In one of our recent blog posts,
What Corporations Can Learn About Customer Loyalty, we discussed how Amazon was “Eating Everyone’s Lunch”…with all other retailers and merchants being the main course. But what can existing loyalty programs learn from good or GREAT customer care and loyalty programs like Amazon’s?
1to1 media states, “To truly cultivate customer loyalty, companies need to build integrated loyalty initiatives that leverage both the digital medium and traditional programs, while offering their high-value customers unique rewards and incentives based on relevant customer data. Such a foundation gives rise to customer satisfaction, which inevitably trickles down to advocacy, referral, and increased revenue.” Current customers are the ones to keep happy and customer loyalty programs should be designed to strengthen customer relationships. In a research paper from SAS and Loyalty 360,
Facing the Challenges of Building Loyalty and Retention: The New Strategic Imperative; we see that an “average of 68% of new business comes from current customers”.
It’s not enough anymore to offer coupons, certificates and gift cards exclusively for your own brand. This is NOT how Amazon does it…they offer choice at the core of their being. Retailers and merchants can apply this by investing in complementary gift card brands that can be offered in a loyalty points reward system. Perhaps it’s counter intuitive for retailers to reward loyalty with brands other than their own, but perhaps teaming-up amongst brands will guard from the stolen lunch.
