Stop Pushing, Start Engaging: How Marketing Mimics Dating

by Paolina Milana

Published on October 24, 2011    /span>

Tags: Advertising, Customer-Centric, Customer Engagement, Online Marketing

Come on. Admit it. With maybe one exception—the Super Bowl—you fast-forward through commercials when watching your favorite TV programs on your DVR.

You spew an occasional four-letter word when those irritating animated pop-up ads block your Web view and force you to find the "close" option.
You even hate to hear those loudspeaker announcements at the grocery store, interrupting some '80s tune just to tell you that freshly baked bread is now out of the oven and ready to be purchased for pennies. Bread…? You've been struggling to stay away from carbs, for goodness' sake! The last thing you need is another interruption to take you in an unintended direction.

Church of the Customer Blog

October 17, 2011

14 new statistics about word of mouth marketing

The Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA)has a neat infographic detailing the latest stats about word or mouth marketing, online and offline.

1. Very easy to bring in extra revenue with perceived high value. In this case, just 100 people paying $50.00 per year brings in $5,000 per year for nothing more than a trigger to get people to come back more often. This particular owner thinks he can get 1/3 of the community or close to 1000 people paying $50.00 per year because it seems like such a great deal. Most customers have NEVER joined their local restaurant or bowing center but they love the idea of being treated special. This idea does not need to be Miller Beer, it could be a glass of wine, appetizer, kids meal, bucket of balls, games of bowling, or anything the establishment desires. We have an automatic block in place with all kinds of automated Fraud Monitoring check points in place to make redemptions very easy for even the most mentally challenged employees.
   
   
2. Increased engagement of customers with SOFT benefits. Soft benefits are often appreciated more than hard benefits and creating a Platinum Membership opens the door to make this very easy to accomplish. Soft benefits can include anything such as first in line priveleges, free samples, parties at the end of the year, just about anything and everything you can think of which are available to Platinum Members Only!

   In addition to soft benefits, hard benefits with contests, prizes, and games are another great way to get Platinum Members happy and engadged. Soon, a larger majority of customers will desire to be a Platinum Member since it’s so much fun and so rewarding. In addition, happy customers love to spread Word Of Mouth through Facebook, Twitter and more. Most people don’t win anything in their lives and are not even recognized by the places they frequent. When you provide outstanding value, a good product and great customer service and support, the results are outstanding. The ideas are endless but here are a few below. Remember, we know how to track and implement all these things so if you don’t understand the mechanics, give me a call.

   1. Sports contests such as you often hear with Taco Bell when a certain team scores X amount of runs or Tom Brady throws 4 interceptions in a half All kinds of things you can do to get people engadged with sports marketing.
   2. In house specials and promotions for Platinum Only. On the fly or planned in advance.
   3. Win free things when spending a certain amount, accomplishing something, or visiting X amount of times in a month.
   4. Ability to redeem rewards on outside items such as airline, hotel, or other non-compete business locations
   5. Double cash back rewards
   6. Increased Fundraising Benefits
   7. Gift card pre-load ideas on buy a gift get a gift and more. Fill the register with advance cash on top of membership fees!
   8. Referral Bonus

   There are so many ways to make people feel special and get paid in advance to do so. Credit card companies have known this for years and our clients have much greater capabilities with Loyal Patron or Bowling Rewards than any credit card company can provide. You can now do these things without credit, without debt, no application necessary, and of course market through schools, little leagues and family events due to this fact. We have scores of ideas you can use and we can have our graphics team create everything needed to spread the news.

   Soon, we will be adding a custom Mobile Communication option designed to take advantage of all best practices and enhance the membership strategy even further.

   Sponsorship Revenue: Due to our proprietary reporting, accountability and real time transparency, we can offer sponsors remarkable advertising benefits which are far superior to any other advertising strategy they may have used in the past. In addition, we can offer them exclusivity which is unheard of in the advertising world.

   Using the simple card below as an idea, this particular membership is ONLY good for Miller Light so the program increases the pour rate for Miller as compared to Bud or any other brand. Companies pay our clients for this ability (you keep all the money) and we can track all the purchases, communicate with members and drive added purchases OUTSIDE the establishment as well.

   We can’t go into all the details and strategies here, but we offer custom consulting with sponsorship expertise on how to get paid additional dollars while getting paid by customers at the same time so revenue comes in TWO different doors all while doing nothing more than increasing frequency and spending while getting paid in advance to do so.

3. Fundraising Enhancement: Platinum Memberships make ideal fundraising benefits for the community. The idea below might not be good for the kids to sell (due to alcohol) but as mentioned previous, these offers can be anything such as an appetizer, kids meal, dessert, bucket of balls, games of bowling, something free every day of the year looks like a tremendous value and indeed it is. No more discounting, no more advertising, the value is very easy for customers to experience by simply becoming a Platinum Member. Schools, churches, little leagues and more can sell the Platinum Membership for 1/2 price and keep 1/2 of the proceeds to generate immediate income.

   With our proprietary Cause Marketing module, one time donations don’t stop with the sale of the card, they continue 24/7 with complete accountability and transparency. Very few firms understand how to combine sponsorship expertise, cause marketing and platinum memberships into one very powerful revenue generating program. Obviously, we can’t go over everything here, this is just giving you the concept and general idea. We customize solutions for each client.

4. Barter: Many customers use their Platinum Membership to exchange for FREE radio, TV, and other forms of advertising. One client gives the radio station free Platinum Cards which they then sell on their website for 1/2 price and they keep the other half as pure profit. In return, the radior stations give them thousands of dollars of free publicity, advertising and special promotion, it’s that easy and it really does not cost either party anything!

   The real key in designing these programs is to make it a PROFIT stream even when NO MONEY is collected. In other words, by including something free every day of the year with an automatic block on redemeption, it does not matter if you get paid by customers or not, they will come back more often, spend more money and be much happier due to their member benefits. Getting paid is just gravy and getting paid by sponsors is double gravy. The ideas are numerous here with Groupon, Daily Deals and more.

• Digital gifting on the rise—44 percent of those retailers surveyed plan to offer some form of eGift offering this holiday season.
• Personalization an issue—85 percent of those surveyed who had an opinion were not satisfied with how consumers can personalize their gift cards. Additionally, by an almost 4:1 margin those respondents found this lack of personalization to be the most significant barrier for adoption.
• Mobile marketing a key element of retailers’ strategies—Of those retailers surveyed 72 percent planned to increase their mobile marketing spend this year, with six percent planning to increase it significantly. Only two percent of survey respondents planned to decrease their mobile marketing spend. When it comes to mobile marketing, mobile coupons were the most popular offering (64 percent) followed by location-based deals (44 percent).
• Retailers are planning to promote to the last minute—42 percent of those surveyed plan to stop holiday promotions on the last day consumers can ship an item and have it arrive in time for Christmas, but 32 percent plan to continue their promotions to Christmas Eve.

Editors Notes:  Get your free whitepaper below, but if you don’t have time here are the bulleted highlights of this latest upper level study which focused on the top 4 customer demands.  We can explain how we have implemented all four of these key demands into our solutions and how you can follow these best practices with your marketing or consulting.   Contact me with questions.

1. 86% said they are more likely to visit a retailer if they have an effective loyalty program in place.
2. 79% prefer high profile simple rewards like cash back with instant redemption
3. 75% want a feel good factor such as membership benefits which are not available to everyone.
4. 72% want to be surprised with special treatment or offers which thank them or their business.
5. They DON’T want points based programs
6. They want special offers via email or text but don’t want too many essages and they want the right offers
7. Communication must be relevant to their needs and desires.
8. 75% cited personal benefits based on spending, birthdays, anniversaries, etc. was very important
9. 62% said they would prefer to have their membership good at other locations or savings with other brands.

Consumers spend more for ‘valuable rewards’ Thursday August 11, 2011 It’s official: customer loyalty drives revenue. But the results of a recent online consumer survey showed very positive responses when asked to think about loyalty in general, with 93% saying they would be most likely to spend more with a brand if it had a great loyalty programme, and 86% saying they would be more likely to visit a particular retailer if there was a valuable loyalty programme to join, according to Sarah Cross at UK-based loyalty consultancy Uber. Continue reading..

That’s why it’s so important to manage information about every customer interaction in a shared business system that all customer-facing employees can access and use to communicate with and serve the customer. The customer can then be treated appropriately and consistently because Marketing, Sales, and Customer Service are all aware of her needs, interests, previous purchases, and value.

A small retailer — which asked not to be identified — hung up a sign requesting that customers not pay with rewards credit cards.

We all know the importance of establishing and maintaining loyal customers. Loyal customers are overwhelmingly more profitable, not only because they buy more, but also because their cost-to-serve is less.

In addition, loyal customers are a company’s most productive marketing channel because they provide authentic word-of-mouth referrals and serve as trustworthy advocates of its brand.

So, the question is: if we all know these facts as truths, then why haven’t our loyalty programs kept pace? In most cases, it’s a combination of strategic and technological impediments.

Written for senior level executives, Circumstances and Customers Have Changed: Has Your Loyalty Program Kept Pace?, identifies the four rules of customer loyalty marketing and how these principles are being used in companies to deliver strategic and tactical business benefits.

Download your complimentary copy today

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http://screencast.com/t/jA8c1AExVqvb

Monday July 4, 2011

The ‘Hitting the Mark’ study found that brands such as Amazon and Republic that get their approach to email marketing right are likely to achieve a higher return on investment (ROI) through the e-mail channel. sschroed1 This article is copyright 2011 TheWiseMarketer.com).

The annual study added a new criteria for 2011, scrutinising whether or not brands are using the customer data available to them to better target their email messages, and found that an alarming 69% of emails showed no personalisation at all, while 87% of messages that were sent following a purchase were no different to those sent to cold prospects. In fact, only one retailer (Amazon.co.uk) followed up an online purchase with an email marketing message tailored to that purchase.

The majority of retailers apparently made no attempt to drive cross-sell, up-sell or repeat purchase based on customers’ previous online buying behaviour. Another surprising finding was that only 13% of retailers attempted to customise their email messages based on the known gender of the recipient.

However, 93% of retailers were found to be using triggered emails following a purchase to reassure and build customer loyalty, and 67% are keeping online customers informed about the progress of their order through timely email updates.

According to Tink Taylor, managing director for dotMailer, this study serves as a warning to those in charge of marketing budgets: “By their nature, online sellers should have access to customer data that can allow them to dramatically increase the relevance and impact of their email marketing communications with customers. In this tough economic climate, marketers who are not actively collecting and using that data to create targeted email messages that drive related sales are really missing a trick.”

As a result, dotMailer suggests five key post-sale email targeting best practices:

The #1 answer from consumers as to WHY they would refer another business or brand to their friends was HOW they are being treated by the business. When we show value, appreciation, and concern for our customers while rewarding them with every purchase and funding what they believe it with a percentage of each transaction, people will spread the word like nothing else.

Word of Mouth is King of the jungle in the digital age, you want customers logging into THEIR Facebook account or twitter and letting their friends know about how they are being treated by Jim. Special cash back rewards, membership benefits, relevant communication, support of what they believe in. In other words, Jim is showing how much he cares with EVERY visit.

Seven Keys to Building Customer Loyalty–and Company Profits

BY: MICAH SOLOMONMarch 4, 2010

A personal bond with customers lets your company escape the commodity pricing wars and provides you with a powerful new marketing arm: loyal customers who will promote and defend your company online and off–for free. Here are seven tips for getting the process started of building customer loyalty in a big way.

1. Building a database without paper forms, sign-up sheets, fish bowls, or any paper input whatsoever.
2. Pulling data such as 30-35 year old females who have not been in the last 30 days, by spending, frequency, and purchase behavior.
3. Communicating with these same customers via integrated email or text based on their needs, their purchases, their wants and desires.
4. Rewarding every customer after each visit and supporting the customers heart felt need with every purchase with full accountability.

Here you go…

Manufacturing, distribution and information expertise once set one company apart from another. No longer, insists Forrester, which now insists that the only differentiator that really matters is consumer loyalty.

 Companies that keep riding their current model and attempt to lock in customers are doomed. “They’re dead men walking,” Bernoff believes. “They just don’t know it yet.” 

In its new report “Competitive Strategy In The Age Of The Customer,” Forrester asserts that companies must be more than customer-focused — they must be customer-obsessed, according to Forrester analyst and report author Josh Bernoff.

What does that mean? Specifically, a customer-obsessed company “focuses its strategy, its energy and its budget on processes that enhance knowledge of an engagement with customers, and prioritizes these over maintaining traditional competitive barriers,” according to Bernoff.

For his report, Bernoff looked at Michael Porter’s five forces as a framework for analyzing competition. “There is no longer any barrier to potential entrants or substitutes — in a digital world, competition can come from anywhere,” Bernoff noted in a blog post on Monday. “Customers have real-time information about pricing, product features and competitors; they hold all the advantages.”

As such, brands should spend less on surveys whose results arrive too late to act on; instead, they should invest in real-time listening to social media.

Also, brands should change their service unit. “You invest in a comprehensive cross-channel customer-experience program — and stop treating your call-center workers as slaves,” Bernoff explained.

In the area of sales, brands should stop encouraging their sales force to cram channels and concentrate on connecting directly with end-consumers.

Furthermore, Bernoff suggested that brands take cash from their email and ad blasts and spend it on interactive content and mobile apps that create what he calls “real connections.”

“This is a corporate wide shift in thinking,” Bernoff added

The top 25 frequent flyer programmes compared

There is, however, a consumer-facing problem that is common to many of today’s airline loyalty programmes: excessive complexity. While airlines are complex enterprises with many hundreds of variations of tickets, seats, classes, routes, destinations, customers, and even baggage and security rules, the customer should not have to understand and negotiate all of these complexities in order to work out what reward they can get for flying from Point A to Point B next month.

Almost every traditional coupon references a discount (probably due to the fact there is no loyalty solution present and even if there were, the current programs leave much to be desired and don’t advise how to market correctly with proper offers).

Change the message and deliverability of coupons and use them to drive frequency and spending while plugging the visit into a loyalty platform and you have the holy grail. Here are three simple concepts for coupons which can accomplish the above while increasing frequency, spending, visitation and engagement. We have many more with professional consultants and distribution companies standing by waiting to help.

Try sending these coupon offers via text for even higher response once we build your database for you!

1. Double cash back coupon. Bring the coupon on your next visit and spend as much as you wish and earn DOUBLE or TRIPLE cash back rewards on the entire ticket! Try putting a minimum spend such as $20.00 to get DOUBLE REWARDS and $40.00 to get TRIPLE rewards! This special coupon can be targeted to be used during certain time frames such as July 4th weekend. No expense on redemption, higher spending on the visit and a balance to bring them back at full price in the future.

2. Double Fundraising Coupon – Same concept as above but notify certain schools or churches to distribute the coupon for you without any cost. Let them know on July 4th the fundraising donation percentage is DOUBLED or TRIPLED for every member of their specific school or church. Real time accountability and transparency with our Cause Marketing makes this a reality and confidence that donations are accurate to the penny. Simply run a report for donations and visit that day and double or triple the amount with a special check back to the non-profit. See video below for bowling example.

   http://screencast.com/t/FWoZMLTNno

3. Free Platinum Membership (to bowling center or restaurant) with $25.00 purchase this weekend. See video here http://screencast.com/t/jA8c1AExVqvb

   The key to this solution is that there is no hard cost to a $19.95 Platinum Membership or $29.95 Platinum Membership. With bowling we use 1 free game of bowling every day of the year with automatic block. 365 games of bowling FREE is a huge profit driving increased frequency. See a sample of this program here

   http://screencast.com/t/GS5ozn5RxTAb

   Restaurants use one free appetizer every day of the year, one free hamburger every day of the year or any of the ideas in the video to get 1000s of people joining your restaurant or center for increased frequency and spending when they come in. No advertising costs to bring them back.

1. Approach a local bank about branding their logo or branch on the loyalty card as exclusive sponsor in their space.
2. Include the banking information and agreed upon promo on the thank you email to every customer.
3. Each bowling center offers FREE GAMES of bowling to every banking customer so the bank enhances customer service and hands each customer a free gift when they visit the branch.  This gets the bank promoting the center and vice-versa.
4. Offer double cash back rewards if the customer pays with the banks branded credit card or debit card.
5. Offer 365 Free Games of bowling, one per day every day of the year to anyone who opens any type of account with the bank.  We track everything like you see here http://screencast.com/t/GS5ozn5RxTAb
6. Offer MATCHING fundraising on behalf of the bank with your cause marketing strategy.  If the bowling center is donating 5% on every transaction, then the bank agrees to match this donation amount.
7. Give a FREE CORPORATE BOWLING PARTY once per year for all the employees and staff – food and drink extra

SUMMARY:  There is much more, I don’t want to get too detailed here.  The key to this strategy is to endear the banking brand and logo to everyone in the community.  Instead of thinking bad thoughts about our financial institutions (which is the current mindset) we replace negative thoughts with positive emotions and tie these emotions to every purchase.  Each time consumers save money, earn rewards, support their community, save money and sustain the environment, the banks logo and brand is being viewed at the time of the transaction.  When the thank you email is sent, it cements the emotion and gives a good reason to bank with that branch.  When checks are delivered to the schools, the bank attends or sends a separate check with the proprietor to further endear the brand to local non-profits.  Our solutions have 100% accountability and transparency, something banks need to be associated with to reverse the trend of suspicion and hidden agendas.   These benefits are priceless to a bank or financial institution and very profitable for our clients.  Contact me for a custom presentation for your bank,.

Loyalty to financial institutions: the way ahead

It’s often said that it can cost up to seven times more to acquire one new customer than to retain an existing one. But in the financial industry, the costs reach a whole new level: acquiring one new customer can exceed US$350. As a rule, of these 20% will be very profitable, 20% will cost money to retain, and the middle 60% will pay for themselves while generating marginal revenue, according to Harvard Business Review. With statistics like these, a customer engagement and retention plan based on extensive data collection and analysis is imperative for the long-term health of companies in the financial industry

Financial institutions must therefore find a way to retain profitable customers, make marginally unprofitable customers into profitable ones, and reduce the marketing budget spent on the most costly customers. To do that, and to increase customer loyalty, financial industry firms need to constantly monitor their customer portfolio and actively manage their marketing efforts based on the changing behavior of their customers

Important Business Stats Below

Editors Notes:  It’s being referred to as the ‘old normal’ and consumers are returning to their roots in droves and expect business owners to follow and listen.  If they don’t, these same consumers have promised they will vote with their pocket book and search out merchants who do.  Research indicates this trend has staying power since it’s the way consumers have really felt all along.  Consumers still want businesses to support them but they also expect the business to support local causes and they want these benefits tied to the transaction so they feel there is a connection between their purchase and making a difference.  Research like the amazing statistics below is why we created www.bowlingrewards.com and www.loyalpatron.com.  We are one of the few loyalty companies in the market that tie BOTH of these emotions directly to the transaction and then cement the emotions with automatic thank you and transparency.  We supply what customers have indicated they desire from a business.  When business owners listen to their customers, profits increase.  Why don’t we start listening today?

