our customers to keep one step ahead of us, often to stymy our efforts.

Customers share more data than ever, through their smartphones, tablets and GPS devices, yet they’re increasingly distrustful of business and concerned about privacy. At the same time, they are taking the merchandising process into their own hands by researching big-ticket items in the store and then buying them cheaper online, a practice we all now know as showrooming.

I can still remember, less than 10 years ago, when customers came into a store to buy something, not investigate it. Today, shoppers are holding the price scanners, through their smartphones, and capturing bar codes faster than a merchant could ring them up. If it were to have the chance, that is.

Marketers are more plugged in than ever, yet I fear some of us are becoming more tuned out.

Consider that the average person has a nine-second attention span. That’s about how long it takes to recite the alphabet. Author Sally Hogshead addresses and resolves the attention-deficit issue in her book “Fascinate,” and she will be at the Summit to share her tips for becoming a fascinating brand. She is offering a solution, and I look forward to it.

Other speakers at the Summit also will help put these blurred lines into focus, because the fundamentals of marketing and loyalty haven’t changed. The speakers, representing Google, Coca-Cola, FedEx, CVS and others, are setting industry standards as they zero in on the customer – not product or performance goals – and make her the center of their purpose.

Companies such as these use data to clarify their view of the customer’s preferences and needs, so they can deliver messages and experiences that resonate. The key is realizing that customers not only want to be recognized and rewarded for what they do, but also for whom they are.

That’s a pretty clear expectation, yet all the insights in the world will fail to meet it if they are not deconstructed to reveal the consumer’s aspirations and preferences. That takes clear dedication.

From where I sit at the COLLOQUY Summit, among the best marketers in loyalty, I think I can see it coming together.

September 18: Loyalty Links & Likes

Here are a few loyalty links that caught my eye this week.

1. Loyalty to Your Bank Could Cost You Money – TIME

Survey results indicate that customers may be loyal to a fault when it comes to where they bank.

2. Is Socialization the Secret to Customer Loyalty? – Fox Business

The story shares findings of a study investigating the connection between community engagement and retailer ROI.

3. Earning Points When Programs Fade Away – COLLOQUY

Steps companies should consider when terminating loyalty programs.

4. Hard and Soft Benefits: How Loyalty Marketers Can Create the Ideal Blend – Total Customer

Take a page from Canada’s largest bookstore chain. Indigo Books & Music gives its customers a unique blend of benefits.

5. New Generation of Business: Connecting Employee Loyalty with Customer Loyalty – LinkedIn Today

New research reveals relation between loyal customers and employees.

Protecting Privacy in a Smartphone World

Photo courtesy of Renew London

If you’ve traveled the streets of London lately, there is a chance that a trash bin tried to pick up your smartphone.

I mean that in the abstract sense. A company called Renew recently programmed “smart” trash bins to record the unique addresses of smartphones carried by pedestrians. No one was notified, and there was no way for people to know that their personal data was being collected. But in one day, a small number of those bins collected data from more than a million devices.

Renew since discontinued the tracking, but that won’t stop the technology. Other companies have been selling this same kind of innovation to retailers for some time.

This practice came to light in an NBC story that declared, alarmingly, that “smartphones could spell the end of real-world privacy.”

“Unless leaders step up and work on a framework that works for all consumers, it’s going keep getting worse and worse until it is unbearable,” one source was quoted.

But whether it is the end of real-world privacy all depends on the handling.

Basically, the NBC story analyzes how new technology is making age-old research in retail more accessible. For instance, the technology company Euclid, like Renew, sells retail tracking systems that follow not only how consumers pass through the store, but the lengths of their visits and return shopping patterns.

Marketers have for some time been automating research processes, like in grocery stores where they have turned to tracking phones as a replacement to using tracking devices on shopping carts. The technology is advancing, but to me the issue isn’t the direction of the technology; the issue is transparency and what marketers consider reasonable in how they use this data.

The story, for example, emphasizes a balance between data aggregation and anonymity. This balance presents an opportunity to improve the customer experience to drive higher sales, but some may perceive the technology simply as a method for personal targeting.

It is up to marketers to prove one over the other. The answer likely lies in this question: Would consumers opt in to have their traffic tracked if they knew there was a benefit?

That’s not a debate for the trash bin.

September 11: Loyalty Links & Likes

Here are a few loyalty links that caught my eye this week.

1. With Acquisition, Fandango Plans to Raise Curtain on Loyalty Program – COLLOQUY

The online movie ticketer is creating a loyalty program to reward movie-goers.

2. Loyalty Program Changes Irk Frequent Business Travelers – USA Today

Rewards program policy changes trouble members who must use more points for perks.

3. At Virgin America, a Fine Line Between Pizazz and Profit – The New York Times

Airlines are upping the ante with new benefits such as mood lighting to wow customers, appeal to investors.

4. Credit Card Confusion: How Do I Earn Those Rewards? – Today.com

New survey reveals that although rewards credit cards are more popular than ever, many people don’t understand how they work.

5. Why Gamification and Big Data Go Hand-in-Hand – CMO

Story shares background on gamification including examples of organizations using the approach to increase customer and employee engagement.