The Loyalists Shall Take You To The Promised Land

Members pay an annual fee to belong to a retailer's loyalty program and they receive discounts on the retailer's most popular products, invitations to member-only events, and reward vouchers for reaching certain spending levels.

What other creative ways can this retailer reward its loyal customers?

Your customers are swimming in messages. And they’re being pursued by countless brands. How can you keep their attention, their time, and their dollar?

Gone are the days of a one-size-fits-all loyalty program. Building a creative campaign that your customers will respond to can only begin once you have a clear understanding of their buying motivations. By using real insights you can cultivate stronger relationships customers so your brand stands out. Ultimately your message motivates action… then your bottom line.

Depending on what inspires your customers craft programs which also meet your internal objectives along with actionable metrics for program refinement. More common loyalty program objectives include:

• Stimulate sales and improve gross margins

• Encourage purchase of new and better/best products
• Establish competitive differentiation
• Motivate employee performance
• Boost retention of high-value customers
• Build stronger long-term relationships
• Drive key behaviors

To understand what your customers truly value, conduct focus groups, one-on-one interviews and quantitative research. From this, determine the core elements needed to create a lasting relationship with your customers.

The mandatory requirements for an effective loyalty program are – Creative Conceptualization, Feasible Program Development, Systematic and Time Bound Program Execution and Measurement. 

Here are some proven loyalty concepts which can be customized to your customers buying motives:

• Club Cards (pay for membership for regular discounts, points programs, reward vouchers)

• Email Only Promotions
• Premium Shipping Clubs (for ecommerce)
• Subscriptions (asking customers to go steady and purchase product to be fulfilled at regular intervals)
• Service Extensions
• Recycling Programs
• Loyalty Affiliates
• Gift Reminder Service
• Value Propositions (Not loyalty per se, but extremely successful in customer retainment; think Zappos.com and their exceptional customer service)

Marketers are racing to keep up with customer expectations for personalized services and wnhancements, and well-designed loyalty programs are a tremendous opportunity to communicate directly with enticing offers that will keep customers coming back.

"The dogs on Main Street howl
'cause they understand
If I could take one moment into my hands
Mister I ain't a boy, no I'm a man
And I believe in a promised land"

- Bruce Springsteen

PHANTOM POWER
Marketing by Design
http://www.phantompower.co/

15 Key Social Media Analytics Terms

1. Social Reach

The total number of users associated with a brand on different social media platforms.

(For example, a company with 10,000 Twitter followers, 7,000 Facebook fans, 3,000 blog subscribers and 1,000 YouTube subscribers has a total Social Reach of 21,000)

2. Social Reach Velocity

A percentage representing a brand’s capacity to increase its social reach over time.

(For example, if a company’s social reach was 10,000 in January of 2011 and became 15,000 six months later, then it has 50% social reach velocity.)

3. Social Profile

The aggregated shares, comments, and overall brand-related activities of a social media user.

(Social profile examples include: Twitter followers, Facebook fans, RSS subscribers and so forth )

4. Social Conversion

The percentage of visitors originating from social media who take a desired action.

(Examples of desired actions include product sales, downloads, newsletter subscriptions, membership registrations and so forth.)

5. Social Mention

The overall mentions of your brand on social media in a positive/neutral/negative context over a specific period of time.

(SocialMention.com is an excellent tool that offers four important social mention metrics: strength, sentiment, passion and reach)

6. Brand Sentiment

The ratio of positive brand mentions to negative mentions.

7. Share of Voice

Brand share of voice = (total number of mentions of you + your competitors)/ your mentions.

8. Share of Social Conversations

Brand Share of Social Conversations= Social Brand Mentions/All Relevant Conversations

9. Social Media Impressions

The number of users’ reactions to your own content on social media, including retweeting, commenting, sharing and so forth.

10. Optimal Engagement Times

The best times to share content or engage with your network on social media.

(Studies have shown that many social media sites (such as Twitter and Facebook) have peak hours: the times when it’s most effective to share updates or interact with user )

11. Content-to-Contact Ratio

The ratio between a brand content and social network expansion.

(For example, if your content-to-contact ratio is 3:1, it means that for every 3 pieces of content you publish, a new user is added to your social network.)

12. Content-to-Share Ratio

The ratio between your brand content and social network sharing.

(For example, if your content-to-share ratio is 3:1, it means that for every 3 pieces of content you publish, one piece of content is shared on social media channels.)

13. Activity Ratio

The ratio of active members of your brand’s social network versus total members.

14. Bounce Rate

The time it takes site/blog visitors originating from social media to lose interest and leave your site.

15. Targeted Social Traffic

The percentage of social media traffic to your site/blog that results in sales compared to the overall social media traffic.

PHANTOM POWER
Marketing by Design
www.phantompower.co

NOTE: This glossary is not presented in alphabetical order because some terms are related to each other. So, I figured it’s best to order them in a way that will help you understand all of them without having to skim back and forth.

For the Experiential Marketer...

As an Event Marketing professional I highly recommend Event Marketer Magazine, the Event Marketer website (www.eventmarketer.com) and other Red 7 Media publications (i.e. BizBash... a whole NEW world of prospects) to learn more about the heavy-hitters in this field.

For their top 100 Event Marketing Agencies of 2008 visit:
http://directory.eventmarketer.com/agencyitlist/home

I also recommend checking out those agencies that specialize in branded entertainment and sponsorship activation:
http://directory.eventmarketer.com/agencyitlist/results/Sponsorship+activation+-+execution

Finally, for a thorough Event Marketing Agency list visit:
http://directory.eventmarketer.com/cat/Agencies

PHANTOM POWER
Marketing by Design
http://www.phantompower.co/