Loyalty Management September 2011

Volume 3 Number 3
September 2011 powered by Loyalty 360
The Rise of Social Media as a Lever for Employee Engagement
Thirty Years of Loyalty

Congratulations to Affinion Loyalty Group
The Consumer Packaged Goods Dilemma
2011 Engagement Expo Sneak Peek!
with Russ Reynolds of Batteries Plus
Embracing Corporate Social Responsibility
Loyalty Management LOYALTY360.ORG
This Month in
SEPTEMBER 2011 VOLUME 3 NUMBER 3 WWW.LOYALTY360.ORG
DEPARTMENTS
6 Whats on Loyalty360.org 8 Letter from the Editor 10 Contributors
LOYALTY FORUM
12 Your Voice 14 Behind the Brand Jeff Robertson, Delta Air Lines
14
pg
Get a backstage look at Delta Air Lines' successful SkyMiles program

Behind the Brand: Jeff Robertson
18 Q & A: Ask the Experts What are your recommendations to help retain customers in todays marketplace? 20 Loyalty Reads
Engaging Partners through Communities in Today's "New Normal"

pg
24
Learn what affluent customers want from your program

pg
FEATURES
22 Thirty Years of Loyalty Mark Johnson, Loyalty 360 24 Engaging Partners through Communities in Today's "New Normal" Melissa Fruend, Maritz Loyalty & Motivation 28 What Do Affluent Customers Want From Their Loyalty Programs? Linda Dickerhoof, VIPdesk 32 The Consumer Packaged Goods Dilemma Carlos Dunlap, Kobie Marketing 36 A Mobile Wallet? Near Field Communications, the New Frontier in Customer Experience, Engagement & Loyalty 40 Accounting for Loyalty Programs Brian Jones & John Kryczka, PricewaterhouseCoopers
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Loyalty Management SEPTEMBER 2011
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This Month in
SEPTEMBER 2011 VOLUME 3 NUMBER 3 WWW.LOYALTY360.ORG
TECHNOLOGY, TRENDS & REWARDS

sneak preview on page 71!
42 Making the Audible Actionable: The Value of Voice Analytics Erich Dietz, Mindshare Technologies 44 Three Ways to Make Your Loyalty Programs More Social Sanjay Dholakia, Crowd Factory 46 The 360 of Mobile Marketing: Benefits & Best Practices Doug Dwyre, Mocapay 48 Social Loyalty: Beyond the Like Matthew Kates, ePrize 50 The Rise of Social Media as a Lever for Employee Engagement David Schroeder, LoyalNation 52 Loyalty Innovation
Three Ways to Make Your Loyalty Programs More Social
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44
BEST BUSINESS PRACTICES

54 How Healthy is Your Customer Base? Measuring Through Unified Customer Experience Management Russ Haswell, Medallia, Inc. 56 Embracing Corporate Social Responsibility Interview with Russ Reynolds, Batteries Plus 58 Knowledge is Power: Helping Your Customers Understand Their Loyalty Programs Christopher Barnard, Points.com 60 Establishing a Dialogue with the Consumer Inside the Business Customer Interview with Toni DeWitt, XO Communications 62 Using Social Technologies to Co-Innovate Product Evolution Stephanie Logerot, National Instruments 64 A New Era of Customer Loyalty Nick Afonsky, 5one 66 The Inside Scoop: Viewpoint Voice of the Customer Nancy Porte, Vovici & Pam Snodgrass, Viewpoint Construction Software 68 Behind the Brand Christopher Barnard, Points.com
Loyalty Management Editorial & Production Team Erin Raese - Editor in Chief Mark Johnson - Contributing Editor Caitlin Schar - Editorial Director Kathleen Ostoich - Graphic Designer Crescent Printing Company - Print Production Loyalty 360 Team Mark Johnson - President & CEO Erin Raese - COO Caitlin Schar - VP Account Management Amanda Chasteen - Manager, Marketing Operations Kathleen Ostoich - Marketing Manager Jillian Hensley - Corporate Marketing Manager Lindsay Wagner - Sales Manager Contacts Article Submissions & Advertising: Erin Raese erinraese@loyalty360.org or 513.360.8680, ext. 210 To subscribe to Loyalty Management, visit loyalty360.org.
2011 Loyalty 360, Inc. and/or its Affiliates. All Rights Reserved. Reproduction and distribution of this publication in any form without prior written permission is forbidden. The information contained herein has been obtained from sources believed to be reliable. Loyalty 360 disclaims all warranties as to the accuracy, completeness or adequacy of such information. The opinions shared are those of the contributing authors and not necessarily reflective of Loyalty 360 and/or its affiliates. Loyalty 360 shall have no liability for errors, omissions or inadequacies in the information contained herein or for interpretations thereof. The opinions expressed herein are subject to change without notice.
ENGAGEMENT EXPO
71 2011 Expo Sneak Peek
LOYALTY 360 ON THE WEB
Near Field Communications (NFC). Google recently announced Google Wallet, the latest app to the NFC platform; joining the ranks Orange and O2 who brought contactless payments to the market this summer in the UK. Heads up USA, NFC is a new technology with loyalty and engagement opportunities to watch.
NOW
NFC The Cloud
trending
The Cloud. A resource that allows data and software to be accessible through an internet connection rather than a localized computer. The cloud provides a real-time extension of IT capabilities including Infrastructure asa-Service (IaaS), Platform-as-aService (PaaS) and Software-asa-Service (SaaS). Read more about the cloud on Loyalty360.org in, Will Loyalty Marketing Embrace the Cloud? by Bhavana Yerrumreddy
ll series, The Pulse. of the findings from our weekly po Here's a snapshot of some
65%
are not currently using analytics to monitor and measure your social media efforts. But, 40% plan to do so in the next six months.
36%
Nearly 36% say YES , they would pay to play in a loyalty program!
42%
say hotels & casinos are leading the way when it comes to implementing the most innovative and effective loyalty strategies
This fall, attend a Loyalty 360 webinar, learn from industry leaders and gain access to valuable insights, trends, tools and advancements.
LOYALTY 360 THOUGHT LEADERSHIP SERIES WEBINARS
DID YOU MISS A WEBINAR? Check the Loyalty360 archives and catch up on what you missed.
6
NEW
LOYALTY TODAY
Loyalty Today is an aggregation of leading blogs focusing on customer loyalty, engagement, CEM and CRM. Interact with the best minds in the business and find content from a wide variety of blogs all in one place. Loyalty Today is quick to become your favorite stop for daily marketplace insights. As a Loyalty 360 member, you have the opportunity to share your blog or original content through Loyalty Today to increase exposure and readership and engage with other Loyalty Today users by exchanging comments. Plus, each member who contributes content to Loyalty Today is eligible to become a Loyalty Leader and receive a featured spot on the Loyalty Today homepage. For information on submitting your blog and becoming a Loyalty Leader visit Loyalty360.org.
what's
on LOYALTY360.ORG
COMING SOONCouncils
Loyalty 360 Councils are online communities for thought leaders to connect with their peers to share and discuss hot topics, pressing issues and experiences within a specific industry or marketing focus. Membership in Councils is a Loyalty 360 member exclusive. Council, benefits and functionality include: Initiating discussions and engaging in conversations with council members Sharing resources such as research, case studies and assorted multimedia Viewing recent activity within your councils from a personalized mini-feed Privately messaging other members of the councils you belong to Attending virtual monthly meetings led by council moderators Councils will be launching soon. Join Loyalty360 today and be part of the council community!
Loyalty Management MAY 2011
FROM THE EDITOR
It's About the Experience!

A focused approach to improving the customer experience is a shared goal for consumers and marketers alike. 78% of you say that the customer experience is the key to your loyalty. While the market has been spending a lot of time talking about Facebook, twitter, emails, loyalty programs, points, etc., hearing 78% made me take a step back. Yes, this new media is important. But, what's most important is how these new media outlets fit into our core brand message and work in tandem to elevate the consumer experience. It's integrated marketing 101. One message, one vision, one goal. Simple. In this issue, we take a look at using the various tools and tactics available to spearhead engagement from a variety of viewpoints, including employee and B2B strategies in the mix! David Schroeder of LoyalNation, shares, Management teams that can harness the power of social media to connect and engage employees will enjoy a significant competitive advantage as he illustrates the value of integrating social media into your employee engagement strategies in, "The Rise of Social Media as a Lever for Employee Engagement." As we examine B2B engagement, read Melissa Fruends of Martiz Loyalty & Motivation article, "Engaging Partners through Communities in Todays New Normal," and then join her at Engagement Expo this fall to hear more on the topic. In addition, we were honored to speak with XO Communications' Toni DeWitt for exclusive insights into how engagement, loyalty and retention efforts can have significant influence and play at one of the nations largest communications service providers. Learn more about how her approach to integrating engagement efforts may influence opportunities in your workplace as well in, "Establishing a Dialogue with the Consumer Inside the Business Customer." We continue on the engagement journey with National Instruments and Batteries Plus. Both companies have shared stories and insights about how their approach to engaging the consumer and enhancing the customer experience leveraged brand goals to engage fans and lead the way to creating a loyal customer following in: "Embracing Corporate Social Responsibility," an interview with Russ Reynolds, CEO of Batteries Plus, and "Using Social Technologies to Co-Innovate Product Evolution," by Stephanie Logerot of National Instruments. We wrap this issue with a preview of some of the great speakers, workshops and presentations from Loyalty 360s Inaugural Engagement Expo. Join us November 6th 8th at The Westin Stonebriar, Frisco, TX (just outside of Dallas), we look forward to seeing you there! Enjoy the issue! Sincerely,
Welcome new Loyalty 360 Members:

Hawkeye Profit Point Giftango Pilot Flying J uSamp Fiserv Hasbro Dirty Harry's Restaurant Allant Loyalty Edge, American Express
Erin Raese
Editor-in-Chief Loyalty Management erinraese@loyalty360.org
we're here to guide you along the way.
loyalty is a journey.
Looking to build your organization's engagement and loyalty strategies? Loyalty 360 makes it easy to find a partner with the capabilities to help you reach your goals. Want to be a part of the largest engagement and loyalty supplier directory? For only $2500/year, sign up to be listed with your own customizable member page. Find tools, tips, and connect with your peers to find the answers to your loyalty questions at loyalty360.org
CONTRIBUTORS
Nick Afonsky
SVP Business Development at 5one, Nick has 19 years of experience as a solutions consulting and sales executive in international Retail and FMCG.
Carlos Dunlap
Nick Afonsky
Carlos is the Practice Director of Loyalty Consulting at Kobie Marketing. He has spent the past 16 years cultivating a rich background in customer engagement strategies, direct marketing, business development, customer acquisition, customer loyalty and strategic marketing through several key posts.
Carlos Dunlap
Christopher, President and co-founder of Points International Ltd., is responsible for corporate strategy, product development and investor relations. In 1998, he also cofounded Canada's first internet business incubator, Exclamation International.
Christopher Barnard Doug Dwyre
Christopher Barnard
Doug Dwyre
Doug Dwyre, president of Mocapay, is a seasoned executive with 24 years of experience in the financial services industry delivering innovative payment solutions to issuers, merchants and consumers.
Toni Dewitt
Toni Dewitt
Toni DeWitt is a loyalty marketing practitioner with over 15 years in consumer-centric marketing strategy to include both consumer and B2B marketing, customer lifecycle management, and customer experience initiatives.
Melissa Fruend
Melissa Fruend
Melissa Fruend is Solution Vice President for B-to-B Loyalty at Maritz Loyalty and Motivation. In her role, Melissa provides the thought leadership for the solution by introducing innovative strategies and marketing solutions to deliver on clients objectives for direct and channel sales models.
Sanjay Dholakia is CEO of Crowd Factory, the leading provider of crowd-powered marketing applications that add a quantifiable social boost to every digital interaction.
Sanjay Dholakia
Russ Haswell
Sanjay Dholakia
Russ Haswell
Russ Haswell is Vice President of Sales for Medallia, Inc., a CEM vendor headquartered in Palo Alto, CA. With over 12 years of experience in customer experience management and enterprise software-as-aservice solutions, Russ heads up sales and business development efforts for Medallia.
Linda Dickerhoof
Mark Johnson
Linda Dickerhoof is the Director of Marketing Communications with VIPdesk, which is trusted by global industry leaders to enhance their brands through its concierge, loyalty, and customer care programs.
Mark Johnson
Mark is the President & CEO of Loyalty 360. He has significant experience in selling, designing and administering prepaid, loyalty/ CRM programs, as well as data-driven marketing communication programs.
Linda Dickerhoof
Erich Dietz
Brian Jones
Erich Dietz has been the Senior Sales Director for Contact Centers at Mindshare Technologies since 2003, deploying successful customer feedback solutions for several recognizable brands.
Brian Jones
Brian Jones is a Principal of PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP in Los Angeles leading the US casualty actuarial consulting practices in the West Coast and Southeast regions.
Erich Dietz
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Matthew Kates
Matthew Kates, Vice President, Strategic Services, ePrize, is responsible for leading all areas of loyalty and promotion concept development, client metrics, research, analysis and program development.
Russ Reynolds
Russ Reynolds
Russ Reynolds is President & CEO of Batteries Plus, the largest U.S. battery and light bulb franchise system focused on the expanding $30.7 billion battery and $14 billion light bulb categories.
Matthew Kates
John Kryczka
David Schroeder
John Kryczka
John Kryczka is a Managing Director of PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP in Chicago leading the firms customer loyalty actuarial practice. His clients include many of the world's premier airline, credit card, and hospitality loyalty programs.
David Schroeder is the President of LoyalNation, dedicated to the development of employee engagement through employee recognition and incentives.
David Schroeder
Stephanie Logerot is a social media and marketing content strategist at National Instruments.
Stephanie Logerot
Stephanie Logerot
Pam Snodgrass
Nancy Porte
Although Pam has worn many hats during her 30+ years with Viewpoint Construction Software, there was a common theme customer focus. As Manager of Customer Quality, Pam is the companys #1 nag about the importance of both gathering and acting upon customer feedbackto ensure all customers go home happy.
Pam Snodgrass
With over 20 years experience, Nancy Porte is responsible for the Voice of the Customer program while managing customer support, customer training, and CRM systems.
If you would like to contribute to a future issue of Loyalty Management please contact Erin Raese at (513) 360.8680, ext. 210 or email at erinraese@loyalty360.org.
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LOYALTY FORUM: YOUR VOICE
What is the link between customer experience and loyalty?

I
n terms of offers and discounts, loyalty schemes cannot compete with organizations providing instant gratification, deals and discounts (Groupon and latest Google Offer) as by nature loyalty programs are delayed gratification.... Thus the experience as the most important aspect in loyalty...Do things extraordinarily well, delight the most loyal customers with differentiated services, recognition and address their prestige quotient. Extraordinary experience is what would be and is the important part of any successful loyalty program. Its the operations/delivery which drives such experiences, so empower them. Ravi Shankar
t experience; things tha s that are core to the here are some thing can't remember the lance for. I ard scale goes off ba for me was a trip to the typical risk/rew cemented the topic the example that rfectly that is an exsource but s Sleeping Beauty pe and d. If the artist portray Disneylan we see her smoking rd' DL with loyalty. If tion. We don't 'rewa perfection there is pecta back. So for er ildren we never go nishment. On the oth cursing at young ch lure the ultimate pu ard, and for fai ily of six the very little rew shows your fam m the janitorial crew Fireworks. Behand if someone fro parade fromwow! l to watch the d ily. I think it was Fre rfect place on the hil pe lights' the fam t don't an expectation it 'de tha cause it wasn't frugal wows...Things ed to these things as Reichheld that referr impact. an inordinate positive ach cost much, but have y be, a database appro well meaning as it ma . t have transparency I don't appreciate, as one that does no dit card. perience, especially to customer ex me off a receipt or cre t tries to read my na e and say, It's like the checker tha in the eye the next tim t you look me t genuine. I rather tha It's no termelon... ck, how was that wa knew, and I mean thanks for coming ba , within three visits dry cleaner, EVER ferences. What got My favorite uterall of my pre t looking up in comp ognized MEnot my knewno fold, what to hang; rec , what didn't; what to starch the window. carbefore I got to Dale Halvorson
search Center, a marketing research company specializing in customer loyalty. Our scientifically validated hierarchical model of loyalty shows how daily interactions between customers and companies drive overall company perceptions that lead to loyalty (or not) and positive or negative behaviors. Positive behaviors include willingness to recommend the company, continue to do business with the company, do more business (greater share of wallet) with the company. While negative behaviors include discontinuing doing business with the company and sharing negative experiences about doing business with the company with other current or prospective customers. A poor experience that is unresolved will impact loyalty toward a company as mentioned above. However, a poor or bad experience that is quickly resolved goes a long way toward enhancing customer loyalty"that company listened to my problem and really took care of me." Experiences help form attitudes and attitudes drive behaviors. Tracie Mrakich
I am the Marketing Director for the Loyalty Re-
12
tomer Experience or rather, Customer Delight. Bring in extraordinary differentiated services and loyalty will automatically be built in. The 'catalyst' (loyalty cards/mobile services/etc.) should be such that it captures instances of experiences and brings forth customer delight at the right time of interaction. I would like to share a small experience about customer delight and loyalty; small, but powerful enough. Recently I had travelled to the same place thrice and during each visit I stayed in the same hotel. In my room there was a basket of fruits containing three types of fruits. During my first two visits I had eaten only apples from the basket. When I visited the same hotel for the third time, I went my room and was pleasantly surprised to see just apples in the basket. This I believe is customer delight and personalization and obviously loyalty will follow. Now, the hotel is assured of my visit the next time I come [to town], creating automatic loyalty. I think todays operations should be such that they drive the loyalty program, and they are bound to be successful. Rakesh Jadhav
Customer Loyalty is cemented through Cus-
n important factor to remember too, is that which a company perceives as loyalty. The common mistake is believing that if a customer is repeat purchasing or staying with a service (e.g. renewing gym membership) that this is characteristic of loyal behavior. Yes it is in a sense loyalty, not the most profitable though. Look a little deeper and you may find that the customer is repeat purchasing due to lack of alternatives, or because the price is right. If they are staying with you because of price, they may leave if a competitor offers the same service at a lower cost. As Frederick Reichheld so eloquently puts it, the customers who glide into your arms for a minimal price discount are the same customers who will dance away with someone else at the slightest enticement. Of course, its still of benefit to the company if a customer is staying because of an attractive price. The most profitable customers however, are those that will refer friends, family etc..., ultimately becoming your marketers; with budget cuts in marketing departments, these are the customers you want. You want to reap the benefits of the loyalty ripple effect. Apostle like loyalists emerge from organizations that exhibit a behavior that mirrors this loyalty. Linda Donegan
I would highly recommend a book called, the
"Loyalty Link" by Dennis McCarthy. In this wonderful book, Dennis talks about the link between EMPLOYEE and customer loyalty. To paraphrase, if you focus on creating employee loyalty, you won't have to worry about customer loyaltyyour employees will WANT to create the exceptional experience that leads to the loyalty you desire. Given that we cannot deliver the exceptional customer experience without our employees, this makes sense. Steve Saenz
78%
Loyalty 360 asked its members a series of questions concerning customer experience. Here's what you had to say.
LOYALTY 360 PULSE
say great customer experience makes me loyal!
30% Want You to

Anticipate MY Needs
21% Recognize ME 21% Surprise ME
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LOYALTY FORUM: BEHIND THE BRAND
Jeff Robertson
Vice President, SkyMiles - Delta Air Lines, Inc.
On behalf of Loyalty Management, Laura Hewitt of Carlson Marketing sat with Jeff Robertson, Vice President, SkyMiles for Delta Air Lines, Inc. Jeff supports Delta's efforts to provide high-value, world-class loyalty and partnership programs for the airlines 81 million SkyMiles members worldwide. Now in its 30th year, SkyMiles is one of the largest and longest-running loyalty programs in the travel industry.
Through the years, Delta has maintained an amazing reputation. How do you think things are going after the acquisition of Northwest Airlines?
Over the last couple of years, Delta has invested heavily and IS investing more in the customer experience. This past year, we announced that we will be investing more than $2 billion in improving the customer experiencewhether that be in-flight entertainment on our long-haul aircraft, Wi-Fi on all of our mainline aircraft and larger regional planes, or fully flat beds in Business Elite. The combination of those investments, the work around fine tuning the customer experience and moving beyond to actually improve it, is where were heading and what were focusing on right now.
The two largest pieces of that integration were the technology components and communications. The complexity of bringing two different reservations systems into one and two loyalty platforms into one, while transitioning 45 million program members from one program to the other was significant. And most important was communicating. We sent almost 100 million communication pieces (both direct and email) and repeated at least 20 times over and over your miles are safe. Your elite status is safe. We will pool your frequent flyer program miles. So you have to repeat it over and over again until the message finally sinks in. As many times as you hear it internally, doesnt necessarily mean that its resonating with the customer yet.
How about the merger of the two loyalty programs?

Merging the two loyalty programs was definitely one of the top three challenges we faced within the integration of the airlines. Customer expectations were high. And they wanted it to go as fast as possible. We moved really quickly to get it done.
Why do you think the Delta SkyMiles program does so well?