The Positive Effects Of Cause-Related Marketing

Date: April 05, 2011
Author: Mark Dolliver , Contributing Writer , CMO.com

Any marketer who’s not a novice can recall when terms like “cause-related marketing” and “corporate social responsibility” (CSR) were exotic novelties. But now it’s a given that consumers believe companies have obligations beyond making money for their owners. In fact, it is getting more difficult for a company to connect with customers and prosper if it doesn’t stand for something more than its bottom line.

If people’s attitudes toward corporate behavior are shifting in a lasting way, the trend stems from a change in the way they regard themselves as consumers. In Young & Rubicam’s BrandAsset Valuator polling, 65 percent of respondents agreed that, “Since the recession, I realize that how many possessions I have does not have much to do with how happy I am.” The same proportion agreed that they’re now “happier with a simpler, more down-to-earth lifestyle.”

John Gerzema, vice chairman of Y&R’s BrandAsset Consulting, suggested to CMO.com that consumers’ current frugality is apt to be durable because it’s actually the long-term norm. “It’s not a ‘new normal,’–it’s the ‘old normal,’ ” he said. “Modern consumerism of the past 30 years is an anomaly, and, in fact, people are reverting to older, much longer-held values.” In the process, consumers “are moving from mindless to mindful consumption,” said Gerzema, who co-authored the book Spend Shift, which examines the phenomenon, and annual “Goodpurpose” study by Edelman, 87 percent of U.S. respondents agreed that “business needs to place at least equal weight on society’s interests” as it does on its own interests. The BrandAsset Valuator polling found 71 percent of its respondents endorsing the statement, “I make a point to buy brands from companies whose values are similar to my own.”

A Cone report, titled “Cause Evolution,” offers further detail on these tendencies. A landslide 83 percent of those polled said they “wish more of the products, services and retailers they use would support causes”; 81 percent said they want companies to give them the opportunity to “buy a cause-related product”; and 80 percent said they’d be “likely to switch brands, about equal in price and quality, to one that supports a cause.” Polling by Penn Schoen Berland (in association with Burson-Marsteller and Landor Associates) found 55 percent of respondents saying that, when choosing between similar products, they’d be more likely to buy the one “with added social benefit.” Nor, apparently, is this just an airy sentiment: The Cone survey found 41 percent saying that in the past year they’d “bought a product because it was associated with a cause or issue.”

“What the recession has taught us is that our greatest deficit isn’t economic–it’s social,” said Robbie Blinkoff, an anthropologist who is co-founder of Context-Based Research Group, an ethnographic research and consulting firm that has worked with ad agency Carton Donofrio Partners to produce recent studies of the shifts in consumer attitudes. “We’re trying to regain our sense of social, and corporations have jumped on the bandwagon, absolutely,” he told CMO.com. “They have lots of resources and infrastructure, so they’re the ones who can really do this and get people connected around a cause,” adding the caveat that “a sense of social is difficult if not impossible to scale.”

Outsourcing Responsibility
Amid the public appetite for CSR, there’s even some indication that consumers have, in effect, outsourced civic behavior to companies rather than assuming the full burden themselves. A study by the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business found that consumers who buy products involved in cause-related marketing campaigns “end up giving less money to a social cause or charity.” And that’s true even if the consumer were going to buy the product anyway, “regardless of its link to a cause.”

While mainstream consumers do care about how their purchases affect the world at large, marketers should be careful not to ignore an accompanying reality: Most people haven’t ceased to care first about themselves. As president/chief operating officer of the Hartman Group, whose specialties include researching and advising on sustainability issues, Laurie Demeritt told CMO.com she has noticed a certain obliviousness to this on the part of some clients: They seem surprised when she suggests the consumer’s self-interest needs to be part of the equation: “They think, ‘This is about saving the world–isn’t that enough?’” she said.

Sure, consumers are happy to help save the world. But they must see the benefit to their own households. Demeritt pointed to household-cleaning products as a case in point: “The entry point [for broad social concern] is that, ‘I feel good about this because I’m not putting toxic chemicals on my counter.’” That gets them thinking about how the product might affect the wider world. “Then they start thinking about whether there’s animal testing, about what they’re putting down their drain,” she said.

What sort of behavior matters to consumers when they rate a company as virtuous or unvirtuous? Surveys offer some guidance. The one by Penn Schoen Berland asked respondents who know what “CSR” means to pick the foremost behavior companies “should be doing today to be considered ‘socially responsible.’” Atop the standings in widely scattered voting were “be environmentally responsible, create energy-efficient products,” and “treat employees well, equal-opportunity employer, good pay/benefits,” each cited by 16 percent of respondents. Getting at the issue a different way, Cone’s survey asked respondents to identify the issues they think companies should address. “Economic development” (including job creation) and “health and disease” were both cited by 77 percent of those polled, with hunger right behind (76 percent). Nearly as many cited “education” (75 percent) and “access to clean water” (74 percent).

Read more: http://www.cmo.com/branding/positive-effects-cause-related-marketing?cmpid=SNL7011#ixzz1NBJW2GQA

1. Cash back rewards with instant redemption for simplicity and flexibility.
2. Support of their heartfelt need or local community tied to the transaction.
3. Relevant communication based on their wants, desires, and needs

According to research released today, 50 percent of retailers and almost as many manufacturers (48 percent) utilize rebate programs as part of their customer loyalty and promotions mix. Half of the retailer and manufacturer respondents said the top benefit of rebates is customer retention; evidence that today’s new rebate programs that have begun to incorporate features such as electronic redemption, quick payment and mobile locating, are resulting in pleased consumers and powerful ROI for businesses.

The analyst report, Rebate Optimization in Retail: Driving Customer Responsiveness, was compiled by the Aberdeen Group. The report draws from aggregated research of surveys, interviews and data analysis to reveal the pain points, strategies, processes and technologies that enable retailers and manufacturers to utilize rebates to drive revenue and customer loyalty.

Some key findings of the report include:

• Roughly half of businesses surveyed (50 percent of retailers and 48 percent of manufacturers) utilize rebate programs.
• The top driver of rebate usage in retail is top-line revenue (64 percent), while the top driver in manufacturing is competitive advantage (61 percent).
• Customer retention is the top benefit of rebates for 50 percent of both retailer and manufacturer respondents. The second highest benefit for retailers (50 percent) is promotional and marketing spend ROI due to the shelf-level sales success of products with rebates. For manufacturers, the second highest benefit of rebates is customer conversion (46 percent).
• Both retailers (36 percent) and manufacturers (27 percent) identified building lifetime customer value (the value of future revenue from long-term customer relationships) as another top driver for the use of rebates.

Source: Aberdeen Group

Here is the executive summary to give you an idea.  It’s fascinating and I am amazed by business owners who don’t think understanding customers is important.  Many continue the same old attitudes and will soon be flushed from the system and rightly so. 

The traditional business beliefs that brought success in the past will not bring success in the future. Whether you call today’s business environment the “new normal,”the “not normal,” or just plain unsettling, you know the old ways aren’t working. People are skeptical about their relationships with business. Whether they are customers, sales partners or employees, all are looking for relationships with organizations they can trust … organizations that care … organizations that align with their values. Yet the search is arduous and difficult. Too often, the real story is that businesses view people as a means to their profit end rather than as stakeholders in creating shared value.  So where do we look for answers to this perplexing problem? It takes a fresh perspective about business, about people, and about what really drives a mutually-beneficial relationship. It is commonly agreed that there is massive untapped potential in every stakeholder a business touches. Yet, to unleash this potential, we must be willing to shift our  beliefs about how to engage them. We must understand, enable and motivate them on their terms. A new framework for stakeholder engagement is needed … a framework anchored in the latest research relative to human drives and behavior. The goal of this framework is to create better business results that, at the same time, enrich stakeholders in ways that are most meaningful to them. It is about building a win-win proposition … Better Business. Better Lives. 

Maritz challenges stakeholder engagement ideas

Friday May 13, 2011

The Maritz Institute has published a white paper that delves into the latest scientific research on human motivation and behaviours, and challenges established business beliefs, calling for a whole new ‘multi-stakeholder approach’ to business.

The paper, entitled ‘The Game Has Changed: A New Paradigm for Stakeholder Engagement’, was researched and written to help business leaders navigate today’s business environment and more effectively engage all of their stakeholders, including employees, partners and customers. sschroed1 This article is copyright 2011 TheWiseMarketer.com).

“People are increasingly skeptical about their relationships with businesses,” warned Mary Beth McEuen, vice president and executive director at The Maritz Institute. “Whether they are customers, channel partners or employees, all are looking for relationships with organisations they can trust, that care, and that align with their own values. To succeed in the post-recession era, businesses will need to get in touch with people, and understand what is both meaningful and motivating on a personal level.”

A fresh perspective about business, about people, and about what really drives mutually-beneficial relationships, has already become imperative in today’s business world, the paper argues. For business leaders to achieve these relationships, Maritz advises adopting three core principles for better business practice:

1. Understand what makes people tick
   Re-examine assumptions about human nature and behaviour, based on the latest scientific research;
2. One size still won’t fit all
   Understand your stakeholders as people and seek to engage with them in ways they find meaningful and motivating;
3. Be people-centric
   Genuinely see people as the centre of business strategy, with the goal of serving people and creating shared value – as opposed to the previous mindset of extracting value from people.

Monday May 16, 2011

Businesses that actively engage with customers and are acutely responsive to their questions, comments and complaints tend to be rewarded with greater profits, according to voice-of-the-customer intelligence firm Allegiance, which has published a white paper outlining nine ways to boost customer loyalty.

Just one generation ago, customer loyalty was a completely different game than it is today. Today’s consumers can – and do – switch suppliers at the click of a mouse, despite a wealth of rewards programs, privileges, offers, discounts, and added value. In fact, Bain & Company recently reported that the average company loses between 10% and 15% of its customer base every year. sschroed1 This article is copyright 2011 TheWiseMarketer.com).

In response the white paper, entitled ‘Nine Ways to Increase Customer Loyalty’, identifies several strategies and practices that businesses can implement to help keep their customers loyal.

“Companies are losing customers at a staggering rate without really hearing from them or understanding why,” explained Adam Edmunds, president and CEO for Allegiance. “By identifying what drives customer loyalty and engagement, marketers can begin to develop best practices that will have a direct impact on customer retention and profits.”

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Editors Notes:  Here is an excellent 4 minute segment featured on the Today Show regarding loyalty programs.  Note these women being interviewed assume that every merchant should have a program in place in order to get their shopping dollars along with millions of other women and customers who think the same way.  They also imply that merchants are able to gather data tied to the transactions to send RELEVANT offers due to advances in loyalty program technology.   They speak as though this is common practice and every merchant should have this in place.  Loyalty programs are pure gold to business owners yet we see very few small business owners employing them even though they have the greatest need to increase profits and reduce costs.  If your business does not have Loyal Patron or Bowling Rewards, then find a company to get your business into the 21st century, the evidence is so overwhelming, it should be the easiest business decision you will ever make.  We have independent reports to help you shop as we feel the closer you investigate the better we look.

There are only a handful of companies in the loyalty space which understand how to deliver offers and tie the proper offer and reward back to consumer with transaction data.  We don’t know of any company using all the capabilities you can find with www.loyalpatron.com or www.bowlingrewards.com   As an example, you will see CVS referred to which illustrates my point.  CVS can track the transaction purchase but they follow up with a paper coupon offer rather than loading cash back rewards on the card itself.  This is a very fundamental mistake (among others we write about on www.wildboarstraning.com) and we see other loyalty programs filled with these types of mistakes from companies such as Office Max, Ace Hardware, Staples, Best Buy, and many others.  Very few loyalty solutions understand how to integrate email and text to the transaction and even less understand what consumers want and the proper offers to supply when communicating with them. 

CAUSE MARKETING RADIO INTERVIEW VIDEO http://www.wildboarstraining.com/research/wild-webinars/ 

Here is my latest Cause Marketing radio interview as a further illustration.  Loyalty numbers discussed in the MSNBC piece are impressive, but the Cause Marketing numbers are even more profitable for business owners and yet we don’t know of one loyalty vendor (other than ourselves) which ties Cause Marketing to the transaction and integrates both of these inside of a cash back rewards and loyalty program with integrated text and email.  When both the customer is valued and appreciated while supporting their heartfelt need at the same time, oh my goodness, the benefits are outstanding. 

If you are a business owner sitting on the fence, it is very important to get started in building a database without paper forms or sign-up sheets, learning what your customers purchase, when they come in and what they like.  We are no longer in a transaction based retail world but one where relationships and relevance are key.  Show your customers you value their business and care about their needs and your marketing and advertising budget will plummet while your profits increase substantially.  Who does not want that?

1. Customer trust is absolutely essential today. We are no longer dealing with transactions, we are dealing with relationships.
2. Customers expect business owners to operate in THEIR best interests and to prove it with actions. They want programs in place that value their business, reward them with every visit, and support what they believe in. Since trust is so important today, businesses who supply accountability and transparency with these solutions will prosper for years.
3. Customers want business owners to advertise to them if it’s done properly. They do not mind giving data if it’s used properly with relevant offers and value saving programs where they are recognized. For business owners who use typical communication models such as email blasting, the customer will simply ignore communication, opt-out or take their business elsewhere. They need to trust you have their best intentions at heart and the systems in place to make it a reality. This is one reason why our cause marketing solutions combined with cash back rewards are so effective. These are the top two emotions in the history of retailing, take place at the transaction, and are fully accountable and transparent. This is what consumers want yet very few businesses can deliver. Make this a reality in your business and watch profits grow.

You missed a great webinar last week, Have You Earned Your Customers’ Trust? Martha Rogers, Ph.D., Founding Partner of Peppers & Rogers Group, and Mariann McDonagh, CMO of inContact shared five ways to gain, build, and retain trust in this hyper-competitive environment.

Every time a customer interacts with your company and it doesn’t meet their expectations, you’ve discounted that relationship. Whether it’s through your contact center, email, in-store, or social channels; every interaction should send a consistent message that you have the customer’s best interests at heart.

Watch the complimentary 1to1 Webinar now to find out how your organization can build a level of customer trust that improves retention and increases loyalty and engagement.

WATCH IT NOW

The 1to1 Webinar Team
1to1webinars@1to1.com

1. Let us create a banner and email promotion offering to pay the gas prices for customers who drive to the center or location.  If a customer uses 1 gallon of gas to drive back and forth to the center, then offer to load $4.00 of free bowling or free food on the card to cover their gas.  You can do this with special weekends, promotions or holidays and the good will is outstanding.  One year we offered to pay the gas for the ENTIRE YEAR to anyone who joined a league.  How did we do it?  We just estimated one gallon per day per week to drive to league.  We took 36 weeks of league and multiplied it by $4.00.  We loaded $150.00 of free bowling on every league members card to pay for their gas the entire year.  People loved it and they came in much more often.
   
   
2. Create a partnership with one particular brand such as Exxon or Chevron.  Contact the local owner and let him know you are willing to drive all your customers to their gas station on an exclusive basis.  When customers visit this particular location, let the owner know that the bowling center (or restaurant) will give each person a free game of bowling (worth $4.00) for every 10 gallons they purchase at that designated location, thus the gas is FREE!  This can be an outstanding partnership and many centers/restaurants will get $3,000 – $5,000 per year as exclusive sponsorship or arrange unlimited free gas for themselves in return for rewarding their customers to visit that particular gas station.   We can arrange special marketing materials and really increase revenue and visitation to their gas station.
   
   
3. Offer 10% rewards on bowling equipment for every gas receipt brought into the center.  We did this at one time with Motel 6 for the Western Region PBA Tour and the results were outstanding.  We can work a special deal with a selected gas station similar to above or multiple gas stations.  We can also arrange a special sponsorship from a ball manufacturer.  If you reward customers for spending money in their community at selected places such as country clubs, bowling centers, restaurants, oil changes, gas stations, etc.  The customer can bring in their receipt and earn a reward from you and they LOVE IT!

Here is the newsletter

1. Cash back rewards to value their business and use for their next purchase.  No points, no coupons being mailed for redemption.
2. Relevant communication NOT an email blast but the ability to query the data and send offers based on purchase or visits.
3. Special offers and members only benefits.  Learn how to create a membership into your business, it’s easy and lucrative.
4. Support of their local community or heartfelt need with every purchase.  Not blanket donations but tied to the transaction.

A whopping 87% of consumers surveyed have said they would frequent a business more often and spend more if the business would just listen and supply the above.  All you need to do to grow your business is listen, we have the solutions for you. 

1. Over 2 billion loyalty memberships in the U.S. alone (over 18 per household)
2. Value of rewards earned is over 48 billion with an average of 33% unredeemed or (breakage)
3. Shocking news of restaurants below.  See Chart
4. Top 2 take aways by industry experts is what we have been teaching for years

1. Pursue new, innovative value propositions. Want to stand out from the pack? Innovativerecognition benefits and brand-enhancing rewards are only the starting point. It’s time to take mere perks a few steps further and to borrow inspiration through partnerships with other industries — from Fuel and Grocery to Non-Profits and Restaurants. Too many programs are still designed for simple frills, simple thrills — and fail to evolve to meet the advancing needs, values and demands of today’s canny consumer. Strategic alliances offer the ability to join forces with other companies and create richer, faster ways to earn rewards and status.
2. Break down the silos. So many companies have invested in programs because they change customer behavior. But how can those insights transform the entire customer experience? Insights from the most valuable and highest-potential customers can help a marketer deliver more relevant, targeted promotions. That use of data insights is now table states in a saturated loyalty environment. Instead, marketers should use their insights from customers to ensure the experience they deliver is custom-made to speak specifically to their best customers’ fast-evolving needs — from their email inbox to the layout of the stores they visit to the merchandise presented to them on store shelves. Only then will they get to the front of that crowded wallet.

