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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8 Business Growth Goals You Can Conquer with Great Content

Content, content, content

Let’s be honest: creating great content on a regular basis can be a real drag.

After all, you didn't get into this business to be a writer any more than to be a salesperson, an accountant or a lawyer. However, just as you can't neglect to fill your sales pipeline or pay your bills or protect your company’s assets, you can't ignore your content.

Why is content so important? Because it's the fuel that propels your business growth engine. Whether you call it a blog, a magazine, a resource library or a newsletter, your content is the one weapon in your arsenal that can help you conquer nearly every challenge of growing a company in today's marketplace:

1. Increasing visibility and driving traffic

You can’t win a customer that can’t find you. And more often than not, today’s customer is looking for you online, which is why it’s critical to optimize your organic search ranking.

People tend to think of SEO as if it's some occult form of black magic. While the practice of SEO is certainly complex, the one thing you must remember is that even though search engines are driven by intricate algorithms, all of those metrics and calculations are founded in delivering high-quality, relevant results that will be the most useful to real people.

Real people value good content. As a result, so do Google, Bing and Yahoo.

There’s no more rock-solid SEO strategy than publishing great original content on a regular basis. As you develop valuable, (legitimately) keyword-rich content that becomes popular through page views and inbound links, your level of perceived authority on that subject will increase in the eyes of the search engines, which in turn will boost your ranking in searches that pertain to your core offering. And the higher you climb in the rankings, the more potential customers will be able to find you.

2. Attracting more targeted traffic

If all you want is to send your site visit stats through the roof, there are plenty of attention-grabbing stunts you can pull to draw sheer numbers.

But numbers don't necessarily equate to dollars. For your business to grow, you need to consistently attract the types of people to your site whose needs and interests are the most closely aligned with the products or services you have to offer.

This is where your content steps up to the plate. When you publish unique, insightful information that appeals to your tribe, you'll attract visitors that will become your fans, spread the word about you, bring their friends and, ultimately, turn into customers.

3. Building trust and converting customers

Bringing visitors to your site is just the first step. Your job isn’t done until you convince them to entrust their hard-earned dollars to you.

The task of building trust with a prospect when you're standing in front of them is a relatively straightforward proposition.

However, you don't always have the luxury of a face-to-face encounter to make a first impression. Instead, more often than not, you're relegated to building trust through a computer screen. And thanks to all the Internet con artists and shysters out there, the burden of proof you must overcome to establish your trustworthiness is a large one.

So what options do you have? You can always sing your own praises in the most flattering and superlative fashion. Of course, that doesn't hold much sway in the absence of solid evidence to support your claims.

Don’t just cross your fingers and hope that your customers will buy into your sales pitch. Instead, let your content make the case for you.

Your content is the proving ground for your expertise. If you’re a big phony and you don’t know what you’re talking about, it will become obvious pretty quickly. But if you have something of genuine value to offer, and you give it away willingly upfront before you ask anyone to spend a dime, that’s where real online trust-building begins.

4. Differentiating your company from your competitors

Your company doesn’t exist in a vacuum. There are plenty of other people who do what you do and sell what you sell. For your business to grow, you must be able to make a compelling case for why people should buy from you rather than the other guys.

This is a challenge that dates back to the genesis of marketing, but in the Age of Information, it’s one that great content can go along way toward helping you overcome.

Make no mistake: your content is not your sales pitch. But if you can provide truly useful information that your customers can’t find elsewhere, you’re making an implicit case for the benefits of doing business with you.

For example, let’s say you’re a general contractor, and you’ve created a comprehensive online resource library for homeowners that covers all things home improvement-related: the latest renovation trends, how-tos for simple DIY projects, advice on upgrades that deliver the best ROI, etc.

This is the type of information that your potential clients will truly value. And by demonstrating your authority, you’ll prove that what you have to offer is much more than just a common commodity, which will even help you fend off lower-priced competitors. Your customers won’t care as much about saving a few dollars if they feel more confident knowing their project is in the hands of a trustworthy expert.

5. Generating word-of-mouth marketing

You live in the world of your products and services. You eat, breathe and sleep your business. Talking about what you do is second nature to you.

The same does not hold true for your customers. They don't go through life looking for opportunities to be your walking, talking billboard.

However, great content has the power to get people talking. Everyone loves information that gives them ways to save time and money, makes life easier or gets their creative ideas flowing.

