The Loyalty Whisperers
By Marilyn Stewart & Geoffrey Bailey
The travel industry invented loyalty programs as we know them. But loyalty is about more than a program, or a tangible redemption offer. The pandemic fundamentally changed the way consumers shop, eat, travel, and interact with brands.
As a result, many businesses have had to completely rethink how they evaluate and reward loyalty. For decades, brands have invested in loyalty programs to attract and retain customers. Some are traditional “earn-and-burn” transactional points programs, such as frequent flyer and shopper rewards.
You should rethink your loyalty strategy
We believe that all brands – even those with well-established transactional programs – should rethink and reinvent their loyalty strategies in ways that frame loyalty as something more than points and miles and offers. Points are passé.
True loyalty is won through a genuine desire to forge bonds with a customer – be that customer a hotel guest or a supermarket shopper – and to maximize that customer’s lifetime value through the delivery of hard-to-match benefits sustained over time.
Those bonds can be forged in a multitude of ways. For example, advanced analytics including AI – specifically, the ability of machines to perform tasks such as learning, problem-solving, pattern recognition, and decision making – allow consumer marketers to capture astonishing levels of data.
That data encompasses the where, when, and how consumers are interacting with their brand. As a result, there is huge potential out there for brand management to actively engage consumers – actual, prospective and returning – with a degree of relevance, accuracy and time-sensitivity unimaginable in the past.
Deloitte Consumer Loyalty Survey
Consumers are recognizing and responding to this new – and for those who know how to navigate it – loyalty landscape. While 85% of consumers cite monetary rewards such as points or cash back as important loyalty program attributes, nonfinancial benefits are becoming increasingly significant, according to the Deloitte Consumer Loyalty Survey.
Nearly 60% of consumers identify personalized rewards as important, and more than half say nonfinancial rewards – such as surprising, unanticipated and unusually memorable experiences – are the most important of all.
The travel category is jumping on the bandwagon with an increasing degree of enthusiasm. More and more destination brands are recognizing that the discriminating traveler is seeking sanctuary: an uncluttered, reliable destination resort where standards are maintained, services sustained, and personal peace-of-mind assured.
Conclusion: Customers are assets, not transactions
By thinking of loyalty as a living, design-led product, a destination brand can stay close to guests and create a seamless delivery of experiences. Such experiences are those that guests will wish to repeat – and enthusiastically refer to loved ones, friends, colleagues and acquaintances. Customers are assets, not transactions.
Marilyn Stewart & Geoffrey Bailey are co-founders of The Loyalty Metric: Understanding the art and science of attraction.