Editors Notes:  Groupon Research Article Below – A brief note on the math

1. Instead of using Groupon, try the same type of Groupon offer to EXISTING CUSTOMERS.  Approximately 75% of Groupon users known as ‘Groupies’ have already visited the establishment (they already are existing customers) so you can reach 75% or more of the same people without spending near the amount to bring them in.  These ‘existing’ customers already enjoy your food (or entertainment) and should be the ones rewarded with special offers rather than those who will be here today and gone tomorrow.  Restaurants (or general retail) don’t need any NEW customers, (especially groupies who are not loyal to the establishment but loyal to the discount) they just need existing customers to come back more often.  Merchants can utilize a cause marketing solution for new customer acquisition which can be even more effective in driving new visits than Groupon, and at a much higher profit margin.  Email comments for details

2. Instead of DISCOUNTING items or merchandise by 50%, offer a 50% Gift Card Bonus or Reward Bonus instead.  This offer feels the same as a discount to your customers since it’s money they can use at the establishment and probably has more flexibility than a Groupon offer.  In addition, these types of promotions fill your register with tons of advance cash and will increases frequency from customers who are comfortable with your establishment and are ready to pay full price!  When these ‘existing’ customers come back to use their 50% bonus, there is no split on the difference, (normally given to Groupon) all the cash is kept by each merchant and in fact has already been deposited by the business owner.  The business owner is literally running his own Groupon offer with more customers with a fraction of the cost and will not be stuck in a discount hole giving away 75% of every dollar.   As you know, Groupon offers no database building, no follow up, nothing to really track results, it’s a desperate move by business owners who may not know of better solutions.

3. Here is an example.  Promote a 50% gift card load bonus within the store, (we customize all the materials to promote the offer.) Give customers the option to spend ANY AMOUNT of money and receive a 50% BONUS!  In other words, if customer A loads $20.00 on their gift card, they would receive a $10.00 bonus!  Business owners can use the gift card balance, rewards balance or the custom widget balance for even higher profits.  For example, a different offer might be to load $20.00 on the gift card and receive 10 hamburgers FREE OF CHARGE!  This looks like even MORE than 50% but serves as a better trigger for increased spending and frequency.  The merchant would collect $20.00 in advance and add 10 to the Hamburgers category (custom category can be anything such as hamburgers, free games of bowling, appetizers, drinks, you name it.)  Merchants might limit the redemption of Hamburgers to no more than two per day assuring 10 more visits in the future at full price!  They accomplish this task while getting paid $20.00 in advance and keeping all the profit!  The offer is good to all existing customers and is a huge incentive to load money on their gift card.  We track gift, rewards, membership, loyalty and custom meals all on one card so the options are numerous for the business owner to take in real money while issuing monopoly money in return. 

   If they choose the rewards option, customers might load $20.00 on their card and the business owner will issue a DIFFERENT CARD to use as a gift which the customer can give to friends, colleagues, or business partners without any added expense on his part!  Now that’s a creative way to bring in new customers and all while protecting price points without any discounts, advertising fees or distribution expense.  Let your customers do all the work, reward them for it and boom, you have a revenue generating powerhouse.  Let customers do this with ANY amount of money or put a limit on the amount if you prefer.  Customers might load $100.00 on THEIR gift card and receive 5 $10.00 gift cards to use as gifts for friends, colleagues, business associates or thank you benefits for customers at their business    The corporate strategies with these types of promotions are endless and far cheaper than Groupon with much better success!  

4. The cost of issuing 50% cash back rewards along with gift and rewards load bonuses to existing customers if far less expensive than taking 50% off certain purchases and then splitting the remainder with a marketing arm like Groupon.  If this were not enough all the other benefits of a loyalty program are in full effect as well such as database building, integration with text or email, follow up thank you notes, tracking, ROI verification and much more.  You now have customers who are used to paying FULL PRICE as compared to groupies who are loyal to discounts and want them with every visit.   Here is the article.

November 23, 2010, 7:00 am

Doing the Math on a Groupon Deal

11/30/10 | Updated to include possible Google offer.

I have been reading with great interest (especially here) the stories of retailers sharing their experiences using Groupon. For those of you not familiar with Groupon, the company partners with local businesses to send a daily coupon e-blast to its members. The members who buy the coupon get 50 to 70 percent off on a product or service, and Groupon splits the proceeds with the retailer — usually leaving the retailer with about 20 to 25 cents on the dollar of retail value.

I have never seen anything that is both so celebrated and demonized at the same time. There has been talk that Groupon might be worth as much as $3 billion (it now looks as if Google thinks Groupon might be worth as much as $6 billion), and yet here are some blog comments from retailers who’ve tried the service:

• “It is for desperate businesses.”

• “The financials just can’t work out.”

• “Groupon is the worst marketing ever.”

• “We did Groupon. It was O.K. It brought in new customers — we kept most of them. But the margins are a killer.”

As a retailer who has used Groupon — as well as traditional advertising — to build my business, I’ve come to the conclusion that there’s a lot of misinformation out there. Is Groupon the worst marketing ever? Or is it the best marketing ever? Probably both. One thing is for sure: Groupon is a beast.

What else would you call something that can deliver 2,000 customers to your store? It’s a beast that can propel your business or smother it. It depends on your business. It also depends on you. Here are some key factors:

The first is the type of business you have. How many potential customers in your area don’t know about you? Do you have excess capacity? Can you handle a surge?

The second factor is about branding. Do you believe that by giving out a large discount you risk damaging your brand? It is a judgment call. I am sure that it is a bad idea in some cases.

And then there is the math, which may be the most important factor. I have seen it attempted many times — but if it is not done properly, it can result in very misleading conclusions.

Groupon is advertising. If you don’t need or believe in advertising, there is no reason to look at this. It costs money. Instead of writing a check for an ad, you are choosing to lose money on sales. This can wreak havoc on the brain cells of a good retailer who is always watching profit margins. It can feel wrong, especially when the coupon customers don’t spend more than the amount of the coupon.

That is why it is critical to do the math. Math is cold and unemotional — and eye-opening. Unfortunately, it is much easier and much more accurate to do the math after you try the program, because you will not have to guess on as many numbers. There are eight key calculations you need to consider to determine whether this is a better advertising vehicle than something else you may already be doing:

1. Your incremental cost of sales — that is, the actual cost percentage for a new customer. If you are giving boat tours and have empty seats, your incremental costs for an additional customer are next to nothing. If you are selling clothes, your incremental costs might be 50 percent of the sale price. Food might be 40 percent. In any case, don’t include fixed costs that you would be incurring any way.

2. The amount of the average sale. If the coupon is for $75, will the customers spend more than that? I have seen more than one retailer complain that nobody spends more than the value of the coupon. That’s unlikely but I am sure it can feel that way, and that is my point: Keep track.

3. Redemption percentage. You don’t really know until the end, but from my experience and from what I have heard, 85 percent is a good guess.

4. Percentage of your coupon users who are already your customers. I’m sure this number varies tremendously depending on the size of your city, how long you have been around, and the type of business.

5. How many coupons does each customer buy? (The more they buy, the fewer people are exposed to your product or service.)

6. What percentage of coupon customers will turn into regular customers? Again, it can seem as if they are all bargain shoppers who will never return without a discount, but that’s almost impossible. Is it possible 90 percent won’t return? Sure.

7. What is the advertising value of having your business promoted to 900,000 people — that’s the number on Groupon’s Chicago list — even if they don’t buy a coupon?

8. How much does it normally cost you to acquire a customer through advertising? Everything is relative.

Let’s look at an example of how this might work for a restaurant. Suppose you sell 3,000 coupons with a face value of $75 for $35. Then let’s assume the following:

1. 40 percent incremental costs (mostly food).
2. $85 average ticket ($10 more than the coupon).
3. 85 percent redeemed.
4. 40 percent used by existing customers.
5. Two bought per customer.
6. 10 percent come back again — or send friends.
7. $1,000 advertising value.
8. $125 typical cost to get a new customer through other advertising methods.

Now, let’s do the math:

Number redeemed: 3,000 x 85 percent = 2,550.

Revenue:
3,000 x $35 x 50 percent = $52,500 (Groupon sends a check).
2,550 x additional $10 = $25,500 (additional money spent by each customer).
total revenue = $78,000 (plus, you also get the $1,000 advertising value of having all those people introduced to your product or service).

Expense:
2,550 x $85 (average retail value) x 40 percent incremental cost = $86,700.

In this example, the restaurant took in $78,000 at a cost of $86,700, which means it cost $8,700 to run the deal. The key question is how many return customers the restaurant will get for that expense. If you divide the 2,550 total coupons by two (the average number of coupons bought by each customer), you get 1,275 customers. Multiply by 60 percent (to exclude existing customers) and you get 765. Multiply again by 10 percent (the percentage of new customers who return), and you get 76 new repeat customers.

Divide the $8,700 cost by 76 new customers, and the restaurant paid $114 for each new regular, which in this example is roughly what we assumed it would cost with conventional advertising. The question the restaurant has to answer is whether it was worth the trouble to get 76 customers — especially given that it probably annoyed some of its existing regulars. On the other hand, maybe it kept some of  its employees busy when they otherwise would have had short hours.

But keep this in mind: because of the huge volume, if you change any of the variables, you can get very different results. For instance, if the customers had spent an average of $95 instead of $85, the restaurant would have actually made money on the promotion — something it’s almost impossible to do with traditional advertising. Of course, it goes the other way, too. If the customers spend only the $75 coupon amount, the cost to the restaurant will be $24,000 — an expense most owners probably never even consider.

Best marketing ever? Worst marketing ever? It all depends on a few little numbers. Here is the big difference between traditional advertising and Groupon: Traditional advertising requires spending some money and knowing that it can be lost if the ad doesn’t work. With Groupon, you spend no money up front but you mess with your formula for making money. You can win big and you can lose big.

It is a new world. The old math still works in it.

Jay Goltz owns five small businesses in Chicago.

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Dunkin Press Release Below:   Here are the most obvious mistakes see if you can find two more.

1. The $1.00 reward for every $20.00 spent is a big mistake on at least two fronts.
   1. The reward is much too low.   For small ticket items, 10% should be the minimum.
   2. Instant gratification is not here, the value of my visit is not realized until later.  With this small of a reward, let people see the benefits of their purchase and the ability to redeem immediately.   The value will be lost with millions of customers.
2. The auto recharge bonus is a good idea and 10% re-load bonus is good although it should be in the store as well as auto-reload.  Millions will not choose auto re-load and they should have a load bonus in place at each location to capture money in advance.  This would increase revenue by millions of dollars if marketed correctly.

3. Dunkin should not have the $1.00 reward expire in a month which looks like it will, in other words, you must spend $20.00 in a month or the previous $18.00 gets lost and not carried over to the next month.  This is a fundamental mistake.

4. Oh my goodness, coupons in the mail, this is an absolute insult.  Why have a rewards card if you can’t load the reward on the card and save millions of dollars in postage fees, delays, customers forgetting their coupons and much more.  It’s one thing to waste millions of dollars and quite another to waste millions while aggravating your customers at the same time.

2.  Restaurant Strategy #1 – Memberships – http://screencast.com/t/ieELR88qmB1w

3.  Restaurant Strategy #2 – Query of the Database – http://screencast.com/t/oEOvOHJwx

4.  Restaurant Strategy #3 -  Gift Card Pre-Load – http://screencast.com/t/Gn1K3siN6FB

ENON, Ohio — Speedway added new benefits to its Speedy Rewards loyalty program. The convenience store and gas station chain introduced a number of brand-specific beverage clubs, including the Coca-Cola Club for Coke products; the Pepsi Club, Mountain Dew Club and Gatorade Club for Pepsi products; and a general Milk Club, according to the In-Store Marketing Institute.

Each beverage club rewards consumers with one free single-serve beverage after their sixth cumulative purchase.

Similar product clubs already offered by Speedway include the Reese’s Club for Hershey products and the Food Club, which gives customers 1,000 Speedy Rewards bonus points for every six purchases of sandwiches, pizza slices, grill items or other food products, according to the report. Bonus points also can be accrued by purchasing specific brands, depending on the current promotion.

Loyalty card holders can redeem their bonus points for in-store purchases or gas discounts. They can also visit www.speedyrewards.com to turn their cards into debit Pay Cards.

2.  Pay $5.00 per player and if they are on the LEADER BOARD by Sunday win $15.00 in rewards!

3.  Win $50.00 in rewards if your player WINS the tournament.

4.  Double cash back rewards on all food and drinks while watching the Masters in our lounge.

5.  Special Prizes and Rewards during the tournament, come and watch to find out!  Lots of prizes and fun on the fly!

6.  Free rounds of golf from sponsoring Country Clubs with ways to win equipment from Taylor Made.

7.  Many other ideas and this is just the Masters, what about NCAA tourney, the NBA Playoffs, MLB, etc. etc.

If your business is not running sports contests just about every day of the week, then a great deal of revenue is being left on the table.  Major sporting events take place just about every day and they are an ideal way to engage customers, increase spending and frequency, enhance relationships,  and make visiting the location fun and exciting.    

You do need the proper loyalty program in place which tracks everything, allows custom categories, varies rewards on selected items and a few other goodies but of course we have everything in place for this very type of marketing.  We can even design the email, create the offer, send the text or email, create marketing materials around the program and much more with our full service option.  Just let us know you want to start running contests EVERY DAY and we will give you all kinds of ideas.  Winning is fun and when customers WIN anything at your business, frequency and spending go way up. When was the last time your customers won anything?  If the answer was not TODAY, you are leaving all kinds of revenue at the table.

1. A significant drop in profits from current level or what could have been realized.
2. BK

Neither of these two options are pleasant events and yet they are inevitable.  Just because your business NEVER did certain things in the past and flourished, does not mean you can get away with the same marketing in the future.  Business owners who ignore research and new customer demands do so at their financial peril.  We offer our clients everything they need to prosper and grow in the new digital age and CAUSE MARKETING is HUGE.  Just read the stats below and realize the power of supporting local community with a percentage on every transaction.  Business owners who LISTEN to their customers will profit tremendously while competitors who don’t will fall by the wayside. 

Author: Mark Dolliver, Contributing Writer, CMO.com

Any marketer who’s not a novice can recall when terms like “cause-related marketing” and “corporate social responsibility” (CSR) were exotic novelties. But now it’s a given that consumers believe companies have obligations beyond making money for their owners. In fact, it is getting more difficult for a company to connect with customers and prosper if it doesn’t stand for something more than its bottom line.

If people’s attitudes toward corporate behavior are shifting in a lasting way, the trend stems from a change in the way they regard themselves as consumers. In Young & Rubicam’s BrandAsset Valuator polling, 65 percent of respondents agreed that, “Since the recession, I realize that how many possessions I have does not have much to do with how happy I am.” The same proportion agreed that they’re now “happier with a simpler, more down-to-earth lifestyle.”

John Gerzema, vice chairman of Y&R’s BrandAsset Consulting, suggested to CMO.com that consumers’ current frugality is apt to be durable because it’s actually the long-term norm. “It’s not a ‘new normal,’–it’s the ‘old normal,’ ” he said. “Modern consumerism of the past 30 years is an anomaly, and, in fact, people are reverting to older, much longer-held values.” In the process, consumers “are moving from mindless to mindful consumption,” said Gerzema, who co-authored the book Spend Shift, which examines the phenomenon, and recently spoke at the Adobe Summit 2011. “They still buy, but spending is less about materialism and more about voting for their values with their dollars.”  

Judging from ample polling data, companies had better pay heed. In last fall’s edition of the annual “Goodpurpose” study by Edelman, 87 percent of U.S. respondents agreed that “business needs to place at least equal weight on society’s interests” as it does on its own interests. The BrandAsset Valuator polling found 71 percent of its respondents endorsing the statement, “I make a point to buy brands from companies whose values are similar to my own.”

A Cone report, titled “Cause Evolution,” offers further detail on these tendencies. A landslide 83 percent of those polled said they “wish more of the products, services and retailers they use would support causes”; 81 percent said they want companies to give them the opportunity to “buy a cause-related product”; and 80 percent said they’d be “likely to switch brands, about equal in price and quality, to one that supports a cause.” Polling by Penn Schoen Berland (in association with Burson-Marsteller and Landor Associates) found 55 percent of respondents saying that, when choosing between similar products, they’d be more likely to buy the one “with added social benefit.” Nor, apparently, is this just an airy sentiment: The Cone survey found 41 percent saying that in the past year they’d “bought a product because it was associated with a cause or issue.”

“What the recession has taught us is that our greatest deficit isn’t economic–it’s social,” said Robbie Blinkoff, an anthropologist who is co-founder of Context-Based Research Group, an ethnographic research and consulting firm that has worked with ad agency Carton Donofrio Partners to produce recent studies of the shifts in consumer attitudes. “We’re trying to regain our sense of social, and corporations have jumped on the bandwagon, absolutely,” he told CMO.com. “They have lots of resources and infrastructure, so they’re the ones who can really do this and get people connected around a cause,” adding the caveat that “a sense of social is difficult if not impossible to scale.”

Outsourcing Responsibility
Amid the public appetite for CSR, there’s even some indication that consumers have, in effect, outsourced civic behavior to companies rather than assuming the full burden themselves. A study by the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business found that consumers who buy products involved in cause-related marketing campaigns “end up giving less money to a social cause or charity.” And that’s true even if the consumer were going to buy the product anyway, “regardless of its link to a cause.”

While mainstream consumers do care about how their purchases affect the world at large, marketers should be careful not to ignore an accompanying reality: Most people haven’t ceased to care first about themselves. As president/chief operating officer of the Hartman Group, whose specialties include researching and advising on sustainability issues, Laurie Demeritt told CMO.com she has noticed a certain obliviousness to this on the part of some clients: They seem surprised when she suggests the consumer’s self-interest needs to be part of the equation: “They think, ‘This is about saving the world–isn’t that enough?’” she said.

Sure, consumers are happy to help save the world. But they must see the benefit to their own households. Demeritt pointed to household-cleaning products as a case in point: “The entry point [for broad social concern] is that, ‘I feel good about this because I’m not putting toxic chemicals on my counter.’” That gets them thinking about how the product might affect the wider world. “Then they start thinking about whether there’s animal testing, about what they’re putting down their drain,” she said.