If you look at a variety of metrics, weve fared well over the last four to five years. We look at customer satisfaction metrics compared to competitors, their customers perceptions of their program and our satisfaction has improved. We
There are a variety of ways we are trying to improve the customer experience and most metrics would say it is paying off.
14
also look at complaint volumes on the program through the Department of Transportation and actual internal customer complaints. Those are down significantly over the last three to five years. We are winning more industry awards (and there are a lot out there) than we have in the past, and I think its being driven primarily by our investment in our elite customers. Our Medallion program and the elite experience are really driving that differential. So its the things that we have done that attempt to differentiate ourselves; whether its introducing a new elite tier at 125k that has industry-leading benefits ( Diamond Medallion) or whether its rollover elite qualifying miles and being the only one to offer that in the world. Customers love that it came with 100% positive feedback from customers. We recently announced the non-expiration of frequent flyer program miles. So granted, for elites it wasnt as relevant, but there are a lot of elites who stop flying and they dont want to have to worry for 18-24 months that their miles will expire. We have eliminated reward redemption fees. Those types of changes are things we are doing to invest in the program. We are trying to get rid of the punitive nature of how airlines often are positioned. So there are a variety of ways we are trying to improve the customer experience and most metrics would say it is paying off.
The Delta SkyMiles Gold Credit Card & Diamond Medallion Status Materials
What can other industries like retail or financial services learn about customer loyalty from Delta?
I believe the travel industry probably does the best job in managing rewards programs AND loyalty programs all in one. There are things that we have done as an airline sector or hotel sector that if we could have started over again we would have done differently. And I think other industries have learned from that. I credit them for perhaps designing their rewards programs more linked to customer profitability than maybe our programs are linked. Where I do think they are failing, on a personal level, is in the loyalty space. I am a member of several high-end retailer programs. I receive rewards points and coupons and use them, but when I walk in the store or have any type of experience, I dont feel that theyre appreciating my business more than anyone else. It feels like its just about the transaction. There is nothing programmatically that is driving me to be more loyal to a particular retailer. That is where I struggle with retailers.
we would have spent in advertising - now were much more in a targeted and social media place. Weve hired a couple of folks exclusively for social media out there blogging, staying in the know, listening for news and seeing what customers think about us. Weve increased our presence on Facebook and Twitter and our @DeltaAssist Twitter handle has proven to be both helpful and popular for customers.
What is your customer loyalty philosophy?

From the baseline perspective, I think its important as an airline or as any industry that we treat customers, employees and people fairly. Anything I do in my life, I always say I want to treat somebody fairly. It could be my friends, my employees, colleagues asking for the same thing and in many cases it is our customers. So, if a customer is asking something from me or wants to talk to me about something, and its reasonable and fair, the answer is always yes. If its unreasonable, unfair and would not be appropriate for all the other customers who have not called me to ask for that favor or question, then the answer is no. Then I explain why it needs to be out of respect to others. In terms of super loyalty (those customers who would really die on the sword for you,) you have to go out of your way to show respect for that. From a customer perspective, its reaching out to them when they are in need and taking care of it. Or pulling that customer aside when theyre in the airport and saying hey, youre at the gate, youre a Diamond, I am going to help you out. The agent cant do it, but dont worry, we will take care of it and make a call to get it fixed. Those are the kind of things you have to do. I have seen customers do some unbelievable things on planes before. When that happens, I will almost always go back and acknowledge that somehow and take care of them. Good deeds come back around. The elite experience needs to be fair, equitable and reasonable both balancing customer interest and financial interest, but going out of your way for customers who do go out of their way, as well.
How has your program evolved with the addition of social media/mobile/new technologies?
We have done a lot in the last 12-18 months to move more into the social area. We are also doing some small things that add up; like putting places on our web site to go to interact and talk to other customers, like creating places to interact with our staff online through the site. We still do national advertising, but weve gone more digital, much more online and targeted using the web site. Weve made a big shift in what would have been hundreds of millions
continued on next page
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LOYALTY FORUM: THE INSIDE SCOOP
Tell us about the last time you had an ah-ha customer experience.
A couple of years ago, a Platinum Medallion wrote me a letter telling me he was one of our top flyers on a flight from LA to Atlanta in First Class, waiting for the flight to depart, thinking about all he needed to do when he got back home. The flight attendant announced there would be a delay for some very important passengers waiting to board the plane. He was annoyed. After about an hour, he was even more miffed. However, he then realized the delay was to wait for two military guys coming back from Iraq who were boarding the plane. He recognized how petty we can all be sometimes over customer experiences or outraged about something that really isnt as big of an issue. Really what we are doing is being human and doing what makes sense. Would a shareholder think we were
Who has had the most influence in your life?

Its a great question and there is a quote from Alfred Lord Tennyson who once said I am part of all that I have met. I think thats sort of my philosophy in life. I am the culmination of what everybody has taught me and thats what makes me unique.
If you werent working for Delta, how would you be spending your time?
Not working! One of the biggest disadvantages of being in a leadership position at any company is we never have enough time to spend giving back, so probably if I had the financial resources to be able to move on, I would give back to the communities somehow and dedicate what I think might be either the managerial experience, strategic advice or analytics or
Push for what you think is right in a great company. The CEO and the highest leadership will have your back if what you are doing is right, appropriate and fair.
smart to hold up 180 passengers to wait for two? Probably not. But there are times in business you make decisions because you feel like they are right and you go with your gut. It makes a difference. Another customer wrote to me and told us he was around a seven million miler having been a Gold and Platinum Medallion customer over the last 30 years and had been with the program since its inception. He simply wanted to send a thank you to say I was thinking about what youve done for me over the last 30 some odd years since I flew you. I am now retired and realize there were a lot of times where you did great things for me customer experiences that were great, phone calls that were wonderful with your agents where you took care of me. And, there were bad experiences with the weather causing cancellations when I was frazzled and not sure what to do, but looking back over 34 years, the only thing that really mattered was that you carried me safely across the world for 34 years, so that I can spend time with my family today, and my grandchildren can see me alive. To me, thats the kind of story I want to read. Those are the things that make a difference and the reason why I come back to work every day. anything that I have and use that for providing greater value back to society than necessarily through driving profit for a company.
What can we expect from Delta in 2011 and beyond?

I think having the merger behind us is now a competitive advantage. We can focus on our core business to move ahead. Its about leadership, its about doing whats right for Delta and I think you will see a lot of that. The same will apply to the frequent flyer program. We are looking at everything in our program to ensure we invest our money wisely. Are our most profitable customers happy with their experience? Are we truly business-focused? Are we more leisure-focused? And looking at a variety of those things, assessing where we want to go next to stay ahead of the competition is exactly where we will get ahead.
What have you learned from your experiences that could help others in the loyalty industry?
Never accept the norm. Never feel like you have to copy. Be a leader. Be a thought leader. Be thought provoking. Ask why it is that way? If you get shut down every time you ask why? and people tell you thats because its the way its always been, leave. Dont stay. Because youre not valued. Push for what you think is right in a great company. The CEO and the highest leadership will have your back if what you are doing is right, appropriate and fair. And it makes sense. If anyone comes to work in my organization, those are the things I tell them and I tell them not to be afraid to challenge me, just because I have been around for a while. L
What inspires you?

Knowing that I can always do more inspires me and that I can always improve upon the existing. Knowing that the business in which I work is constantly changing and knowing the expectations of customers go higher and higher, my own expectations of myself go higher. Im also inspired to stay balanced, making sure to strike the right path, focusing on work and on what really is important in life; family and friends. Working for a company that I love, in an industry I love, working for customers who I respect and appreciate, and having a good personal life is what inspires me to get up every day and go back to work.
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SAVE THE DATE FOR THE 2012
march 18 - 20, 2012

ROSEN SHINGLE CREEK HOTEL ORLANDO, FLORIDA
www.loyaltyexpo.com
THE CONFERENCE BRINGING PEOPLE TOGETHER TO
&
focus on maximizing customer, employee,
CLIENT RELATIONSHIPS
interested in speaking or exhibiting? contact Erin Raese: erinraese@loyalty360.org
Q&A
LOYALTY FORUM: Q&A In the short term, leverage your experience and customer data to help identify those more or less likely to attrite and their corresponding lifetime value. Use the resulting segmentation to develop measured save strategies that can be deployed to mitigate attrition, e.g., unbundling of services, down sell, staggered price increase, price lock with extended terms, special offer, other. You will want to be most aggressive with those high value/high risk customers compared to those low value/high risk customers. The former are critical while the latter may not be worth saving. In the longer term, a strategy you may want to consider to complement your current efforts is what we refer to as preemptive retention. Simply put, preemptive retention looks holistically at customer relationships to determine opportunities to add additional value that is both meaningful to consumers and affordable to the business. The strategy looks to extend the relationship beyond the service offering to help establish additional goodwill
Ask the Experts
Q: My company is a service provider and it has become necessary

to update our pricing structure. We are currently evaluating our customer retention strategy to ensure we dont lose our regular customers during this transition. What are your recommendations to help retain customers in todays marketplace?
A:
it is an investment in furthering the lifetime value of the customer and a forward-looking retention tool. It is different from most loyalty or reward programs in that it provides immediate gratification or access to benefits without anything to earn. There are a number of program configurations to consider to best align with your economics and demographics, but most will include the addition of lifestyle benefits that consumers can use everyday. You can use tactically for example as part of a new customer acquisition, award customers for length of service and/or deploy as a save technique to help combat a customers desire to cancel. Ultimately, it is the experience with your service that counts but this can help to influence consumer behavior particularly when there are service hiccups, a not so good customer experience, or even a price increase. It becomes part of the leverage to help you weather the storm as customers have a more defined relationship and investment with you than just the services you provide. L
Preemptive retention looks holistically at customer relationships to determine opportunities to add additional value that is both meaningful to consumers and affordable to the business.
Michael Ptak
VP, Sales & Strategy, Teleformix, LLC
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A:
Price increases are like death and taxesoften they are unavoidable. I think your first question is going to be how proactive do you want to be with your existing customers? You may choose to just increase prices and "not make a big deal about it", or you may want to proactively reach out to your existing customers ahead of time to allow them to prepare for the increase. This is not an easy decision, and it depends on a number of specifics to your situation, but I feel a proactive and transparent approach builds long-term retention. You should also be prepared for two questions customers always ask: Why did the price go up? For example, your costs could have increased because the costs of materials or services you use have gone up. Regardless of the reason, I think it is important to think through explaining the cost increase to the customer. If you are unable to explain the reason, the customer will assume you are raising prices just to increase profit at their expense. Is there any way for me to lower the price? Offering your customers options for savings is always helpful. For example, can they change the way they do business with you to save money? Even if you are unable to lower a customer price back to the level it was before, customers will give you credit for trying to react to their needs.
Despite all efforts, I would expect your price increase to negatively affect your retention. Any price increase draws the attention of the customer and they are more likely to shop around to make sure they are still getting a good deal. One final point: customers are not always logical about price increases. A price increase from $85 to $102 will hurt retention more than increasing the price to $97. Crossing "psychological thresholds" such as $100 draws a lot of attention from your current customers. L
Bart Blackburn
Marketing Process Manager, Progressive Insurance
Offering your customers options for savings is always helpful. For example, can they change the way they do business with you to save money?
A:
In times of economic challenges that leave many households budgeting conservatively, it becomes imperative to reinforce the value of services provided. This can be done by answering three key questions: 1. Who is receiving the value? 2. What will be the perceived value? 3. How is the value communicated to the intended audience? Understand the customer audience to the best level data resources allow. Identify key segments of that audience to have a better understanding of how core customers may react to a strategic decision. If data is limited, look into answering why. Are the right mechanisms not in place to collect it? Are there technical limitations that are being worked around? Are there short term solutions that can be implemented to give customers a voice- a survey, Twitter or a Facebook forum? Look for key indicators like length of time as a customer and demographic information including income and age. Are there any audiences that it is cost prohibitive to provide service to? Can service or value be
differentiated by the audience segments created? Will the value being proposed change the response model for any of the audiences?
Be the customer and brainstorm about the process a customer goes through and ask where can the value get added?
Enhancing the value of any retention strategy must be relevant to the audience and ideally unique to the service provider. Providing something that another competitor cant gives more reason for the customer to stay with a particular service. Be the customer and brainstorm about the process a customer goes through and
ask where can the value get added? Are there any small conveniences that could be provided, and enhance the customer experience? E-mail communication is cost effective and thank you or customer appreciation messages can create a positive experience. Keep the concept of surprise and delight in mind when determining what offers are being evaluated to add value and drive retention. Having a communication channel that reaches customers will is essential in how value is perceived. After answering the three questions, compare the results to the existing value offers. Decide what can afford to be tested and if anything extensive can be done to test the new offers before going to market. And be sure to review the existing values, new values and evaluate or test as offers mature. L
Natalie Bean
Strategy Manager Customer Loyalty | Partnerships, The Boston Globe
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LOYALTY FORUM: BOOKS
Loyalty Reads
The Amazement Revolution: Seven Customer Service Strategies to Create an Amazing Customer (and Employee) Experience
by Shep Hyken
Greenleaf Book Group | April 2011
What is the amazement revolution? It is the culture that can drive any organizationfrom one employee to tens of thousandsto focus completely on delivering an amazing customer-service experience In this sequel to the Wall Street Journal bestselling book The Cult of the Customer, Shep Hyken shares seven powerful strategies that any organization can implement to create greater customer and employee loyalty. In a tough, competitive, and price-sensitive economy, customer service is one of the most essential tools to separate your business from the
competition. These strategies work, as evidenced by the more than seventy case studies and examples that Hyken shares throughout the book. These examples provide dozens of lessons that can and should be implemented immediately. Corporate and industry clients from all over the world have tapped into the expertise of Shep Hyken. His client list is a whos who in the business world. As an author and speaker, Hyken is known for his simple and direct strategies that help his clients build successful, customer-focused organizations.
Books to Know About Now

Customer Service: New Rules for a Social Media World
By Peter Shankman
Que | December 2010
BOLD: How to Be Brave in Business and Win

By Shaun Smith & Andy Milligan
Kogan Page | June 2011
Use Social and Viral Technologies to Supercharge your Customer Service! Using social media, you can deliver amazing customer serviceand generate an army of fans wholl promote you in good times, and rescue you from disaster. Now, legendary online marketing expert Peter Shankman shows you exactly how to do all thatwithout spending a fortune! Shankman draws on his immense experience as founder of the online growth company HARO and marketing consultant to multiple Fortune 500 clients. He presents straight-to-the-point solutions for building customer loyalty, trust, and credibility onlineand rebuilding it when catastrophe strikes. Companies around the world are driving enormous value from online customer service at remarkably low cost. You can, too. Peter Shankman will show you howstep-by-step, right now!
Renowned brand-experts unveil secrets of the bravest companies in the world and what makes each business epic. Shaun Smith and Andy Milligans new book, BOLD: How to Be Brave in Business and Win, which hit U.S. bookstores on June 1st, offers in-depth, one-on-one interviews with executives from fourteen of the worlds most elite and wellknown brandsincluding Burberry, Umpqua Bank, Virgin Galactic, The Geek Squad, World Wildlife Fund and Zappos. The results reveal unique company cultures, innovative marketing, dynamic customer experiences and purpose-driven profits. Thats right; these fourteen featured companies put purpose before profit. BOLD is the story of companies who do it their own way. The book highlights how building brands is now about completely rethinking the end-to-end experience and redefining the customer-company relationship. More than ever, business success depends on standing out from the crowd and delivering authentic, memorable experiences for your customers and employees, says Smith. BOLD offers all readers a C-suite, birds-eye look at companies that are brave enough to challenge industry norms and relentlessly differentiate themselves.
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The Customer Experience Edge

By Reza Soudagar, Vinay Iyer, and Dr. Volker Hildebrand
McGraw Hill | September 2011
One of the most important strategic priorities for most companies is providing customers with a positive and differentiated experience, but few achieve this goal, according to a survey commissioned as part of the research for the new book, The Customer Experience Edge: Technology and Techniques for Delivering an Enduring, Profitable and Positive Experience to Your Customers, to be published in the fall 2011 by McGraw Hill. However, while a great customer experience may be the imperative, it is difficult to deliver a great customer experience to a lot of people and achieve profitable outcome. Indeed, trying to delight all customers all the time, or aiming only at increasing customer satisfaction scores or following traditional paths of focusing only on a select group of customers, can result in a costly, unsustainable project that falls short. This book fills the gap. It provides actionable insights about how companies can improve their customers' experience in a way that supports their bottom line goals. The authors explain, using scores of case studies, surveys and comments from leading practitioners, how to develop a profitable customer experience program by combining strategy, leadership and organizational change with the smart use of technology.
The Ultimate Question 2.0 (Revised and Expanded Edition): How Net Promoter Companies Thrive in a Customer-Driven World
By Fred Reichheld (Author) & Rob Markey (Contributor)
Harvard Business Press; Rev Exp edition | September 2011
In the first edition of this landmark book, business loyalty guru Fred Reichheld revealed the question most critical to your companys future: Would you recommend us to a friend? By asking customers this question, you identify detractors, who sully your firms reputation and readily switch to competitors, and promoters, who generate good profits and true, sustainable growth. You also generate a vital metric: your Net Promoter Score. Since the book was first published, Net Promoter has transformed companies, across industries and sectors, constituting a game-changing system and ethos that rivals Six Sigma in its power. In this thoroughly updated and expanded edition, Reichheld, with Bain colleague Rob Markey, explains how practitioners have built Net Promoter into a full-fledged management system that drives extraordinary financial and competitive results. With his trademark clarity, Reichheld: Defines the fundamental concept of Net Promoter, explaining its connection to your companys growth and sustained success Presents the closed-loop feedback process and demonstrates its power to energize employees and delight customers Shares new and compelling stories of companies that have transformed their performance by putting Net Promoter at the center of their business
Kiss Your Customer: 77 Reasons Why Sales & Service Are Just Like Dating & Relationships.
By Andy Masters
Hawthorn Publishing | January 2011
The Social Media Business Equation

By Eve Mayer Orsburn
Course Technology PTR | April 27, 2011
Kiss Your Customer is a "business humor with a purpose" book which provides the ultimate "learn through laughter" experience for sales and service professionals. Author and international speaker Andy Masters takes the reader on a journey through the highs-andlows world of relationship-building, utilizing the clever irony between business and romance. Common principles include "Never Underestimate the Power of First Impressions", "Have a GREAT Sense of Humor", "Maximize the Internet & Social Media", and "Know How to Build A Long-Term Relationship". Andy's creative and insightful spin on proven principles impact sales and improve customer loyalty, while also enhancing our personal lives. Enjoy this entertaining and impactful treat.
Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube have changed the way consumers communicate today and businesses today must be a part of this social phenomenon or risk losing significant marketing opportunities. The Social Media Business Equation: Using Online Connections to Grow Your Bottom Line clearly demonstrates how you and your organization can use social media to unlock exponential growth and immediate opportunities, no matter what your business size or industry. Author Eve Mayer Orsburn, CEO of one of the largest social media optimization companies in the world, introduces a proven, step-by-step methodology -The Social Media Equation -- in this quick, practical read. Fourteen case studies highlight social media at work in companies large and small, including the Mayo Clinic and General Motors. This book focuses on results-oriented strategies as the author dispels the myths and reveals the true secrets of using social media for amazing business growth. This book presents practical, useful insights and proven successful techniques that readers can immediately apply. The Social Media Business Equation's clear presentation provides early emphasis on the growing importance of social media today to help readers fully understand the impact of social media on marketing results today. Loyalty Management MAY 2011
21
FEATURES
Thirty Years of Loyalty

As Affinion Loyalty Group celebrates their thirtieth anniversary this year, we reflect on how the loyalty industry has changed and grown during the past three decades! By Mark Johnson Loyalty 360
uring the past 30 years, Affinion Loyalty Group (ALG) has become a powerhouse in the loyalty space by believing that this mantra, Converting Customers into Fans, is key to their clients success. Thirty years is a long time. And in an industry as dynamic as loyalty marketingrife with rapid change, consolidation, influences of governmental regulation, and a confluence of social, mobile and other media30 years is an eternity. Launched in 1981 as National Card Control, Inc., Affinion Loyalty Group has grown into an industry thought leader and driver by listening and responding to the market. Whether its leadership team is moderating panel discussions at trade shows, conducting webinars, or developing new products, ALG keeps, and often sets the industrys pace.
behavior, enhanced behavioral modeling, proximity marketing, and multi-channel communication management. Employing that depth of knowledge, ALG will design loyalty solutions around technologies (social, mobile, NFC) to create the next-generation loyalty and engagement marketing platforms. The key to future success will be enabling choice. Customers ability to choose their relationship and interaction with a brand based on their needs and wants will increase the effectiveness of the one-to-one marketing platform. L
Converting Customers Into Fans

As Affinion Loyalty Group (ALG) celebrates its 30th anniversary, Scott Lazear, President, reflects on the early years, the current business climate and initiatives, and what he sees on the horizon: Our tagline at ALG is Converting Customers Into Fans. Simply, thats what we have worked to do for the last thirty yearscreate fans of our clients brands. There is no greater compliment that clients can give than when they trust you with their brands. In our clients programs, points redemption typically leads to even higher earnings per account, as customer loyalty and usage increases after a redemption. This is a major indicator of engagement and loyalty to a brand. As financial institutions have been faced with the evolution of their loyalty programs, ALG has assisted them in numerous ways, from finding delivery channels to forging strategic rewards partnerships to expanding into new areas such as social media. Our success is a tribute to our strongest asset, our employees. The unwavering dedication and tenacity of our employees, both past and present, has built and maintained our pioneering spirit and industry leadership.
Scott Lazear, President, Affinion Loyalty Group
Customers ability to choose their relationship and interaction with a brand based on their needs and wants will increase the efficacy of the one-to-one marketing platform.
ALGs beginnings in the loyalty industry are worth reflection. In the early 1990s, credit card issuers that had co-branded relationships with airlines dominated the loyalty space. The idea of a bank-owned and bank-controlled loyalty currency was new and there wasnt a system in the marketplace that could provide it. Identifying this need, ALG developed a private-label loyalty program enabling a bank to effectively create its own currency and build its brand. These non-cobranded loyalty programs allowed banks to differentiate themselves from competitors and in so doing, segment and expand their customer bases. Today, in 2011, as ALG launches the Bank of America Value Portal platform, the company remains focused on delivering the kinds of technology-driven solutions that will ensure their clients success for years to come. ALG remains at the forefront of the loyalty industry as they monitor the latest work in the areas of engagement, digital convergence, the neuroscience of
22
THE HISTORY OF LOYALTY
A look back at the evolution of the modern day loyalty program

