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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Writer’s Block Be Gone! 9 Sources to Mine for Endless Blogging Ideas

“Content is king!” is the chief mantra of today’s marketing. And in the king’s service, many a business has begun blogging with fervor, only to have those efforts languish a few weeks or months later as the novelty wears off before the long-term benefits kick in. The challenge facing any business blogger is not only to produce top-quality content that people will love and share but also to establish a regular rhythm of publishing new content over time in order to build a following and develop a community around the brand. Perhaps you’re a sole proprietor – and therefore a solo blogger – juggling too many responsibilities and too little time. Or maybe you’ve been handed the torch of managing your company’s blog, and you have no clue where to begin. Perhaps you’ve been blogging for your company for some time now and are starting to feel the well of inspiration running dry. Wherever you currently stand on the blogging spectrum, don’t give up. Great content ideas are all around you; you just have to know where to look to find them.

Here are nine reliable sources you can always turn to whenever you need inspiration for that next great post:

1. Your company documents

In the course of doing business, your company cranks out tons of documents. While many of these might seem boring or commonplace, there are seeds of inspiration to be found if you look hard enough. Has someone from your company recently given a presentation at a conference or hosted a webinar? Find a way to mold the content into article form, and embed a video or audio recording (if available) for those who’d prefer to watch or listen rather than read. Has your company published an ebook or whitepaper? You’re in luck! Take that content and break it down into bite-sized snippets for near-ready-made posts. Even the most mundane documents can yield surprising gems. Your company’s annual report, for example, probably highlights the past year’s major accomplishments. Seek out the individuals responsible and interview them about the process of reaching those milestones. Ask them to share lessons learned along the way and advice that would be helpful to others (without giving away any trade secrets, of course). Transcribe your sessions and – just like that – you can check another blog post off your list.

2. Your coworkers

Every person within your organization brings a unique set of skills, experience, interests and expertise to the table. Tap into that brain trust to keep your blog humming with an interesting and diverse array of content. Recruit your coworkers to write posts inspired by their own particular strengths and areas of expertise. Different minds think differently, so you’ll likely discover that they’ll explore ideas that might never have occurred to you. Plus – as a bonus – having many voices and perspectives represented on your company’s blog will only make it that much more useful and appealing to readers.

3. Your customers

If you’re doing your job right, your customers are your blog’s readers. But they can also be an invaluable source of its content as well. After all, who’s better qualified to share creative and practical ideas for how your products or services can be used to make someone’s life (or business) better, easier, richer or more efficient? For example, Evernote regularly features customer interviews on its corporate blog as a way to tout the limitless possibilities its suite of apps offers for personal organization and productivity. Within each post, Evernote includes screen shots from the featured customer to demonstrate the software in action. The firm has even taken this approach one giant leap further, recruiting their best customers as brand ambassadors in areas relative to their particular expertise. For example, they’ve instituted a food blogger as their Home Cooking Ambassador, a workout guru as their Fitness Ambassador and a personal tech expert as their Parenting Ambassador.

4. Studies, surveys and polls

If there’s one thing we’ll never be lacking in today’s information age, it’s data. Every day, new research is being published on any number of topics. Find a recent study that’s relevant to your audience and digest what the results mean for them in practical terms. Do the numbers indicate a shift in trends? If so, how should your readers adapt their approach to stay ahead of the curve? Does the research suggest that the status quo is here to stay? If so, how can your readers respond to make the most of a proven winner?

5. News headlines and pop culture trends

A sure way to spice up any blog post is to find a tie-in to current news headlines and pop culture trends. The trick is to take two seemingly unrelated concepts – such as comedian Louis C.K. and customer service – and create an analogy that brings them together in a way that offers a fresh perspective on a topic that’s been covered countless times before. Whether it’s The Amazing Spider-Man or the Olympics, Tom Cruise or the presidential election, by linking subject matter that may seem either unfamiliar or unoriginal to something very familiar and timely, suddenly your topic – no matter what it is – becomes much more relatable and of the moment to your reader.

6. The calendar

Life – and business even more so – is cyclical. With every year comes tax season, summer vacation, the holiday rush and the lull that follows, a new year and new budgets...you get the idea. Think critically about what types of challenges each season brings for your readers, and write timely posts centered around useful tips and advice to help them through.

7. Your own blog

Just because you’ve written about a certain topic before doesn’t mean it’s off the table now. There’s always more to say or a different angle to explore. Perhaps the original was an entry-level, 101-style post. Now it’s time to delve deeper to help those readers who’ve mastered the basics and are ready to learn more. Perhaps enough time has passed since the previous post that new research has been released on the topic, or industry trends have shifted in a different direction. Revisit the topic and bring your readers up to speed on the latest developments.

8. Other blogs

You never have enough time in the day. Guess what? Neither do your readers. Sometimes the best way to solve both of these problems is not to create new content but to curate the great content that already exists. What does that mean? It means aggregating the best, most useful posts that you’ve found in your travels across the Web into a single post (giving due credit to the original sources, of course). This type of article can be organized either around a central theme (e.g. “Pinterest: 10 Articles to Help You Get Started”) or by timeframe (e.g., a “Week in Review” round-up of your favorite articles from the past seven days). Either way, you’ve done your readers a great service by sparing them the time to cull through all the riffraff to get to the good stuff, and you’ve published another great post that required minimal time and effort to compose.