What sort of behavior matters to consumers when they rate a company as virtuous or unvirtuous? Surveys offer some guidance. The one by Penn Schoen Berland asked respondents who know what “CSR” means to pick the foremost behavior companies “should be doing today to be considered ‘socially responsible.’” Atop the standings in widely scattered voting were “be environmentally responsible, create energy-efficient products,” and “treat employees well, equal-opportunity employer, good pay/benefits,” each cited by 16 percent of respondents. Getting at the issue a different way, Cone’s survey asked respondents to identify the issues they think companies should address. “Economic development” (including job creation) and “health and disease” were both cited by 77 percent of those polled, with hunger right behind (76 percent). Nearly as many cited “education” (75 percent) and “access to clean water” (74 percent).

Next: Choose Your Cause With Care

Read more: http://www.cmo.com/branding/positive-effects-cause-related-marketing?cmpid=TT82#ixzz1IkYTrCnG

 Entertainment Center General Overview

http://www.bowlcard.com/pdfs/BR_General_Overview.pdf

Key Slideshows

http://www.bowlcard.com/pages/program_overview.

“I’ve had positive experience with Groupon and wish you would add the following notes to the warning you posted:

1. You can negotiate a more favorable split than 50/50 with the Groupon administrator. I have done a 60/40 deal.
    
2. A significant percentage of vouchers purchased do not get redeemed. We sold 1550 vouchers and about 1250 have been redeemed with only a few weeks remaining til the end of year expiration.

   These two factors make it reasonable to expect you can cover your food & beverage cost on the redemptions.
    

3. The front of house staff make out extremely well and were very welcoming to the Groupon redeemers. The wait staff get tipped on the full amount and since the Groupon redeemer’s only outlay is tax and tip, the guests tend to tip well. The kitchen gets a lot of exercise, not a bad thing.

   This makes it a smart play for a restaurant that needs trial — a new place (or in our case, six months into a newly renovated re-launch).
    

4. Size the voucher to be more than is typically spent by a party of two. Our average check for a party of two is $42, so we made the Groupon $50. This meant they tried apps or desserts they would not typically try.
    
5. We found more than half the redeemers spent more than the $50, either with larger groups of people in the party or with splurge spending (bottles of wine rather than wine by the glass –good margin on such extras). Waitstaff wasn’t afraid to suggest bottles and became more adept at selling wine.
    
6. Time the offering for a slow period. We went out in mid-January. The initial flurry of activity was welcome and made for a stronger Jan-Feb than we ever had before the re-launch. We bumped up 25% in cash sales and have never come back down. Don’t forget a huge number of people get pitched, a fraction buy the deal, the rest get exposed. The happy Groupon redeemers write Yelp reviews etc etc. and the buzz makes others say, “I should have bought it.”

Of course if you give bad service or etc you’ll get whacked with bad reviews, but what else is new? Just do your job.”

In a follow up we asked, would you do it again?

“One time only. I agree, repeating would be detrimental.”

This operator’s experience with Groupon reinforces our belief that there are very few absolutes in the restaurant business. However, one account of a favorable daily-deal promotion does not minimize the importance of carefully considering your own unique market, operation and situation before venturing too quickly into any new promotional activity.

The member’s forum has several dozen discussions about Groupon. The pros and the cons. To read more or get involved in those discussion, you can search for Groupon using our forum search feature.

1. All customers want higher rewards with simple instant redemption. For those who listen, customers have indicated they will REMOVE competitor programs in their wallet and go with the program that listens to them! This is huge.
2. Men and women are rethinking how much plastic should be in their wallet and trying to keep the plastic which offers the most value. There are very few properly designed loyalty programs, the merchants who offer them, will benefit for years.

USA Today 16 page loyalty insert March 2011 –

1.  Hire a Chief Customer Officer (CCO) 

The Chief Customer Officer (CCO) is one of the most important positions in the company.   Among other duties, CCO’s will visit schools, churches, synagogues, little leagues, rotary clubs etc. and explain the program and help non-profits engage in best practices so they understand their responsibilities in creating donations and driving visitation to the business.  In addition, CCO’s mingle with customers inside the doors providing exceptional customer service, explaining the loyalty program, signing up additional non-profits, and increasing revenue in a variety of ways.   Many businesses have never considered hiring a CCO but with a world class loyalty solution in place, it makes a lot of sense as there are numerous ways to increase pre-paid sales, gift card loads, frequency, spending and much more.  The CCO removes the pressure from other employees in understanding these strategies and in fact helps and trains them to be better customer service personnel.  

A loyal employee is more valuable than a loyal customer…
Employees are also human, and they bond emotionally with your customers. The virtuous circle of ‘customer – employee – shareholder – customer’ has become well known in loyalty marketing. These groups go together and if the loyalty or even co-operation of any of the groups is lost, the chain breaks. To be completely successful, they must all work together, supporting each other, to build strong relationships. According to Frederick Reichheld, “the only way a company can build a loyal customer base is by building committed relationships with the employees responsible for serving those customers.” In fact, ‘loyalty leader’ companies identified by Reichheld were seen to out-perform their competitors by a factor of 2.2 in the stock market. 

Add to that the fact that in many cases, it’s actually the employees near the bottom of the ladder – those who are often treated most poorly and are underpaid – that have most personal interaction with customers, and it becomes clear that there is a problem. Without loyalty to the business there won’t be enthusiasm at the customer facing level, and that’s enough to nullify the very expensive marketing programmes that are intended to show the customers how important they are. In this time of almost universal cost-cutting resulting in employee cutbacks, fewer employees are being asked to do more and more work and – quite understandably – are becoming demoralised and discontented. It is becoming increasingly difficult for HR managers to maintain the loyalty of their employees. 

And of course, the level of employee loyalty is influenced by factors other than those within an organisation. For instance, the state of the general job market has a major effect on whether employees change jobs frequently or not. As more jobs open up, the opportunities to defect increase. So how should top management approach the challenge of increasing the loyalty of employees? Our report looks at some of the latest strategies and how well they’re working. And what exactly are the challenges facing these executives? Where should most money be invested for the best return on investment? The report clearly explains what’s needed, what works, and what doesn’t work.

BORDERS CHAPTER 11 Plan: Did you know that in the filing of the Chapter 11 papers, the CEO of Borders has stated a new commitment to loyalty solutions will help pull the company out of its problems? Don’t wait until it’s too late, there are many signs on the wall to prepare and strengthen your business now.

My Panera’s effective surprise and delight

It’s now 6 months after Panera extended the MyPanera program into Chicago and other major markets, and I can see why Panera is counting on this program to help them drive top line sales — there is a lot to like about this program which embraces soft rewards within a “surprise and delight” approach vs. a structure-heavy traditional rewards program. The program is grounded in showing appreciation and rewarding customers in unexpected ways, and it delivers against these goals in three key areas:

• This program has a great communication cadence. Rewards come quickly (how about a free dessert after one visit?) and additional offerings are varied and frequent (seem to be appearing every 2-4 visits afterwards). Panera has embraced the concept of proactive gifting driving future visitation and purchases, a key differentiator from traditional QSR loyalty models.
• The majority of the rewards are “thank-yous” vs. % and $ off. MyPanera does not have a heavy “upsell” feel to the program. Most of the rewards at register are Free items, and Free works much better than the % off. The architects of this program have largely avoided % and $ off items that can feel like “non-rewards” to customers, and I’m hoping a few of the recent $-off rewards remain in the minority. or go away.
• Strong focus on in-store experience. The program quite simply enhances the in-restaurant experience. I find myself waiting anxiously for associate to tell me what special treat I have received. It’s fun, and enhances the interaction while not sacrificing speed at register.

There is still opportunity for this program to evolve and expand, and Panera’s ability to identify customers and drive repeat visits could be greatly enhanced if the scale of rewards & benefits were better communicated. Prospective members should not be left wondering if the rewards were going to be meaningful for them, especially when being asked to subsequently register online.

And while Panera indicates they are tailoring these rewards based on members’ purchasing history, the free item rewards appear fairly broad-based according to some sampling over the past few months. There is a great opportunity here to increase rewards relevance as well as further entice members to buy add-on items, and this is a capability we anticipate will be strengthened as the program’s data history becomes more robust.

It’s delightful to see a program like this cited as a major driver of financial results, as Panera did in their mid-February WSJ article. With a few small (but key) changes, the MyPanera program could quickly evolve to an even stronger customer loyalty driver, and a dominant element of Panera’s business intelligence strategy moving forward.

Fred Thompson is a COLLOQUY contributing writer and Partner, Retail Practice Lead with LoyaltyOne Consulting.

Here is a video which can be used for any stand alone restaurant, snack bar or lounge.   Bowling centers have far more capability to increase revenue since food and drink is one of several profit centers.  Bowling Centers should also have a membership program in place for their center.

Many centers are familiar with Kids Bowl Free, this would be an ideal Platinum Membership benefit with all the games loaded on the card (like chicken sandwiches in the video.)  We can text or email the kids anytime to come in and no coupons are necessary.  Everything is loaded on one membership card and centers would keep every penny of the membership fee.  They could do this for many different groups such as league bowlers, and run a tiered membership program which would bring in 10s of thousands of additional fees every year whether or not any customers even showed up.  

Creating Memberships for added profits and frequency.

http://screencast.com/t/jkhX3QOggqP

1. Customers will use Social Media to promote businesses which offer what they have requested.  These same customers will also use Social Media to communicate with others NOT to frequent certain businesses.  Customers want their community to be supported with every transaction and they want a simple, easy way to track and receive these donations.  They also want to be rewarded with every visit and want to feel value and appreciated for frequenting the business. 
2. Over 87% of consumers prefer cash back rewards and close to 90% indicated they would frequent a business more often if donations were tied to the transaction.  These are the top two requests and very few business owners implement them. 
3. Notice #2 trend has a lot to do with #1.  For business owners who insist on not listening to their customers, their business will pay a steep price.
4. The top 3 retail emotions are community support, personal value, green benefits.  We supply all three.
5. Relevance, there is the R word again.  No longer can you BLAST to a database, send relevant offers based on spending, age, frequency, groups, etc.  You must have a system tied to transaction so you can communicate with 30-40 year old female league bowlers or 18-24 year old cosmic bowlers in a certain zip code.  Communication needs to based on spending, purchases, visitation habits, etc.  Most business owners today are blasting to a database and will cause more damage than good while wasting money at the same time.   Text messaging will be even more strict than email. 
6. Stop with the same old points based programs or punch cards.  If you ride a horse to work then keep using them but if you have an automobile, then ramp up your loyalty program as well.

Loyalty Update:  Radio Broadcast Interview You Tube  http://bit.ly/xpectrewards

Here is an example of Cause Marketing with our Beaver Pride solutions in Minnesota.  This is an email template we created for them and notice the following in red.  Every community should have something like this to help support business owners, non-profits and cardholders alike.  Everyone wins.  Watch the video below when the local news interviews these gentleman on all they are doing for the community.  Will your business be one associated with helping the community while increasing the bottom line at the same time? 

1. The first red arrow summarizes the donations for the previous month
2. The second red arrow totals the donations to date
3. The first red box promotes new merchants which can be looked up and mapped inside their site
4. The third red arrow breaks down the transactions by cardholder and recognizes consumers for shopping at local merchants.   Consumers love this, it becomes a contest as to who can frequent participating merchants the most.  Contest can be run with sponsors DONATING prizes to these consumers for supporting local business owners.  If you are a business owner, how do you like the idea of companies giving away $1000s of dollars on your behalf so people in the community spend more money with you?  There is no reason why any business owner would not want to participate.  Advertising is reduced or eliminated, price points are protected, new customer acquisition increases, frequency goes up, average ticket goes up and all of this while supporting the local community with every transaction.
5. The fourth red arrow promotes a few merchants who are increasing the benefits this month
6. The sponsor box below shows sponsors like Coca-Cola and Dr. Pepper and others who pay for the entire program and help support the community due to proprietary loyalty benefits we provide.

Editors Notes:  First off, any business without a loyalty program rewarding their customers at the time of purchase is making a clear decision to ignore every major study on how to increase sales and protect price points.  

Secondly, it’s NOT the points that make a difference it’s the reward and value associated with ANYTHING.  In other words, if POINTS work, then you can bet your bottom socks that the more relevant solutions work even better!  We have written for years that even TERRIBLE loyalty programs work to a certain extent since consumers are starved for recognition, value, good will and much more.  When you take a loyalty program and focus on BEST IN CLASS research based on what customers are saying, the results are obviously superior.  The amazing truth is that most business owners don’t seem to care about building their business.  They complain about the economy, groupon, and many other things, but they don’t take the time to install a loyalty program when every analyst in the world keeps sending research like below. 

Neuromarketing, Neuroscience Research

Every merchant seems to have a loyalty program these days. It makes sense to reward customers for their patronage and encourage even greater frequency. But, it appears there’s one kind of loyalty reward that may be more effective. One study showed that “irrelevant information” (in this case, largely valueless loyalty points) changed consumer buying decisions.

…irrelevant information may influence choice even when there is an easily justified basis for choice other than the irrelevant attribute. [From Irrelevant Information and Mediated Intertemporal Choice by van Osselaer, Alba, and Manchanda.]

What the researchers identified in their experiments was went beyond the logical and expected effect of a loyalty program: the mere presence of point values influenced customer buying decisions. Even when the value of loyalty points was less than the value of a real-money price difference, they were swayed by the loyalty points:

Choices were influenced by points even when consumers were provided with other truly discriminating information (e.g., price) and the irrelevance of the loyalty points was readily discernable. This implies that irrelevant information can influence choice when other, easily justifiable bases for decisions are available and, therefore, that irrelevant information can function as more than a tie-breaker. [Emphasis added.]

Maximizing Loyalty Program Impact

The Neuromarketing takeaway from this research is that exposing customers to point values at the time of purchase can amplify the effectiveness of the loyalty program. Want to encourage sampling of a new product, or drive upgrades? Or get a customer to visit you instead of your competitor? Try something along the lines of, “100 extra Rewards Points with every purchase!”

Loyalty Inflation?

It might be worth setting the value of the loyalty currency in a way that lets you use larger vs. smaller numbers. E.g., “100 points” might be more effective than “1 point” even if the value was the same. I’ve often wondered about the effectiveness of airline mile restaurant promotions. I often get notified that a local establishment is offering “triple miles” if I use my airline-branded credit card. The final number of miles earned seems rather paltry, and I don’t think my purchasing behavior has been affected at all.

Then again, maybe at some level my brain HAS responded with, “Oooh! Three times the points!” and my rational, conscious thought process has merely justified the dining choice on a seemingly logical pretext

BORDERS CHAPTER 11 Plan:  Did you know that in the filing of the Chapter 11 papers, the CEO of Borders has stated a new commitment to loyalty solutions will help pull the company out of its problems?  Don’t wait until it’s too late, there are many signs on the wall to prepare and strengthen your business now.  

• This program has a great communication cadence.  Rewards come quickly (how about a free dessert after one visit?) and additional offerings are varied and frequent (seem to be appearing every 2-4 visits afterwards).  Panera has embraced the concept of proactive gifting driving future visitation and purchases, a key differentiator from traditional QSR loyalty models.
• The majority of the rewards are “thank-yous” vs. % and $ off.  MyPanera does not have a heavy “upsell” feel to the program.  Most of the rewards at register are Free items, and Free works much better than the % off.  The architects of this program have largely avoided % and $ off items that can feel like “non-rewards” to customers, and I’m hoping a few of the recent $-off rewards remain in the minority.  or go away.
• Strong focus on in-store experience.   The program quite simply enhances the in-restaurant experience.  I find myself waiting anxiously for associate to tell me what special treat I have received.  It’s fun, and enhances the interaction while not sacrificing speed at register. 

There is still opportunity for this program to evolve and expand, and Panera’s ability to identify customers and drive repeat visits could be greatly enhanced if the scale of rewards & benefits were better communicated.   Prospective members should not be left wondering if the rewards were going to be meaningful for them, especially when being asked to subsequently register online.

And while Panera indicates they are tailoring these rewards based on members’ purchasing history, the free item rewards appear fairly broad-based according to some sampling over the past few months.   There is a great opportunity here to increase rewards relevance as well as further entice members to buy add-on items, and this is a capability we anticipate will be strengthened as the program’s data history becomes more robust.

It’s delightful to see a program like this cited as a major driver of financial results, as Panera did in their mid-February WSJ article.   With a few small (but key) changes, the MyPanera program could quickly evolve to an even stronger customer loyalty driver, and a dominant element of Panera’s business intelligence strategy moving forward.

Fred Thompson is a COLLOQUY contributing writer and Partner, Retail Practice Lead with LoyaltyOne Consulting.

1.  Relevance

2.  Relationship

3.  Rewards

When the three R’s are followed correctly, then the fourth R kicks in ROI.  Although these three R’s sound as simple as Reading, Riting and Rithmetic, over 95% of business owners today are not following ANY of the three R’s even though consumers are screaming at the top of their lungs for them.  What a time to represent loyalty solutions, the offline retail world is just starting to wake up and beginning to realize that newspaper ads and little pieces of paper with discounts are no longer necessary.  Do you happen to know any business owners desiring to reduce costs, increase profitability and eliminate discounting?  If you can find one, they are a good start.

Email Trends Underscore Shifting Media Habits

Date: March 03, 2011

Author: David Gardner, Contributing Writer, CMO.com

Mobile and social platforms are making a significant impact on consumers’ brand engagement, according to a new survey by customer relationship marketing (CRM) agency Merkle.

Facebook, for instance, is used by nearly two-thirds of the online adult community, and a growing percentage of their time there is spent on commercial communications, also called permission e-mail, Merkle found.

However, Merkle’s survey of more than 3,500 consumers shows that e-mail remains the bedrock of consumer commercial relationships. “E-mail is still the most preferred method [of viewing brands,” said Rich Fleck, vice president of Merkle’s digital studies group, in an interview with CMO.com. “We’re seeing an uptick in social networking, but e-mail remains the backbone.”

In fact, nearly 75% of survey participants said e-mail is their preferred method of commercial communications, even over direct mail by a margin of nearly five to one. Overall, commercial e-mail usage has been gradually gaining market share--in 2005, 17% of consumers e-mail time was related to business, compared to 30% now--and is poised to surpass personal e-mail use in a year or two, according to the report.

Another interesting finding from the study was the symbiotic relationship between social networking--primarily Facebook--and mobile phones, which have become a “gateway” for consumers to read e-mails, surf the Web, and participate in social networking, Fleck said.

“It’s no longer about these separate, distinct marketing channels, but about the consumer experience as a whole, and smartphones have become tools to augment that experience,” said Lori Connolly, Merkle’s director of research and analytics, in a statement.  