Loyalty programs have changed the way consumers interact with the companies from which they purchase products or services. Fast forward some 100 years since the first initiatives were launched, and companies now spend more than $2 billion on loyalty programs annually. More than 75% of consumers, according to Jupiter Research, are enrolled in at least one loyalty program, and the number of people in two or more is estimated to be one third of the shopping population. Heres a brief look at some of the key milestones in the evolution of customer loyalty programs:
1896 1931 1960 1981
The S&H Green Stamp programone of the earliest efforts to win the hearts, minds and wallets of customerswas launched. Just how popular was the program? S&H Green Stamps once issued three times as many stamps as the US Post Office, and by the 1960s, S&H was the largest purchaser of consumer products in the world. General Mills launched its long-standing Betty Crocker Points Program in which customers collected points which were redeemable for kitchenware from a catalog. The process of attaching a magnetic stripe to a plastic card was invented by IBM under a contract with the U.S. government for a security system. This would later have a huge impact on loyalty card data integration, prepaid, member cards, and most obviously credit cards and credit card rewards. Affinion Loyalty Group started as National Card Control, Inc. (NCCI) in 1981 by Wes Hall. At that time, banks were implementing fees on credit cards and Wes recognized the need for financial institutions to retain customers and build customer loyalty. American Airlines introduced AAdvantage, one of the most renowned customer loyalty programs in which the company tracked how many miles each member flew and offered free tickets and upgrades to frequent customers. United, Delta and TWA all followed suite later that year.
vintage Betty Crocker advertisement
first National Card Control advertisement
1983 1985 1992 1993 1994 1995 2000 2007 2010
Hotels initially partnered with airlines in customer loyalty ventures, but many eventually started their own initiatives as they discovered the power of the programs and the costs of participating in those hosted by airlines. In January, 1983, Holiday Inn launched the hotel industrys first loyalty program, and was followed by Marriott later that year. -Catalina marketing started in 1983and would become the backbone for grocery and CPG loyalty Diners Club introduced the first credit card linked to an airline loyalty programa move destined to have implications almost as significant as the launch of FFPs themselves. Today, there is one or more credit cards affiliated with virtually every travel loyalty program. LoyaltyOne launched its pioneering coalition loyalty program AT&T launched the first credit card rewards program, providing cash back on purchases which could be used toward the account holders phone bill -The first smart phone, IBM Simon, was released to the public and sold by BellSouth. By 2011, 75 million Americans use smart phones33% of all mobile phone users. This invention will take customer loyalty programs well past simple punch cards. Neiman-Marcus launched the industry-changing InCircle loyalty programformalizing Stanley Marcuss industry-changing strategy to integrate branding, customer service and promotions into a customer loyalty strategy. Internet was commercialized when NSFNET was decommissioned, removing the last restrictions on the use of the Internet to carry commercial trafficand, the world of loyalty marketing was forever changed. -The launch of Linkshare in 1996, ebates in 1998 and UPromise in 1999 brought the start of the "merchant-funded" loyalty concept Points.com was launched, enabling customers to manage their loyalty memberships, learn about new promotions, and exchange points and miles between programs. Apple introduced the iPhone. Although cell phones started carrying GPS in the mid 00s, the debut of the iPhone allowed third-party applications to develop programs to take advantage of built-in satellite positioningfueling the growth of geo-based loyalty programs. New technologies such as QR codes, analytics, and data mining tools, are poised to take customer loyalty programs to the next level. These and others allow the gamification and social network integration of loyalty marketing programs at a level that was impossible just a few years ago.
NeimanMarcus InCircle advertisement
points.com
and beyond
23
FEATURES
Engaging Partners through Communities in Todays New Normal

by Melissa Fruend, Maritz Loyalty & Motivation
we better How canand brand?connect our business partners to our goals, messages
Its a question that has been asked time and time again. While the problem is nothing new, the uncertainty brought on by recent economic turmoil and intensified competition has added urgency to the need to create strong, lasting bonds with your most valuable sales channel partners. Adding fuel to the fire is the continuing decrease in engagement by partners that you rely on to represent your brand to customers in the channel. From a customer perspective, todays New Normal business environment has brought with it a new set of expectations, among them the desire for greater transparency, trustworthiness and the delivery of value that benefits all to create both better business and better lives. Clearly, fresh thinking is needed. The influential management academic Henry Mintzberg provides important insight when he says: Companies must remake themselves into places of engagement. People are social animals who cannot function without a social system larger than ourselves. In fact, one way that companies are beginning to realize the power of social interaction among their key stakeholders is by creating brand communities. What do we mean by community? Online or offline, a community is a group of individuals who share common values, interests and sense of purpose. And, remembering that channel partners are people first, communities offer the opportunity to connect in a supportive social environment to create relationships that serve as resources to advance individual members both professionally and personally.
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ue most as an outcome of their participation. One way to capture this insight and provide a mechanism for guiding the overall governance of the community is by establishing an advisory panel selected from a crosssection of partner business types. Such a group can provide insight on what content and practices will effectively engage community members and help establish guidelines for how members will interact and in what venues.
Putting Communities into Practice

In order to build a community that engages people and builds sustained loyalty, we must personalize the experience. Communities are launched every day, but we believe the most successful share the five following characteristics:
When we think of communities, we usually associate with online, but studies show that the face-to-face interaction can contribute greatly to the experience.
Reframing How We Look at Business Partners
As we all know, companies usually have very specific objectives when it comes to their channel partner relationships. These typically include: Improve vendor/partner business relationships Ensure competency and focus Improve sales capabilities Grow business for both parities When thinking about creating a brand community, its helpful to not only begin with the frame of shared interest and stretch to grow beyond the transactional nature of most partner relationships. Building a community can enable channel partners to build more personal relationships with individuals from across your organization who best represent your brand. And, possibly just as important to your partners, a community also enables them to build their personal network of peers for the purpose of learning and collaborating in ways that theyve perhaps not been able to do before. For this reason, its critical to begin planning with a deep understanding of what channel partners would val-
1. People First: Channel partners and their employees are PEOPLE first, so build it for THEM not for you. This means taking the time and effort to understand what they value most from their relationship with you and where they see benefit in connecting with their peers in other organizations with similar interests. Begin by putting the partner in the center of your community strategy and youre on the right path.
2. Brand Effect: Community will be perceived as an extension of your brand. So, while the community is not ALL about your brand, your brand represents the central, unifying component. Sometimes, when communities are launched they look and sound very different from core brand values, creating dissonance with brand messaging and confusion around the shared purpose of the community itself. The lesson here is to make sure brand values are consistently represented in all virtual and offline community touch points. 3. Enrich while you Educate: While the first step is to define what is meaningful and motivating to your partners, its equally important to be diligent in your efforts to supply valuable content with frequency. This is one of the biggest challenges for companies but it doesnt have to
continued on next page
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FEATURES be. Who are your thought leaders in product, education and sales? Enlist these experts and develop an integrated content calendar. It can also be very productive to solicit content ideas and input from organizational resources outside of marketings domain. Dont underestimate the hidden desire of others to contribute if given the opportunity or the value to your channel of hearing from voices outside of leaders, experts and marketers. Outside and thirdparty resources can also be highly-valued by community membersbased on areas theyve identified for learning or business development. For example, Maritz designed a targeted communications platform to support and elevate engagement rates in an already existing incentive program. As expected, these communications increased overall engagement rates; however, the introduction of a blog by a company expert, who happened to be named Cindy (her real name) with a photo attached (her actual photo) gave the company the impact they were looking for. Cindy established her reputation as a caring, smart technical expert who the partners came to know and trust as a positive representative of the brand. 4. A Case for Face-to-Face: When we think of communities, we usually associate with online, but studies show that the face-to-face interaction can contribute greatly to the experience. Consider including the opportunity for both virtual and face-to-face community interactions. A successful channel community might include frequent opportunities for regional conferences and an annual conference. For example, a large software company sought Maritz assistance in creating immediate sales momentum for a new product. The company hosted a meeting that had three core objectives: To expand audience reach past a one-city stand-alone meeting To ensure presentation of a consistent message by connecting product experts and senior management with key business partners To make it memorable but keep it cost-effective The solution was to host a live satellite broadcast and dinner event in 21 cities. This approach enabled both the delivery of high-impact product information and the opportunity for partners to network with local sales leadership and reseller partners face-to-face and virtually. The result was a tenfold increase in the number of resellers participating. 5. Create a go to Place: Utilize game science and social networking to elicit active participation and a general feeling of fun in your community. Game science is one design approach to leverage the basics of neuroscience and the growing social gaming trend. The power of games
Reward Custo
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Add More Flavor To Your Loyalty Program.

Grow your business today with an SVS Loyalty program that will drive customer behaviors toward the outcomes you choose. With over twenty years of experience as an innovative industry leader, we create billions of dollars in increased client revenues every year.
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Contact SVS to learn how to increase sales with our state-of-the-art loyalty platform. Call 502-326-4600 or visit us online at www.storedvalue.com.
to motivate and shape consumer behavior is well known. Games tap into our primal urges for competition, status, reward, achievement, prestige, social interaction and skills mastery. And any experience that heightens the emotions sticks in our memory, shapes our attitude and contributes to greater engagement. Communities are also an opportunity to build the status as a reward to those most willing to participate and share their ideas and best practices. Giving members of the community the opportunity to not only respond to the content you provide but provide their own perspectives, ideas and success stories is a critical success factor for any healthy community. And, as you begin to build a two-way communication with membership, you will receive great feedback on whats important to them and adjust accordingly. Todays ever-changing business environment and peoples desires for greater connection are the driving forces behind the need to refresh traditional practices to better engage channel stakeholders. Building communities based on the mutual benefits inherent in advancing business and personal capabilities represents a powerful tool for todays marketer. It all begins by remembering that channel partners are people first and their desire to create a network of valuable relationships and to be recognized for their contributions with increased status can benefit your brand in a myriad of ways over time. L
Hear Melissa explore this topic in "The Game Has Changed: Engaging Partners in the New Normal" at the Engagement Expo with Stacy DeLong from the HON Company.
Think Outside the Bank.

Affinity Solutions delivers innovative loyalty solutions to financial institutions worldwide. We develop online and offline relationship marketing programs by integrating merchant-funded, bank funded, and enterprise reward solutions.
Customized loyalty platform Accelerated merchant-funded earning of rewards Strategic consulting End-to-end portfolio management platform FI decisioning engine Multi-channel, targeted marketing
Our customized programs deepen customer loyalty, improve acquisition and retention, boost card usage, and increase revenues. Learn more about what we can do for your financial institution today.
INTELLIGENT PARTNERSHIPS. SMART SOLUTIONS.
FEATURES
What Do Affluent Customers Want From Their Loyalty Programs?

by Linda Dickerhoof, VIPdesk
ver 50% of all household spending in the United States$4.2 trillion annuallyis attributed to affluent consumers. In addition, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, affluent consumers spend 2.5 times more than the average consumer annually, the average U.S. consumer spends approximately $50,000, while the top affluent consumer spends over $124,000. As such, the affluent demographic has become one of the most sought-after by loyalty marketers due to the increased spending ability they possess. In order to discover what affluent customers want from their loyalty programs, it is necessary to look at their overall motivators. Charles Christianson, VP of Sales and Marketing with Affinion Loyalty Group and Mark Robeson, VP of Marketing and Strategic Accounts with VIPdesk, recently presented a webinar for Loyalty 360 members, What Do Affluent Consumers Want From Their Loyalty Programs? In this webinar, they outlined a motivation formula highlighting the drivers of brand loyalty for this market: In order to understand the affluent market, you must understand who they are as consumers, what they value, how they behave, and empower them. Empowerment is what affluent consumers want from a loyalty program. In return, they will seek you out, trust you, be loyal to your brand, and rave about you to others.
Who Are Affluent Consumers?

Affluent consumers, defined by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, are households that earn $100,000 or more. Approximately 22% of U.S. households (25.4 million households) are classified as affluent. The affluent demographic can further be broken down into five segments: 1. Aspirational mass market: trendy metropolitans, tend to have average jobs and backgrounds but aspire to an aboveaverage lifestyle. 2. Rising middle class: middle-class background with well-paying jobs. 3. New money: high net-worth consumers who earned the wealth themselves. 4. Old money: high net-worth consumers who have inherited their wealth. 5. Beyond money: similar to old money, but these consumers have a complete indifference to status, avoiding ostentatious displays of wealth.
Approximately 22% of U.S. households (25.4 million households) are classified as affluent.
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Affluence in the U.S.

Portion of U.S. households classified as affluent*
All affluent households
Portion of U.S. household spending generated by all affluent households
Average annual spending per consumer unit

$124,678
25.4 mil.
Non-affluent households
22%
Non-affluent households
52%
$4.2 tril.
$50,486
*Households earning $100,000 or more in 2008 Note: Consumer units include families, single persons living alone or sharing a household with others but who are financially independent, or two or more persons living together who share expenses. Sources: Packaged Facts, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Census Bureau
All U.S. consumer units
Top affluent consumer units $150,000+
GRAPHIC BY ALG BRAND COMMUNICATIONS
When looking at the affluent consumer, it is necessary to cast aside stereotypes often seen in the mass media. First and foremost, looks can be deceivingthe outward appearance of affluent consumers rarely reflects their spending ability or net worth. Instead, the average affluent consumerespecially in the higher net-worth subsets of this demographicis the antithesis of the stereotype that you see in the media. They tend to live below their means, drive domestic cars, wear less expensive clothes, and drive less expensive automobiles than you would imagine.
Behavior of the Affluent Consumer

Three behaviors of the affluent consumer that should be taken into consideration by loyalty marketers are brand loyalty, online/mobile savvy, and travel focus. 1. Brand loyal. The affluent are far more likely to look for brand names than other demographicsas long as it is a brand that is providing a product or service that is worth the price. Not unsurprisingly, given the importance of service to this demographic, brands that provide a stellar customer service experience are the most likely to gain and maintain brand loyalty from the affluent consumer. This is especially true in the travel and hospitality industries, where brands such as Starwood and Marriott understand the importance of service to keeping long-term brand loyalty, which is shown through their service-centric loyalty programs. 2. Online and mobile savvy. Affluent consumers want to simplify their lives with technology, while still obtaining a high level of service regardless of the channel they use. A recent survey of millionaires from Fidelity Investments shows that 85% use text-messaging, smartphone applications and social mediaproof that this demographic is wired across the spectrum of channels offering online and mobile content and customer interaction. 3. Travel Focused. The affluent demographic is travel focused82% of affluent Americans took a domestic vacation or personal trip in the past year. As such, this market values a loyalty program that can help them make travel easier. Brands such as the American Express Platinum card and the Merrill Lynch Beyond Rewards card are responding by offering travel-focused benefits including priority international lounge access, room upgrades, and dedicated Concierge service.
Values of the Affluent Consumer

Affluent customers value luxury, but it must be luxury that is worth the price. Given that much of the net worth of affluent consumers resides in the stock marketwhich lost 2.4 trillion dollars in 2007-2008 it is no surprise that this demographic values a good deal. Affluent consumers are more likely than the average consumer to use coupons. With this demographic, there is no stigma related to coupons or discountson the contrary, coupons can be viewed as representative of a new status symbol of fiscal responsibility. Along with coupons, the prevalence of group-buying sites such as Groupon and Living Social has not gone un-noticed by the affluent marketinstead they are embracing this trend. One such example is group buying site, Gilt.com. Gilt has been very successful targeting luxury consumers with discounts on premier quality fashion, housewares, and travel items. Affluent customers also value quality service, as shown through the success of retailers Nordstrom and Zappos, both of whom are known for their customer service. The importance of quality customer service to this demographic is shown in recent research from Harvard Business School to indicate that affluent consumers are likely to be the first to switch allegiances to a competitor providing superior customer service. This research also shows that even though high-end customers can be fickle, a company that sustains a superior service position in its local market can attract and retain customers who are more valuable over time.
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What Do Affluent Customers Want From Their Loyalty Programs? (continued)
Empowering the Affluent Consumer

Affluent consumers seek out loyalty programs that will empower them in a way that is different from the rest of the marketplace, meeting these needs: Help me feel less busy. Affluent consumers want a loyalty program that will help them feel less busythis is a demographic that wont use a service if they can just as easily do a better job themselves. Remember their preferences, which will save them time in the future. Offer online and mobile access to program features. Provide program features such as Concierge service specifically designed to make them feel less busy. Give me exclusive access. This is a demographic that values luxury that is worth its price. A loyalty program that stands out from the crowd, providing access and experiences that they cant get anywhere else is certainly a luxury that is worth the price. Provide holistic services. The affluent demographic values service, especially holistic service. Make sure to ask them the right questions, and anticipate their needs. Offer flexible redemption options through a one voice single point of contact. Make me feel truly special. The ultimate way to empower the affluent customer through a loyalty program is to make them feel special. A personal touch, exclusive access, and stellar customer service all combine to do just thatprovide an interaction that makes your customer feel valued, and thus value your service. L
Survey Reveals Exceptional Customer Service Most Important Aspect of Customer Loyalty for Affluent Consumers
Over 50 percent of loyalty marketers identify exceptional customer service as the most important aspect of customer loyalty programs geared towards affluent consumers, according to a survey conducted by Affinion Loyalty Group and VIPdesk during their recent webinar. Survey results include the following: 57% find exceptional customer service to be the most important aspect of customer loyalty programs geared towards affluent consumers 44% identified exclusive rewards or concierge service as the most important aspect of customer loyalty programs geared towards affluent consumers 52% believe that affluent consumers are most influenced in their customer loyalty decisions by recognition/personalization 32% find affluent consumers most influenced by desire for exclusive access 15% feel this demographic is most influenced by desire for status
Loyalty 360 members can access a recording of the webinar, What do Affluent Consumers Want from their Loyalty Programs? at Loyalty360.org.
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specializing in results driven loyalty communications. With Fiserv you have a partner that can help you with every aspect of your loyalty program from strategy and analytics to creative and production. With Fiserv you have the power to win your members loyalty. The power within. www.directmarketing.fiserv.com
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FEATURES
The Consumer Goods Dilemm

by Carlos Dunlap, Kobie Marketing
n recent months Ive had in-depth discussions with consumer products marketing teams, especially within the packaged goods sector. Our conversations revolve around what type of loyalty marketing strategy, if any, can be developed to help them identify best customers, grow their business and ultimately increase patronage and loyalty toward their brand. Most of these brand stewards admit they dont know what they want to do, but they want to do something. CPGs want to establish strategies based on unique insights into their customer base, but the distribution channel makes connecting with customers difficult. It is the classic CPG loyalty marketing dilemma. As the digital frontier has emerged, it is safe to say that most of these brands have developed some type of online community, social network presence or consumer friendly web site. Some customer specific data is being captured, which is then added to an existing database of promotional responders, customer service inquiries or warranty card registrations. Despite these resources, the vast majority of a CPG brands customer base remains invisible on an individual level. Will putting up Facebook pages and generating a few thousand likes get the CPG brands into the loyalty game? Like everything else about Facebook-related marketing and social media, it is only one tactic, a single prong that in and of itself will not create an integrated loyalty strategy. While most travel, financial, retail and telecom loyalty programs around the world use a points based model, or some variation of it, many CPG companies avoid it like the plague. The unique needs of CPGs warrant a closer look at a model that addresses their different needsone that provides the benefits of a loyalty program without the liability they believe points create for their industry. Simply put, accrual-based loyalty programs are not designed to drive incremental behavior or brand loyalty with the CPG industry. They claim points are stale and they seek fresh.
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Packaged a
In addition, CPG firms experience a disconnect between tracking individual purchase behavior in traditional accrualbased programs. This disconnect occurs as a result of being separated from the end user by the distribution channel and the retailer. In fact, many consumer product companies struggle to implement strategies that will identify the individuals value, potential and attrition associated with the brand or with the larger enterprise.
Enabling technologies can be leveraged to help CPG brands evolve from a mass marketing approach to a highly segmented strategy based on individual behaviors and desires.
Given this model, the historical CPG loyalty program has been communications-based. New media and digital environments have accelerated this approach, but most of the communications have followed old patterns of push marketing developed for older technologies and media by traditional advertising agencies. Few brands have embraced the power of true consumer dialogue. Customer engagement offers real opportunity, but the implementation of such programs can be very hard to execute. Primary consumer research is useful in understanding broad trends, target audiences, demographic and attitudinal segments, however it fails to deliver CPGs personable snapshots of their most valuable customersthose who buy more and inspire others to adopt their brand. Scanner data and associated panel information can yield extremely valuable metrics around marketing actions, but fall short in helping them identify the individuals who are responsible for the actions success or failure.
Today, enabling technologies can be leveraged to help CPG brands evolve from a mass marketing approach to a highly segmented strategy based on individual behaviors and desires. The consumer today will embrace such an approach if something of value is offered in return. Delivering on the WIIFM (whats in it for me) is the secret ingredient to any great loyalty strategy. To complicate things, the definition of value varies from person to person. The delivery of relevant value, the two-way delivery/collection of information and the corresponding engagement chain that can result is possible today via the web, social networks, mobile devices, tablets, kiosks and other interactive devices. But the consumer is not going to play, at least not play the traditional loyalty marketing game, unless the CPGs create a true value exchange.
What type of value can be offered?

