Make Sure Your Loyalty Program Makes Sense


Writing recently for Fast Company, author and customer engagement guru Don Peppers noted that loyalty programs have become ubiquitous in a variety of industries, risking over-use. Last year in the U.S. alone, researchers tallied more than 2 billion loyalty program memberships, which means the average U.S. household belongs to about 18 different loyalty programs. Evaluating a program, he says, should be based on two issues: 1) Under what circumstances will a loyalty program generate incremental repeat business? and 2) How valuable are its other benefits, including the chance to gain insight into individual customer needs and preferences? If you want to avoid wasting money on your company’s loyalty program, ask yourself these basic questions:

  • How much of your business comes from the top 1% or 2% of your customers?
  • Is it possible to identify and track your customers’ individual purchases even without a loyalty program?
  • Do your customers have diverse needs and preferences? and
  • Are you prepared, organizationally, to treat different customers differently?

Read the full article at www.fastcompany.com/1822468/when-loyalty-marketing-programs-are-a-waste-of-money Dominic Moore