One reason for the rapidly emerging growth of e-mail on mobile devices is “hyper e-mail checkers” who repeatedly check their e-mail; 43% of mobile e-mail users in the Merkle study do so four or more times a day. Merkle noted that those who use social networks like Facebook are likely to be hyper e-mail checkers, too.

"This means that the marketers sending email are likely to have a regular viewing audience of at least their brand and subject line," the report states.

Also useful to know about these Facebook users: On average, they like 12 company brands. In addition, friend referrals are important to them--and for Twitter and MySpace users, too. Some 20% of the respondents in the survey said they are likely to become a fan of a brand after a friend indicates a like for the brand.

For marketers, the challenge will be to adapt their digital marketing strategies for successful engagement.

“Seasoned digital marketers will confirm that many of the same questions regarding content and frequency are being asked of newer media--like mobile--as they were 10 years ago when commercial e-mail was fledgling,” the report states. “What has changed, however, is the customer intimacy of the newer media. The personal space [has] shifted to mobile, that intensely personal, always close device that demands more responsible marketing than has been required in the past.”

Editor’s Note:  The writing is on the wall (this comes from the book of Daniel and what happens afterwards is not pretty) blasting to databases either by email, text, or any other communication method will not produce the proper ROI and may indeed cause brand damage.  Solutions must be in place which are more personal and relevant in nature than simply offering everyone the same deal, discount or special.  There is quite a bit of ‘behind the scenes’ info in this article, but the theme continues from all over the world, customers are demanding more relevance these days and business owners must have a loyalty program tied to the transaction allowing them to communicate to customers based on age, demographics, spending patterns, visitation habits, birthdays, anniversaries and much more.  In addition ‘soft’ benefits such as membership privileges should be implemented immediately by almost every business model. 

Editor’s Note Research Article Below:  The real power of social media is not in a bowling center, restaurant, or local business creating a Facebook presence or tweeting on Twitter.  Of course they should, but to ignore the real power of Social Media with word of mouth referrals is a big mistake.  The proper customer loyalty program will cause customers to share their experiences with 100s (if not 1000s) of friends and thus makes implementing a loyalty strategy even more important for basic business survival.

Cause Marketing has a huge impact in creating WOM champions and so does effective customer service communication tools using relevant information to show value and appreciation to customers.  We have all these tools in place now and the early movers will benefit tremendously.  The case for proper loyalty solutions has never been more clear.

Contact a loyalty expert today, every minute you wait is lost revenue.  If you need to enroll in our online course to earn your Master’s Degree and then your PhD. please visit www.wildboarstraning.com for the introductory Piglet Exam.

 by Sharon M. Goldman2/25/2011 VOLUME 19 / ISSUE 1

In 2009, COLLOQUY conducted a consumer research survey exploring the intersection of consumers who participate in loyalty programs and their word-of-mouth (WOM) activity (“TalkTalk: The New Champion Customers”). In 2011, we returned to the topic, looking even more deeply at the relationship between loyalty and advocacy and the role of customers we call WOM Champion Customers (those who are both “Connectors” who are able to and do recommend brands they like and “Advocates” willing to recommend the brand). With 91% of WOM Champions surveyed saying they belong to one or more loyalty programs, the strong, powerful connection between Connecting and Advocacy is crystal clear.

We found that social media and word-of-mouth are closely intertwined when it comes to WOM Champions: Our survey results show that social media is significantly more useful and important to Champions than ever. In 2009, 27% of Champions said they used social media to recommend or discuss products or services. In 2011, 48% of Champions said they used social media—a jump of 77%.

Not surprisingly, Facebook is the WOM Champions’ platform of choice for discussing or recommending brands: A whopping 85% of member Champions use Facebook, while 77% of member non-Champions do so. Twitter, too, is popular with member Champions—31% use Twitter, which is 63% higher than non-member Champions.

With the idea of “trialogue” becoming more prominent in 2011, social media is clearly fueling amazing growth of Champions’ WOM behavior. Only a few years ago, a WOM Champion was limited to one-to-one or one-to-a-few conversations conducted face-to-face, via telephone and email, or through other means. Champions continue to use such media, but today social networks allow far broader impact—both positively and negatively—as they share either satisfaction or displeasure with potentially thousands of others who can pass the word along.

You know who your WOM Champion Customers are: They’re likely found in the membership rolls of your loyalty program. They are your best customers, your brand advocates—take them seriously, because they can exalt your brand or tear it down through social media. They’re conversing in spaces where you should be working on trialogue as well as dialogue. Want to increase your loyalty success through social media? Get the conversation started with your Champions—today.

Sharon M. Goldman is a COLLOQUY Contributing Editor.

Notice consumers are members of 14 programs on average. Think they have ONE card that can work everywhere? Not a chance. Imagine the coalition potential of one card delivering instant cash back rewards on everyday purchases which can be used at multiple locations across town. All this one sentence does is deliver what millions of customers say they want and what most of our Fortune 500s fail to deliver.

What a crime! The list of popular rewards programs is nothing short of horrific. The Rite Aid program is terrible and Borders just declared Bankruptcy and they are the top two! If there was ever a list that verified the value of our services it’s this list of preferred programs. The only reasons customers like them is that there are so few who do it right, they are stuck with programs who at least do something. CVS and Staples fail in a number of fundamental ways and so do ALL of the others. The timing in delivering proper loyalty solutions to a starving marketplace and consumer has never been more needed. There is a HUGE void in competence.

This is essential stuff: Think I make this stuff up? Almost every business consultant is mentioning this as essential, mandatory, required, words of this nature and yet we see millions of businesses who don’t even know how to build a database. Representing proprietary solutions in this space has never been a more lucrative pursuit. Time to find the right partner and jump in. I think I know the right partner, but it’s sure easy being the right one, all you need to do is have a D grade point average and you are pretty much on top of the heap!

Wow, what a statement (directly under the title).  Sure this sounds like common sense, then why do over 90% of businesses I frequent not offer anything?  Small business owners are in crisis mode, any business not offering some type of reward to their customers or utilizing some type of  loyalty solution are ignoring every major research study in the market. 

There has never been a more important time to reward consumers and there has never been a more important time to do it right.   In spite of everyone agreeing on this basis assumption 80% -90% of business owners still offer NOTHING, what in the world are they thinking?  What a great time to be in the loyalty business

Loyalty programs handcuff unhappy consumers

“Every consumer wants something different,” he said, “but every consumer wants something.”

No one wants to give up their rewards over a surly customer-service agent

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By Jennifer Waters, MarketWatch

CHICAGO (MarketWatch) — Consumers increasingly find themselves unhappy with the customer support they receive from their cell-phone company, banks, retailers and other service providers, but in an unusual shift in behavior, some are willing to keep doing business with them anyway.

For the first time in six years of studies, the Accenture Global Consumer Survey reported a decline, albeit a small one, in the number of consumers who switched service providers because of poor treatment, even as customer-satisfaction levels fell in all 11 categories of providers studied.

Protect your bank account

At a time when fraud involving debit cards is on the rise, consumers may not realize that some banks won’t pay consumers’ losses in debit-card fraud. James Van Dyke, founder of Javelin Strategy & Research, talks with MarketWatch’s Andrea Coombes about ways consumers can safeguard their money.

Some 64% of consumers said they dumped one service provider in favor of a new one in 2010, down from 69% the prior year. That’s still a high number, however, and up from a low of 49% in 2005.

“The most primal behavior of consumers is when they switch providers,” said Robert Wollan, global managing director of Accenture’s customer relationship management practice. “Until now we’ve only seen that trend go in one direction.”

Why the shift? Partly it’s because consumers are less likely to talk directly with customer-service agents; instead, we’re using technology like automated phone attendants, live Internet chats and website self-service options. Wait periods are shorter, there’s no being put on hold for what seems like hours and it’s rare that the same information has to be repeated to multiple service agents.

What’s more, consumers are being pickier about what providers they choose, relying more on word of mouth. Also, social-networking sites are gaining popularity. Seventy-six percent of all respondents said they listen more to their friends and acquaintances about their experiences before choosing providers, and one in four said they trust reviews and comments posted online by people they know.

“Word of mouth has always been an important motivator for consumers, but it’s been thrust into new levels of importance” as social networking proliferates, Wollan said.

Loyalty programs are working

But there’s another emerging trend in satisfaction surveys: loyalty programs. As the traditional levers of promotion and marketing are proving a less-than-stellar means for attracting and retaining customers, companies are using loyalty program, and their perks, as a lure.

Some 52% of respondents said they opted in to loyalty programs in 2010, compared with 45% in 2009. And the percentage of consumers who stayed with their loyalty program climbed to 54% from 49% among retail consumers, to 53% from 45% among those with wireless-service providers, and to 51% from 49% among people in hotel programs.

Loyalty programs, it turns out, generate loyalty. If you’ve been building miles on your credit card or accumulating points for a free hotel stay, you’re not likely to give that up because you have to deal with customer-service agents who can’t solve your problem, according to the Accenture study.

However, it could also mean that when you opted in, you unwittingly locked yourself into a longer relationship with the provider than you might have wanted.

But here’s the good news for consumers: loyalty programs are more tailored toward individual needs and wants than ever before. Companies realize customers are in fact individuals who want to be treated uniquely, Wollan said. “Loyalty and loyalty programs have emerged as something that companies can really look to leverage,” he said.

“Every consumer wants something different,” he said, “but every consumer wants something.”

Jennifer Waters is a MarketWatch reporter, based in Chicago

1. A system tied to transactions designed to gather customer data for relevant communication is becoming mandatory for survival. We live in a technology driven world which causes change at rapid levels. Business owners that don’t keep up with new solutions and communication tools will suffer substantial loss or go out of business.
2. Membership benefits or ‘soft rewards’ combined with ‘hard benefits’ or cash back rewards are the most successful. Points are often referred to as the default ‘hard benefit’ option since very few have the ability to issue cash back rewards. Don’t worry, cash back is superior to points in every aspect.
3. Simply blasting discounts to a database shows a lack of understanding, creates very little (if any) loyalty and is actually causing more damage than good will due to customers awareness of better ways to communicate.
4. Business synergy for redemption is an excellent idea. We just spoke with one bowling center which uses ‘Auction Dollars’ as a custom widget which we can track separately from gift, rewards, fundraising and other categories. Customers earn these ‘auction dollars’ based on how much they spend or visit along with a variety of contests which increases their bottom line. Once or twice per year, they go out and purchase some very nice gifts which can only be purchased by their customers with their ‘auction dollars.’ Kudos to this group, very forward thinking and when programs like this are combined with ‘hard’ rewards such as cash back to their business models, the customer will be loyal for life, spend more money and frequent much more often all without any advertising expense.

The authors write, “Some observers have argued that the recently passed Card Act and recent changes to overdraft access for debit cards in the United States would reduce the ability of issuers to extend rewards. While mandated reduction in cardholder fees and finance charges may potentially affect the level of rewards, we find that rewards have significant impact on credit card debt especially via substitution from another issuer’s credit card suggesting that rewards are an effective tool to steal customers from a financial institution’s competitors.”

The study shows that the rewards need not be significant to have strong impact on card use: “We find that consumers generally spend more and increase their debt when offered one percent cash-back rewards. The impact of a relatively small reward generates large spending and debt accumulation. On average, each cardholder receives $25 in cash-back rewards during our sample period. We find that average spending increases by $68 per month and average debt increases by over $115 per month in the first quarter after the cash-back reward program starts.”

This again shows that, as we’ve pointed out before, financial institutions can benefit from a broader range of rewards, and that they should “Reward more engagements with customers, not fewer.”

For additional perspective on the study, including information not included in the study itself, check out a PYMNTS.com audio interview with the study’s authors at “How Reward Programs Get Consumers to Switch Cards.”

Editor’s Note:  I know you think I wrote this article since we have been talking about these various issues for years!  Watch for our new whitepaper this weekend, the entire marketing and loyalty landscape is finally catching up and yours for the taking!  Our solutions are far ahead of the vast majority and small merchants are clueless (even the big boys are behind)  The time to capture market share is now, everyone needs what we have and they are now starting to realize they need it!  I guess Bill Gates had this problem when the P.C. was the size of a house, but last time I checked, Mr. Gates is doing just fine. 

With consumers being targeted by marketing communications from all directions at all times, and email inboxes being flooded not only by adverts but also by social media alerts, there is a huge amount of ‘noise’ that marketers must cut through before their message will be heard, according to Ryan Deutsch, vice president of strategic services for StrongMail.

Digital messaging is at the core of every brand’s marketing strategy and, despite the ongoing growth in SMS and social media, email still remains at the centre of the digital customer relationship. In fact, according to some industry analysts, almost three out of four consumers (73%) cite email as their preferred communication channel, and a recent poll of Windows Live Hotmail users found that shopping online, receiving statements and communicating with businesses were the top three reasons for using email. sschroeder This article is copyright 2011 TheWiseMarketer.com).

But, despite of a wealth of knowledge about how email is used by consumers, most studies find that some 90% of all email messages sent are unsolicited commercial messages, or ‘spam’. It therefore seems that, even after years of building email marketing programmes, marketers are still only just scratching the surface of email’s true potential.

As a result, 2011 may well be a year of changes and development when it comes to the use of email in the marketing sector, with the following being StrongMail’s top six predictions for the year:

1. Increasing Investment in Channel
   2011 is likely to be a year of highly sophisticated and intelligent email marketing and as such companies are expected to increase their investment in email marketing providers. There is a big requirement for smarter programmes that can run highly complex campaigns and provide ROI with brands are turning to the channel to deliver this.

   StrongMail’s recent research into marketing trends revealed that 93% of businesses plan to increase or maintain marketing spend in 2011, whilst 65% of businesses plan to increase marketing budgets for email alone. So clearly, brands are aware of what needs to be done and plan to make some big changes.

   It’s hardly surprising that many of them are turning to email marketing providers for support. The channel understands the ad avoidance and engagement problems that companies face and it has the expertise and knowledge to overcome these issues. It is highly likely that a large majority of 2011′s marketing investments will be seen in the adoption of sophisticated platforms to help brands to improve their email marketing campaigns.
    

2. Sophistication Gap
   During 2011 the gap between best in class marketers and those who are reluctant to embrace new techniques will continue to grow. Mass-market campaigns may have worked in the past but the consumer landscape has changed and users are no longer interested in receiving a generic email that doesn’t address their needs and has been sent to 50,000 other recipients. As such, it is increasingly important that marketers include preference-based segmentation, right-time email marketing and personalised messages in their campaigns.

   It is important to ensure that any new processes adopted, extend beyond implementation and include analysisng their success. Unfortunately, most companies are still only tracking basic values. Forrester’s Email Marketing Review (EMR) scores companies on their email tracking and found that across all industries, marketers understand basic, but not advanced, email marketing practices. Out of the 70 campaigns that Forrester reviewed, only two passed, indicating that there is still a long way to go.
    

3. Ad Avoidance
   Consumers have become savvy when it comes to identifying brand adverts that drop into their inboxes. So much so, in fact, that they are often deleted before even being opened. Up to 77% of all emails are not even read.

   This has given rise to new business models like group commerce or flash sales developing in the email channel. Instead of receiving 20 different brand emails, a consumer receives just one centralised email, which lists offers from a number of different brands. This method is proving particularly popular across the pond, where consumers are opting to receive and read these emails in return for big money savings. Many UK companies are also adopting this new way of thinking, especially in the restaurant sector where consumers are being sent vouchers for discounted meals via third party emails and websites.

   The great thing about these models is that, because they are subscriber based, they cut through the mass of irrelevant emails that fill our inboxes and this is a skill that marketers are going to have to perfect if they want to succeed in 2011. Switched-on brands are beginning to see increased value in these types of techniques versus more traditional advertising methods.
    

4. The Growth in Social CRM
   In 2011 brands will start to sit up and take notice of the wealth of unstructured data that social media can offer them. Consumers are engaging with brands, communities and peers all over the web, leaving a vast trail of customer information behind them that can be used by brands to intelligently target their communications.

   Social CRM is a relatively new term in the world of online marketing, but the concept behind it is based on age-old direct marketing principles. It’s about measuring how customers interact with their online communities, not just the brand itself. Companies now have the ability to combine data and intelligence from multiple channels and use it to anticipate a customers’ next move. Through social CRM, marketers can listen to the types of conversations that customers are having about their products and services, learn how they use the social web, engage with their best customers and influence and encourage sharing and brand advocacy.

   By analysing this unstructured data, brands can gain a wider understanding of their best customers and can begin to build strategies that drive lifetime value and improve campaign and marketing performance across all channels.
    

5. Integrated Marketing
   For most marketers, 2011 should be about switching their focus from a few short lived, labour intensive campaigns to a more ongoing and automated approach based on customer activity. Although accurately planning and monitoring the success of a campaign is still essential, brands should be ready to respond quickly to consumer behaviour and trends instead of spending weeks, maybe months, focusing on one pinnacle launch.

   By ensuring that every part of marketing communications is integrated, brands can make sure that customers are engaged and interacting on a regular basis. The focus should be on regular contact and offering the customer an improved brand experience. Integrated marketing communications will ensure consistency of your message, identify customer insights and help you to develop a strategy with the right channels to forge a stronger brand-consumer relationship.
    

6. Engagement
   Intelligent customer engagement is vital in a world of smarter inboxes. The introduction of Google’s Priority Inbox and similar applications, mean that emails no longer drop into a recipients inbox in order of delivery. Instead, they are ranked by importance, meaning that if you are not providing consumers with targeted information, your emails are unlikely to ever be read.

   This is just another example of why brands have to understand their customers. Emails must be targeted and tailored to suit individual preferences to make them feel more personal. The most efficient way of doing this is to combine preference-segmentation, right-time marketing and personal messages with social CRM.

   Frequency must also be addressed. Customers are demanding relevant and timely emails, instead of inboxes full of irrelevant content. Achieving this will become an integral part of email marketing this year to ensure emails rank highly on the scale of inbox importance.

Contrary to popular belief, instead of damaging the effectiveness of email, the rise of social media is actually increasing its use. Consumers still look for emails from the favourite brands alongside notifications of activity on their favourite social networks. Instead of competing, the two channels should work together to drive customer engagement.

As a result, Deutsch argues, investing in your email marketing efforts is now more important than ever, especially as the user-generated content on social networks increases expectations for relevancy, interaction and design.

Consumers are receiving more marketing messages than ever before, which ups the ante for email marketers to get their attention with the right combination of eye-catching layout and data-driven relevance. Investing in these standout trends doesn’t just increase your clicks and conversions; it deepens the customer connection, which ultimately improves interactions across all channels.