1. Taking another look at points, or similar manner of keeping score of the consumer, may be the natural place to begin. Points work for some brands and clearly offer an accelerated benefit across a family of brands within an enterprise because they reflect the individual value of each participating consumer. 2. If you need to avoid liability, you may want to consider an auction-based currency, which allows consumers to bid on meaningful, experiential rewards where the CPG can control the budget, timing and size of the reward. 3. In addition, you may want to consider targeted sampling, or participation in research surrounding new products. Additionally, special privileges extended by the brandaccess to something, even if it costs the consumer moneycan be a powerful motivator when demand exceeds supply. 4. Another strategy to consider is one that supports the development of platforms to capture valuable information, product trial, product review and advocacy around specific lifestyle, social, entertainment or cultural segments that align with the brand. Try experimenting with the new tools such as gamificationthe use of games to engage consumers and drive behavior, in this case measurable brand engagement, loyalty in the form of repeat purchases and advocacy. 5. Recognizing and rewarding referrals, as well as responding to best customer inbound inquiries in a fast, value-oriented mannerand with a solid human touchcan also have a meaningful impact on your loyalty initiatives.
continued on next page Loyalty Management SEPTEMBER 2011
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Luckily, the technology exists to help you operate, communicate, report, analyze and fulfill all aspects of your newfound loyalty strategy. Making slight modifications to packaging or by including in-pack codes, you can make tracking and selfreporting of purchase behavior more convenient and even fun for end-users. Profile information can be collected with each value exchange, databases built, and new segments defined. When it comes time for your market research team to evaluate a special sample of brand users, youll be prepared to help them discover and utilize valuable insights at a fraction of the cost.
My Coke Rewards
A look at how one brand is approaching CPG loyalty How Consumers Earn Points:
Consumers can purchase their favorite Coca-Cola beverages for unique My Coke Rewards codes. Codes can be found on caps, inside tear off on twelve packs and on multi-pack wraps from 15 different brands, including: Coca-Cola, Sprite, DASANI, POWERADE, Minute Maid, NESTEA and others. Codes = points. The more codes a member collects and submit, the more points one accrues.
The next cycle of marketing innovation will focus on discovering techniques and delivering experiences that enhance and support the daily lives of consumers.
Are you looking for some examples to get your loyalty marketing planning jumpstarted? Check out Doves Real Beauty program that provides a powerful combination of recognition and social movement while driving the brands market shares forward around the world. Or, check out the Makers Mark Ambassadors Club, which trades the transactional tracking device for the power of a single brand advocate to get his friends involved in the fun, rewards, privileges and special accessibility offered to members-only. If youd like to play the auction or points game you can register on-line with Stouffers Dinner Rewards, Huggies Enjoy the Ride or Aveda Pure Privilege, just to name a few. If your brand aligns with a mobile strategy, check out the Chivas Regal Brotherhood. And of course, there is always My Coke Rewards. We all know that the consumer is in control. The next cycle of marketing innovation will focus on discovering techniques and delivering experiences that enhance and support the daily lives of consumers. We can no longer count on feature-function, product based differentiation to drive CPG results. And we cant keep discounting forever or there will be no margin left to create customer loyalty. To help spur the required innovation consider unleashing a small group within your marketing department to experiment with several loyalty strategies. A few other words of wisdom: obtain cross-functional support, measure everything and most importantly, foster a culture that accelerates entrepreneurship, allows for failure without punishment and keeps the consumer the focus of your loyalty strategy.
Opportunities Available for Consumers to Share their Personal/Purchase Data

My Coke Rewards members register online at MyCokeRewards.com providing: name, gender, birthday, mailing address and email information. Including a mobile phone number is also an optional field to register (for Mobile News Flashes). There are a variety of options for consumers to log their codes. My Coke Rewards codes can be entered: online at the My Cokes Rewards website, via a desktop widget, by text, or through My Coke Rewards Mobile.
Burn Opportunities
Rewards: Exchange points for merchandise from the My Coke Rewards Catalog (gift cards and merchandise). Sweepstakes: Use points for a chance to win sweepstakes prizes. Instant Win: Use points for a chance to win a prize instantly. MCRPointsPlus: Use points to pay for a portion of a purchase. Donate Points to support a cause Donate Points to a School
How Coke Rewards Communicates

All communications are opt-in and presented at registration. Email: Sending up to five email communications per month; with information about program rewards, bonus points and member exclusives. Text Messaging: Up to five messages highlighting rewards and free offers directly to a mobile device. Social Networks: Become a Fan on Facebook and follow on Twitter For more information visit, MyCokeRewards.com
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Making slight modifications to packaging or by including in-pack codes, you can make tracking and self-reporting of purchase behavior more convenient and even fun for end-users.
Ill leave you with a few guiding principles: Leverage the power of your brand. Most brands have spent an enormous amount of time, energy and money building a unique and defensible position in their respective category. While many loyalty strategies can be duplicatedsome easier than othersyour brands positioning belongs only to you. Leverage all elements of this positioning in your loyalty plan and your eventual program execution by layering in specific program components, benefits, communications and technologies consistent with your target audience and the unique characteristics of your brand. Dont be lazy; dont follow copycat tactics that detract from your brands overall image in the marketplace. Think brand. Act enterprise. The world of CPG Marketing is often characterized by compartmentalized responsibilities associated with brand managers and their agencies. While your loyalty strategy needs to be totally focused on the special circumstances surrounding your brand and program objectives, there may be resources, tools and systems available to you within the enterprise which can make your efforts easier, faster, less expensive and reflective of best practices. Dont fall victim to my brand, my budget and my system. If multiple brands that serve a common audience can pool their efforts and budgets, not only will the effort be worthwhile, but it'll also improve the overall value proposition to the consumer. If a similar platform can be cost-shared and supported among brands, the entire enterprise wins. Evolve or die. Before you unveil your loyalty effort in the marketplace, you should already be thinking two steps ahead. The next two evolutionary program enhancements should be planned, approved and queued up for execution. Programs must evolve or they will quickly become stale. Some competitors will quickly match your efforts. Some will automatically play one-up and raise the stakes as soon as you launch. Dont fall victim to complacency. Have your targets already defined, your bullets loaded and ready to fire, then reload and fire again. The best loyalty programs in the world are constantly moving down an evolutionary path. Engage, dont preach. CPG marketers are especially good communicators. The traditional agencies that support CPG brands usually like more communications, new campaigns, greater reach and frequency and other tactics that generate increases in overall brand spend. Unfortunately, the historical directions of the communications effort have been one-way from brand to consumer. The loyalty game changes all of that. You must re-focus your efforts on dialogue, true listening to and learning from, sharing and collaborating with, your brands franchise. We have the tools and tactics today to accomplish engagement marketing across a myriad of channels, networks and technology platforms. We have to start using them in the manner for which they were created. Keep score. Your loyalty marketing program must be measurable. The ability to identify best customers and advocates, maintain their business, possibly increase their yield and/or potential to your brands, are all hallmarks of loyalty marketing measurement plans. While all CPG brands may not be able to track purchase behavior at the specific customer level, each loyalty initiative must find the specific behavioral, attitudinal and emotional metrics that can be correlated to business results in order to justify the investment. A shake out is coming, especially in the social media marketplace. Unabated spending and experimentation will quickly take a back seat to performance. Develop and refine your scorecard. Dont shy away from the scrutiny that loyalty marketing brings to your brand reviews. L
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FEATURES
A Mobile Wallet?
N
Near Field Communications, the New Frontier in Customer Experience, Engagement & Loyalty
ear Field Communications (NFC) is the latest innovation to revolutionize a technology driven world marketplace. With developing opportunities in mobile payments, ticketing, couponing, loyalty and engagement tactics, NFC applications are sure to capture consumer attention quickly. Orange and O2 have been testing the waters and have the population in the UK anxiously awaiting the rollout of this technology. A recent survey conducted by Acxiom, finds 1 in 5 consumers in the UK are ready and waiting to make purchases and receive targeted promotions directly through their mobile device. With Googles recent announcement of Google wallet, the US marketplace is soon to follow. We had the chance to hear from a variety of perspectives on NFC and mobile wallet applications. Learn what is happening today from experts leading the market with exclusive insights from: First Data, The Container Store and Acxiom.
provider insights
First Data Explores Near Field Communications (NFC) Technology

Dom Morea, SVP and Division Manager, Advanced Solutions and Innovations
L360: What drove First Data to be a leader in the space alongside, Google, Citi, MasterCard and Sprint?
FD: First Data had a vision of an open, connected commerce future which aligned Googles vision. We brought to the partnership: An ability to play a central role in simplifying a complex payment ecosystem to create value for our partners Scale of millions of merchants and thousands of financial institutions An unparalleled infrastructure on top of which we innovate and deliver a suite of solutions that span the entire mobile experience No other company has the reach that First Data does across both the issuing and acquiring sides of the payments industry. We look at ourselves as both a partner and a catalyst on this project by helping get enough merchants on board to attract consumers as well as helping get enough consumers on board to attract merchants to quickly ignite the platform of mobile commerce.
mobile wallets will be able to migrate all of the accounts in their physical wallet to their mobile device in order to make payments anytime or exchange value, anywhere.
Why should companies integrate NFC technologies into their business and marketing strategies?
NFC technologies like Google Wallet can help merchants better serve their customers by offering a new payment choice that is faster and safer. Merchants also have the potential to increase sales with the Wallet by driving more traffic to their stores and through the ability to push targeted offers to shoppers. Additionally, Google Wallet can help increase the speed of check-out (contactless payments are 40% faster than swipe transactions) and attract valuable customer segments such as higher income, early adopters and younger audiences who do everything mobile.
Which merchants or types of merchants will be (or should be) the first to deploy contactless payment terminals in the US?
Several top retail brands including American Eagle Outfitters, Bloomingdales, Champs Sports, The Container Store, Duane Reade, Einstein Bros. Bagels, Foot Locker, Guess, Jamba Juice, Macys, Noah's Bagels, Peets Coffee & Tea, RadioShack, Subway, ToysRUs and Walgreens have already started accepting contactless payments at the point of sale. Driving contactless adoption has been a priority for First Data for years, knowing that this day has been coming. Now that its here, were accelerating our efforts to make sure small merchants can also participate in this project and ensure Google Wallet is accepted in a growing number of locations. With over 4.1 million merchant locations in the US, were reaching out to
What marketplace conditions are driving the need/ desire for these applications?
According to a recent study by MasterCard, two-thirds (62%) of Americans who use a mobile phone would be open to using their device to make purchases wherever their errands may take them. As more consumers go mobile while managing their busy lives, an increasing number of smartphones equipped with NFC technology are now being deployed across a range of carriers and handsets. Were nearing a tipping point where these connected consumers with access to a range of NFC-enabled devices and
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Each day, we are growing closer to true mobile commerce becoming mainstream in the U.S. The availability of Google Wallet surely takes us one step closer to achieving that.
our customers and upgrading them to accept contactless. At the time of launch, First Data had signed over 1000 new merchants in New York City alone to accept Google Wallet and were launching new programs today to ramp that even higher.
ing (such as opening the case) will make the data unreadable. But even if data could be read with a very sensitive instrument, its stored in a way that makes it extremely difficult to piece together.
What are some possible opportunities to use NFC as part of an engagement or loyalty strategy?
NFC technologies such as Google Wallet will enrich the consumers shopping experience by integrating the payment function of the mobile wallet with other value-add loyalty programs and offers from their favorite local retailers.
A recent Axciom survey found 1 in 5 consumers in the UK were ready to use NFC. Any predictions for how this will translate to a US audience? When do you anticipate seeing widespread use of NFC in the US marketplace?
The mobile revolution is affecting every part of life from music, to computing, to photography. And very soon, the millions of Americans who own mobile phones will no longer need their old leather wallets either. The U.S. consumer has come to expect mobile banking at their financial institutions and has grown increasingly comfortable using it. As they do so, they become more comfortable using their mobile devices for other things that can make their life easier and more convenient. Mobile commerce is the next step. Each day, we are growing closer to true mobile commerce becoming mainstream in the U.S. The availability of Google Wallet surely takes us one step closer to achieving that. With consumers ready to embrace the technology, a growing number of merchants implementing contactless POS systems and financial intuitions seeing the power of a deeper understanding of and engagement with their customers through this new channel, mobile commerces arrival into our personal mobile devices is not only imminent, its time has come. We expect huge growth rates in NFC in the coming years with mobile contactless transactions predicted to top 2.2 billion in 2011. We believe widespread adoption in the U.S. will happen the coming year or so.
continued on next page LoyaltyLoyalty Management MAY 2011 Management SEPTEMBER
How is First Data addressing the concern of security for NFC payment applications?
As Trusted Service Manager (TSM) for Google Wallet, First Data provides the infrastructure, functionality and services to provide end-to-end lifecycle management of payment accounts on the Secure Elements of mobile devices. Simply put, the TSM is the underlying technology that securely connects physical payment cards into Google Wallet. The Secure Element is a highly robust device with many features designed to protect the data is stores. Its basically a standalone computerits separate from the phones main operating system and hardware. Only trusted programs like Google Wallet can access the Secure Element to initiate a transaction. Strong cryptography is enforced on the chip itself, so only authorized entities can communicate with it (such as when payment credentials are being provisioned into it). The Secure Element also contains hardware protections to prevent tampering. For example, there are multiple sensors (heat, light) to determine the integrity of the device so that any tamper-
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A Mobile Wallet? (continued)

retailer insights
The Container Store Explores NFC Technology

The Container Store is a leader in the retail marketplace, testing the use of the Single Tap experience in their stores.
L360: How many stores are testing NFC/Single Tap technologies?

TCS: 20 stores in five markets
ers dont always like to carry around loyalty cards, and they can lose special offers that were mailed to them. This takes the burden off the customer and keeps them organized and engaged with our brand.
What marketplace conditions are driving the need/desire for these applications?
Customer service is a priority for The Container Store, and we see this being a natural extension of that commitment to our customers. Mobile is the way customers will shop in the not so distant future we need to provide the customer with the ability to shop this way and on their own personal terms. We just launched our mobile site and see this as another extension of service for our customers. We know customers access information like product reviews and product pricing while they are in our stores. It just makes sense that they also are able to use their phone to pay at checkout. Were all about making life more convenient for our customers through our organized solutions, so the Google Wallet payment option just makes perfect sense.
What are some of the advantages and/or hurdles to prepare for as an early adopter of NFC technologies and applications?
Our core competency is customer service and we work hard to deliver on that brand promise every single day for every single customer. Our participation in Google Wallet shows us as a leading retail innovator, and that is what our customer expects from The Container Store.
Why is it important to The Container Store to offer NFC and Single Tap experience to their customers?
At The Container Store, we have a passion for customer service. Were always eager to advance new technologies that elevate our customers shopping experience. Beyond providing our customers with more payment options, this technology is an improvement in both convenience and ultimately security. It's also a fun way to pay and that adds to the air of excitement our customers experience in our stores.
Beyond providing our customers with more payment options, [mobile] technology is an improvement in both convenience and ultimately security.
How do you educate your customers about NFC and Single Tap experience options and advantages?
Well make sure our sales people are very educated about this neat new technology. We will also have information in stores at point of sale showcasing this service.
Any predictions for the customer response to NFC applications and offerings?
What are some possible opportunities to use NFC as part of an engagement or loyalty strategy?
The options are many. Google Wallet allows customers to save information to their virtual wallet related to payment options, gift cards, loyalty programs and special offers and incentives. This is a very convenient service, keeping it all in one place. No more digging through your bag to find any of this information! We know custom-
Survey
95%
Our customer is female, with a high household income; shes well-educated, may work inside of the home or outside of the home, might be juggling a family, a career, community involvement or all of it. Bottom line is that she is a busy woman. We want to enable her to get in and out of the store as quickly and easily as possible so she can get her organization projects accomplished in order to spend more time doing what she wants to do. Thats why we developed services like our GoShop Click & Pickup that even delivers a customers product to them in their car and also and Scan & Deliver in our New York markets. We see this falling in line with these other services. She also wants, and is used to having, the newest gadget, and is comfortable and quick in adapting to all of its bells and whistles like the Google Wallet application. The use of NFC technology will hopefully increase frequency of customer visitsince it makes it even easier to shop with us.
Loyalty 360 surveyed thought leaders and marketers in the customer experience, loyalty and engagement space to seek insights around NFC and mobile wallet applications. What do you know, what is your interest level, and how do you plan to use NFC in your marketing & communications strategies?
What is the current level of interest & concern for integrating NFC technologies and application strategies into a business model and marketing strategy? What survey respondents had to say Over 30% of surveyed are likely early adopters, or have plans in the works, to integrate NFC technologies and applications into a business or marketing strategy!
Almost of those surveyed expressed interest in learning more about NFC technology and its potential applications!
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global insights
Acxiom Survey Explores Desire For NFC Technology in the UK

Gaurang Vartikar, Acxiom Europe Head of Mobile shared details with Loyalty 360 about a recent Acxiom survey and the adoption of NFC technologies in the UK.
L360: Acxiom recently conducted a survey garnering responses from 17,000 consumers in the UK, what inspired the survey creation?
Vartikar: NFC was the hot topic at the World Mobile Conference held during February in Barcelona. I recently joined Acxiom as head of mobile for Europe, and attended this event. As Acxiom had not seen any consumer stats about the take-up of NFC in the UK, we decided to use our own online consumer survey to ask the public key questions about whether they would use the mobile wallet, and what for. The findings were mapped against Acxioms Personicx Household consumer data segmentation solution to give a clear picture of this audience.
erators have issued statements about their intention to enter this market. While the UK public may not fully understand the benefits of and issues around the introduction of NFC, they appear to know enough to embrace it in large numbers already.
What companies are (will be) first to participate in the launch of NFC technology in the UK?
We believe the best way to reach early adopters would be trials at their favorite retail stores, which are Sainsburys Local, Tesco Metro, Waitrose and Marks & Spencer, as consumers seem willing to trial in-store use of cell phone readers in these environments.
What learnings can you share from your recent survey?

Topline findings include: 20.5% of respondents (equal to 6.8 million UK consumers) are willing to use NFC when its introduced Those people who are open to using NFC would do so to make payments, receive loyalty points, acquire coupons and even download ads to their phones Some 15% are happy to share their information as long as a brand is transparent about what information they collect Single female homeowners aged 25 to 44, living in urban areas and earning up to 40k, are more likely to use NFC for coupons and loyalty points than for making payments Students and large families showed a greater amount of interest in using their mobile devices to make day-to-day payments, but are still interested in receiving coupons and loyalty points via NFC.
How are current market conditions in the UK driving the desire to lead the world as early adopters of NFC technology?
High penetration of mobile phones and growing use of Smartphones are factors that make the UK ripe and ready for NFC.
What are some possible opportunities, being tested in the UK, to use NFC as part of an engagement or loyalty strategy?
Contactless data transfer opens up a world of possibilities for marketers. From new payment options to marketing and peer-topeer communications, the opportunities are immense and yet to be fully understood. Our research indicated that 15% of respondents are willing to share their details with brands via NFC. Brands now need to quickly understand who these supporters of NFC are, what they spend their money on and what they will use the new services for in order to send them targeted, relevant offers.
Acxiom survey findings uncovered 1 in 5 consumers in the UK were ready to use NFC. How has the public been made aware of this new technology? What has them so anxious and excited about its release?
The public is being drip-fed information about NFC in the UK, through media stories. In 2010, consumers were told that a handful of UK cities would trial the new technology, while over the last couple of months major brands (including Google) and network op-
marketers, in the midst of the there Aasconstant bombardment of newtechnological evolution,adapt is technologies to adopt,
and embrace as the consumer demands more ease, more play and greater functionality. Its hard to know when to jump in and when to wait for the dust to settle in the hopes that your predecessors have left a clear marked path to follow. Follow Loyalty 360 as we explore the rise of NFC technologies and their play in the customer loyalty and engagement marketplace. We will be sharing research on consumer and marketer insights and global perspectives in an upcoming study exclusively from Loyalty 360. L
What is the best use for NFC technologies in business & marketing strategies? Loyalty program: 40% Payments: 30% Engagement/Targeted Couponing: 17%
90%
of survey respondents believe their customers would be interested in using the technology!
Loyalty Management MAY 2011
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FEATURES
Accounting for Loyalty Programs

by Brian Jones & John Kryczka, PricewaterhouseCoopers
s consumers become increasingly savvy about rewards, loyalty programs often are a significant expense for companies in a variety of industries including travel and hospitality, financial, and consumer/retail. Accordingly, these companies need to address fundamental accounting issues for the recognition and measurement of 1) revenues and expenses on the income statement and 2) related liabilities on the balance sheet. US GAAP has offered little specific, authoritative guidance on accounting for loyalty programs, so diverging accounting practices have emerged. New international accounting rules have triggered changes in some major programs, and possible modifications in US GAAP have generated further discussion. Depending on the nature and size of the program, accounting changes to loyalty programs can significantly impact a company's balance sheet, profits, shareholder value, and financial disclosures. As a result, it is critically important for companies to be aware of current accounting treatment and emerging industry developments.
US GAAP recognition of revenue for customer loyalty programs

Under US GAAP, two dominant accounting approaches have emerged to recognize and measure loyalty program benefits and costs. Cost/provision. Under this approach, the nature of the awards are viewed as a marketing expense so a company immediately recognizes the full payment received from the customer as revenue in the period of the qualifying purchase (e.g., when points are earned). At the same time, the company records a provision for the internal cost associated with the company's future obligation to its customers. Divergent practices have emerged as to how this internal cost is determined, ranging from incremental to full cost calculations. The program liability is subsequently extinguished when customers redeem points. Deferred revenue. Under this alternative approach, the issuance of points is viewed as a separate component of a sale. Therefore, a company defers the recognition of a portion of the company's revenue, which is directly related to the earning of loyalty points, to a future period in which the customer either redeems the points or the points expire. Aside from the different revenue recognition points, both approaches establish a liability on the balance sheet"program liability" under the cost/provision approach or "unearned program revenue" under the deferred revenue approachbetween the time points are earned by customers and the time
the points are redeemed. The amount of the liability, and therefore the impact on net income, will often be larger under the deferred revenue approach than under the cost/ provision approach as the revenue associated with rewards is typically greater than its costs, particularly if only incremental costs are considered. With little guidance related to the derivation of loyalty program costs under US GAAP, "fresh-start" accounting rules applicable to reorganizations or bankruptcy proceedings are an important exception. These "fresh-start" rules, which require loyalty program liabilities to be stated at fair market value, have been applied in a number of recent bankruptcy proceedings in the airline industry. Since 2002, the US Financial Standards Accounting Board (FASB) and the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) have been working on a joint project to clarify the principles for recognizing revenue and to develop a common revenue standard. In June 2010, the FASB and the IASB issued the Exposure Draft, Revenue from Contracts with Customers, for commentary. This standard could require a more conservative approach (e.g., deferred revenue and/or fair market value concepts) than current US practices. Such a change could dramatically impact loyalty program accounting in the US in a manner similar to that of recent changes in international accounting standards (discussed below). While the Boards originally intended to issue a final revenue standard by 2011, they have recently decided to re-expose the proposed revenue standard, pushing the expected timeline for issuing a final standard into 2012. Based on this timetable, the effective date of the standard would not be earlier than annual periods beginning on or after January 1, 2015.
The consequences of IFRIC 13

