CMO Council Research Finding: Loyalty Programs Need to Engage
David Rosen | SVP Strategy and Partner Development
Today, MediaPost’s Research Brief highlighted the latest survey on loyalty from the CMO Council.
It’s a solid overview of general member satisfaction and general marketer satisfaction with their programs. In fact, generally very good news for the loyalty industry: Members really do appreciate the additional value that loyalty programs deliver and marketers’ returns justify increased investment in 2010 and beyond.
I was, however, struck the by title: “Loyalty Programs Need to Engage.”
Based on the research, there still is a significant gap in marketers’ ability to build a dialog with their members that is based on points of interaction that extend beyond the transaction. While a clear majority of the respondents are increasing their digital spend, few seem to be ready to take the highly personal inputs of the engagement to drive big lifts if frequency, retention and measurable advocacy.
As reported in the Council’s research:
When it comes to in-depth profiling of customers, the vast majority of marketers still only aggregate and analyze limited customer data sets.
- 73% collect basic demographics and
- 68% track the location of members
But critical insights are not being leveraged:
- Advocacy rates (14%)
- Brand loyalty and attachment (27%)
- Personal preferences (31%)
- Satisfaction levels (33%)
- Product preferences (38%)
Clearly the gap needs to close. This year, we’re doing our own research in collaboration with Razorfish on member engagement and loyalty. Stay tuned – and if you would like an advanced peek, email me at david@loyaltylab.com