Leading brands must therefore learn to create this bond and to utilise the creativity and tools necessary to build relationships and drive brand advocacy. It is through leveraging the data and insights gained from marketing activities to build more relevant conversations, that results can be achieved.

Email has been at the centre of marketing campaigns for years and this trend looks set to continue. Techniques and practices are of course still evolving, but the winners in 2011 will be those brands that embrace changes and make investments to ensure they have the right tools for the job.

Fox Makes Super Bowl Ad History With ‘Rio’ Promo

Twentieth Century Fox will make Super Bowl history this Sunday when a 30-second spot for 3D ton Rio becomes the first ad to air during the game with an embedded code. Embed is tied to app Angry Birds.

our editor recommends

Fox Announces ‘Angry Birds’ Mobile Game Tied to 3D Toon ‘Rio’

Studios are back in force this year in terms of buying up time during the Super Bowl, the most watched event of the year. It’s the first time Fox has plugged a movie during the event since Jumper in 2008.

Rio promo will air during the fourth quarter of the showdown between the Pittsburgh Steelers and Green Bay Packers, which airs on the Fox Broadcasting Network.

During the spot, viewers will be invited to find the frame with the code, which in turns directs them to a special level of Angry Birds, which has entered into a first-of-its kind partnership with Fox. The level will take Angry Birds players to a Rio sweepstakes.

The sweepstakes winner will attend Rio’s world premiere in Rio de Janeiro on March 22. That same day, Fox and Rovio launch the highly anticipated “Angry Birds Rio” app. Film opens April 15.

The Rio Super Bowl spot will be available across the web, including YouTube.

Paramount’s the big buyer this year in terms of the Super Bowl. During the game, it will air spots for J.J. Abrams‘ alien-invasion pic Super 8, the threequel Transformers: Dark of the Moon, Gore Verbinski‘s CGI film Rango and Marvel’s superhero pics Thor and Captain America: The First Avenger.

Disney has bought time during the game for Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, while Universal and DreamWorks’ will plug the Daniel Craig-Harrison Ford sci-fi western Cowboys & Aliens.

1.  The fragmented media to reach customers, it needs to be targeted and relevant.

2.  The shift in power of consumers in determining how and when to engage with companies which is related to #1

There are very few integrated loyalty solutions like ours in the marketplace and it’s a worldwide pursuit.   We will have a new whitepaper ready in the next day or two to help explain.  In the meantime, here you go

by COLLOQUY Staff

One only needed to look at the line-up of presenters to see the evidence. Leaders from PAYBACK, Groupe Aeroplan (owner of the Nectar coalitions in the U.K. and Italy) and LoyaltyOne (which owns AIR MILES in Canada and is a strategic investor in Dotz in Brazil) were all on the podium discussing a variety of trends that will shape the future of loyalty efforts in the Indian market.

In his presentation, Alex Rittweger, CEO of Loyalty Partner Solutions GmbH (owner of the PAYBACK coalitions in Germany and Poland), explored the consumer and sponsor benefits of the coalition model. Given PAYBACK’s investment in Indian coalition i-mint, attendees questioned Rittweger on the ability of the Indian marketplace to support more than one coalition. Rittweger replied, “Given the size and scope of the Indian market, I’m confident that it can support two—maybe even three—coalitions. I can tell you this: Our company intends to be one of them.”

That assessment is clearly shared by other loyalty leaders from developed countries. Stephanie Coyles, Chief Strategy Officer of LoyaltyOne, described how her team has been in dialogue with Indian consumers, Indian companies and other stakeholders for nearly 12 months. “In India, there is a distinct opportunity to leapfrog the start-and-stop efforts of loyalty practitioners in developed nations. Harnessing the power of partnerships is just the starting point. Indian companies can make real strides in leveraging the data and insights of customer loyalty programs—even in the formative stages of engaging the explosion of new middle-class consumers in India.”

Throughout the 4th India Loyalty Summit, other presenters echoed the role that partnerships can play in creating a meaningful value proposition for customers. Suzy Cox, SVP of Carlson Marketing Worldwide, discussed how several CPGs (consumer packaged goods companies) have leveraged partnerships to create profitable and winning programs in North America. On the other hand, ICICI described a different approach to building relationships with their small- and medium-sized business customers. Ms. Ronita Mitra, Head of the Corporate Brand Group for ICICI, described how they’ve leveraged a local network of consultants and subject matter experts to create a resource that their smaller business customers can access to grow their retail and service companies. “Through our CEO Knowledge Series and online SME Toolkit, companies in their formative stages can gain access to the expertise they need,” she said. “Whether that is accounting advice, strategies to manage tax expenses or financing help, ICICI is providing access to expert advice to help these companies take full advantage of the growth opportunities in India.”

According to COLLOQUY’s Hlavinka, companies are struggling with a sustainable way to drive profitable growth throughout the world. “While the exact reasons may vary a bit from region to region, there are two challenges we all share. The first is the fragmentation of media and communications channels to reach customers. The second is the shift in power to the consumer in determining how and when to engage with companies they do business with.” The implications, according to Hlavinka, are quite clear. Enterprise-wide deployment of customer insights in shaping tailored pricing strategies, optimizing merchandise assortments and refining store layouts will be the way that companies can balance revenue growth pressures with the need to ensure that growth is not eroding bottom-line margins.

FULL DISCLOSURE: COLLOQUY, like AIR MILES, is owned by LoyaltyOne, an Alliance Data company.

For more Summit information, consult “Winners of the 4th Annual India Loyalty Awards“—awards were presented Jan. 27, 2011.

BTW:  I have spoken to Qdoba about their program and they acknowledged these mistakes in their previous loyalty program which ran for years.  This is supposed to be the attempt to fix the problems.  If you represent our solutions, you know you are in a good space when we keep seeing Fortune 500 after Fortune 500 create loyalty programs as though their marketing department has yet to graduate from pre-school.   Think I am harsh?  There is no excuse for companies this size to ignore all the independent third party research I send to you which verifies the mistakes they make year after year.  This is supposed to be the fix to the problems which were in existence for years.  What you may not know is that these 100 points are not accumulated with every purchase, there are scores of purchases you can make where points don’t count or you don’t get the credit.  There are still redemption problems as well, you can’t see these mistakes from the article, you can only experience them first hand like I have when you become a member.  Forget the fact that over 80% of customers DON’T WANT points, there are many other issues.  Sure customers want something, that’s why they were happy with something since 90% of business owners offer NOTHING!  Do you think all these companies are clueless or do you think they are not aware of the proper solutions?  What do you think?

Here you go

Qdoba Mexican Grill, known for its wide variety of handcrafted, fresh and innovative Mexican cuisine options, rolled out Qdoba Rewards nationwide today, an enhanced electronic program that shows appreciation for Qdoba’s loyal guests by giving them greater flexibility and opportunities to redeem rewards.

Qdoba’s enhanced rewards program now gives guests the ability to flash a scanable card, key fob or a small sticker that can be placed on any commonly carried object — such as a driver’s license, a credit card or even a tube of lipstick at the register to earn points toward free meals. In addition, the program now allows guests to bank their rewards and use them at a time they choose — like if they decide to treat a group of friends.

“Our guest research found that approximately 73 percent of our current rewards members were happy with our program but wanted more flexibility with it — like being able to bank their points and use them later,” said Chris Bingel, marketing projects manager at Qdoba. “The new Qdoba Rewards gives customers greater choices in how to earn their rewards and greater control over when they can redeem them.”

For each entree purchased in most markets, guests will earn 100 reward points and once 1,000 points are earned, guests will receive one free entree. In addition, guests will receive free food and special offers once they register online on their birthday and on the anniversary of their registration. Guests can also select to sign up to receive additional special offers via e-mail through the program. In addition, guests can bank their rewards for redemption whenever they want.

Qdoba guests are invited to join the Qdoba Rewards program by visiting one of Qdoba’s more than 500 restaurants where they can pick up information and a scanable card, key fob and a small sticker that can be placed on any object. Then, guests need to go online at www.qdoba.com/rewards to complete a quick registration process and immediately begin earning points toward free food and special offers. To earn and redeem rewards, guests simply need to present one of hese items at the register to be scanned.

Rewards points can still be earned even if guests forget their card or sticker. Once guests tell the cashier that they forgot their card or sticker, the cashier will print a code at the bottom of their receipt. They can then enter that code online to redeem points (codes will expire 30 days after being issued).

Qdoba Rewards also incentivizes guests who purchase Qdoba catering. Customers earn one point for every pre-tax dollar spent. Guests can qualify to spend their points on free entrees, catering discounts or Hallmark gift certificates. Catering guests can also redeem points online and bank their rewards as well.

Source: Qdoba Mexican Grill

Papa John’s is one of seven businesses, which advertised during last year’s Super Bowl, but will not be returning this year. Which means, that they’ll be saving $3,000,000 dollars for every 30 seconds of advertising they don’t show during the many hours of Super Bowl TV coverage on February 6. Instead, Papa John’s has created a different form of marketing, which we think will work out better for them in the long run.

The company has a program, Papa Points, where customers can earn points towards free pizza with each online purchase. Once enrolled, customers earn one point for every $5 spent online; when customers accumulate 25 points, they receive a free pizza with their next online pizza purchase. For the Super Bowl, every person who registers at the company’s website and joins Papa Points is eligible to receive a free pizza should the football game between the Green Bay Packers and Pittsburgh Steelers go to overtime. In an article in USA Today, Andrew Varga, Papa John’s marketing chief says, “We’d rather give away millions in free pizzas than spend millions on a spot.”

The company estimates they could have to deliver 100,000 pizzas should the tie at the end of regulation happen.

There’s little downside to this for Papa John’s considering the very small chance of the game ending in a tie and the upside for is huge. Think of the publicity they’re getting from this marketing campaign, and think of the data they’ll gather from 100,000 new customers to whom they can begin to market on February 7. The question will of course be, are the people signing up going to become “loyal program members” or just “members of the loyalty program” hoping for that one in a million chance at a free pizza.

All we know is that this could lead the many people rooting for a tie (or, in the case of bitter Patriots fans everywhere, both teams to lose). There hasn’t been this much excitement since Taco Bell offered a free taco to America for the first stolen base in the World Series. Thanks Jacoby Ellsbury!

For more on the difference between freebies, gifts and rewards, read Bill Brohaugh’s article, “Free Associatation”, then please volunteer to do his dishes.

by Bryan Pearson

Email to a Friend
Groupon’s decision to turn down Google’s $6 billion acquisition offer was one of the more interesting business stories of 2010. It certainly raised many eyebrows and got folks wondering if the giant e-coupon company known for its daily deals could sustain its phenomenal growth particularly. with new competitors emerging every day.

This news got us, as operators of North America’s largest coalition loyalty program—the AIR MILES Reward Program—thinking about the social couponing model and the role loyalty marketing can play in ensuring the established players such as Groupon maintain and grow market share while helping the start-ups create a point of differentiation.

First consider Groupon’s story. They’ve stood apart by maintaining their vast database with such eloquence—and irreverence—that no single competitor has yet to serve as a serious threat. But with so many small social coupon companies emerging daily, expect consolidation—and with that will come scale and strength.

To continue to stand apart and foster loyalty, Groupon needs to do the following three things well:

      Woo Them: Groupon should continually recognize the consumer’s relationship with the service, and demonstrate that this engagement is as important to Groupon as its carefully selected offers are to consumers. Personalized thank-you notes go a long way, for instance.

      Wow Them: Groupon should lavish its loyal followers with the unexpected—a free Groupon “pass” for a Groupon offer, for example, or an accumulation of points that can be redeemed toward future Groupons.

      Win Them: Groupon has the data and it has the mass not only to identify its most profitable consumers, but also what motivates them. And Groupon is asking some members to fill out additional short surveys to get a better picture of each of them. These pictures can be used to better tailor offers, get more buy-in, and contribute to an added sense of a partnership.

Groupon has the advantage of already knowing much about us as consumers. It reportedly counts north of 40 million members in more than 300 markets globally. About 19 million of these subscribers live in North America, according to a recent report in Advertising Age, and Groupon knows the name, age and gender, residence, purchases preferences and payment methods of each. It also knows that all its members are highly desirable consumers—mostly college-educated, 18 to 34 years old, with two-thirds making $50,000 to $100,000 a year.

It only makes sense that Groupon is testing a loyalty plan. In the test, members automatically earn points, called “G’s,” which can be used toward free Groupon coupons. Top members, or frequent users, also can earn invitations to special events. (Separately, Groupon also offers $10 in “Groupon Bucks,” to members who refer a friend.)

By converting that consumer mileage into miles, or points, or some kind of reward, not only will Groupon benefit by learning more from its members, but they will also benefit by receiving richer, more relevant offers.

1. Issue cash back rewards instead of points. This is a no-brainer and we have written on this topic numerous times. The article references simplicity and it’s exactly what customers have requested. I just called United to find out about my points based mileage program and it took 30 minutes and one supervisor to try and figure it out and I still don’t know if I have a one way ticket to paradise or half a round trip to Tucson.
   
   
2. Partner with companies who service retail locations, let’s use Bowling Rewards as an illustration although the examples are numerous. Southwest could do this with any one bowling center to test ROI and customer response. Of course I have already surveyed 100s of customers and they have already indicated this type of strategy would be a key factor in choosing an airline, but they need to find this out for themselves. Either way, this strategy does not need to be industry wide, it can be with one bowling center, one restaurant, one retail outlet and it’s wide open for sponsorship.
   
   We would brand every card with Southwest Airlines logo, block out all the other airlines by contract and let people earn Southwest Loyalty Dollars based on spending inside the bowling center. We might even create Southwest Airlines pins and have people earn $5.00 towards any Southwest Ticket when they throw a strike with a Southwest Airlines headpin. We might even have Pepsi add special rewards based on buying Pepsi and have the two companies work together to drive spending back and forth. 1000s of bowlers would end up having small balances such as $20.00 – $75.00 (maybe more based on spending) which can only be spent on Southwest Airlines. They might even run special promotions to redeem Bowling Dollars towards Southwest tickets and offer an incentive to certain areas, but the ideas like this are numerous, easy to implement and exclusive to Southwest. When selected PBA members with Southwest logos win tournaments, people earn balances towards tickets and we now have a fantasy Southwest bowling experience like the NFL. Throw in a fundraising component where local churches and schools would be funded based on Southwest purchases and they would move millions of people to their brand who would fell much better about flying and making a real difference.
   
   
   
3. Other partnerships can be developed, we can even create a Southwest Rewards Card which can be used inside of 1000s of locations for custom rewards to that location with our one card technology. I won’t go into all the details, but big companies who have millions of dollars vested in rewards and loyalty programs are virtually clueless as to how to structure the proper incentives and offers. When the biggest companies and the brightest minds struggle with loyalty implementation and capabilities, you can see the opportunities ahead of you when you represent our solutions with common sense offers backed by mounds of research.

The Fork in the Road

Filed Under (Airlines, Breaking News, Travel) by Randy Petersen Posted on 01-19-2011

The recent announcement of an updated frequent-flyer program from Southwest Airlines seems to be a bit like that proverbial fork in the road–which path to take?

Two key factors in the decision for this new program appear to have been:

• to design something that could resonate with the business traveler, a breed of traveler that while Southwest has its share in select markets, they haven’t been able to win over in the share of wallet
• given that Bags Fly Free, Southwest certainly understands that while they can move some business over from other carriers, it may not always equal what they might have gained by being like the others and taking a slice of the anticipated hundreds of millions of dollars that come from these sorts of ancillary fees.

So, where else are some revenue models that could aide in adding to ongoing financial success of Southwest Airlines? That’s right, the untapped model of frequent-flyer programs. In doing so, however, Southwest needed to break the current barrier of an inflexible currency—the credit system. Partners and even Southwest Airlines were unable to bundle credits in a form which could be nibbled up. By adapting to the new “points” system, they now have a currency that can be understood and sold as part of their brand. It’s immediately obvious that the single change that is most overlooked is that members will now be able to purchase points. The check-in counter for airlines certainly has a check-out line for point purchases and when Gary Kelly, the CEO of Southwest Airlines, proclaimed that this change could result in a growth of hundreds of millions of dollars of new revenue for Southwest Airlines, I understood that declaration better than most if not all the others.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the “forum.” In this new change for Southwest Airlines, they did something they’ve never done before, and that is they became unoriginal. Throughout most of the legend of Southwest Airlines, they’ve created a model like no other, introducing everything that is Southwest Airlines as original and during this time, became the most copied airline in the world. But no matter how the wizards at Love Field tried, there was no path for originality when it comes to creating Rapid Rewards 2.0. After nearly 30 years, the age-old observation of “been there, done that” is alarmingly true.

While the current program will certainly be compared to U.S. competitors JetBlue and Virgin America, both those programs now appear much simpler than the new Rapid Rewards, which is exactly what Southwest Airlines has always been. There is some irony that in fact Southwest Airlines has borrowed from the past and from one of their nemeses—America West FlightFUND. Remember the days when these two airlines were absolute in their direct competiveness as low-cost carriers? And there was reason for the name of America West’s frequent-flyer program at the time FlightFUND. It was because the entire program was fare-based and offered international awards as well. Members earned FlightFUND dollars based on three different fare classes: B or Y (like Business Select fares), K fares (like Anytime fares) and Q, M or V fares (like Wanna Get Away fares). Members could redeem their FlightFUND dollars on Pan Am or Singapore Airlines but could not earn FlightFUND dollars when flying those two airlines.

Twenty years ago, it was highly unlikely than anyone could have imagined the impact that FlightFUND has today. The idea of tying loyalty programs to revenue spent and redeemed was very foreign back then, and faced with the competiveness of mileage-based systems, America West opted to go and follow the main currency—miles. Today, programs far and wide like Air New Zealand, Virgin Blue, Virgin America, JetBlue and now Southwest Airlines have that frequent-flyer program to thank, at least for being different. And while FlightFUND did go on to be more alike than different, it’s really too early to tell right now if being as different as being fare-based is the right call. It makes sense for the airlines who have adopted the model, but there is no empirical research yet that shows it takes or builds market share from other mileage-based carriers.

