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.

---

What Does the Demise of Internet Explorer Mean for the Future of Website Design?

On January 21, 2015, web developers everywhere let out a great collective sigh of relief. Why? Because that was the day Microsoft announced that Windows 10 will ship with a brand new browser, code-named “Project Spartan,” thus effectively signaling the inevitable demise of the old stalwart Internet Explorer. According to Microsoft, Spartan is designed to provide a more interoperable and reliable experience with advanced features including the ability to annotate web pages, a distraction-free reading experience and integration of Cortana for finding and doing things online faster. While this all might sound appealing to the average user, it is particularly welcome news for web developers, for whom Internet Explorer has long been regarded as the very bane of their existence. You see, each browser interprets code in different ways, and each has different versions that offer different capabilities. While Chrome, Firefox and Safari do have their differences, for the most part they have the same capabilities. However, Internet Explorer, or IE, has historically been the odd one out, notorious for causing issues for website designers due to its lack of capabilities, especially in older versions like IE7 and IE8 (which, for example, does not support such simple design elements as rounded corners and text shadows). But while web devs are raising their glasses to toast IE’s impending downfall, you’re probably left with more than a few questions. After all, since IE has been the standard Windows browser since the mid-1990s, that little blue “e” icon has become synonymous with the Internet for many everyday users. So what exactly does Microsoft’s decision to do away with Internet Explorer mean for you – and most importantly – for your website? Let’s explore (no pun intended).

The challenges of IE

On today’s Web, the various browser manufacturers have agreed on a certain set of standards that they will all obey. This is incredibly important for web designers (and, by extension, for businesses that have websites), because it means that as long as your website conforms to those agreed upon standards, it should be displayed in a fairly consistent manner no matter which browser a visitor uses to access your site. Unfortunately, this is not always the case. In the mid-to-late 1990’s, Microsoft was engaged in a heated race for market share with the other most popular browser of the day, Netscape Navigator. Instead of agreeing on a singular set of standards, these two companies tried to outdo each other by adding proprietary features to their software that would interpret and display websites differently. This created a lose-lose scenario for web designers and businesses, as it meant that you either had to develop two different versions of your site (one for each popular browser) or dictate which browser visitors should use (this is why it became commonplace to see disclaimers on sites reading something like “Best viewed in Internet Explorer 4”).  This exclusive approach is what led some companies to build the software they use to run their business for those specific platforms. Even now, almost 20 years later, companies that continue to use that software may still be dictating that their employees must use a woefully outdated browser. This is where IE begin to falter, especially in the court of public opinion. As newer browsers, such as Google’s Chrome – which now ranks as the most popular according to many studies – began to enter the market, people started using them at home. They quickly discovered that these modern browsers were not only much faster but that they also included many new features and capabilities. It didn’t take long for consumers to develop a strong preference for these newer browsers and to begin pushing back against their IT departments’ requirements that were keeping them shackled to antiquated versions of IE at the office.

Microsoft realizes the problem

You might think that Microsoft would love any scenario in which people are forced to use their browser. On the contrary, however, it has created a major PR problem for them. The same IT departments that would not allow employees make the switch to a new browser also prevented them from upgrading to newer versions of Internet Explorer. The reality is that those new versions of IE are very capable browsers that, like the others on the market today, conform to the standards that are an important part of modern web design. Microsoft wants customers to begin using these new versions of their software because the continued use of versions that were originally released 10 years ago or more has created a vey negative perception of their product in the marketplace that has tainted the Internet Explorer brand as a whole.

The struggles of web designers

While old versions of web browsers certainly pose problems for consumers, they are doubly challenging for web designers and for the companies they build sites for. Testing newly developed websites in legacy browsers to ensure reliable backwards compatibility  is a critical step in the process that requires significant time and effort, creating overhead that adds to the timeline and budget of every project. Exactly how many people are visiting your site with those outdated browsers? It depends on the nature of your business. For instance, my company works primarily with IT professionals, and our traffic numbers indicate that the majority of our audience uses newer browsers (including many on mobile devices). As a result, we don’t need to develop and test for very old browsers because our visitors simply aren’t using them. However, if your business serves a more broad base of consumers – and especially if many of your customers are likely to be older and/or less tech savvy – it is important to ensure that your site performs equally well on new and old browsers alike. A good place to start is by examining the analytics data for your site, which can tell you which browsers are being used to access your site. One of the nice things about newer browsers like Chrome and Firefox (and even current versions of IE) is that they auto-update. This means that they automatically download and install their own updates so we no longer need to worry about radically outdated versions of the software. However, older versions of IE do not do this, which is why we still struggle to support software that came out over 10 years ago. With Microsoft’s new browser – which we expect will include auto-update approach – we may hopefully have arrived at a point where even that legacy software is forced to be rewritten for the new age and we can all say a final goodbye to outdated browsers.