Because of diverging accounting practices, International Financial Reporting Interpretations Committee 13 (IFRIC 13) was issued in 2007 (effective July 1, 2008) to provide
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more specific guidance and to bring greater consistency regarding the treatment of loyalty program liabilities. Two major concepts underlying the application of IFRIC 13 to loyalty program accounting include: 1. The issuance of credits or points must be accounted for as a separate component of the sale. In essence, this requires a deferred revenue approach, whereby the income statement immediately recognizes the portion of revenue related to the sale of a good or service and defers the remaining revenue allocable to the value of loyalty points. This deferred revenue is recognized when the loyalty point is redeemed or has expired. 2. The process of calculating the amount of deferred revenue when issuing points must be calculated based upon the fair market value of those points to the customer. This guidance means that a company must defer the face value of the points (less expected "breakage"). In contrast, US GAAP allows an alternative approach for the recording of points at face value based upon the internal cost of goods sold. IFRIC's starting position for determining fair value is "the amount for which the award credits could be sold separately." In practice, this definition can require significant estimation and judgment by management, particularly in the absence of significant sales of points to third parties. Where third party point sales are significant, this definition often is the most appropriate and compelling evidence of the fair value of the points. In the absence of third-party point sales, the fair value of goods and services for which the rewards may be redeemed likely would be the fair value basis. The following table summarizes the difference in current US accounting practices in accordance with US GAAP and IFRIC 13: Current US Practice Income Statement Classification Deduction of revenue ("deferred revenue") or marketing expense ("incremental cost") Accrual / provision, e.g., program liabilities Various, but generally at related cost to fulfil the obligation for the company Varies at earning or at redemption IFRic 13 Deduction of revenue ("deferred revenue")
Balance sheet classification Measurement
Accrual / provision, e.g., deferred program revenues Fair value to the customer
Recognition of the awards
At redemption
Although not required in the US, IFRIC 13 accounting for loyalty programs is becoming more pervasive as companies domiciled in other countries, e.g., Europe, Canada, Australia, etc. are required to use it.
Understand how accounting changes in loyalty programs could affect you

Changing accounting treatments for loyalty programs could well be a painful process. For example, converting from a US GAAP approach to IFRIC 13 likely would increase liabilities for most loyalty programs. Such a conversion could require a one-time adjustment to increase liabilities and decrease net equity if a company previously accrued the liability based on the actual cost of the points and rewards issued rather than upon the deferred revenue approach at fair market value. Even if a company previously used a deferred revenue approach, stating the liabilities at fair market value could significantly increase the amount of liability. In recent years, certain international airlines have recorded significant increases in loyalty program liabilities upon adoption of IFRIC 13, as have some domestic carriers undergoing reorganization or bankruptcy for which the relevant accounting guidance required "day one" recognition of the liabilities at their fair market value. Although loyalty program costs intrinsically are unchanged, the timing of revenue and profit recognition can be significantly different under the alternative accounting treatments. Therefore, a thorough understanding of the current accounting treatment is critical for effectively planning for possible future accounting changes or alternatives. L
A thorough understanding of the current accounting treatment is critical for effectively planning for possible future accounting changes or alternatives.
LoyaltyLoyalty Management MAY 2011 Management SEPTEMBER
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Making the Audible Actionable:

The Value of Voice Analytics
by Erich Dietz, Mindshare Technologies
m at the drive-thru of a national burger chain last week, craving that juicy super-burger that melts as it slides down my throat and becomes 800 calories of fat that Ill probably never work off. As I grab my bag of food at the pick-up window, the employee informs me that if I call the number on the back of the receipt and take the survey, Ill get a free burger next time I visit. The quickest way to a mans heart is up his wallet pocket and through his stomach, so the words free burger sold me. Plus, I had a bone to pickthey forgot my ketchup and a straw. As I pulled out of the drive-thru, I was already dialing the survey number with my cell. After all, texting is illegal in most states, but talking isnt. So I can provide feedback, eat, and drive all at one time! The easiest and most effective surveying method for the customer is over-the-phone responses to an automated survey. Automated phone surveys allow you to rant and rave to a company without an awkward exchange between you and another person. You can let it fly! Plus, neither your hands nor your eyes are busy while responding to a phone survey. In fact, I JUST took a phone survey while I wrote that last sentence! Thats how simple they are!
Ease of Method Trumps Technology

According to our research at Mindshare Technologies, when customers are given the option to take ei-
ther a phone survey or an online survey, they choose to use their phone approximately 60% of the time no matter the size of the company or its industry. Though web surveys still take almost half the cake, theyre not as hot as everyone expected. When the internet became a regular household appliance nationwide about 10 years ago, customer feedback experts expected it to overtake phone surveying methods. Web surveys never made phone surveys obsolete because technology doesnt dictate your customers surveying preference; ease of method does. And for most, automated phone surveys are the simplest, quickest, most comfortable feedback method for customers. Regardless, both web and phone surveys are here to stay. To collect the most surveys, your customer feedback program should offer customers the option to provide feedback via phone, web, text message, kiosk, iPad, social media, or whatever method they choose. After all, the more feedback you collect, the more usable information you receive. And with proper analysis for all that info, youll find more specific, actionable insights from your feedback to improve operations and increase revenue. With customers taking as many or more phone surveys as web surveys, you need an analytics engine that digests both audible and textual comments equally well, combining all comments into one system.
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Your Voice Analytics Should Be Equal to Your Text Analytics

Text Analytics is a hot topic right now. Companies with successful customer feedback programs are using Text Analytics. At its very basic form, Text Analytics provides keyword search and a word cloud of topic frequencies so businesses know whats important to their customers. But, many Text Analytics engines do much more than that: trending, root-cause analysis, automatic comment categorization, and much more. What about Text Analytics up-andcoming brother, Voice Analytics? Only a handful of VoC (Voice of the Customer, or EFM Enterprise Feedback Management) vendors even offer Voice Analytics. And most of those Voice Analytics engines only provide the basics: keyword search and word cloud topics. Why? Because Voice Analytics engines dont transcribe the whole comment, they listen for keywords within the comment predetermined by the user. For example, if a fast-food manager wants to stay on top of his locations french fry quality, his Voice Analytics will be tuned to flag comments that mention fries. Then, the manager has to listen to that comment to find out what it says. Frankly, thats pretty weak technology. But, thats the state of current Voice Analytics engines. If customers are speaking to companies as much as they type or text, shouldnt Voice Analytics engines be as insightful as Text Analytics engines? The answer is yes, they should have equal importance. The best way to utilize Voice Analytics and Text Analytics is to transcribe your audible comments into text and then feed them through your Text Analytics engine. The two methods become equal in the quality and quantity of their results. Valuable, actionable insights are extracted from both. Plus, transcribed comments make for easy referencing and provide retainable data for use over and over again. Just remember, transcribed audible comments provide potential insights. Transcription is near-worthless if you dont analyze the comments to find usable information.
Actions Speak Louder Than Insights

If youre going to collect feedback, you need to act on it. Like Text Analytics, your Voice Analytics results should be actionable and drive decisions that result in operational improvements. All analytics must pass the now what? test. When you see Voice Analytics results, ask yourself, now what? The answer should be an action that drives measurable results for a Return on Investment (ROI). Lets put this test to work. Here are a
The Future of Voice Comments

As social media platforms, mobile phones, tablets, and other technology advancements continue to make communication instant and easy, surveys will also become easier. At Mindshare, we believe that Voice Analytics engines will become more effective and eventually traditional surveys will change dramatically. Let me explain: Imagine leaving a retail store with a receipt and a customer feedback number. You call the number and the automated machine collects your satisfaction ratings and tells you to leave your voice feedback after the beep. You then talk about your experience in your own words! Instead of being saved and analyzed at a later time, your comments are instantly analyzed for actionable insights pertinent to the retail location. Obviously, surveys wont become extinct. Businesses will still occasionally survey their customers for market research needs. But for pure customer service insights that improve operations, customers wont be tied down by formal, structured questions about their experiences specifics. No more Did you visit the _____ department? Did the employee greet you with a smile? and other questions that only improve very minute details of your operations. Instead, you will simply talk or type, providing freeform, unstructured feedback in your own words as you remember the experience. For that future to become mainstream, youll need to have extremely intelligent Voice and Text Analytics systems that actually listen to the voice of the customer, not just listen for keywords.
When creating your Voice Analytics strategy, make sure your solution can answer the all-important now what? test.
few common, less useful Voice Analytics scenarios: I know the top ten keywords used by my customers in phone survey feedback. (Now what?) I am told I need to have a word cloud. (Now what?) My competitors were mentioned 143 times by customers! (Now what?) See? Its that simple. The above scenarios cannot easily and usefully answer the now what? question. While they are all very interesting factoids, what practical action steps do they drive? If you cannot take action with your Voice Analytics, why bother with it at all? Contrast those with the following useful cases: My least satisfied customers complain about long hold times. (Now what? Hire more contact center agents and/or reduce talk times.) When dissatisfied with order accuracy, my drive-thru customers most often use the phrase missing...toy. (Now what? Change the assembly process and train employees to double check that toys are included in every bag.) These Voice Analytics scenarios easily pass the test because they lead to actions that produce measurable operational improvements. When creating your Voice Analytics strategy, make sure your solution can answer the all-important now what? test.
Conclusion
The easiest and most effective surveying method for the customer is overthe-phone responses to an automated survey. Those comments empower customers to rant and rave to their hearts content using their own voice. Those powerful comments are useless unless your Voice Analytics system is as insight-focused as the best Text Analytics engine. After all, the two should be equal. With an intuitive, intelligent Voice Analytics system, businesses can use audible comments to their fullest potential, and thus maximize their profits with improved operations. L
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Three Ways to Make Your Loyalty Programs More Social

by Sanjay Dholakia, Crowd Factory
ustomer loyalty programs need a makeover. The oldschool methods of driving loyalty by providing frequent-user benefits or VIP access to services or information certainly help build a bond between brands and existing customers, but they dont offer ways for happy customers to spread the word about their good experience. They dont inherently let customers get social with other potential customers, and they dont have mechanisms for letting customers advocate for the brand. Marketers can evolve their loyalty programs by layering social capabilities into all of their loyalty activities. By integrating social engagement into these programs, brands empower their loyal customers to become brand advocates. This is phase
Group incentives offer consumers benefits such as discounts or premium access to products and content in exchange for mobilizing a team of other consumers. They bring together two elements that encourage consumer engagement: social gaming, in which people are encouraged to meet goals (like getting five friends to take part in an incentive), and deals, which appeal to shoppers who love a discount or bonus. Standard loyalty programs such as frequent-flier clubs also require a significant time investment before customers see benefits: they have to wait until they fly several times, stay at a hotel, etc. before they see benefits. But with group incentives, customers can reap benefits such as valuable discounts or exclusive ac-
Involved, engaged customers are more loyal customers, so give them a chance to make decisions about how they want to connect with the brand.
two, if you will, of marketers recent efforts to connect with customers on social networks, which has become standard practice. The task now is to make all marketing programs social, including loyalty programs. Heres how you can build social into your loyalty programs (and all of your marketing), and give customers motivation to build buzz around your brand. cess to premium content right away by assembling their group of friends. This accelerates the process of advocacy and loyalty.
2. Recognize customers for their social activity.

Customers who become frequent participants in your social and group offer programs should get recognized for their hard work. Badging is a great way to let customers show off their special status for instance, customers who share a certain number of incentives, or whose friends sign up for group deals, can get an exclusive icon or avatar to show off on social networks or in customer communities. You can also give customers benefits that accrue with the degree of sharing. For example, Razor & Tie recently ran a contest for artist Vanessa Carlton where fans had an opportunity to
1. Combine group buying with loyalty programs.

A great way to reward loyalty while adding a social aspect to marketing programs is through group incentives. This approach uses the loyalty of current customers to gain new ones and in the process, loyal customers become even more connected to the brand, earlier in the customer lifecycle.
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win an exclusive meet-and-greet with Vanessa at one of her shows. Fans entered the contest by sharing the contest link with friends via Facebook or Twitter, and they received an additional contest entry every time they shared with a friend.
perfans on an ongoing basis and make them part of the marketing mix. Give them preferential or early access to new items, and reward them with recognition on your Facebook page, on Twitter, or on your website.
With group incentives, customers can reap benefits such as valuable discounts or exclusive access to premium content right away by assembling their group of friends.
Also try to identify your "superfans" people who take sharing to the next level and promote your programs through their own tweets, Facebook posts and other means to recruit hundreds of new fans or more. Its not uncommon for one of these people to bring back a hundred or more of their friends. Smart marketers will look to reward these su-
3. Encourage co-creation.
Involved, engaged customers are more loyal customers, so give them a chance to make decisions about how they want to connect with the brand. For instance, let customers choose which version of a product should be offered, or vote for the discounts or special offers they want to receive. HarperCollins Bookperk.com website, which keeps readers up to date on new books and special deals, lets members pick which books will be offered at a discount. Once members have chosen a book, they have the option to log in to their Facebook page and share their selection with Facebook friends spreading the word about the discount. The social strategies above build customer loyalty, but they have the added benefit of turning customers into advocates. When customers share their brand enthusiasm with friends across their social networks, they play a powerful role in engaging new customers to join in the fun. L
www.veracentra.com Follow us on Twitter @veracentra
The 360 of Mobile Marketing:

Benefits & Best Practices
by Doug Dwyre, Mocapay
ith over 303 million mobile phone users in the U.S., which accounts for 90 percent of Americans, it is no wonder why merchants and brands are asking for mobile solutions to increase sales and engagement among customers and prospective consumers. A variety of current marketing offers are providing customers incentives to visit merchant locations. These types of digital or group coupon companies lower the risk of discovery for consumers, but dont necessarily increase loyalty. In fact, new research shows that only 20 percent return to the merchant for a full-time purchase. Marketing practices, including mobile, need to benefit all parties involved, including merchants, existing customers, and prospective customers, in order to be successful. If one is missing, offers cease, participation dwindles, or sales become stagnant. The increasing use of mobile devices is providing merchants and consumers a new channel to market and receive offers. Mobile marketing is expected to grow to $56.6 billion by 2015. Below are a few benefits to launching a mobile marketing campaign.
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Purchasing Behavior
Customer purchasing behavior can be a merchants most valuable property in delivering better customer service, promoting new menu selections, promotions and offers. Each purchase may collect time of purchase, location, ticket price, and whether or not they redeemed an offer. Building upon that data over time
through their phones. Technologies such as geo-fencing, mobile applications, and payment technology are advancing customer usability as a one-device-fits-all potential.
Best Practices
Mobile marketing provides merchants a clearer sense of their customer, which allows marketers the ability to offer distinctly targeted marketing messages. There are a few best practices to keep in mind when executing a mobile marketing campaign. 1. Integrate mobile into existing marketing collateral. Customer discovery is crucial with any new service and mobile marketing is no different. Consumers will seek out solutions that offer them both value and a simple and straightforward registration process. The use of in-store posters, receipt messages, or other store materials, can make discovering that much easier for customers to sign-up. Mobile should be integrated into a merchants current marketing strategy, not used as a standalone channel. 2. Leverage a solution that allows the greatest number of customers to participate. Of the 303 million mobile phone users in the U.S., not all are equipped with a smart phone or browser enabled device. The solution you choose should reach the largest portion of your customer base and customers should be able to manage all aspects of the solution from their phone. According to CTIA, two trillion texts were sent in the second half of 2010 alone. SMS is the best option, as 99 percent of phones are enabled to send and receive. 3. Listen, measure, and adapt campaigns to suit customer needs. Mobile offers a unique opportunity for merchants to adapt campaigns as customer sentiment and behavior changes. Using redemption data along with the purchasing behavior of current customers, merchants can shape campaigns to show customers that they are listening to their needs. Merchants can also track performance and identify opportunities throughout the campaign. L
Mobile should be integrated into a merchants current marketing strategy, not used as a standalone channel.
can also provide frequency to better inform management of busy times, best times to offer samples, and business slumps where a promotion might boost business. With all of this data, marketers can create tailored campaigns that target specific demographics and times of day.
Location Based Services

Location-based services continue to grow as GPS chips embedded in mobile devices continue to gain popularity. According to stats from the Mobile Marketing Association, 26 percent of mobile users regularly use a map, navigation tool or similar service that automatically determines their current location. Merchants and mobile marketers can use this advanced feature to better target customers with promotions and offers in a radius around the customer. What about customers without GPS-enabled devices? Merchants can target customers using historical data of when and where this person typically makes purchases (office, neighborhood, etc.) and target offers accordingly. Location is an important feature of mobile marketing, as it allows marketers to reach customers anytime, anywhere, but because of targeting; it reduces the feeling of obtrusiveness.
Redemption Data
Unlike a direct mailing, merchants have the ability to link redemptions with an individual customer, telling a larger story of who that customer is and which offers are attractive to specific demographics. Mobile in general has a larger redemption rate, as the coupon or promotion is always with the customer, unlike direct mail which is typically three to four times lower.
Future of Mobile
As mobile usage continues to grow around the world and consumers increasingly move daily activities and tasks to these devices, merchants will see a significant ROI in engaging with consumers through mobile marketing. Just in its infancy, mobile marketing has great potential as devices become more advanced and consumers adapt to receiving offers
SEPTEMBER 2011 Loyalty Management SEPTEMBER 2011
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Social Loyalty: Beyond the Like

By Matthew Kates, ePrize
any brands are successful at recruiting consumers to Like their Facebook page or follow them on Twitter. However, the perpetual challenge is keeping consumers engaged with their brand in the social media environment and motivating beneficial social media behavior, trying to prevent the "Like it and Leave It" phenomenon. The solution is found in the longestablished marketing discipline of loyalty programs. Traditional loyalty strategies such as points and reward catalogs that successfully retain consumers and motivate purchase behavior can be used to create "stickiness" to a brand's social media presence and deepen behaviors. Ultimately, a consumer makes the final decision on how to communicate with brands through social media, but social loyalty is a powerful tool that can encourage and influence interaction.
credit for each dollar spent or mile traveled. The reward mechanics of non-purchase loyalty programs are less straightforward. How do you value an action? Is a tweet worth more than a like? Is a referral worth more than a testimonial? Assess the relative value of different actions based on value to the brand, the ease to consumer of participating and potential frequency of the action. This will provide a balanced viewpoint of the brand value and member effort while ensuring that no single action dominates that program. 4. Provide Value, Earn Value and Keep Your ROI Social actions are extremely valuable in a macro sense but each individual's behavior is worth a small amount. This creates a challenge of providing meaningful member payback while being fiscally responsible. It is a critical equation to solve because the majority of people who leave reward programs say the key factor for dis-engaging is the length of time it takes to earn rewards. The key is to provide strong perceived value while managing costs. Fixed liability rewards, such as allowing members to use their points to purchase sweepstakes entries to bid on auctions
Five Ways to Make Your Fans More Loyal

