The beginning of history

Why has loyalty always been a crucial issue for companies? Because, as Dawkins and Reichheld (in Customer Retention as a Competitive Weapon) stated in 1990, 5% more loyal customers per year represent a doubling of profits over 5 years. And because retaining a customer costs 5 times less than winning over a new one.

Let's remember that loyalty is historically perceived by companies as being primarily a financial advantage. This has been the case for decades. This probably explains why 79% of loyalty programs today are based on simple and financial reward mechanisms, while only 21% are based on customer relations and recognition. (in 6th edition of the VERTONE multi-sector study).

As a result, every business is now required to implement at least the same reward program as their competitor. Every hairdresser has the same card to stamp as the competing hairdresser on the same street. Each GMS offers you their points card or cash-back, and notifies you of their promotional offers through their app.

In reality, loyalty programs are overwhelmingly from the same vein. They are financial. We are definitely in this persistent perception of Dawkins and Reichheld's work, where loyalty is an integral part of the company's commercial arsenal, for a simple benefit to understand for the company as well as for the customer: the financial gain for each party, through the frequency of purchase of products or services.

At the end of this logic, we arrive today at applications that group all the loyalty cards of customers. Since 60% of customers have a competing loyalty card, and 59% of women have more than 10 loyalty cards (source: Observatoire de la fidélité).

Towards a new loyalty

So, let's ask ourselves the questions of our time: where is the loyalty to our company, when our card today offers the same reward as our competitors? Where is the loyalty, when our card is collected among others? Where is the loyalty, when we only address the most volatile population: the one that is the most price sensitive?

By simply asking these questions, we all understand that a certain age of loyalty programs has thus passed. That it is saturated. That a truly competitive company, in terms of loyalty, must today do better than simple "financial" card programs.

Because a card, even a digital one, does not tell the customer anything. It is stored. Whereas the five main reasons for customer loyalty are :

1. quality (26%)
2. price (24%)
3. brand values (15%)
4. availability (13%)
5. the brand (8%)

(source: Selligent)

This is the other vision that loyalty induces, if the company wants to look at itself, rather than stopping at the reward of its competitors. Because thinking about loyalty is ultimately about solving all the problems of your brand. From production to customer relations.

And that is precisely what is at stake: the "relationship". That is to say, the construction of an outstanding and "distinguishing" story with the customer. We are talking about loyalty communication that can now be enriched with elements of quality, values, performance, but also brand events and customer recognition... in addition to the reward, to strengthen loyalty.

And conversely, by rethinking the objectives of the reward and its attribution criteria, we can also create many more interactions with the customer, which will increase their loyalty as they will be added to the fact of already rewarding their purchases. Our customer can indeed be a sponsor, influencer, prescriber, tester, critic etc. In addition to increasing customer value through up-selling, loyalty can also increase customer value through its marketing value. Because our customer capital is also a formidable relational capital to exploit.

It's obvious: our loyalty strategy has enormous potential, as long as we look at it through the prism of relationship marketing. And loyalty cards have never been able to do that, even in a digital format. Because they have never had the role, nor the functionalities, to establish the legitimacy of speaking with the customer, in a loyal relationship, adapted to his profile, and capable of exploiting in an optimal way his engagement possibilities.

So, which technological solution for this new loyalty?

Of course, sponsorship programs already exist. Like reward programs for influencers, influencers, testers etc. Of course, the themes of quality, values, performance, but also brand events are widely relayed on the website of brands and their social networks. It is even the current trend...

OK, but to offer what experience to the loyal customer? How many contact points do we offer them, when our goal is to build a coherent relationship, a personalized interaction capable of exploiting their possibilities of engagement, between :

• our website for everyone
• our Facebook page for everyone
• our LinkedIn page which is for everyone
• our Instagram account...which is for everyone
• our mini site and our e-mailing / mailing campaigns for influencers
• our mini site and our e-mailing / mailing campaigns for prescribers
• our mini site and our e-mailing/mailing campaigns for testers etc.
• our old loyalty mini-site "club avantages" and our e-mailing / mailing campaigns
• our loyalty card and app that only deal with the reward of purchases
• our dedicated e-mailing / mailing / SMS / notifications, but drowned in the other emails / mails / SMS and notifications of our client.

So, yes, a good CRM should be able to put all this noise to music. At least to bring some coherence to it. That's what Salesforce's latest communication campaign is all about. But in the end, creating, animating and managing so many contact points in a 2.0 loyalty strategy will cost us how much time, human resources and money?

And above all, in the activation and engagement we want to create, have we taken into account that, for almost 2 out of 3 customers, it is particularly the pushing and management of their data that is a problem in a loyalty program (in the 2020 Loyalty Observatory)?

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So let's be pragmatic.

Rather than trying, in our loyalty strategy, to make consistent this inflation of contacts, with "costs" of data management, for an efficiency concerning only ⅓ of the customers... wouldn't it be more coherent to use a single media, able to exploit all the potential of a 2.0 loyalty?

Because it is all the ambition and know-how we have put into tooodooo, to provide companies with a single 2.0 loyalty media, capable of :

• communicate on all the values and events of the brand, its services and its products, according to the profiles
• to engage the customer in all his marketing potential, in the service of the brand according to his desires
• to personally reward the customer according to a hundred or so criteria that can take into account all their roles, your products, your catalogs, your region, your country, your language, your budgets, your marketing objectives, etc.
• segment, animate, exchange and analyze with an integrated CRM.
• all this for a simple subscription.

That's why I strongly encourage you to ask our team for a demo, because I'm sure you need it and it will blow you away ;-)

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