Better days ahead

So what does the emergence of Project Spartan mean for your business and your website? In the short term, you may not feel an immediate impact, but you likely will begin to reap the benefits in the not-too-distant future. If Microsoft succeeds in its objective of transitioning customers away from old versions of IE and adopting their new Project Spartan (or other more current and capable browsers), by the next time you are ready for a redesign, the amount of time required for browser testing may be significantly reduced because the browser landscape will have gotten less diverse with the continued shift away from those legacy browsers, which can only mean good things for your project budget! Another benefit will be a greatly reduced potential for users to encounter problems on your site due to browser compatibility issues, which of course means less chance that a frustrated visitor will need to call your company for support (best-case scenario) or will give up on your site and go elsewhere (worst-case scenario). Finally, the release of a new, more capable option from a company that has been at the forefront of browsers for years (despite popular opinion, Microsoft remains a power player in the world of the Web) is a great thing because it gives users more options. And if Microsoft is successful, their competitors will inevitably up their game as well – and that is good news for everyone!

Don’t throw dirt on IE’s grave just yet

While there is certainly much to look forward to with the future release of Project Spartan, unfortunately, we can’t call time of death on IE yet (as much as we might like to). As AdWeek’s Krista Monllos explained to NPR, Spartan is in for an uphill battle: “By introducing a new browser, you're asking people to change their daily habits. If someone is used to Chrome or used to whatever it is they use, they probably don't want to change.” After all, Internet Explorer still accounts for almost a quarter of the present-day desktop browser market, and IE8 is still used by almost seven percent of people in the United Sates. Therefore, moving forward, it will be important to keep a finger on the pulse of the shift in these numbers – as well as any changing trends in your own analytics data – in order to ensure that your site is designed and tested to serve the needs of your users, no matter where they may fall in the continuum of browser evolution.

---

Insider Secrets to Killer Website Content: 7 Steps to Building a Better Blog

As important as good website design is, let’s face it, it’s not what brings visitors to your site. They come for the content, and if that content is sufficiently compelling, then they’ll take the action you desire, whether that’s making a purchase, completing a registration form or even just picking up the phone to contact you for more information. In short, the success of your website begins and ends with quality content.

That’s why in this series of articles – Insider Secrets to Killer Website Content – we’re taking a look at types of content that are common to many websites and exploring ways that they can be redesigned and improved. So far, we’ve covered customer testimonials and “About Us” pages. In this third installment of the series, we tackle the ever-popular but often poorly executed business blog.

The promise of blog content has always been the ability to easily add fresh content to your website on a regular basis. In practice, however, that’s not quite as easy as it sounds.

While the tools available to us today allow blogsto be updated very easily, authoring content that is relevant and unique is a much greater challenge – one that proves to be the downfall of many a blog.

The challenges of maintaining and sustaining a blog

Every new blog is launched with the loftiest of goals and expectations. Plans are laid to write articles chock-full of insight on the latest industry trends, and anticipation is high for the proliferation of inbound links to come along with the resulting boost in search engine rankings.

The road to realizing those dreams starts with quality content, but being able to produce that content on a regular basis is where the rubber meets the road – which often proves to be a much greater obstacle than many realize when they initially decide to launch a blog.

At the outset of blogging, enthusiasm is high and ideas flow like honey. But all too often, after a few months or even weeks, the content begins to falter. The frequency between updates grows, and the quality wanes as articles begin to read more like standard press releases or company news updates.

For any blog to succeed, it must have regularly published content that is timely and relevant. If you can also make that content unique, then you have achieved the trifecta of excellent blog content.

So how do you ensure that the enthusiasm and quality that you have at launch can be sustained past the first handful of posts? Here are seven steps to turn your blog into a powerful traffic-boosting, sales-generating machine:

1. Answer questions you are being asked.

Every writer’s biggest challenge is coming up with a topic – and blogging is no different.

Staring at a blank screen and trying to get started on a new article is a daunting task indeed. But one way you can generate some topic ideas is to think about questions that often come up in your day-to-day conversations with your customers.

Whenever I begin brainstorming ideas for a new article, I start by reflecting on these conversations. Typically, I can identify a few topics that I’ve recently been asked about, and I can also recall the answers I gave and the discussion that ensued. More often than not, these provide the perfect foundation for a new article.

By coming up with a list of common client questions, you’ll provide yourself with excellent potential blog topics. Better yet, you’ll also create content that people are actually interested in and actively looking for – because you can bet that if these questions are being asked of you, then there are others out there who are looking for those same answers too.

2. Write about what others are not writing about.

Answering common questions is a great start, but you can really take your blog to the next level if the articles you publish – and the answers you provide – are unique.

Think about your own experiences in searching for answers online. If you search for a topic and find very few relevant articles addressing that topic, then that article – and its source – become gold to you. If it’s a really great article that does indeed answer your questions, you will tell others about it via social media or by posting links on message boards and forums where you are an active participant. A unique article succeeds because it addresses a topic that no one else effectively has.

The value of an article with little competition increases exponentially. So anytime you’re brainstorming new blog content topics, be sure to do a search for articles that may be similar in nature. If you do find similar content, make sure yours offers a different perspective or creative spin. If you do not find similar articles, this is your golden opportunity to publish something truly unique.