So while the next firmly established elite levels for Rapid Rewards 2.0 are a positive start for this program in its quest for the business traveler, there’s still something that suggests that it’s going to take more than this to move that needle farther from empty to full. I have no doubt that this program will be successful with its financial goals for Southwest and that accounts for much in this new program. But there’s still plenty that will keep the elite business traveler glued to their elite perks, lifetime Gold and Platinum and London and Hawaii all in the same award chart from straying too far. And with the economy picking back up, it really is too bad that this program couldn’t have come at a better time—when the economy was tanking, rather than when it is improving. So, whether it is Rapid Rewards 1.0 or 2.0, it remains one of my favorite airlines and frequent-flyer programs to track, but I just wish that there was something more original in this new program that would have made it more than being new for Southwest Airlines—but as even Southwest Airlines have found, frequent flyer programs can be the tail that wags the dog.

COLLOQUY Editorial Advisory Board Member—Randy Petersen is Editor/Publisher of InsideFlyer magazine and Founder of FlyerTalk.com.

1. BR Blue River Dealership Sample Letter
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3. rip card w card

Others, however, have recognised that the real benefit of a loyalty programme is not necessarily felt first by the customer, and that it is the merchant that gains the necessary insight (from detailed analysis of its loyalty programme and transactional data, for example) to be able to improve the way it communicates with and deals with its customers. The customer is actually the secondary (but still the most important) recipient of the benefits of a true loyalty programme.

To say that a loyalty programme is not useful, or is a waste of marketing budget, is to have misunderstood the real purpose of the programme. Rather than offering a simplistic discount or rebate programme, a real loyalty programme offers the customer any number of incentives to allow the programme operator to collect accurate and useful data about their lifestyle, purchase choices, motivations, interests, circumstances, and in many cases even about their household and immediate family.

The reason for gathering this data is not – as a very small minority of consumers seem to fear – to create some kind of ‘Big Brother’ database of peoples’ personal habits, but to gain practical insights into ways in which the merchant could serve each customer more effectively, more easily, and more satisfyingly.

But should you adopt a single-operator model or a coalition model? There are arguments for both, but coalitions (multi-partner programmes) have many benefits, financially, operationally, and in terms of consumer perception.

With a coalition, the programme management is independent of any of the partners. The partners have contracts with the operators of the programme to issue and/or redeem the currency of the programme, and only have access to data harvested by the programme through its operator. Individual partners don’t have direct access to other partners’ data held in the programme, although the operators of the programme will usually market to other partners’ customers on behalf of another member. For example, a supermarket member could ask for mailings to be sent to the customers (or just certain segments of the customers) of a fuel retailer partner in an area where a new supermarket is being opened.

There are several essential goals that a coalition programme must achieve if it’s going to succeed, and why they’re so important. For example:

1. Rapid market penetration;

2. Delivery of attractive rewards;

3. Being the first in the market;

4. Building communication channels.

The advantages, disadvantages and structural needs of coalition programmes (compared to a non-partnered loyalty programme) are complex, and include:

· Greater interest in the programme;
· Members have fewer cards to carry;
· Members earn points more quickly;
· A greater variety of rewards;
· Concentrated, coherent promotions;
· Time saved in development;
· Lower costs of development;
· Database run by professionals;
· Sector exclusivity;
· Coalition marketing campaigns;
· Higher penetration rates;
· Real cost benefits of coalition.

Our latest report ‘The Loyalty Guide 4′ covers all of this in detail, with over 1,000 pages of solid loyalty marketing data, practice, and theory – everything you need to know in one global report. It explains customer loyalty and engagement, metrics, best practices, concepts, technologies, models and the latest tools and innovations. It’s packed with detailed case studies, research, market sizes, forecasts, models, charts, illustrations, and materials to support new initiatives, presentations and proposals.

Key marketing budget trends for 2011

Tuesday January 4, 2011

Half of businesses plan to increase their marketing budgets in 2011, and another 43% plan to maintain current levels, while only 7% plan to decrease marketing budgets, according to the ’2011 Marketing Trends’ survey by StrongMail.

Conducted in November 2010 and examining the marketing budget plans of 925 global business leaders, the survey’s respondents felt that “a lack of resources or staff” would be the biggest email marketing challenge for 2011, followed by “integration with customer data” and “email deliverability”. sschroeder This article is copyright 2011 TheWiseMarketer.com).

Email marketing (65%) and social media (57%) were reported to be the top areas of marketing investment for 2011, followed by online search (41%).

Direct mail (36%) and trade shows/events (33%) were the top targets for decreased spending, although this is still a marked improvement over the 2010 survey, which found marketers reducing spend in these areas by 42% and 44% respectively.

But the most important email marketing initiatives for 2011 were cited as:

1. Increasing subscriber engagement (52%);
    
2. Improving segmentation and targeting (49%);
    
3. Integrating social media and email marketing (43%). Interestingly, 71% have already integrated email and social marketing, or had plans to do so during 2011.

Among social media initiatives, Facebook was named as the biggest priority (35%), followed by viral/referral marketing programmes (22%). Marketing via Twitter and implementing social media management technology tied for third place (21%).

Awareness building (63%) has become the primary goal for social media marketing initiatives, followed by loyalty member acquisition (54%) and reaching new audiences (42%).

As is the case with any new channel, social media marketing is currently seen as being the least effective at generating new leads and revenue.

“As marketers head into 2011, they are focused on increasing subscriber engagement through increased relevance and automating lifecycle communications,” said Ryan Deutsch, vice president of strategic services for StrongMail.

The full details of the survey data have been made available for free download from StrongMail’s web site – click here (1.48Mb PDF document; no registration needed).

The Seven Biggest Mistakes that Independent Restaurant Owners Make

1. Trying To Become Branded… Let me be the first to tell you.. “Forget it!”…  You can’t take “branding” to the bank… only cash!  Second, you don’t have enough money in your budget!   Leave the branding to Coca-Cola, McDonald’s, Ford and all the other big boys.
2. Not Having A Customer List… Get everyone’s name, address, birthday and email address that walks into your restaurant!  No customer list – No way to contact them when you need an immediate influx of cash!
3. No System In Place…  that attracts and acquires new customers… not just a hit and miss marketing system.
4. Thinking That All Customers Are Created Equal… They’re not… believe it!  In fact, some should be black-balled from your restaurant!
5. Having Boring Marketing… or worse yet, just following what others are doing.  Do something DIFFERENT… stand out in the crowd!
6. Not Measuring How Effective Your Marketing Is… What’s your ROI (return on investment)?  What did it Cost you to bring that new customer through the door??
7. No Exit Strategy… Not knowing exactly how you will sell and get out of the business.  Big Hint…  You need a in-house customer list to make your business worth more.

1.  Business Synergy:  Bowling Centers, Restaurants, Car Washes, Cleaners (you name it) take their gift and rewards card loaded with free games of bowling, free appetizers, $5.00 in rewards, (any type of value) and offer their card to surrounding business owners to hand out to THEIR customers as a thank you for coming in.   Let other business owners do all the work for you and we have some added capabilities to track business synergy that other programs are unable to do.   No advertising, no discounting,

2009 Customer Loyalty Research Highlights

Research Articles:

1.   04/01/2009 TNS Consumer Credit Card Research Firm, Joe Hagan Senior V.P. of Financial Services and Data Research.
   
   Findings:
   1. Cash Back Rewards are preferred by over 70% of the population.
   2. Rewards Cards are ‘top of the wallet’ cards and are viewed very favorably by customers.
   3. Higher spending and increased frequency occurred across every demographic and every business model.   There was not one exception.  Poorly designed programs still offered significant ROI but when simplicity and flexibility were emphasized, the program performed far better.
   4. 77% of consumers indicated they are searching for ‘non-debt’ related rewards programs with personal offerings based on visitation and spending.  Cause marketing was a close second place with Green benefits third.  Green marketing is projected to increase substantially in 2010 but must be tied to the first two which are still paramount in customer’s minds.

    

2. Denny’s restaurant Super Bowl promotion as reported by Ad Age.
   
   Findings:
   1. Customer good will was much higher than expected.
   2. Customers requested more companies to offer similar benefits in return for increased loyalty
   3. 80% of customers indicated they would try and visit the brand more often
   4. Bigger benefits were verbalized by customer such as, ‘good for America’, ‘good for my family’ , ‘shows lack of corporate greed’.
3. 04/01/2009 UPromise press release with Bank of America – Restaurant Association 3/31/2009
   
   Findings:
   1. Business synergy strategies increased revenue for all parties involved. 
   2. One car wash simply handed out FREE APPETIZER gift cards (from a local restaurant) as a thank you to their customers which resulted in 53 new customers to the restaurant who had previously never visited that restaurant.  This same restaurant spent $1000s of dollars the previous year with traditional media advertising and could only account for 79 new customers the entire year.  Their business synergy model produced more in one month than almost the entire year’s budget previously. 

 

4. 03/24/2009 Word of Mouth Customer Research Dr. Laura Brooks, V.P. of Consulting for Satmetrix Customer Data Research Firm.
   
   Findings:
   1. Word of Mouth ‘promoters’ of a business was worth $1700.00 per each customer and accounted for over 50% of new customer acquisitions for the retail industry on average.
   2. Retailers with a rewards program showed W.O.M. promoters were 70% more likely to refer a business than one without a rewards program.
   3. A company’s ability to produce more word of mouth referrals will have a substantial impact on their bottom line.
5. /16/2009 Wise Marketer Press Release on data findings by Torex Inc.
   
   Findings:
   1. The future of customer loyalty will involve cash back rewards, email and SMS solutions in a unified and organized fashion.
   2. Only 16% of businesses indicated they are using data and email as effectively as they should
   3. Only 8% of business indicated they are using text messaging to deliver value
   4. Over 71% of consumers indicated a willingness to receive text messages from retailers if cash back rewards or free offers were a result.
   5. Over 89% of customers said they preferred to be notified by permission based email or SMS about special offers or balance inquiries of their rewards.
   6. Rewards programs were seen as the #1 reason to increase frequency as long as they contained personalized value and simple redemption options. 
   7. Permission based email produced the highest ROI with the lowest cost of any form of advertising by a substantial margin.  (see below)
6. 3/10/2009 Epsilon Inc. Research Firm…Permission Based Email
   
   Findings:
   1. 56% of customers said they were more likely to purchase from a company who utilized permission based email to keep them abreast of offers and specials.
   2. 52% of customers had a ‘more favorable’ view of the brand if the utilized permission based email.
   3. 48% of customers said they would be more loyal to a brand using permission based email.
   4. 87% prefer to learn about specials and offerings via permission based email.
   5. 63% want personal content based on spending and visitation.
   6. 88% have downloaded coupons from permission based campaigns.
   7. 79% have ‘clicked through’ to a website to learn more.
   8. 75% have purchased a product or visited a retailer as the sole result of permission based email.
   9. 60% tried a product or offering for the FIRST time.
   10. 55% forwarded the email or shared the offering with a friend.
   11. 33% saved the URL in their favorites section.

    
   ** Texting options combined with email or in lieu of email are expected to have even greater results.

7. 02/21/2009 Harris Poll Interactive Research Firm
   
   Findings:
   1. 87% of U.S. adults would find a recognition and rewards program ‘very appealing’ with 79% of the 87% indicating they preferred cash back rewards as the option of choice.
8. Business Week 02/02/2009
   
   Findings:
   1. Tax advantages of rewards programs are outstanding for any size business
   2. Certain States allow non-redeemed rewards to be expensed and deducted.
   3. Redeemed rewards an expense and donated rewards can often be deducted by the consumer or the business owner.
   4. The more flexible the rewards program, the MORE tax advantages.
   5. Properly executed rewards programs are the single most important program for a business to implement.
9. Packaged Facts Inc. (White Paper) African Americans – Credit, Debit, and Pre-Paid card users – Overlooked and Under Valued.
   
   Findings:
   1. African Americans have been tremendously overlooked in regards to rewards programs resulting in a huge opportunity for small business to benefit.
   2. African American incomes are the fastest rising demographic.
   3. The aggregate income of the top 25% is 116 billion.
   4. African American home ownership increased by over 1/3 during the last decade.
   5. African American’s carry fewer cards in their wallet than any other ethnic group.  They strongly prefer non-debt or non-credit card solutions rewards programs but have been completely overlooked.
   6. Customize or personalized offers to this demographic with cause marketing strategies could result in brand dominance for years to come.
10.  London, England – Business Economic Loyalty Summit of 2009 – Compilation of Fortune 500 companies and top executives from around the world.
    
    Findings: 

    Top 5 Most Important Aspects of a Customer Loyalty Program – Over 80% of CEO’s indicated their top objective for 2010 and beyond was a properly executed data and rewards program tied to SMS and permission based email. 

    1. A unique and relevant reward that’s EASILY attained with every visit or purchase.
    2. A rewards currency that is EASILY understood.
    3. Several EASY ways to earn additional rewards beyond higher spending
    4. No restrictions, expiration dates, or fees tied to rewards.
    5. A simple, fast, and flexible redemption process at the point of sale.

 

11. Digital Media Consulting Firm Brothers Einstein on Brand Advertising
    
    Findings:
    1. Brand awareness and advertising strategies are ‘upside down’.  Brands must tie in emotional events at the time of the transaction to develop relevant awareness and value.
    2. The brand must ‘intrude’ on the customer’s life and purchase behavior in some fashion.
    3. ROI must be quantified.

 

12. CitiGroup 2005-2009 Decade in Review – 5 year study as reported by Source Media in their white paper, ATM – DEBIT – & Pre-paid forum in Chandler, AZ.
    
    Findings:
    1. Customer attrition was reduced 50% by implementing a thank you based rewards program tied to every credit or debit transaction. 

 

13. Smart Money Research – National Retail Foundation study headed up by Chairman James Fisher – Marketing Professor, St. Louis University.
    
    Findings:

    “Compared to the expense required to attract new customers with advertisements or discounting, loyalty programs have shown to be a life saver for business owners across every market segment.  Rewards programs are not only inexpensive to initiate, but they produce far greater results than their more expensive alternatives.  The lifetime value of a customer is in the $1000s of dollars for even a low ticket retailer such as Pizza Hut or Dominoes.  Developing a customer loyalty strategy is paramount for success in this highly competitive retail environment.”

14. Shaju Nair, Director of Global Customer Research IBS International.  How to Recession Proof a Loyalty Program.
    
    Findings:
    1. Paper forms or subscription fees are huge deterrents to participation.
    2. Extra incentives and higher rewards are paramount during a recession.
    3. Waiting for a reward is perceived by most consumers as the ‘the most aggravating’ part of a loyalty program, they despise it!  Keeping track of transactions, daily reviewing of balances, constant calculations of points and what they mean, turns a loyalty program into a NEGATIVE!
    4. Benefits must be INSTANT, flexible and simple.
    5. Two way communications via email or text as a reminder of balances is ideal.
    6. A system must be in place to reward more loyal customers more-so than casual customers.

     

Important Concepts to Communicate:

7 Highly Successful Habits of Business Owners

1. Must reward customers for spending money with cash back being most preferred.
2. Never allow any customer to leave without a full color ad in their wallet with a balance.
3. Build a database without paper forms.
4. Thank customers for coming in and remind them of their balance and cementing benefits.
5. Acquire new customers with W.O.M. strategies.
6. Communicate with customers back and forth with SMS and email.
7. Develop a fundraising or ‘cause’ marketing strategy tied to every transaction.

Research Statistics

1. 67% of customers would be influenced to visit more often if they received 10% cash back on their bill.
2. Big store chains have seen visits increase by 93% with 65% increase in incremental sales.
3. A working database nearly doubles the value of a business.
4. Repeat customers average 33% more spending and are 2x more likely to refer new customers.
5. Loyal customers shield a business from competitive and economic assault.
6. 82% of rewards customers have referred new customers.
7. 90% of customers said they would be influenced to switch brands which offered a rewards program.
8. 75% want instant cash back to spend on anything within the business.

 
Key Thoughts for Business Owners

Mr. Business Owner:   How would it feel to be married and yet your spouse never listened to you?  In addition to never listening he/she would

1. Forget your name and if and when you came home on certain days.
2. Forgot your birthday and other important days like anniversary.
3. He/she never initiated any type of conversation on top of not listening when conversation was started.
4. Whenever a point needed to be made he/she took out an ad in a paper rather than talk to you direct and the ad was in a paper you did not even read.

 
How long would you stay married?  As silly as the illustration above sounds, this is the way most business owners are treating their customers.  Customers have spoken with the research above but many business owners are not listening, fail to communicate, and still use traditional advertising to initiate interaction.

How much better and stronger would the relationship be if we simply listened and implemented what customers are asking for?  The above research is literally a letter from our customers asking us to listen to their concerns so they can frequent our business more often, spend more money, and refer others.

Which is worse?

A.  Knowing the contents of this letter and not listening?

B   Not knowing the contents of this letter?

Increased business and profitability (with lower costs) is as simple as finding the proper loyalty and rewards program which fulfills the needs and requests of the boss, that being your customer.

 Entertainment Center General Overview

Gift Card Bonus #1 http://screencast.com/t/3TPUfTBNqSYj

Gift Card Bonus #2 http://screencast.com/t/tm6owgMca7

Gift Card Bonus #3 http://screencast.com/t/wI1bjEqmfm

72% of gift card users become regular customers Monday December 27, 2010 For the 2010 holiday shopping season, business owners had the benefit of knowing that every gift card sold represented not only one future sale, but a potential lifetime customer as well, according to research by Harris Interactive, commissioned by Givex. When surveyed, more than two out of five American consumers (41%) said they had tried a retail store, restaurant or hotel for the first time because they received a branded gift card. Furthermore, many of these first-time customers had also become repeat customers as a result, with 72% of them saying they had returned to the same business afterward. sschroeder This article is copyright 2010 TheWiseMarketer.com). The study evaluated consumers’ responses to many of the strategies employed by businesses to retain them. For example, once a new customer is acquired, the journey to customer retention requires building a relationship with them with relevant communication and appealing rewards. But different customers demand different treatment. For example, many merchants are discovering that discounts do not have the universal appeal they had hoped for. While consumers aged 35-64 overwhelmingly preferred discounts as a reward (46%), Americans in the 18-34 category were more divided between discounts (32%), small instant rewards (17%) and large rewards, such as free trips (18%). Consequently, the most successful rewards programmes could be said to be those that recognise the different needs of customers. During the recent tough economic climate, many businesses saw the benefits of having previously invested in gift card and loyalty reward programmes, having already built up a larger customer base to communicate with and to encourage repeat business. However, they also realised, as the survey showed, the importance of customizing these incentives, and personalising communications to truly maximise their effect. In other words, Givex argues, the more that marketers focus on how they are acquiring new customers and learning about their specific needs, the stronger they are during slow economic periods and the faster they can grow under normal trading conditions. For additional information: ·  Visit Givex at http://www.givex.com ·  Visit Harris Interactive at http://www.harrisinteractive.com

better than the below with our solutions.  