1. Matching the Right Platforms with the Right Behaviors Based on the brand's objectives and target consumers, a social loyalty program can be tailored to fit one social media platform, or it can be leveraged across multiple platforms. If the program is going to include multiple platforms, don't use a "one size fits all" approach. Each form of social media offers a different way to engage with your consumers. Understand the value of each platform and how your consumers can contribute and benefit from them. 2. Compliment and Encourage, Don't Disrupt the Conversation Your program should naturally fit into the social media ecosystem, not disrupt it. According to a recent survey, the top three reasons why people unlike brands on Facebook are "The company posted too frequently," "My wall was becoming too crowded with marketing posts," and "The content became repetitive or boring over time," (source: Exact Target, 2011). To maintain your brand and program authenticity, encourage consumers to engage in behavior that is both natural to them and benefits them. Your goal should be to add value to the social media experience instead of being a noisy distraction. 3. Applying the Right Value to Each Behavior For traditional purchase-based loyalty programs, determining member payback is fairly straightforward. Based on a brand's margin economics, the member earns a pre-defined
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or access content, are compelling, cost-efficient options. Another tactic is to use rewards to drive future purchases by allowing members to spend points to purchase special discounts or a limited quantity of first-to-get items. All of these rewards are consistent with the reasons people become fans of brands. 5. Balance Creativity with Simplicity There are endless ways to apply traditional loyalty tactics to your social media efforts. Use them to develop not only longterm programs but also short-term campaigns. They can take on a variety of themes, incorporate sponsorships, or be used to generate awareness, trial and advocacy for new product launches. Don't let the preconceived notions of traditional loyalty constrain your ability to apply loyalty techniques in this evolving medium. The application is limited only by your creativity. Lastly, make your program straightforward and the value proposition easily understood. Social media offers a wide range of behaviors to incent; but just because you can do something, doesn't mean you shouldcomplexity can lead to confusion and lack of adoption. Simple elegance always wins over complex design. L
DOING IT RIGHT
Fan It is an affinity game that gives members a chance to earn real rewards by watching, sharing and interacting with your favorite NBC shows. Once you sign up, you can participate in a series of fun and easy online challenges to earn Fan It points. Opportunities to earn points include following on a show on Twitter, checking in at events, watching a video or taking a trivia challenge. Once you have accumulated enough points, there are plenty of rewards to help show your true fandom. Points can be redeemed for exclusive virtual badge to post to your Facebook page, NBC merchandise such as a cool new Dunder Mifflin t-shirt from The Office or the chance to win a big prize, such as signed script from your favorite TV show. In celebration of the launch of Degree with motionSENSE, Degree is rewarding women for staying active. The Get into the Move application on Facebook allows fans to earn motionMILES, virtual currency redeemable toward chances to win thousands of prizes. These motionMILES are earned for various ways women move, including checking in with Facebook places, going to the gym, answering daily trivia questions on the Facebook application and inviting friends to Get into the Move. Prizes include a surfing trip to Hawaii, designer shoes, gift certificates for Zumba classes and much more. Fans can also choose to donate motionMILES in a dollar amount to one of two charities.
If the program is going to include multiple platforms, don't use a "one size fits all" approach. Each form of social media offers a different way to engage with your consumers.
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The Rise of Social Media as a Lever for Employee Engagement

by David Schroeder, LoyalNation
ielsen recently reported that people are spending more time on Facebook than Google, Yahoo!, YouTube, and Wikipedia combined. Think about that for a second. Its important not just as cocktail party conversation, but for what it tells us about how people spend their time and what they value. The latter sites are all information providers, while social media enables us to personally connect with people and groups we care most about. Great companies and strong leaders understand that business is personal, too. Management teams that can harness the power of social media to connect and engage employees will enjoy a significant competitive advantage, especially when it comes to attracting and retaining the best possible talent. These tools gain even more importance as teams and entire workplaces become increasingly virtual. Social media is a powerful mechanism for human engagement in any environment, and successful companies will utilize it effectively to achieve their business goals.
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Three quick factoids about the business value of employee engagement: Profitability: A Towers Perrin 2008 Global Workforce Study found that companies with high employee engagement achieved, on average, a 17% greater growth rate than those with low employee engagement (as measured by 12-month net income). Innovation: The 2011 Worlds Most Admired Companies (WMAC) results from Fortune / Hay Group show WMAC are 20% more likely to regularly solicit ideas from employees than their peer group. Customer Service: A 2011 study from American Express Global Customer Service Barometer shows that 70% of American consumers would be willing to spend 13% more if they receive excellent customer service.
of truly engaging the team in key themes and topics that drive the business. Relationships: As we consider the always-on work life, its not a trivial matter to foster relationships between peers and managers that support open communication, idea sharing, celebration, and accountability. Social media for business presents an amazing opportunity to achieve these goals in an environment that is both familiar to employees and entirely measurable as it relates to adoption and progress against objectives. A recent blog by Adam Richardson said it like this, the first thing to recognize about collaboration is that it is something that best happens over a period of time, with a warm-up period before critical work happens. Just like a runner, you don't want to do a 10K cold. You need to get things loosened up first. Getting things loose means building relationships and trust, and social media tools foster and accelerate this process. Recognition: Recognition is a critical element in the development of employee engagement. Historically, recognition has been limited to one-on-one interactions, infrequent meetings with public acknowledgement, and mass emails. All are generally beneficial and support the goal while having unique limitations. With social media, there is an opportunity to provide real time recognition that can then be seen, celebrated, and commented upon by the broader work group. This is meaningful for the recipient and team as positive reinforcement and a standard of success. Theres also an opportunity to systemically catalogue recognition trends at the unit or company level and to evaluate their alignment with corporate values and strategies. Are our managers actually rewarding the behaviors and values that we deem to be important? Incentives: While Frederick Taylor and Peter Drucker are under attack in some circles for process based incentives and management by objectives, theres little doubt that much of our business performance is based on execution of fundamental behaviors AND that incentives can provide short term boosts in performance. I recently read an article from an academic that said The only incentives that work.are self-generated in the context of creating real value for customers and other stakeholders. While the point is taken, its a virtual lock that the author has never worked on a sales or service team where short-term competitions and targeted awards are incredibly effective in creating camaraderie, spark energy, and boosting results. The notion of employee engagement as a competitive differentiator and driver of financial success is not new for the enlightened organization. What is new, and game-changing, is the emerging application of social media as a means to more fully operationalize and measure many best practices and social norms historically associated with strong cultures and motivated employee populations. L
Companies with high employee engagement achieved, on average, a 17% greater growth rate than those with low employee engagement.
While email gained its initial critical mass in business and science, social media first exploded as a personal application and has found its way to business. Thats important to remember as social media is yet another indicator of the blurring of lines between personal and work lives. Indeed, one of Gallups key 12 Elements of Great Managing is I have a best friend at work, and while the alignment of values and engagement of employees have always been critical, todays instant global access showcases lapses in real timereference one JetBlue Airways steward and his take this job and shove it moment as a high profile example of late. The utilization of closed loop social networks now affords companies a powerful new tool to develop and maintain employee engagement. In considering this opportunity, keep four dimensions in mind: Aesthetics: With apologies to the engineers among us, look and feel matter. In working to engage employees, its important to provide an environment thats visually interesting, easy to interact with, and provides a meaningful output of information and ideas. Your IT teams gap analysis for employee interaction tools may come back with Sharepoint as a solution, and functionally this may have merit. However, its important to note (and made famous by Daniel Pink of late) that its essential to engage people at a deeper level than pure function. Fun isnt a four-letter word. Rather, it supports the goal
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Loyalty Innovation
PRODUCTS, ADVANCEMENTS, & TECHNOLOGIES RewardLoop
A universal consumer loyalty network for the mobile age. Its patent-pending customer loyalty technology, which prints secure, transaction-identifying rewards program barcodes (QR codes) on bills and receipts, can measurably increase revenue 5% or more for independent and chain merchants. Consumers simply scan a QR code with their mobile phones and use the companys mobile applications to collect and redeem reward stamps in real time, thereby eliminating the need to carry physical cards. The Product Universal POS Adaptor + Hosted Cloud-Based Application: RewardLoops flagship universal Point of Sale (POS) adaptor, RewardLoop Connect, enables merchants of any size to easily deploy a secure, plug & play mobile loyalty program in minutes via their exist-
RewardLoop is unique in its ability to offer merchants a transactional mobile loyalty solution with security that is comparable to traditional card-based programs.
ing POS system. The patent-pending, plug & play POS adaptor intercepts and interprets POS print data streams and adds transaction-identifying QR Codes to merchants bills and receipts. Scanning the QR code links the user to their loyalty account with that particular merchant inside RewardLoops cloud-hosted universal loyalty network. Analytics & Re-Marketing Engine: A sophisticated data analytics engine provides deep and granular customer segmentation based on purchase behavior, spend, demographics, and geography. Marketers can identify the top 20% of their most profitable customers by categories such as frequency, total spend, and social influence (how many friends they bring), and then re-market to them with personalized communications via email and push notifications to Smartphones.
What Makes RewardLoop Better? An ever-growing number of mobile loyalty offerings reward customers based on location check-ins, QR code check-ins, or game mechanics, but when evaluating mobile loyalty platforms, merchants should be asking themselves: Would I rather reward a customer with a free cup of coffee for checking in 10 times, or for buying 10 cups of coffee? In contrast to the security gaps posed by mobile check-in loyalty apps, RewardLoop is unique in its ability to offer merchants a transactional mobile loyalty solution with security that is comparable to traditional card-based programs. For a mobile loyalty program to deliver value and be successful in our business, it needs to be transactional and secure. RewardLoop is the only solution weve seen that meets these criteria, said Tim Kraus, Interactive Marketing Manager at Quiznos USA. Customer Adoption Merchants in the RewardLoop network have seen customer enrolment rates as high as 5% to 8% of in-store customers per day. Program discovery, enrolment, and earning occur on a self-serve basis. To order RewardLoop Connect, please visit: www.rewardloop.com
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appsbar has evolved the idea of putting the power to reward loyal customers in the hands of the business with the first DIY coupon generator. This tool promises to eliminate thirdparties from digital coupons and directly reward the customers who want deals from businesses they frequentall designed to keep more money in businesses pockets. Its never been so important for businesses to do as much as they can, with what they have, and appsbar is redefining loyalty management. When appsbar launched their free-to-use app developer in April of 2011, they changed how and why businesses build, publish and share professional-level mobile apps. For the first time, any business could design and publish a professional-level app that would cost thousands of dollars to hire a web developer to builda process that can take months. appsbar immediately responded to the business community-demand for a way to reward loyal customers, and only
appsbar
a few months later introduced a new way for any business to directly engage their customers. The proliferation of smart phones and social networks created the perfect, all-new way for businesses to directly make and deliver digital coupons without all the restrictions and without any of the cost of using third-party deal sites. If a business builds and publishes their own app, and encourages their customers to download the app for special deals, they are able to engage directly with the people who want their deals the most. App-delivered digital coupon deals also let businesses be nimble. If they suddenly have an overstock or want to invite people to a late breaking event, they can alert their customers in real time through the app. They can design and distribute a digital deal in a matter of minutes. Businesses can make coupons in real time, at any time, with whatever level of discount they want to offer on whatever products they choose. Within minutes, a business can alert their customers through their app of long-term or limited time coupons and promotions using calendar event notifiers.
The inherent ability of apps to connect with social networks also adds a layer of social sharing. Friends can share deals they find immediately across their. App builders such as appsbar add in layers of calendars, menus, soundboards, graphics and GPS capabilities so businesses can explore new ways to attract and reward customers. With smart phones, customers are notified immediately that a coupon is available. With no need to print a coupon, the user simply shows the coupon, either simply presenting the onscreen image at the store or allowing the business to scan the bar code or QR codes that can be added. Smart phones have opened the floodgates for development of a host of tools to help businesses get fast, free and efficient engagement with customers. Just like when websites, blogs, and social networks were introduced, the business community seized the opportunity to attract and reward loyal customers. Appsbar was the first company to democratize app development and publishing for free.
The Big Deal
This summer, MotivAction unveiled The Big Deal, a new pattions. Now organizations can design reward programs that inent pending reward platform that enables participants to unspire performance, are easily managed and tracked, and deliver lock deals and rewards based on their bottom line results. achievements. The Big Deal uses three simple steps to drive engagement and The Big Deal is the first product that loyalty: addresses the greatest needs of organi1. Goal setting (identify participants, segment audiences, eszations searching for engagement and tablish goals) loyalty by providing high value rewards, 2. Deal determination (establish budget, select deal payout) at a fraction of the cost, tied directly to achievement, behavior, 3. Launch communication (extend offer via e-mail, web, moand loyalty. bile) Unlike traditional reward programs which rely solely on the The Big Deal is a seismic shift from the traditional point proaccrual of points, The Big Deal allows participants to unlock time gram. This platform and methodology reinforces the golden sensitive deals based on their accomplishments. Participants moment, the time when parbenefit from immediate access ticipants redeem in a program to high value rewards that are Now organizations can design reward and experience the benefit or meaningful and relevant. Program reward for their efforts. In a trasponsors now have the ability to programs that inspire performance, are tie recognition directly to perfor- easily managed and tracked, and deliver ditional point program participants earn at a rate which often mance and benefit from a reward takes months and sometimes a cost structure significantly below bottom line results. year before they redeem. In The retail value. Applications for The Big Deal rewards are unlocked with achievement. Examples inBig Deal are unlimited and suit the needs of sales or channel clude achieving quarterly sales goal, employee anniversaries, or incentives, employee recognition, and consumer promotions. in a consumer model servicing your vehicle three times at the In addition to supporting multiple audiences, the rule structure dealership unlocks a free oil change. Redemption equals engagefor unlocking deals is dynamic and allows for individual achievement and performance. Redemption is in fact the surest sign that ment, team goals, time sensitive deals, progressive performance participants are engaged in the program. awards, chance based promotions, and a host of additional op-
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How Healthy Is Your Customer Base?

Measuring Through Unified Customer Experience Management (CEM)
by Russ Haswell, Medallia, Inc.
magine a world of customer experience management (CEM) unification. Where a CEO of a Fortune 500 company has his finger on the pulse of what millions of customers think about his company: When he logs into his companys metrics dashboard, he sees Promoter Score: 62, a high rating. By itself, that number is a single measure of customer health, but, similar to key financial measures like Net Profit and Revenue Growth, it doesnt tell him enough about what areas of the company are driving that number. To find out why customers value his company so much, he can, with one click, break down the score by touchpoint (brick-and-mortar, e-commerce, contact center), by brand, or even furtherby individual stores or agents. He can also track performance over time. The health of the organization from the perspective of the customer is at his fingertips. The information is not overwhelming, but it is not too simplistic, either. Imagine, the call center agent in the same organization having real-time access to how the 50 customers he served today feel about his performance and, by extension, the companys? When the agent logs into his dashboard, which is customized to his role, it displays Promoter Score: 59. To find out why customers value his service so much, he can, with one click, delve into verbatim customer comments. He can also benchmark himself against his top-performing co-workers to discover best practices that might help him improve.
This system unifies the organization around a single metric by making it relevant to everyone. It tells the CEO that his company is a leader in experience, which delivers value to customers and shareholders across the organization. It tells the call center agent that he is a leader in experience whose performance impacts that of the overall organization. This level of unification is possible only when the entire organization leverages a single platform to embrace a single metric. The benefits of a unified system are measurable. When a global athletic merchandiser consolidated its multiple programsfor stores, web channels, and call centersonto one metric (Promoter Score) and one platform, it achieved a 5 to 7 percent score increase across channels, as well as a 10 percent decrease in dissatisfied customers. Other benefits include cost savings (one subscription vs. many) and internal consistency (no need to train inside transfers).
Negative Consequences of Sticking with Silos

Unfortunately, too often, companies end up with separate, siloed programs by happenstance. They shop around for a contact center solution, then add a separate platform for point-of-sale surveying. And so it goes as the company grows until, before long, it has too many platforms to keep straight. The result is less than optimal. Theres: No centralized customer history. If a customer first makes a purchase online, then seeks tech support at a
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brick-and-mortar store, then calls the contact center about a billing issue, each piece of this record will be housed in a different system. No synchronized case management. An employee trying to close the loop with the customer will have no way of knowing the customers entire use history and pain points, so any follow-up risks being either over- or underdone. No clarity at the executive level. With a handful of systems each generating different reports, execs have no way of monitoring and benchmarking the performance of the business on a single metric spanning touchpoints. You cant have these silos of communication channels, Forrester senior analyst Kate Leggett said in a recent interview with SearchCRM.com. You also have to understand that each communication channel has a cost associated with it. Some are high cost, some are low cost and what a company is trying to do is balance the cost of doing business with how happy their customers are. Please consider the following case study as an example of best practices for implementing a unified CEM program.
Case Study: Global Apparel Company Launching WebBased CEx Program

Gain commitment to the launch from everyonethe frontlines to
corporate executives. This client embraced the customer satisfaction initiative as the single most important goal throughout the organization. From the CEO on down, the company was prepared to expend the resources necessary to build the program across two brands, thousands of stores, a wedding registry, furniture delivery, the contact center, and more. In fact, the CEO informally added Chief Customer Office to his title to further reinforce the commitment. No decision will be made without the customer at the table, he said. Walk before you run, starting first with a pilot and then a full launch. The client wanted to implement a customer satisfaction program across stores, contact centers, and the website, so it began with its corebrick-and-mortar. Once brick-and-mortar embraced the system, this client was free to add contact centers, delivery, and other business aspectsand each feature became a seamless add-on rather than an entirely new implementation. Breaking up adoption into manageable chunks may take more time, but by doing so, you gradually convert stakeholders rather than overwhelming them with a new system. Sustain your commitment to the program even after launch: This company expects over 1 million
pieces of feedback from customers in 2011which puts employees on the hook to make 100,000+ followup calls to customers wanting to hear from them. The effort to launch a unified program is greater than the effort to launch a siloed one, but so is the payoff. Since the kickoff of the program less than a year ago, brand promoters have increased, sales have grown 6.6 percent, and the companys stock price has surged 60 percent.
Overall Business Benefits

Customer experience is the leading indicator of business performance. Influential business thinker Peter Drucker argued that the one valid definition of business purpose is to create customers by delivering value customers are willing to pay for. Whatcustomers valueis so complicatedit can only be answered by the customers themselves, he said. In other words, customer experience measured by asking customer directly what they value and, by extension, whether they will remain customers is the leading measure of whether a company is fulfilling its core purpose: to create customers. Unified CEM programs let customer experience be what it is: the leading indicator of overall business performance. Silos squelch the true potential of customer experience. Its time to unify CEM. L
Each communication channel has a cost associated with it. Some are high cost, some are low cost and what a company is trying to do is balance the cost of doing business with how happy their customers are.
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Embracing Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)

Interview with Russ Reynolds, CEO of Batteries Plus
or many, corporate social responsibility (CSR) has become part of the company culture. Integrating plans for community outreach, fundraising, green practices, or fair trade into efforts to take advantage of corporate influence and impact the world in a positive way. Consumers do take notice, and as more and more companies find ways to integrate these initiatives into their core strategies, CSR has had a positive influence and impact on both customer and employee engagement and loyalty. Loyalty 360 had the opportunity to hear from Batteries Plus CEO, Russ Reynolds to learn more about their partnership with USA Cares and the creation of the, Time to Care program. We are happy to share the Batteries Plus story, discovering how they are taking action to support Vets and as a result engender trust, engagement and loyalty through their employees, community, and their customer. lives of as many people as possible. We choose to partner with USA Cares because of the veteran connection with many of our store owners and employees. USA Cares assists post 9/11 veterans with a hand up to help them get acclimated back into civilian life once they return from active duty. Batteries Plus works with many military bases across the country, supplying them with their battery and light bulb needs, and many of our stores either employ veterans or are veteran owned. When we saw that the gap of unemployment percentages between veterans and the general population was nearly double for veterans, we decided we wanted to do something to help bridge that gap. So we teamed up with USA Cares and created the Time to Care campaign to help make a difference in the lives of unemployed veterans. We believe this donation campaign will mutually benefit both our organizations by building brand awareness, brand image, as well as making society aware of USA Cares initiatives, joblessness among vets, and providing them with information on how they can help.
Tell us a bit about Batteries Plus, Time to Care program with USA Cares.
Reynolds: Batteries Plus created the Time to Care campaign to raise awareness about USA Cares and their Jobs for Vets program and raise funds to help veterans get placed back into the work force after serving their country. For one week in May (May 24th- May 30th Memorial Day) and one week in November (November 5th November 11th Veterans Day) participating Batteries Plus locations, amongst our 460 stores across the nation, will be teaming up with USA Cares to: Donate $5 from each regular or lifetime watch battery replacement to USA Cares during these two designated weeks. Accept In-Kind donations from customers which will go to USA Cares Batteries Plus, LLC will also be contributing $1 for every person who likes the Batteries Plus Facebook page and supports the USA Cares Jobs for Vets Cause page up to $25,000. (For more information, please visit http://tinyurl.com/5unmoa8)
What lead your organization to get involved?

Reynolds: First and foremost, its the right thing to do. We have always been a franchise system that gives back to the community and one that believes in corporate citizenship and goodwill. We were looking for a national organization to team up with so that all of our stores across 46 states and Puerto Rico could participate, in order to make the greatest impact and help the
Why does Batteries Plus believe that embracing a CSR strategy is a valuable approach in the customer engagement process?
Reynolds: Customer acquisition and retention goes far beyond the transaction process. Its about building a relationship based on outstanding customer service, trust, and a genuine belief that the company is looking out for the best interest of its customers and the local community it does business in. A CSR
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The most important consideration before beginning a CSR strategy is to make sure youre doing it for the right reasons and will be fully committed to it.
strategy allows for a mutual interest between a business and customers in the community to rally behind a common good cause. As it specifically relates to our partnership with USA Cares and the Time to Care campaign, there are veterans in every community in America and by embracing a CSR strategy we are connecting with our customers and the people in their lives in a personal way. From a business standpoint, a CSR strategy helps separate us from the competition and allows us to remain in the minds of our customers beyond the transaction and products we sell them. The Time to Care campaign has allowed us to engage customers in different ways and using different outlets that once were not available to us (i.e. USA Cares website, Facebook page, military blog sites, Dennis Miller Radio show, etc.). A CSR strategy plays in important role in building positive customer perception and loyalty based on distinctive ethical values, and we feel this campaign has helped us attract new customers and engage our existing customers in new positive ways. make sense and resonate with your employees and customers, while also sharing your companys values. Ensure senior management is on board with the strategy and willing to support the strategy. For franchise businesses, make sure franchise councils are on board as well, as they can help influence fellow franchisees. 2. Plan ahead so that you have time to implement the program and clearly communicate the details in advance when getting the word out about it. 3. Work together with the organization you are helping to utilize each others resources to help increase the impact of the initiative. For instance, they may not have financial resources but they may have a huge database of contacts to help get the word out.
Is there value in incorporating social responsibility into an overall business model?

Reynolds: The rewards for us are immeasurable. First, to know that we raised over $60,000 for USA Cares Jobs for Vets program thus far and that the donations will help veterans in communities across the nation gives us a sense of pride and our franchisees a sense of community. Together we are making a difference and the more we embrace CSR initiatives the more valuable it becomes to all of us. Companies can and should play an important role in their communities and give back to the customers and communities that support them. Incorporating social responsibility in a business model helps increase your brand image and brand awareness and it can help give that company a competitive advantage in the marketplace. It also opens the door for future opportunities that also may be beneficial to your company. Social responsibility can also add value through employee satisfaction and their appreciation for the company values. This can help enhance employee motivation and productivity. Knowing you work for a company committed to doing the right thing and supporting worthy causes creates a great camaraderie and team environment in the workplace.
In what unique ways, are you integrating social media into your CSR program?
Reynolds: We have created a video detailing the experiences and story of one of our veteran franchisees, Paul Bessey, and why the Time to Care campaign hits home with him. Weve posted the video on multiple video sites such as YouTube, and shared it on our social media channels (Facebook, Twitter, Google Buzz and LinkedIn ) along with other promotional info. Weve also actively created posts, sent tweets and blogged on many military sites to promote the Time to Care campaign and had some great online conversations with new and existing customers who are excited about what were doing and proud to support this cause.
What has been the overall consumer response?

