Why Loyalty & Social Networking?
by Mark H. Goldstein, CEO
We’ve been spending a lot of time @ Loyalty Lab thinking about social networking and its relevance to loyalty programs. Seth Goldstein CEO of SocialMedia Networks conducting a webinar viewed by 000s, David Rosen put on a great seminar at the DMA (with Carlson Marketing) and Shop.org chatting about our clients Dell and others and what they are doing to blend the two…..the real fit is simple. Social networking is simply all about getting the right advice, the best recommendations, the…sex, best idea…from folks you most trust.
Fact is…consumers are more influenced by the recommendations of their friends than by marketing messages. According to a study conducted by The Nielsen Co., parent of Adweek, recommendations from others are trusted by 78 percent of consumers, while TV ads are trusted by 56 percent. Web ads fared even worse, with just 26 percent trusting them. Add a study released last week by WPP Group PR shop Burson-Marsteller. It found influential consumers-those most likely to share product opinions with friends and family-have a heightened wariness of commercial interests weighing in on blogs, message boards and review sites.
A brands best evangelists are those who have raised their hand and signed up to the brand’s loyalty or rewards program. It just intuitively makes sense. These brand evangelists are saying it’s OK to message me aggressively and its OK to provide me with incentives to buy more product because I WANT TO BUY MORE PRODUCT. So, its important a brand leverage these customers and have them speak out to their ‘friends’ across cyberspace.
This is why we are really thinking hard about bridging these two worlds. Your best new customer is likely to be referred by your happiest existing customers and with customer brand loyalty becoming a harder and harder thing to engender…we think owning and leveraging loyalty is awfully key…..