And in the culture of the Web, we're all hard-wired to be like-button-pushers and retweeters. So when you give your customers good stuff that sparks their interest, they’ll be instinctively inclined to share it with others, and your name will travel far and wide right along with the content you’ve created as it passes through their networks and their friends' networks, too.

6. Expanding your customer base

The interminable task of business growth is identifying sources of new potential customers and finding ways to get in front of them. This quest is what's kept the purveyors of mailing lists in business for decades.

But in today's Web marketing universe, you don't have to shell out thousands of dollars to gain exposure to new customers. Communities exist everywhere around the Web, and your content is your foot in the door.

All you have to do is identify those whose tribes’ interests align with your products or services, and offer to provide content for their websites. In exchange for giving away your valuable expertise, you'll have the opportunity to take the stage in front of a brand new audience of potential customers, who will be more receptive to what you have to say due to the cache of trust conveyed to you by the established leader of that tribe.

If you’re an event planner, for example, you could approach the owner of a popular local blog targeted to moms and offer to write an article on a timely topic of interest, such as “10 Trendy Summer Birthday Party Themes.”

Without ever having to make a direct pitch for your services, you’ll suddenly have a new tribe of potential customers who know who you are, and if you’ve done a good job, will likely be inclined to click through to your website to see what other ideas and information you have to offer. In terms of exposure to your target demographic, your content-driven approach will deliver a greater ROI than traditional advertising ever could.

7. Building community and keeping customers engaged

You wouldn’t hand a customer a brochure and expect them to wake up every day excited to read it over and over again.

The same holds true for your website. You can’t expect to build community around a vanilla site that’s all about you and your product or service offering. No matter how beautifully crafted it might be, there's nothing to keep people coming back. They'll get the basic information they need, and they'll move on.

Great content is the key to transforming your company’s website into the hub of a thriving online community. People don’t want to interact with brands; they want to interact with other people. Content puts a human face on your company and makes your brand approachable. It’s the common ground between your company and your customers.

And not only is your content the spark that ignites conversation, but it's also the fuel on the fire that keeps it going. When you recognize and respond to those who comment on and share your posts, you make them feel like they’re part of something meaningful and give them added motivation to invite others to join the party.

8. Driving innovation

One of the best fringe benefits of the task of researching and writing top-quality content is that it forces you to keep up with what’s going on in your industry.

When you’re trying to build your business, it’s easy to get tunnel vision. You get so deeply immersed in the day-to-day nuts and bolts that you don’t make time for the big-picture thinking that’s required to reach the next level.

Creating content requires you to be a perpetual student of what you do; to be constantly reading and exploring so that you have fresh, exciting ideas to share with your readers.

This, in turn, makes you a sharper, more confident, more agile businessperson. Rather than doing things as they’ve always been done, you’ll be on top of the trends and ahead of the curve, with an overabundance of inspiration for what to try next.

What you put in is what you get out

Just like anything else, what you put into your content it is exactly what you'll get out of it.

If you want your content to help you meet your business growth goals, it has to be the real deal. It has to be meaningful. It has to be unique. It has to be too valuable to ignore. It has to address real problems and issues that are relevant to your customers. It has to offer practical solutions and insightful tips that are so good they’ll eagerly await your next post and gladly pass along your links to others.

Creating content of this caliber takes time. It takes hard work. Most importantly it takes discipline and commitment. If you don't make yourself buckle down and hammer out the good stuff week after week and month after month, you’ll quickly lose your audience to someone who will.

On the other hand, when you faithfully publish the type of content your customers crave, the reward is a sales engine that’s so powerful and so robust, you’ll put your company in a competitive position anyone would envy.

Read more:

Shut Up and Blog Already

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Deconstructing the Viral Hashtag

Pick your platform — whether it’s print advertising, video, Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook or Twitter – hashtags have overtaken them all. Handy, catchy and often irreverent, hashtags are quickly becoming a mainstay of modern marketing. Like every aspect of marketing, though, some brands are more adept than others at creating hashtags that drive awareness and engage the public. As a marketing tool, hashtags can be a bit of an enigma. Many times the best ones are spontaneous and random. They have an incredibly short lifespan, and there’s no way to control them once they’re out there. So what exactly makes one hashtag succeed wildly while another one plummets into instant obscurity? Why are some hashtags so memorable and others imminently forgettable? The short answer: The most effective hashtags appeal to a wide range of people because they key into the human psyche in a powerful way. Let’s deconstruct a few of the most viral and memorable hashtag campaigns of the past few years and uncover the secrets of their success:

The appeal of social currency: #firstworldproblems

The nonprofit organization Water is Life (http://www.waterislife.com) was looking for a way to raise money to supply clean water to villages in developing countries. And they hit on an innovative way to do it, with a video and print campaign that capitalized on the popularity of the existing hashtag #firstworldproblems by juxtaposing the perceived problems of Americans against the all-too-real struggles experienced by those in less fortunate nations around the world. In the documentary-style video, complaints from actual #firstworldproblems tweets – including “I hate it when I go to the bathroom and forget my phone” and “My son got the wrong toy in his Happy Meal” – are read aloud by impoverished Haitian families. The stark contrast in conditions really struck a chord with viewers, who discovered newfound perspective on just how lucky they are to have such superficial issues. The campaign took off, with the video drawing a million views in just four days and response that generated enough donations to supply clean water to impoverished communities for a million days, according to Water is Life. The psychological appeal of this campaign and its signature hashtag is an interesting one. It leverages the natural human desire to accumulate social currency — to appear generous or to “look good” to our peers — to drive people to perform acts of generosity they might otherwise not consider. By poking a bit of gentle fun at the public while educating them to issues of real concern, Water is Life created a tidal wave of awareness and action.

The appeal of emotion: #SFBatKid

There’s no doubt about it: people share content that inspires strong emotions, and the BatKid story was one of the most emotionally appealing stories of 2013. The campaign, which was spearheaded by the Make-A-Wish Foundation, reached out to the city of San Francisco to help make a little boy’s dream come true. And five-year-old Miles Scott, who is currently in remission from life-threatening leukemia, got his dream — and then some. Powered by the Twitter handle #SFBatKid, the Make-A-Wish Foundation originally hoped to attract 200 volunteers in their effort to help Miles become Batman for a day. But the story and the hashtag caught fire, and the foundation was inundated by responses from as far away as Norway and Australia. About 10,000 San Franciscans turned out to watch as BatKid saved them from several dastardly villains. Even the mayor got into the act, giving Miles the key to the city as thousands of spectators watched from the steps of City Hall. It’s important to note that although this could have been framed as a sad story, it wasn’t. Sadness evokes a low-energy response that rarely results in action. Instead, the uplifting #SFBatKid campaign inspired a whole city to act by appealing to the most positive human emotion: hope.

The appeal of humor: #tweetfromtheseat

Who knew toilet paper could be so funny? In a cleverly designed campaign, Charmin managed to get people laughing in and out of the bathroom by transforming a taboo behavior into an ongoing conversation with their playful #tweetfromtheseat. With a little wink and some witty repartee, Charmin’s #tweetfromtheseat campaign incorporates current events and other brands into their Twitter feed — and the public loves it. As a result, they’ve turned a mundane household product into something special and built a huge, highly engaged following at the same time. It’s truly an inspired campaign, with an appeal that’s simple but nevertheless effective. After all, people do love potty humor.

The dual appeal of practical value and social proof: #40dollars

Talk about the power of a tweet: the Obama White House used the hashtag #40dollars to great effect to lobby for an extension on the payroll tax cut. The campaign began in February 2012 when the President tweeted “Taxes will go up for 160 million Americans by the end of this month if Congress doesn’t act. What does #40dollars a paycheck mean to you?” People all over the country responded — and a Congress infamous for not passing legislation was convinced to extend the tax cuts for the rest of the year. The #40dollars hashtag worked on two different levels: It inspired a response from Twitter users because it asked them to consider something of practical and personal value — what would an extra $40 mean to them? And it inspired action from Congress because humans are wired to respond to social proof. In other words, people embrace an idea or an action more easily when they see others agreeing with it.

#thebottomline

Even hashtags that seem to be completely spontaneous — and lucky at that — are often the result of some serious planning. (Check out Oreo’s #dunkinthedark Super Bowl tweet for a great example.) If your business is looking to leverage the power of hashtags to create a lasting impression, you can use these notable success stories as your model. Spend some time strategizing. Think about what type of appeal will work best for your brand, and make a deliberate effort to tap into it. Be thoughtful, be creative and be daring! If you can hit the right notes, you’ll not only be the brand of the moment but the one that people will be talking about for weeks, months and even years to come.

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