Reynolds: During the first week of the campaign, May 24th May 30th, our participating stores sold over 10,000 watch battery replacements and accepted in-kind donations from customers, raising an estimated $60,000+ for USA Cares. Not all customers had a replacement watch battery that needed to be purchased, but they still wanted to donate to help this cause. We also heard some feedback from stores that many customers wanted to contact USA Cares to look for other ways they could get involved and help. Our website also saw a double digit increase in the percentage of visits during this week, so we believe the overall consumer response from a brand and traffic driving standpoint has been great.
What are the immediate benefits Batteries Plus has seen by embracing CSR initiatives?
Reynolds: The first immediate benefit is raising money to help the USA Cares Jobs for Vets Program. The other immediate benefit is the positive feedback weve received from our franchise community. Over 55% of our stores have agreed to participate in the program and were hoping to increase this number for the November portion of this donation campaign. Weve received compliments from many owners saying the Time to Care campaign not only benefitted the brand nationally but also helped their stores leave a positive impression in their communities. The campaign has helped drive traffic to our stores and our website, increased brand awareness, and created a sense of community internally among our corporate employees and our franchise system. Most importantly, it has led to great partnership with USA Cares and allowed us to make a positive impact in the lives of those that have served our country. L
What are the top three things to consider when beginning a CSR strategy?
Reynolds: The most important consideration before beginning a CSR strategy is to make sure youre doing it for the right reasons and will be fully committed to it. When beginning a program the top 3 things to consider are: 1. The charity/organization you choose to partner with should
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Knowledge is Power: Helping your Customers Understand Their Loyalty Programs

by Christopher Barnard, Points.com
n light of the recession, consumers today are smarter than ever when it comes to saving money, yet most are still woefully confused and overwhelmed by their loyalty programs, especially how to leverage their various pools of points and miles to save even more. Only 18 percent* of airline loyalty program members were able to correctly identify the value of their awards. Considering the average American household is a member of 18 loyalty programs, but only active in 8 (Colloquy, 2011), getting just 10 percent more people to understand how, when and why to earn, use and buy miles could have a tremendous impact on the industry. By providing your customers with a few easy tips for understanding your brands loyalty program and how to use it, consumers will reap the benefits, become more engaged, save money and time, and will feel rewarded for the money they save on travel and accommodations. In the end, that will make them more loyal to your brand. Track. The first step to understanding loyalty programs is tracking accounts and knowing the balance accumulated in each one. In fact, a recent survey of the Points.com user panel showed that 76 percent* of members belonging to multiple loyalty programs agreed its important to keep track of loyalty program balances. Sites like Points.com allow users to manage all of their programs in one place with one central dashboard instead of signing in to several different websites to check balances think of it as an online loyalty wallet. Imagine all the time that could be saved by aggregating all programs in one place to eliminate weekly check-ins to 8 loyalty program websites.
Study (at least a little). Once your customers are easily keeping track of their balances, help them read up on the different redemption values of your programs points and miles. No two programs are exactly the same and becoming fluent in the different currencies will make it easier to manage and redeem for the awards they want, resulting in greater brand loyalty. Part of being fluent is knowing when points expire. It can be difficult to keep up with expiring points even if members are aware of the policies and are constantly checking their balances. Only 9 percent* of users surveyed by Points.com know all their programs expiry policies, with 60 percent* having lost points/miles due to expiration even though they were aware of the date. Customers could have avoided this fate simply by purchasing 5 miles or redeeming miles for a $10 gift card, resulting in a much more positive experience with the loyalty brand. Until there is a better method for alerting customers about expiring points, the best way to recommend they log in to their accounts once a week to check. Another easy way to help your customers boost their loyalty wallet is to help them stay on the lookout for easy ways to earn. 78 percent* of members of multiple loyalty programs have gone out of their way to make sure they earn points or miles in their favorite program. Some people even stay in multiple hotels in the same city during one trip just to maximize the points they accrue. Most loyalty programs offer promotions several times per year giving members bonuses for buying points in bulk or taking advantage of earn opportunities like opening a new account. Make sure your members enroll their children in your loyalty program as soon as they are old enough. Children can
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begin earning miles and points as early as age 2, when they require their own seat. Parents can manage their programs until the child is old enough to do it themselves. Theyll be loyal to
BY THE
NUMBERS
Insights from Points.com Member Survey
18% of airline loyalty program members were able to correctly identify the value of their awards. 76% of members belonging to multiple loyalty programs agreed its important to keep track of loyalty program balances. Only 9% of users surveyed by Points.com know all their programs expiry policies, with 60% having lost points/miles due to expiration even though they were aware of the date. 78% of members of multiple loyalty programs have gone out of their way to make sure they earn points or miles in their favorite program. 40% of all loyalty program members prefer to redeem their points/miles for an award flight 62% of members of multiple loyalty programs found it difficult to redeem miles for award flights because of the blackout dates and restrictions. Only 31% of Points.com users have ever transferred their miles or points to someone else to help them reach their travel goals or save money in the family.
*All figures above from Points.com survey of members of multiple loyalty programs, November 2010-June 2011
78 percent* of members of multiple loyalty programs have gone out of their way to make sure they earn points or miles in their favorite program.
your brand for life once their parents turn over a full loyalty program account to them! Travelers will be able to take more vacations with the whole family earning points and miles for their travel. The loyalty point junkies know all these tips and tricks, but educating more of them will make the programs even more dynamic. Redeem: Once the basics of managing multiple loyalty programs are fully understood, that knowledge can be applied to wisely redeem points and miles for fun awards and trips. Points.com recently found that 40 percent* of all loyalty program members prefer to redeem their points/miles for an award flight and with proper management and a few easy tricks, those goals are easily attainable. For starters, make sure to remind your customers to buy miles or points if theyre just short of their redemption goals. Rewards can cost as little as 2 cents per mile so it is often less expensive to buy the 10,000 miles needed for that cross country flight, than to buy the entire flight at full price. Planning ahead and booking early can also be beneficial because most flights have a limited number of award seats available. Seats also go quickly on flights during peak travel days. 62 percent* of members of multiple loyalty programs in a recent Points.com user panel survey found it difficult to redeem miles for award flights because of the blackout dates and restrictions. Being transparent with your customers and reminding them to plan ahead can remove some of this confusion and frustration so they get the flights they want. Happy customers breed loyal customers. Sharing is caring: Buying flights for an entire family can get expensive, especially around the holidays. If customers travel frequently for work, you can recommend they consider transferring or gifting their miles and points to other family members to pay for flights or accommodations. This is yet another untapped resource for loyalty members; only 31 percent* of Points.com users have ever transferred their miles or points to someone else to help them reach their travel goals or save money in the family. Gifting points is another great option for those distant relatives that have received far too many ties or scarves as gifts. Your customers can surprise their relatives this year with enough points to take their dream vacation all at no cost to them! Reap the benefits: All things considered, traveling and racking up points doesnt have to be as expensive or confusing as one would think. With the proper tools, education and tricks, a family of four can save up to $800 a year and still take the kids to Disneyland for Christmas. L
*Points.com survey of members of multiple loyalty programs, November 2010-June 2011
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Establishing a Dialogue with the Consumer Inside the Business Customer

Interview with Toni DeWitt, XO Communications Senior Manager, Loyalty & Retention Marketing
he B2B marketplace often requires a different approach to loyalty and engagement strategies. Knowing where to start and how to integrate tried and true practices with tactics specific to B2B can be a challenge for many organizations. We had the opportunity to hear from Toni DeWitt of XO Communications, to learn more about how a B2B loyalty & engagement strategy can be a unique and valuable addition to an organizations marketing efforts.
Loyalty 360: Who is XO Communications & what differentiates your B2B approach to loyalty and raising the bar on customer experience?
DeWitt: XO Communications is one of the nations largest communications service providers focused exclusively on businesses, government, domestic and international telecommunications carriers, cable companies, content providers and mobile wireless companies. Our B2B approach to loyalty begins at home by partnering with internal teams like Client Services and Customer Care that provide support to the customer base. We work as a coalition to ensure that our communications and marketing programs align with customer needs. In our minds, we cannot possibly develop programs without incorporating the feedback of the teams that are ultimately the face of XO Communications to our customers. They understand the day in the life of an XO customer better than anyone.
Customer communications is key. How does a successful approach to engaging in dialogue differ through the various campaign strategies i.e.: upsell, engagement and retention? Is there value/opportunity in integrating these strategies?
DeWitt: There is a ton of opportunity in integrating the three types of campaign strategies. All of them are equally important to a successful robust loyalty strategy, but timing and frequency of them may differ. Engagement strategies and supporting programs should continue throughout a customers lifecycle and be refined regularly so that the information shared through dialogue is fresh and relevant, and the channels used are appropriate for the audience and the message. Upsell and Retention campaigns are a little different because they have to be delivered at the right time and to the right person. Some marketers believe that you should upsell customers frequently and are after the quick fix road to revenue. I would argue that these methods tend to boost revenue for a short period, but the returns ultimately dwindle because the relationship may be sacrificed (i.e. customers opt out of communications, feel they are being sold irrelevant products, etc.). To me, if a company can effectively engage their customers, they will build a viable relationship with them based on trust, and then a consultative selling approach can continue throughout the customer lifecycle.
In an often sales driven B2B culture, how do you introduce the value of engagement and loyalty techniques?
DeWitt: First of all, let me say that introduction and adoption to these techniques take time. In a B2B environment, Sales is a tangible and easily measured entity, so most companies dont consider loyalty techniques until they reach a point where they realize that they are losing customers just as fast as they are selling them. And while there are account and customer service employees who are managing the situation in the best way they know how, it just wouldnt be fiscally responsible for them to staff enough of them to effectively address the churn alone. This presents a golden opportunity for introducing loyalty techniques. I have found that the best way to introduce them is through an internal coalition made up of Loyalty Marketing, Client Services/Account Teams and Customer Care. They understand the needs of the customer, the challenges they face as teams, and can be allies in building and defending loyalty programs and techniques.
L360: What role does trust play in developing a dialogue and creating a successful B2B relationship and engagement strategy?
DeWitt: Trust is paramount to any relationship. I think we, as marketers, cant think of loyalty and engagement as just industry buzz words. I tend to think of every loyalty strategy as a means of deepening a relationship. If you want to begin a relationship with a person, you cant misrepresent who you are or what you stand for. The same is true with B2B loyalty strategies. Be honest. Dont misrepresent your brand. Own up to your mistakes and apologize. Follow up with good will and good experiences. Sometimes customers will forgive you, and sometimes they wont, but if there is no trust, there is no loyalty.
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Sometimes customers will forgive you, and sometimes they wont, but if there is no trust, there is no loyalty.
How are you using tools typically found in the B2C space, such as social media, within the B2B loyalty/experience strategy?
DeWitt: Over the past year, the larger marketing organization has become more sophisticated in our corporate social media strategy. There is an XO Communications presence on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn and we share industry-related news and content that we feel will benefit our prospects and customers. This creates quite a following as consumption of relevant and useful content shows that we are a reliable source of information and thus experts at what we do.
How do you measure a programs success?

DeWitt: From a program perspective, the Loyalty Marketing team measures what and how we communicate with our customers. We consider ourselves somewhat of a conduit for our customer-facing teams. The experience teams measure customer satisfaction with our products, installation, billing, repair, and interactions with our customer-facing employees. A loyalty program or customer experience initiative is considered successful if it results in active participation, retention, and if revenue is retained or increased.
What have you experienced with your clients as a result of this integration?
DeWitt: We are just beginning to incorporate Twitter in our customer communications to proactively engage with customers, and our Customer Care organization recently began offering customer service on Twitter. While this is very new, Customer Care has received a positive response and an increase in followers, which encourages us that the proactive channel will be just as successful.
What metrics can you suggest using to determine viability?

DeWitt: Generally, response and conversion metrics should be used and measured over time by program type (engagement, retention, upsell) and analyzed against retention and revenue metrics to determine program effectiveness. Read more from our interview with Toni De Witt on a B2B approach to customer loyalty as our conversation continues online at Loyalty 360.org. L
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Using Social Technologies to Co-Innovate Product Evolution

by Stephanie Logerot, National Instruments
t National Instruments (NI), we develop intuitive software and modular hardware products that help engineers and scientists around the world design and deploy systems. Customers use our products for applications ranging from simply acquiring data to controlling the worlds largest supercollider. We understand the importance of embracing our lead users and other customers when developing new product features and have successfully implemented a system for co-innovating the evolution of our flagship software platform, NI LabVIEW. Co-innovation is a hot topic among technology companies, and we have embraced this idea to incorporate user feedback into our development process. The online LabVIEW Idea Exchange (ni.com/ideas) is a forum where users can provide ideas that help make our products better. It also serves as a way for us to show that we listen to and value their feedback.
Gathering Data
As we began to discuss the idea of building co-innovation into our LabVIEW development process, we knew we needed to gather more information about our community members, as they would be a key part of the process. To accomplish this, we conducted an extensive survey of our community. We specifically wanted to embrace the audience of innovators and evangelists in our community. The survey showed that 41 percent of NI customers are active NI community users. Additionally, the more active customers are with the NI community, the more loyal they are, meaning they are satisfied overall with us as a company, likely to recommend our products to a colleague, likely to purchase the same products from us (repeat customers), and likely to purchase new products from us. This data, shown in more detail in the following graphs, confirmed that it would benefit us to embrace these customers in our software development process.
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Implementation
After evaluating our audience, we narrowed our focus down to the following objectives, which helped us solidify our plan for a LabVIEW co-innovation system: Make it easy for NI customers to share, discuss, and vote on new software features. Gather feedback from lead users as we enter new markets. Encourage customers to share their feedback in the community-driven software development areas. Launch customer-driven software developments at NIWeek, our annual user conference and trade show. Integrate these ideas into traditional marketing efforts. Our end product, the LabVIEW Idea Exchange, was born out of the need to implement the above objectives. Built using the Lithium community platform, it goes beyond the typical beta program by giving our online community a way to interact directly with NI R&D to provide candid feedback about our products. We then work to incorporate their feedback into LabVIEW as much as possible, which results in increased customer satisfaction because they see that we pay close attention to their needs and suggestions. Users can submit and vote on features covering topics such as
R&D team. Many users who had complaints just posted them to their own blogs. By launching an open, public idea board for users to share their feedback, we gave our customers a welcome hand in our software development process. Because of the success of the LabVIEW Idea Exchange, we now have eight Idea Exchanges covering multiple product lines. We have also seen an increase in our own software development productivity because we no longer have to guess which features our users would prioritize. Now, the feedback our community provides in the Idea Exchange gives us direct insight into which features they want to see most, and helps our R&D team prioritize accordingly. Other specific metrics include the following: 2,400 ideas submitted across several software product lines (our initial goal was 500) More than 47,800 votes on product ideas 9,470 customer comments on ideas More than 45,400 unique visitors to the Idea Exchange, for a total of 99,100 visits The LabVIEW 2011 beta includes 13 new features from the Idea Exchange
Many companies are afraid of what their customers might say about their products; however, by embracing customers opinions and making co-innovation an important step in the product development cycle, we have been able to work with them to create better, more useful products.
The LabVIEW Idea Exchange includes ideas straight from customers interested in helping us develop the next version of LabVIEW.
user interface enhancements, performance improvements, computation capabilities, and hardware integration. Since August 2009, more than 2,000 ideas have been submitted for consideration in future versions of LabVIEW. In August 2010, we launched the newest version of LabVIEW, which incorporated 14 Idea Exchange submissions.
Results
Overall, we consider the LabVIEW Idea Exchange to be a great success. One important measure is that it has decreased the number of customer complaints. Before the Idea Exchange existed, customers requested new features for the product by emailing our
Companies are generally interested in customer feedback, but often dont know the best way to gather and then implement their suggestions. The most innovative part of the Idea Exchange is that we not only use social technology to listen to our customers, but that we then incorporate the best feedback directly into our products and give customers access to our R&D team. Many companies are afraid of what their customers might say about their products; however, by embracing customers opinions and making co-innovation an important step in the product development cycle, we have been able to work with them to create better, more useful products. L
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A New Era of Customer Loyalty

by Nick Afonsky, 5one
ustomer loyalty is always a top priority for any retailer, but with the effects of the economic downturn still being felt by many, it is now more important than ever for retailers to build a closer relationship with consumers. Traditional mass media marketing no longer provides the means to do this. The failure to recognise this development has been recently felt by a number of big name retailers across the US and Europe. The battle to keep customers and to differentiate your retail brand is not easily won, but Customer Centric Retailing (CCR) provides a solution. It may seem counter-intuitive or idealistic to suggest that frequency, average baskets, margins, cross-selling and ultimately customer loyalty can increase, while spending less money and using less energy on marketing. However, by developing a customer focussed business strategy, based on nuggets of information from millions of cash register receipts, 5one has repeatedly shown that it is possible for retailers to give their customers exactly what they want in the way that they want it.
What not to do
In the past, many retailers have amassed customer data and analyzed the surface of it, or gone deep to support a number of tactical initiatives. With access to T-log, on-line, loyalty and payment card and other types of data, retailers need to be in a position now to quickly analyze the most relevant customer data, understand customer lifestyles and buying habits, and use these insights in better, more targeted decision making. One of the keys here is to implement a durable customer analytics framework to measure progress towards customer objectives over the long haul. From the board room down to tactical decision making, customer insights drive value. For example, one American retailer planned to remove a product from its shelf because transactional data showed that it wasnt as popular as other brands sold in-store. However, using customer insights, the retailer understood that the less popular item was overwhelmingly bought by the stores most loyal customers. So a potentially costly mistake was avoided.
Customer Centric Retailing
From the board room down to tactical decision making, customer insights drive value.
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Implementation
Best practice implementation of CCR involves the retailer changing the way they think about their customers from the boardroom to the shop floor. This includes the consideration of customer insights at the strategic level as well as day-today decisions on marketing, loyalty-strategy, promotions and product assortment, private label brands, store and category management. The most important thing here is to expand the use of customer insights from Marketing and Loyalty to the other key business functions. It appears a huge undertaking for any retailer, especially for those with many hundreds or thousands of stores. It is also important not to disrupt existing organization and information systems. However, in just a few weeks a sample of just 5% of the customer base is all it takes to reveal relevant and actionable customer groups, from which point the review and potential realignment of existing business plans can take place.
Best practice implementation of CCR involves the retailer changing the way they think about their customers from the boardroom to the shop floor.
Reaping the benefits

When used effectively, customer data and insights will increase customer satisfaction and profitability and help resist the effects of the recession. For instance, when 5one analyzed the sales of a leading European food retailer it showed that budget families, its key customer segment, were buying a lot of high-priced chocolate-flavoured cereals. The retailer then decided to produce and sell a similar product under its own brand, which was cheaper and proved an instant hit with shoppers. Once the proper customer analytics and insights are in place, these types of opportunities come into focus for the business as a part of day-to-day planning. Furthermore, by using this insight in-store promotions and multi-product offers can be optimized to ensure that they are popular with existing customers as well as attracting new ones. In contrast, mass media marketing, which involves offering the same promotions to all shoppers, is more expensive and less effective than direct, insight-driven marketing. The most effective marketing campaigns are those which are tailored to customers based on their shopping habits. Remarkably, this technique has yet to be fully appreciated by retailers, despite evidence that targeted marketing campaigns produce a greater return on investment than general mass marketing. One grocery retailer implemented a targeted multi-offer coupon campaign which resulted in an impressive 50% of those mailed using at least one coupon, and lead to $23 million increase in sales.
Looking to the future

For retailers, the lesson is that by spending less and targeting their actions, shops are seeing their sales indicators, margins, average baskets and loyalty grow within a short space of time. In the short-term this could be the deciding factor in a retailers survival. As Customer Centric Retailing is adopted across key retail functions, it can secure the long-term future of the business as well. L
Come hear Nick speak with Rob Voase from GAME Group at the 2011 Engagement Expo where he explores this topic in an interactive discussion.
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Viewpoint Voice of the Customer

A look at how an annual customer survey, paired with a centralized database helps Viewpoint Construction Software identify important customer-focused initiatives
by Nancy Porte, Vovici & Pam Snodgrass, Viewpoint Construction Software
the inside scoop
ith over 35 years of experience in the construction industry, Viewpoint Construction Software provides a leading construction-specific software application and unparalleled customer support, making sure businesses experience smoother, easier and ultimately more profitable job results. Viewpoint V6 Software is a fully scalable and integrated SQL/. NET solution tailored specifically for mid-to-large sized construction companies. Unifying all the unique departments in todays construction companies from Accounting to Operations to HR, V6 provides real-time datawherever and whenever needed. Viewpoint has always taken pride in its customer satisfaction focus, but with significant growth initiatives underway, including expansion into Canada and Australia, there was concern about their ability to maintain that high standard. Since our sales efforts are very dependent upon great references
and since we often heard that positive references tipped the scale in our direction, we were always pretty confident we had strong customer satisfaction and loyalty, explained Pam Snodgrass, Manager of Customer Quality for Viewpoint Construction Software. Our informal approach to gauging satisfaction had served us well in the past, but with new customers coming on board at a much more rapid pace we knew a formal program was needed to help us stay in touch with customer experiences and ensure continued and even improved satisfaction. Viewpoint had conducted customer satisfaction surveys in the past, but they werent administered on a routine basis and didnt provide valid, comparable metrics. Individual departments would gather feedback on specific topics from time to time, but there was no consistency in branding or best practices. Without a centralized database of participants and
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Its great to have the ability to easily reach out to our customers to gather and analyze information, but theres more to the process. Taking action on that information to ensure we meet, and hopefully exceed, the changing needs and expectations of our customersthats the real end game.
responses, the company was missing feedback in key areas of the customer lifecycle. The primary driving force behind searching for a Voice of the Customer (VoC) software platform was the decision by Viewpoints executives to implement an annual all-customer survey in 2009. This survey would be used as the baseline for future surveys, and would allow them to identify (and act upon) customer-focused initiatives. When choosing a VoC platform, Viewpoint had several requirements including integration with their CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system, so that they could easily identify survey participants, the ability to limit survey frequency, and the ability to analyze responses based on a variety of track-able criteria such as customer location, type of contractor, size of firm, etc. The software also needed to be rich in features and functionality with top of the line support. In addition to implementing a survey tool for their annual survey, another important goal for Viewpoint was to start gathering feedback on a continuous basis related to specific customer experiences. Examples of relevant experiences include support calls, on-site consulting engagements, technical services projects, and classroom training sessions. This information would allow both managers and employees to really keep their finger on the pulse of customer experiences and react much more quickly if attention was needed. Although conducting annual surveys and gathering feedback on various support and service needs were the primary goals, Viewpoint continues to discover more and more survey uses. For example, Viewpoints Product Management team frequently surveys customers to gather input for software enhancement ideas and prioritization. Viewpoint also gathers input and feedback related to user conferences, website features, online training courses, marketing campaigns, and various employee topics. While continuously gathering data in a formal manner was an important step, Viewpoint knew this was just one piece of a successful customer feedback program. We knew if we didnt follow through with the other steps of learning, sharing, and seeking feedback again, that we shouldnt bother starting the process, explained Snodgrass. Viewpoint learns from their survey data in a variety of ways, such as automatic alerts that notify related managers when survey responses are less than positive or if the customer specifically requests additional follow-up. Department leaders also routinely review survey reports that provide both quantitative and qualitative information. These processes allow Viewpoint to quickly become aware of situations that require immediate attention and adjustment, and helps identify larger improvement initiatives. For their annual survey, Viewpoint goes through an extensive process that includes analysis of both ratings and comments. Snodgrass explained, We ask several essay questions, such as If you could change one aspect of the Viewpoint V6 Software, what would it be? and If you could change one thing about our customer support, what would it be? While those take a great deal of time to digest and categorize, they are essential for helping us better understand customer sentiments, identify trends, and ultimately make improvements. Shortly after a presentation of the annual survey results and sharing of detailed ratings and comments, Viewpoints leadership team identifies what they call their Key CustomerFocused Initiatives. While each leader identifies a variety of potential improvements specific to their team, the key initiatives require cross-functional commitment. For example as a result of their 2009 annual survey, one of their key initiatives was Customer Communication. Feedback from our 2009 annual survey indicated we could to do a better job keeping customers informed of important news, providing them access to needed information, and allow more opportunity for them to provide us with input and feedback, explained Snodgrass. Related projects fell in a variety of areas such as switching from a quarterly to monthly newsletter (and related improvements), a complete reengineering of our customer website, and the implementation of various surveys to gather feedback on daily experiences. Initiatives are shared in their customer newsletter and customer website when first established, progress updates are shared throughout the year, and then the annual survey specifically asks customers to evaluate progress. Viewpoints 2010 annual survey asked customers to evaluate progress related to each 2009 initiative. Based on the results some initiatives (such as Customer Communication) were dropped from the key list, some remained and some were added. Then the process continues for 2011 and beyond. Viewpoints 3rd annual all-customer survey recently closed and they are looking forward to having three years of solid data to compare. Although more detailed analysis is still underway they are pleased to report that overall satisfaction and willingness to recommend ratings continued an upward trend for the 3rd year in a row; something they attribute to their ongoing customer focus. Its great to have the ability to easily reach out to our customers to gather and analyze information, but theres more to the process. Taking action on that information to ensure we meet and hopefully exceed the changing needs and expectations of our customers thats the real end game, concluded Snodgrass. L
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BEHIND THE BRAND
Christopher Barnard
President, Points International Ltd.
Christopher is responsible for corporate strategy, product development, corporate development and financing activities as well as investor relations and has also held various additional interim operating positions including CFO and VP of Product Development and Marketing. In 1998 Christopher also co-founded Canada's first internet business incubator, Exclamation International, from which Points.com was created.
Photo credit: Karla Burns Photography
What is your personal motto?