1.  Instead of discounting she issues gift certificates instead 2.  She makes people join her restaurant to use the rewards 3.  She pays attention to customer service 4.  Only people who have activated their account (or joined the egghead club, same thing) get to use their rewards

5   One month they offered triple points to their Platinum club members to

use during slower time periods.  (We once told the governing body of bowling with 3 million members how to do this with their membership program and they could not grasp it)  The results were overwhelming and business boomed during normally slower periods.  We have a proprietary tiered membership program we can share with you upon request.

These people are considered brilliant marketers for simply employing the basics and a points based program is not nearly as effective as cash back.

For all of you representing our solutions to retailers like restaurants, use this story below and show them a much superior method we have been teaching for years.

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From RestaurantOwner.com – December 28, 2010
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Marketing Prowess Isn’t An Option Any More

One trend we’ve noticed over the past several years is that our most successful RO.com members are not only highly competent operators, they have also become very skilled marketers.

During a time when many restaurants have been scaling back or even shutting down, Misty Young’s SqueezeIn is about to triple in size from one restaurant to three. The original SqueezeIn in Truckee, CA is not quite 5 feet wide and 62 feet deep (hence, the name “SqueezeIn”). With just 13 indoor tables they manage to serve over 65,000 meals a year, breakfast and lunch only.

Misty is super passionate about operations and customer service but these days she spends most of her time on marketing and business is booming because of it.

Here’s a brilliant marketing tip that I learned while talking to Misty a few weeks ago. Whenever they offer some type of coupon or special deal they ONLY make it available to members of their Egghead Club.

For example, one month they offered triple dining points to their very best customers, they call their “Platinum” members. The offer was limited to weekdays only and the response was overwhelming.

Their customers got a good deal and the restaurant was super busy on typically slower days.

At SqueezeIn they never use the word “coupon,” it’s a GIFT CERTIFICATE. Slightly different words but huge difference in perceived value. Another valuable point, whenever SqueezeIn gives out gift certificates, the person MUST join their Egghead Club to use it.

SqueezeIn currently has over 14,000 Egghead Club members and it’s the foundation of most of their marketing efforts.

I had the opportunity to meet Misty and her husband, Gary, at a Marketing Boot Camp a few years ago. To learn many of the same marketing concepts that Misty uses at SqueezeIn, plan on attending the upcoming Marketing Webinar discussed below.

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Celebrate The New Year With A Sales And Profit Explosion!

The industry’s leading marketing consultant is going to join us on a webinar January 11 and 12th to share Proven Restaurant Marketing Strategies that are working during these challenging economic times. He’ll present real case studies of what successful RO.com members have done recently to dramatically increase their sales and profit and update us on what online strategies are working as well. 

Register at https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/320025394.

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Featured Articles & Resources at RestaurantOwner.com
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DOWNLOAD: #Foursquare Restaurant 2.0 Edition

Do you need to pay attention to the social media buzz, or is it just a passing fad? It’s catching on phenomenally among the ”

plugged in”, especially the new wave of tech-savvy phone users.

Check out potential customers “checking-in” on Foursquare, the new localized social media platform people in the know are calling “the next Twitter” and see what it could do for your restaurant.

Click here to access:

<http://www.restaurantowner.com/public/1384.cfm>

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DOWNLOAD: Annual Restaurant Budget Worksheets

How will your restaurant perform in 2011? Studies show that companies who prepare annual operating budgets are more successful than those who don’t. Use this budget worksheet to quickly prepare your annual financial plan to give you and your staff specific, measurable goals throughout the coming year.

Click here to access:

<http://www.restaurantowner.com/public/1032.cfm>

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SCREENCAST: Marketing Best Practice – Scratch Ticket Promotion

Listen as veteran operator Peter Troutman describes, his variation of the ‘secret envelope’ promotion that’s resulted in a 30%+ year to year sales increase in one of his slowest months.

Learn in detail what he does, his results, costs, prizes, changes he’s made over the years, and more.

Click here to access:

<http://www.restaurantowner.com/members/1070.cfm> ================================================================

Have a profitable week!

Jim Laube & Joe Erickson

If you’re wondering what it’s like to be a RestaurantOwner.com member, see what our members are saying . . .

http://www.restaurantowner.com/member-comments.htm

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1. Communicating a value prop when the customer is near or inside of a location where the product is being sold is considered the #1 attraction to Pepsi. Ten blocks or closer is considered outstanding, if the customer were inside a facility where the brand can be purchased, that would be the holy grail.

2. If the brand can use a loyalty strategy to get customers from one location (not connected to their brand) to another location (where the brand is sold) and then track the success of whether the incentive worked is a huge value prop to a brand.

3. Immediate feedback or real time tracking of what customers are doing is considered invaluable.

4. If there is any way to track customer demographics such as age and gender of campaigns or what age group or gender purchased more of a brand within a selected retailer, this is invaluable data to a brand.

5. Data gathered which can show the top 100 types of customers who purchase the brand, who is responding to the offer and how often and how much do they spend associated with the activity is why brands are paying millions to companies like Foursquare.

6. Here is another direct quote from the article “Imagine the amount of data we now have in order to make better marketing decisions, in order to make loyalty decisions, about our customers, as opposed to the paper punch cards we had before that didn’t do anything for us,” said B. J. Emerson, social technology officer for Tasti-D-Lite.

   Striking a deal direct with the customer is another huge opportunity, here is the direct quote The location-based opportunity is particularly big for consumer packaged goods brands like Pepsi. Those brands market their product heavily, but they depend on drugstores or restaurants to actually get consumers into stores. With Foursquare and apps that track consumers’ locations, Pepsi can strike a deal directly with the consumer.

   Programs that work with customers who visit a selected store or retailer multiple times is especially desirous in tracking their purchase behavior, here is a direct quote.. “The next generation of that is potentially understanding a little bit more about loyalty as well,” Mr. Walker said. “We’re driving people to different stores. What about people who visit the same store over and over?”

   Programs that offer incentives from the participating location or retailer to entice brand purchases is especially appealing, here is the direct quote.. The app shows the participating Pepsi-serving restaurants on a map, includes menus for them, and allows consumers to sign in to those locations (that sign-in is done separately from a Foursquare check-in). Once they do, they accumulate points toward song downloads. The restaurants can layer in offers, too — Shakey’s is giving $3 off a large pizza for people who show the Pepsi Loot app, for instance.

7. Last but not least, a program which offers relevant rewards to increase frequency and drive purchases to the brand is considered the holy grail by many brands such as Pepsi.

   Linking Customer Loyalty With Social Networking

   By STEPHANIE CLIFFORD

   Published: April 28, 2010Close

   1. Linkedin
   2. Digg
   3. Facebook
   4. Mixx
   5. MySpace
   6. Yahoo! Buzz
   7. Permalink

   PEPSICO wants to sell its customers sodas whether they are near a grocery store, a restaurant or a gas station. With a new partnership that weaves its loyalty program into the location-based network Foursquare, PepsiCo gets a live notification when its customers are close to those sites, and can present offers that get them into the stores.

   Enlarge This Image

   <image001.jpg>

   The Pepsi Loot app for the iPhone is intended to drive traffic to restaurants that serve Pepsi products.

   Related

   · Times Topic: Cellphones

   “Being able to drive foot traffic into our restaurant partners and our retail partners is a huge opportunity, because that’s where our product is sold,” said B. Bonin Bough, director of social and emerging media for PepsiCo. “Ten blocks mean a lot.”

   Through smartphones that signal someone’s location, stores and brands like Starbucks, Tasti-D-Lite, Macy’s and Pepsi are getting live information about when and where people are shopping. Some companies are turning Foursquare into a virtual loyalty-card program, while others are creating their own location applications, offering customers discounts or other rewards for shopping.

   “It gives us immediate feedback for what’s going on in the marketplace,” said Margery Schelling, chief marketing officer of PepsiCo Foodservice. “That’s invaluable.”

   A phone is a simple replacement for a wallet stuffed with loyalty cards, but the real appeal for stores is in the location information provided by Foursquare and other location-based applications. Retailers can track when customers actually enter their stores. Such data can be used to learn things about store traffic, such as when men visit versus women. And it’s easier to note when the most loyal customers visit.

   “If you check into work, then you leave work, you check into a bank and then you check into a store, that’s a behavior that, in aggregate, we might use to transform the way we market to you in the offline world,” Mr. Bough said. “We might see dayparts that are more likely for you to check out of some place and go to the store, and we might do advertising during that specific daypart in that specific place.”

   Because consumers are electing to broadcast their location and signing up for these services, the privacy concerns aren’t enormous, another plus for marketers.

   While Foursquare has a relatively small user base of about one million, the tactics companies are experimenting with could be extended to customers with a GPS-enabled smartphone, the companies say. Pepsi, in addition to beginning a Foursquare program, is also introducing a location-based iPhone application called Pepsi Loot through which customers can collect points toward free music downloads.

   “We believe it’s a real, new opportunity to transform loyalty programs in a way that we haven’t done before,” Mr. Bough said.

   Foursquare is sort of a social application meets game. Its members press a button upon arriving at various locations to “check in,” letting them accumulate points — they compete to be “mayor” of a certain site, or the person with the most check-ins at that site, and can unlock badges for completing certain activities. The designer Marc Jacobs, for instance, gave tickets to his fashion show to four people who unlocked a Marc Jacobs shopping badge. Members can also direct Foursquare to list nearby restaurants, banks or grocery stores, and see where their Foursquare pals are at that moment.

   In March, Foursquare introduced a tool that lets businesses see who is checking into their locations. It lists data like the total number of check-ins, the male-to-female ratio, the top days and times Foursquare visitors come, and the top visitors.

   “Foursquare hopes to tell them a little bit more about their loyal customer — who checks in when, where they go before and after,” said Tristan Walker, director of business development for Foursquare.

   Tasti-D-Lite wove Foursquare into its loyalty-card program this year. When someone registers the card online or visits the loyalty Web site, she can click to connect the card with her Foursquare account (along with Twitter or Facebook). Whenever the card is swiped after that, the customer accumulates Foursquare check-in points and Tasti-D-Lite loyalty points at once.

   “Imagine the amount of data we now have in order to make better marketing decisions, in order to make loyalty decisions, about our customers, as opposed to the paper punch cards we had before that didn’t do anything for us,” said B. J. Emerson, social technology officer for Tasti-D-Lite.

   Starbucks has been offering Foursquare badges when people visit a certain number of stores.

   “The next generation of that is potentially understanding a little bit more about loyalty as well,” Mr. Walker said. “We’re driving people to different stores. What about people who visit the same store over and over?”

   The location-based opportunity is particularly big for consumer packaged goods brands like Pepsi. Those brands market their product heavily, but they depend on drugstores or restaurants to actually get consumers into stores. With Foursquare and apps that track consumers’ locations, Pepsi can strike a deal directly with the consumer.

   Pepsi’s Foursquare program will begin running in June. While the company is still working out details, Mr. Bough said that he expects that when a Foursquare user is near a Pepsi retailer, an offer to enroll the person in a Pepsi rewards system will appear. Once people are enrolled, whenever they check in at a grocery store or drugstore selling Pepsi, they will accumulate rewards points or badges that they can redeem for products or offers or donate toward charities.

   Separately, Pepsi Loot, to be introduced in mid-May, focuses on restaurants; about 200,000, including chains like Taco Bell, are participating.

   The app shows the participating Pepsi-serving restaurants on a map, includes menus for them, and allows consumers to sign in to those locations (that sign-in is done separately from a Foursquare check-in). Once they do, they accumulate points toward song downloads. The restaurants can layer in offers, too — Shakey’s is giving $3 off a large pizza for people who show the Pepsi Loot app, for instance.

   Macy’s, too, has announced that it will use an app from a company called Shopkick to send customers offers when they are in or near the department store.

   Rewards will be critical for getting more people to use Foursquare and similar applications, said Amy Manus, director of media at Nurun, a digital marketing firm that did not work on the campaign. “Offering something that is beneficial for consumers is going to be essential in mass adoption,” she said.

1.  The future of loyalty is all about transparency, accountability, trustability, relevance, and cause marketing. 
2. Blasting text messages or email messages without a query capability of the database will soon start causing customers to default and leave the brand.  Actually, it’s already happening and is a shock to many business owners who don’t realize they are doing more harm than good by not understanding what customers want and how to target them specifically.
3. By 2013 more people will access the web via mobile device than computer so the time to develop killer mobile apps is this year and the solutions need to be better than the simple ability to send text messages.  We are working on this now for early 2011 stay tuned for a cutting edge mobile application.  Our delay has been caused due to our pursuit of excellence and the need to provide what customers want, not what looks cool today.  We already know future problems and issues and are working on having those resolved before others even know they exist.  Mobile will be too important to make mistakes and companies may only have one chance with the consumer to get it right or be blacklisted from communication.

Post-recession shopping behaviour shifts

Friday December 3, 2010

The new post-recession American shopper can be described as ‘high maintenance and promiscuous’ and demands an innovative and engaging experience both in-store and online, according to a study by Leo Burnett’s marketing services arm, Arc Worldwide.

The recession has changed consumers’ mindset about shopping, and most people have already developed new rules for the retailers with which they choose to deal. As a result, retailers need a greater understanding of the changed roles they play in consumers’ lives in order to meet those expectations and maintain customer loyalty. sschroeder This article is copyright 2010 TheWiseMarketer.com).

The study, entitled ‘Re-Imagining The Retail Store’, identified five key findings that retailers should consumer when implementing new strategies:

1. Don’t let technology undermine the shopping experience
   Retailers tend to view in-store technologies as a better way to connect with their customers, but customers don’t agree. While people do want to experience a seamless transition between the physical and virtual store by using technology, they also want educated and friendly service when visiting the physical store. Technology is not a suitable substitute and this practice can damage an already fragile relationship.
2. Shoppers are promiscuous
   Consumers tend to shop around, and their loyalty is hard earned. The recession has taken a toll on consumer confidence and people’s perceptions of retail business. Customer loyalty has to be earned by understanding in detail the expectations of the shopper and delivering every time.
3. Price is attractive, but it’s not the whole story
   Consumers will not accept a trade-off involving low price versus quality experiences and merchandise. Today, people are more than happy not to spend their money if they feel that retailers do not give them a sufficient reason to purchase.
4. Breaking the rules
   If you’re not winning by following the rules, break them. There are two clear ways to win in store-based retailing – excel within your store archetype or take a radical path to greatness and create a new store format that breaks out of category conventions and delivers a unique experience.
5. The basics are still powerful
   It may not be exciting, but there is work to do and profit to be made from making the basics of retail even better. Retailers are struggling to get the basics right and people are visibly frustrated. Going back to basics can help to improve customer appeal, retention and, ultimately, profitability.

According to Dr Alan Treadgold, head of retail strategy for Leo Burnett Worldwide, “The retail landscape continues to evolve and move further away from being just a place to purchase a product. It’s an experience. As retailers listen to their customers and understand their behaviors, they can create an experience that people come back to time and time again.”

A white paper detailing the study’s findings and conclusions has been made available for free download from the Leo Burnett web site – click here (Google Docs web-based document; no registration needed).

Irish town launches local loyalty scheme

Wednesday December 8, 2010

The Irish town of Macroom in County Cork has launched a new town-wide loyalty programme called LocalRewards, offering locals a card that be used to earn points from local independent businesses.

The programme was set up and developed by Cork-based company MyRewardCard.ie, aiming to help loyal local customers get the maximum benefits while supporting local companies and workers. sschroeder This article is copyright 2010 TheWiseMarketer.com).

Customers can pick up a Macrooom LocalRewards card and immediately start collecting points in any participating business in the town. The more they shop with participating businesses, the more points they earn, and the greater the range of rewards available to them.

Because small businesses provide the majority of employment in Ireland, it is important that they retain customers if towns are to survive as viable business communities. But, while Macroom is not the first town to try to encourage people to shop locally, most towns that have introduced ‘shop local’ programmes offer simple discount cards, in which consumers buy a card and then get a discount with every visit to a participating business.

In contrast, the points-based Macroom LocalRewards card allows customers to build up points over multiple visits and therefore allows businesses to give greater rewards to their most loyal customers.

The practical operation of the programme is simple: a customer collects their free card from a participating business, then shows this card whenever they shop at participating outlets. Once the customer has gained enough points, they can redeem them for a reward of their choice, ranging from discounts to free gifts (depending on the merchant).

However, rather than being a coalition-style programme, each effectively business runs its own rewards programme – simply using the same town-wide card as a customer identifier – and the points earned from a specific business are valid only for rewards from that business.

“I had seen research showing the popularity of loyalty cards but, because there are so few cost-effective solutions available to independent businesses, most have only been able to offer stamped cards which customers lose or accidentally put througth the washing machine,” explained chief executive, Brian O’Connell. “So we built a platform that would allow even the smallest business afford a loyalty points programme without worrying about IT issues.”

The same town loyalty platform is now powering the LocalRewards programme in Macroom and Carrigaline, and it will soon be operating in Clonakilty as well.

The LocalRewards platform also offers the benefit of community-wide promotions. For example, the town of Carrigaline introduced the card in August 2010, and a recent promotion rewarded cardholders for shopping in more than 2 businesses in September. Since then, nearly 3,000 consumers have taken and used the Carrigaline card.

The Macroom localrewards card can intially be picked up by customers at four businesses: Macroom Bookshop, Papa Martinos Restaurant, Minihanes Shoes and Murphys Pharmacy. More businesses are preparing to join the programme in the near future, and cards will also be made available through each new partner.

7 Little Words That Sum Up the Entire Marketing Machine
posted by: John Jantsch
Tue Dec 07, 2010

Marketing is essentially getting someone that has a need to know, like and trust you. Of course then you must turn that know, like, and trust into try, buy, repeat and refer.

That my friends is the entire practice of marketing summed up in seven little words that make up what I call The Marketing Hourglass.^TM

The idea behind the hourglass is that you look at each of the seven stages and intentionally plan products, services, processes and touches that logically move prospects along to the point where they become customers and then receive such a remarkable customer experience they become repeat customers and referral advocates. I talk a great deal about building your hourglass in my book The Referral Engine.

If you do nothing but spend the time to fill in the blanks in each of the stages in the infographic below you will be miles ahead in your thinking about a simple, yet powerful approach to your marketing. Feel free to print, share and use the graphic to help build your marketing hourglass

Click on the image to enlarge and get a bird’s eye view of your entire marketing machine.