9. You

We began with one mantra, so let’s finish with another: “Write what you know.” The best source of blogging inspiration will always be your own life experience. Readers engage more with true-to-life stories of obstacles overcome or goals achieved. Generally, if something triggers an emotional response from you – whether it’s excitement, anxiety, frustration or curiosity – you’re likely not the only one who’s encountered this situation or felt this way, which means it’s worth considering how to spin the event into a relevant article for your company’s blog. Also, you can harness personal challenges to put yourself in the shoes of your readers. For example, this article was inspired by my own strategizing process for a new company blog – how would I keep the content flowing when the obvious ran out? Keep in mind, too, that there are certain basic building blocks of life and of business that are universal. Every person who owns a business, for example, has to figure out how to win new customers, what they can do to grow their market share, the best way to manage employees and company resources, etc. If your target readers are business owners and entrepreneurs, any wisdom you have to offer in these areas based on your own personal experience will be appreciated. And don’t be afraid to share your failures as well as your successes; both offer equally valuable lessons for your readers. To make the most of life’s inspirational moments, practice actively paying attention to the events of your day-to-day routines. Keep a running log of content ideas – whether it’s in a physical notebook or just a simple text file that lives on your desktop. As you go through your day, write down every minor annoyance and small victory. Doing so will help train your mind to be aware, and soon you’ll discover that you’re finding blogging inspiration in even the most unexpected places.

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Bridging the Gap: How to Integrate Social Media Into Your Website

Your website is the home base for your company. It’s where you turn visitors into leads and prospects into paying customers.

Social media sites are outposts for your company. They’re where you go to find your customers and prospects and maintain an ongoing dialog with them in the places where they live online.

All too often, however, companies treat their web development and social media efforts as separate and distinct initiatives when, in fact, they should be working together seamlessly to promote the growth of your business.

Here’s how to maximize your online exposure by bridging the gap between your home base and social media outposts:

Start with the basics.

Make sure you have obvious links to every social media site where you maintain an active presence in a prominent location on your website. The header or footer is a good spot for these links because they then become a universal element of your website that every visitor will see no matter which page they might happen to land on first, last or in between.

You don’t have to use the standard logo for these social media sites, either. Instead, you can style these buttons in ways that reflect the look and feel of your own site.

Keep in mind, too, that the point of these links is to entice web visitors to “like” or follow you on these social media networks so that you can continue your conversation with them long after they’ve left your site. Therefore, it’s important that you include links only to those sites where you maintain an active presence. Don’t add a link to any site where you are not a frequent participant because there will be no incentive for that prospective customer to want to continue engaging with you on that platform.

It’s also smart to have these links open in a new tab so that you don’t risk losing your hard-earned visitor to other distractions on Facebook or Twitter.

Empower your advocates.

Today’s culture of the Web thrives on people finding great stuff and passing it along to others.

Make sure it’s easy for your customers and fans to share the stuff they like on your site with their own circles of friends and followers.

Again, use some discernment here and don’t include sharing options for every social site ever invented. Just pick a few key options like Facebook, Twitter and Google+ so that these buttons can be large enough to be easily seen.

Also, don’t plop these buttons on every page. Make sure they’re present on every product page and blog post. But what are the chances someone is really going to share your About or Contact page with the world?

Finally, pay attention to how links look when they’re shared. For example, Facebook’s API displays page titles and meta descriptions for shared links, so make sure these elements that live in the underpinnings of your site are formed strategically so that the shared content is presented in the most advantageous way for your brand.

Use social media to feed your website.

If you regularly use social media networks to keep your customers and prospects apprised of special promotions or events, you might consider plugging a Facebook Like Box or Twitter widget into your website.

However, don’t exercise this option just because it’s there and it’s trendy. Think carefully about whether the content you share on Facebook or Twitter actually pertains to and is appropriate for your average website visitor.

Also, while it’s almost always best for your blog to be an integral part of your own website, if you do maintain your blog on a third-party platform like Blogger or Tumblr, make sure you pull an RSS feed from your blog into your website so customers can discover your great content.

Get visual.

If you have a helpful how-to video or a series of photos from your latest event that you want to feature on your website, consider posting them to social sharing sites like YouTube or Flickr and embedding them in your site from there.

This approach makes your content accessible to the millions of users who search these social platforms for videos and images, making it that much easier for potential new customers to discover your website and your brand.

For example, Pink Cake Box, a gourmet cake shop located in New Jersey, reports that about 10 percent of their website traffic each month comes from Flickr, where they regularly post photos of unique cakes.

Just make sure when you post your photos or videos that you include a link back to your site in the description so users have a clear path to reach your home base.

Get social with service.

It’s standard practice to give your customers the option to contact your company via an email address or by submitting a form on your website.

However, many companies are now encouraging customers to get in touch via Twitter or Facebook as well.

There are several benefits to this approach. First, it gives the person who wants to reach you a quick, convenient way to do so. It also gives your company the opportunity to field both praise from happy customers and complaints from dissatisfied buyers in the public eye.

While you might be nervous about the idea of having complaints aired publicly, consider this: these people are going to be talking about you anyway. It’s best to give them an outlet to do so in a way that allows you to provide a positive resolution to the problem at-hand while demonstrating to the world that your company cares about your customers and is dedicated to providing the best possible experience for them.

If you go this route, just make sure that you’re prepared to monitor and reply to any communication directed at you via social media right away. If a question or complaint lingers unanswered, it will reflect poorly on your brand. Also ensure that anyone who is tasked with responding behalf of your brand is well trained in how to handle any imaginable scenario in a way that demonstrates strong values and a commitment to providing excellent customer service.

By bridging the gap between your activities on social media networks and your own website, you’ll create an even stronger promotion engine for your business that will help you capture and convert more customers.

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