Be flexible enough not to have a motto...
If you were not doing what you do today, how would you be spending your time?
As a self-proclaimed recovering golf addict, my dream job would be squeezing in 36 holes a day.
If you could invite 4 people to dinner (past or present) who would they be?
Muhammad Ali: With a nickname of The Greatest and an unorthodox fighting style best described by his catchphrase, Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee, there has really been no other role model to hold a candle to Cassius Clay. Gandhi: The guy single-handedly started a phenomenon of peace. The phrase, An eye for an eye will make you blind, will always resonate with me. Leonardo Da Vinci: The archetypal Renaissance man. What more can I say? If I had these icons, I would be willing to give up my fourth dinner guest. Oh, and Id be sure we had a prix fixe menu so no time was wasted on ordering.
Loyalty programs have the opportunity to be leaders in this area [mobile payment platforms] on both the earn and the burn sides.
The 4-Hour Body by Tim Ferriss: Im a minimalist when it comes to exercise so this book is showing me how I can stay fit with little effort exerted. Hardcore Zen: Punk Rock, Monster Movies, and the Truth About Reality by Brad Warner: To understand how much I dont understand.
Which book(s) are you currently reading? What must-read book(s) do you recommend?
I drank the e-reader Kool-Aid and never leave home without my Kindle. I have the following books in rotation right now: The Wonder of Girls by Micheal Gurian: In an effort to try and understand my 6 year old daughter. Enchantment by Guy Kawasaki: To keep Points.com as engaging as possible. The Art of Learning: A Journey in the Pursuit of Excellence by Josh Waitzkin: To teach my children to become better learners.
What recent advancement in technology are you most excited about?

I think mobile payment platforms are really going to be significant change drivers over the next few years (by eliminating change actually...). From Square to PayPal, Google Wallet to Groupon there are going go be increasingly more options for consumers very soon. I think that the presence of easy payment options has very much been the under appreciated driver
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Loyalty programs have the opportunity to be leaders in this area on both the earn and the burn sides. Enabling any merchant to offer any currency as an incentive will get a whole lot easier. Conversely, mobile payment will also open up a virtually unlimited redemption catalog that will make programs with the right vision very attractive indeed.
Whats your favorite social media outlet personally? For marketing?

I know its very retro, but email is still my personal social tool of choice. For marketing, it is clearly Points. com. Sure there are some notable social networks that have a significant portion of the world's population as users but as they continue to grow, I think that they will present much of the same challenges as mass media has always presented. Getting a corporate message to appear relevant between posts of Aunt Mary's new puppies and niece Jenny's birthday pictures is going to get increasingly difficult. Much of LinkedIn's success lies in its relevant context - I'm looking for networking/ business opportunities and I know I'm not going to get birthdays and puppies. So too with Points.com, where a growing base of almost 3 million users are managing their loyalty lives through our platform and are seeking more ways to get engaged in their multitude of programs. We believe that getting directly relevant information from these programs is a fantastic way to help any loyalty program ramp up its member engagement.
Christopher and his team celebrating their success.
of some recent notable successes. Take my answer to the previous question. Sure the Kindle is a terrifically well designed product with an awesome amount of content but one of the reasons that I'm reading five books at the same time is that they were just so damn easy to pay for. The same goes for the 92 apps on my iPad. Roll that dynamic out to the broader economy through NFC, QR codes and 2D bar codes and I think we are going to see quite an impact.
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ANALYTICS
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sneak peek
sneak peek
November 6 - 8, 2011 Dallas, Texas
On the Road to Loyalty: Engagement is the Journey, Loyalty is the Destination.

While engagement and loyalty are terms that are often used interchangeably, understanding the differences and interconnection between the two is key to building and maintaining strong, sustainable customer relationships. Engagement Expo 2011, The Road to Customer Loyalty: Engagement is the Journey, Loyalty is the Destination will examine the role engagement plays in the journey to customer loyalty and advocacy. The degree to which a company succeeds in building and maintaining an intimate, strong relationship with the customer starts the first time a person is introduced to the brand and continues as you initiate a dialogue, get to know each other, and develop a rapport. Increasingly, brands are realizing that achieving high levels of engagement is the key to driving loyalty and advocacy and delivering a competitive advantage.
For more information, registration details, or to read more about all of the speakers presenting at Engagement Expo this fall, please visit www. engagementexpo.com. We look forward to seeing you at the show!
Powered by Loyalty 360 The Loyalty Marketers Association, Engagement Expo 2011 will feature a dynamic mix of research, panel discussions, case studies, proven tools and techniques, and focus groups to help marketers optimize their customer engagement strategies. The robust agenda features many of the greatest minds in customer engagement including: WORKSHOP: Partner Optimization Lead by David Andreadakis & Rick Boubelik, Carlson Marketing WORKSHOP: Optimizing ROI Driven Communications Across the Prospect/Customer/Partner Lifecycle Lead by Mike
Carney & Claudio Ayub, Hawkeye
WORKSHOP: In-the-Moment Lifestyle Engagement Attendees Create and Experience Mobile & Social Engagement, Payments and Rewards Lead by Bob Gold, Gold Mobile B2C Customer Data, Segmentation and Analysis: Driving Engagement and Customer Strategy Moderated by Connie Hill,
VeraCentra. Panelists include: Heidi Shurtz, Allergan; David Sims, GNC & Sarah Mendez, Mister Carwash
Radio Silence is Costly, NPR Listens and Succeeds with Panels Presented by Nancy Porte, Vovici & Ben Robins, National
Public Radio
Time to Grow Up: Youth Acquisition Beyond the Transactional Presented by Edwina Doyle, Research In Motion; Sean
Claessen, Maritz Canada Inc. & Barry Kirk, Maritz Loyalty and Motivation
B2B CEMEX USA Constructs a Concrete Competitive Advantage by Being Customer-Centric Presented by Ven Bontha, CEMEX
USA
Using Defined Touchpoints to Ensure a Superior Customer Experience Presented by Jeffrey Bouchard & Michelle Edwards,
FARO Technologies, Inc.
Why B2B Customer Satisfaction Doesnt Create Loyalty Presented by Rob Urbanowicz, Geehan Group
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2011 WORKSHOP
Partner Optimization
David Andreadakis
Manager, Decision Sciences Carlson Marketing
2011 WORKSHOP
Rick Boubelik
Optimizing ROI Driven Communications Across the Prospect/Customer/ Partner Lifecycle
VP, Loyalty Strategy - Carlson Marketing In this breakthrough workshop, we will examine selected strategies and tactics of optimizing partners to drive customer engagement. Partner optimization is a series of management strategies, tactics, and supporting analytics used to optimize partner programs within the engagement and loyalty space. Opportunities exist when the exchange of value between partners, the loyalty program, and customers is out of balance. This leads to decreased customer engagement in the loyalty program, loss of core business profits, and weakened partner offers. We will look at partner selection, offer relevancy, and program structure as it relates to ROI from the program, increased partner value, and core business growth. Participants will walk away with an understanding of core partnership optimization principles, ready to use strategies, and models for improvement.
Mike Carney
Chief Marketing Officer - Hawkeye
Claudio Ayub
VP, Chief Channel Strategist - Hawkeye Engagement varies throughout the Prospect/Customer/Partner lifecycle and data-driven communication ensures that your audience receives the right messages, at the right time, differentiating you from your competition. At this session youll learn how to: Implement data-driven strategies that target both decision makers and influencers Reward strategies that support both indirect and direct sales channels and drive incremental ROI Segment communications solutions that boost response rates and build prospect dialogue Cultivate strategies that create sales-ready leads and significantly enhance sales conversion rates Maximize customer lifetime value up-sell/cross-sell opportunities through data intelligence
2011 WORKSHOP
In-the-Moment Lifestyle Engagement Attendees Create and Experience Mobile & Social Engagement, Payments and Rewards
Bob Gold
CEO - Gold Mobile Attendees will actively participate in the following scenario: (1) Be executives for a simulated consumer brand and actively participate in making the final decisions and tradeoffs on deploying a new mobile and social engagement program with a transactional mobile wallet (2) Switch to being the consumers and experiencing the full cycle of engagement, purchase, and rewards including using (on your cell phone) a real-life mobile wallet and performing an NFC transaction (Near Field Communications). The workshop will address questions such as: How easy is it for your prospects and customers to engage and transact with your brand during their hectic day and lifestyle? On any device they may have? Two way personalized dialogue? When they are In-theMoment and feel like being social, getting entertained, or checking off a to-do item on their list is your brand available to capture that moment? Even more important, can you create that AHA moment that stimulates an immediate action?
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Driving Engagement and Customer Strategy Connie Hill

President & Founder Vera Centra
Customer Data, Segmentation & Analysis:

Heidi Shurtz
Senior Manager, Customer Relationship Marketing - Allergan
B2C FOCUSED SE SSION
David Sims
VP, Direct Marketing GNC
Sarah Mendez
Marketing Director Mister Carwash
In this new age of customer centric marketing, engagement and loyalty marketers are leading the customer strategy charge for their organizations. Armed with volumes of customer data, the task at hand is using that data to create true competitive advantage by building long term relationships with customers. For many marketers, turning customer data into competitive strategy is new and uncharted territory. During this session the panel leader, along with three panelists from different industries, will take an in-depth, how we did it view into the three primary areas that can help marketers chart their own journey from volumes of customer data to true customer strategy that delivers increased profitability. Panelists will also discuss the steps they took to secure executive buy-in for their data collection and analytics programs. The three primary areas that will be covered are: 1. How to identify meaningful data and best practices for data collection; 2. How to create a segmentation strategy that meets the marketers specific objectives and 3. the use of analytics to yield customer intelligence that drives customer strategy. The session leader will introduce each topic area and will lead questions of the individual panelist to secure real life examples that describe their approaches to successful customer data collection, segmentation and analytics for strategic customer intelligence. The audience will gain tremendous value with the how to introduction of each area, followed by real life experiences provided by each panelist, including processes and best practices for: Collecting customer data Customer segmentation Using analytics to yield customer intelligence
The challenge is knowing where all your information is, how it got there and how you can translate it to current and future marketing objectives. The value is in the data. The more you know about consumer habits the better you can interact with them in the most relevant way. Loyalty pays, both ways.
-Heidi Shurtz, Senior Manager, Customer Relationship Marketing - Allergan
Interested in hearing from our featured speakers? Register NOW at engagementexpo.com Spaces are limited.
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Imagine your ROI in the best possible position.
Our integrated campaigns make it a reality.

social mobile digital events direct
To get your ROI in top form, visit booth 15.

Stop by to register for our workshop, Optimizing ROI Driven Communications Across the Prospect/Customer/Partner Lifecycle.
Mike Carney, CMO
214.659.5656
hawkeyeww.com
sneak peek
Radio Silence is Costly, NPR Listens and Succeeds with Panels

Nancy Porte
VP, Customer Experience - Vovici
Ben Robins
Research Manager - NPR
Online communities are one of the most efficient ways to listen to the customer. When a company hosts an online community for its customers, and the goal is truly to listen and be a valuable resource for them, something special starts to happen. The good intentions and efforts will begin to translate into actual business results for the customers, and ultimately the company. As an organization opens up to customers thoughts, concerns and complaints, the company can gain respect and confidence, moving them beyond a vendor who provides a service, but rather an indispensible partner. NPR is an award-winning, multimedia news organization. In collaboration with more than 900 independent public radio stations nationwide, NPR reaches a growing audience of more than 26.4 million listeners weekly. To better understand the audience's experience, interests and needs in an ever-expanding media landscape, NPR required a mechanism to create a feedback loop with its core audience. In 2007, NPR launched an audience advisory Web panel, called NPR Listens, to better understand evolving listener preferences and bring the audience to the center of NPR decision making. To date, the panel has attracted participants from all 50 states, more than 65 countries, and now comprises over 22,000 listeners. Over the past four years, NPR has gathered hundreds of thousands of responses on topics ranging from monthly feedback on the NPR shows that listeners hear on the radio each day on their local NPR member stations to iPhone application testing, and from gathering feedback on end-of-year fundraising to measuring the impact that social media has had on listeners. NPR bucked the trend in declining new audiences in traditional media by enjoying recordhigh broadcast audience ratings in the past year, reaching more than 26 million listeners each week. NPR used audience research to launch its NPR News iPhone app, which saw more than 1 million downloads in its first five weeks and has dramatically enhanced NPR's presence in the mobile space. NPR held usability interviews with NPR.org visitors for feedback on their site's redesign, which now attracts more than 11 million listeners each month.
Transactional Edwina Doyle
Time to Grow Up: Youth Acquisition Beyond the

Sean Claessen
Executive Creative Director Maritz Canada Inc.
Barry Kirk
Solution VP of Consumer Loyalty Maritz Loyalty and Motivation
Senior Manager, Carrier Marketing Research In Motion
Millennials are a new breed of consumer with expectations for brand experiences that go beyond the transactional to something more engaging, interactive and mobile. Increasingly, smart marketers will meet this challenge with brand interactions that mix elements of game science and social/mobile media, playing on the human drives to bond and to explore. This session will offer concepts for making a brand interaction social, mobile and gamified, focusing on a Maritz case study from the Make Friends with BlackBerry program, an initiative that engaged youth in Canada, from coast-to-coast, for an entire summer leveraging RIMs BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) platform. Maritz will demonstrate how the coolest part of this program was the combination of a strong mobile aspect along with rich measurement, which allowed RIM and Maritz Canada to draw a direct line of causality between in-field and digital activity -- distinct from any traditional advertising -- to reveal tangible, real-world results. Maritz will share all parts of the case study, from client brief & assignment, to dissecting our approach and sharing key consumer insights. Well also flesh out the solution detailing the nuances that tie the brand to this particular audience through a shared set of values. The Make Friends with BlackBerry case study will offer a compelling glimpse into this emerging realm of marketing, with an unusual level of visibility into the granularity of consumer engagement and conversion throughout the program's funnel. It will give insight into how to engage the youth market with a peek at a new standard for what we should expect out of database marketing in the future.
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Engagement Expo's B2B Marketing Track

Fueled by the success of the Loyalty 360 and Geehan Group B2B Marketing Track at the 2011 Loyalty Expo, Engagement Expo is bringing together a thought-provoking array of B2B marketing insiders to examine a myriad of the most compelling issues facing B2B marketers today.
Why B2B Customer Satisfaction Doesn't Create Loyalty

Viki Cooney
Vice President, Health Systems Marketing AmerisourceBergen
B2B FOCUSED SE SSION
Karen Posey
Senior Consultant - Geehan Group
According to a most studies including the latest from Business Week, over 60% of defecting customers indicated they are satisfied right before they leave. Learn why satisfaction doesnt equal loyalty or retention and what to do about it. Marketing and Sales must now play a role in driving beyond satisfaction to loyalty and ultimately advocacy. This session will explore best practices and lessons learned in developing customer advocacy. Attendees will learn: Understand the key differences in B2B vs. B2C loyalty and customer satisfaction metrics Understand the three layers of loyalty in B2B How loyalty programs can transform a B2B company, making the marketing team look like a hero Best practices of leading B2B firms to drive loyalty and retention How to engage the internal support necessary to deliver B2B loyalty
To view additional B2B sessions and learn more about the Engagement Expo agenda, please visit engagementexpo.com/ agenda
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CEMEX USA Constructs a Concrete Competitive Advantage by Being Customer-Centric

Ven R. Bontha
Head of Customer Experience - CEMEX USA
Building materials provider, CEMEX USA, faced many challenges that are often associated with rapid growth. After back-to-back acquisitions, the companys U.S.based operations rapidly grew to 14 cement plants, multiple distribution terminals, more than 100 quarries and several hundred ready-mix concrete plants. Learn how CEMEX USA, the recipient of the 2011 Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Excellence Award, met those challenges with its successful and comprehensive approach to customer experience that enables CEMEX USA to continually deliver high quality customer service while improving the efficiency of its service operations.
Whenever you provide anything for customers, think about why you are providing it. What will it enable them to do that they otherwise could not do and what will be the ultimate benefit?
-Jeffrey Bouchard, Director, Learning and Organization Development - FARO Technologies
Using Defined Touchpoints to Ensure a Superior Customer Experience

Michelle Edwards
Manager, Applications Engineering FARO Technologies
Jeffrey Bouchard
Director, Learning and Organization Development - FARO Technologies
FARO Technologies, Inc., a high tech company in Lake Mary, Florida, provides 3D Imaging and Metrology solutions to our customers. We have always believed that we provide more than a tool or even more than a solution to our customers' problems. We provide a total customer experience. Three years ago we began defining this experience in terms of our applications engineers touchpoints with our customers. We designed and implemented processes and standard templates for the touchpoints. This approach accomplished two things: first, it enhanced our customers involvement with us; second, it has enabled our Account Managers to describe to prospective FARO buyers exactly what makes our customer experience unique and exceptional. This session will describe the pre-touchpoint environment, the evolution of the touchpoints and the significant impact of one touchpoint in particular, the FaroBDA process.
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COME NETWORK WITH OUR SPONSORS & EXHIBITORS

GOLD SPONSORS
TO LE ARN MORE OR SEE ADDITIONAL SPONSOR AND E XHIBITOR DETAIL S, VISIT W W W.ENGAGEMENTE XPO.COM/SPONSORS
Come meet our sponsors, register today. The first 100 people to register will get a free membership to Loyalty 360 for the rest of the year. Register now at www.engagementexpo.com/register
November 6 - 8, 2011 The Westin Stonebriar Dallas, Texas
PRSRT STD U.S. POSTAGE
PAID
4120 Dumont St Cincinnati, OH 45226
CAROL STREAM, IL PERMIT No. 475
NOVEMBER 6 - 8, 2011
Westin Stonebriar Dallas, TX engagementexpo.com
Customer engagement begins the first time a person is introduced to your brand and continues as you initiate a dialogue, get to know each other and develop a rapport. Are you creating positive experiences to engage your customers? How do you begin the conversation? How do you keep them interested and involved? Engagement Expo 2011 is bringing together a slate of best-in-class speakers and partners to arm attendees with the education, insights, and proven tools they need to present their customers with the most inviting, interactive and personalized experience possible.
Key areas of focus will include: Insight into what engagement means and how to manage that across the multi-cultural and multi-faceted client/customer constituencies. Customer experience Are you offering the best first experience possible? What about the second and third? Building customer trust Using positive customer experiences and learning the best questions to ask (when and how) to engender the trust needed to begin to build a successful two-way dialogue. Social networking and how to leverage this in your marketing communication strategies to create more engaged participants. Tools such as best practices, processes and analytics will give you much more granular insight. Cross-over of emerging (wireless, mobile) and traditional medium to make the most of your engagement/marketing strategies.
PLEASE VISIT ENGAGEMENTEXPO.COM FOR SPEAKER INFORMATION & TO REGISTER

If you're interested in sponsoring at this conference, please contact Erin Raese at erinraese@loyalty360.org

Loyalty Management September 2011

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Loyalty Management September 2011

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