3. Keep to a schedule and plan ahead.

A schedule is critical when it comes to sustaining your blog over the long term. The frequency with which you update your blog with new content – whether it’s daily, weekly or monthly – will be different depending the nature of your industry and your audience. However, sticking to that schedule is what’s important, because it is all too easy to miss a deadline and brush it off as no big deal. But once you miss one deadline, it’s that much easier to miss another and another and another – until the gap between articles becomes substantial, and getting back on track becomes a grueling uphill battle.

One way to ensure that you keep to a schedule is to plan ahead, and planning ahead starts with ideas. If you dedicate time for you and your team to brainstorm article topics (whether individually or in a group session), you’ll inevitably find that one great idea leads to another and another.

When you have a handful of great article concepts to work on, it’s often tempting to publish these articles in quick succession. However, it’s important to avoid this temptation. Instead, make the most of your brainstorming momentum and plan out exactly when each of these articles will be published based on a regular, sustainable rhythm.

By having a handful of quality articles in queue, you can more easily keep to your schedule. And, of course, while you are waiting to publish those new articles, you can brainstorm new ideas and write those articles so that you always have fresh content at the ready.

Maintaining a schedule helps ensure that you do not publish new articles either too infrequently or too frequently but instead maintain a steady stream of quality content so that your readers know when to expect new articles and remain engaged with your blog.

4. Keep it short and sweet.

One concern I often hear voiced when I speak with clients about blogging is that they fear they will not be able to maintain a regular rhythm of publishing because of the time it takes to do so.

Yes, writing blog content takes time, but if you’re doing it right, it’s not as much as you might think. Blog articles do not need to be lengthy to be effective. In fact, short articles that are very sharply focused and easy to read are often the most effective and popular articles you can write.

By keeping articles short in length but high in quality, you can publish great content with much less of a demand on resources than you may have initially expected while still realizing the value that fresh blog content brings to your site.

5. Enlist help.

Another way to minimize the time impact of creating new blog content is to spread the workload around. If only one individual in your organization is tasked with authoring articles for your blog, then the entire burden of maintaining your publishing schedule falls on their shoulders, which means you also have a single point of failure if their other job responsibilities start encroaching on their available time for blogging. If you have a team of authors, however, then the impact on any one individual is minimized.

In addition to the benefits of sharing the responsibilities, having multiple voices represented on your blog also brings much needed variety to its content. Different authors bring different ideas, expertise and perspectives to the table, helping to create a more well‐rounded blog. Plus, if your organization offers a variety of services, then having experts who can cover a wide array of subjects will give your blog relevance to a broader audience.

When enlisting authors for your blog, look for those with distinct voices that will bring something new to the site as well as those who are enthusiastic about writing and eager to contribute.

You should also seek out those aforementioned subject matter experts in your organization. Many people are hesitant to recruit these experts to write – often because they are so valuable to an organization that pulling them away from their “real work” is seen as counterproductive. This could not be further from the truth. The reality is that these subject matter experts have a perspective that others do not. Remember, you want unique, relevant content that will resonate with your audience. What better way to achieve that goal than by turning to those who know it best? As an added bonus, when your readers see that you have true experts at work behind the scenes, your business and your brand as a whole will benefit from a boost in reputation.

6. Embrace current events.

Timeliness can be important in blog articles. When a topic is current, it is often relevant and being actively sought out by interested readers. Therefore, creating blog content that addresses those current events and latest development can be a great way to add articles to your site with information that others are talking about and looking for right now.

If you are consistently on the lookout for relevant current events that you can build content around, and you are also answering frequently asked client questions as covered earlier in this article, then you are well on your way to ensuring you never run out of possible ideas for new blog content.

7. Get ready to share.

If publishing timely, relevant and unique blog content is step one in building and maintaining a successful blog for your website, then promoting that blog content is a logical step two.

Great content will get found, but can do a lot to facilitate this process by promoting it. Yes, this means letting your connections on social media know about a new article once it is published, but just posting a link on your company’s Facebook page is not enough. You also need to also look for more targeted situations where you can share this content.

One example would be to include a link an email exchange you are having with a current client or prospect as a reference point when they ask a question that your post helps to answer. Furthermore, you and your team should become active participants on other websites and forums where the members of your tribe live day in and day out and where you can post links to your articles when appropriate to the conversation (don’t overdo it, of course, or you’ll become a community pariah). Also, by featuring related articles within each post in your blog, you can introduce readers to other content that they may not have been looking for at that moment, but which they will find valuable, too.

Whatever avenues of promotion you use – and you should use a number of different methods – the goal is to spread the word to readers who are looking for the content you are creating.

Watch your hard work pay off.

There’s no doubt about it – maintaining an effective blog is hard work. But with strategic planning and a solid team behind you, you can publish quality content on a regular basis – content that will serve as a powerful catalyst for bringing new visitors to your website and new customers through your doors.

---