Loyalty Lab Blog

By Mark H. Goldstein | CEO

The Wall Street Journal today offered advice regarding storing customer data. Their point of view – which I concur with – is if you don’t use your customer and credit card data, don’t bother taking the risks in storing it. My view is – if you store this data, mine it. Ensure custom messaging, offers and insights flow from each megabyte of data you store. Data is like sand in a sandbox. If you have kids and they use the sandbox, it’s great. If you don’t have kids, and there are cats in the neighborhood, don’t keep sand in the sandbox. It ends up being quite a negative experience.

by Mark H. Goldstein | CEO

The days are over when a 10% marketing spend on online ad campaigns cut it. The pendulum has shifted – and your commitment to engage in a more meaningful online experience is required to hook your most important buyers or buyer influencers.

But it’s not easy and the stakes are high. Getting her attention and keeping it requires that you understand the difference between phony and real, and that your creative agency or marketing partner really ‘gets’ what makes her tick.

My 5 requirements to being successful in this new online ad world:

1. Make your hot new products ‘virtual’ and tradable online–allow your potential customers to forward, share, show-off and try-on your latest fashion, vacation or benefit.

2. Extend into Facebook (and perhaps MySpace). This may require a media buy. But this is likely where she is, and if you think you can build a social island without connectivity, your ad dollars will be wasted.

3. Tie into celebrity or something super-topical. Your new product might be hot – but your definition of hot is nothing compared to Britney, Paris or this week’s new Hollywood release and intra-celeb du jour.

4. Make sure your physical stores (if you have them) aggressively bounce-back to your online promotion and vice-versa.

5. Have a brand or product that has the potential to be talked about as new. Last year’s styles and commodity products need not apply.

Today’s WSJ article got me thinking.

by Mark H. Goldstein | CEO

Dave Friedman at Razorfish speaks succinctly when he says ‘the home page really doesn’t matter’. This may be really important for Marketers to understand and track over the short term. With the rise of cross-linking, social media and brand name recognition, authorities or friends you trust now recommend (or syndicate or digg) you interesting information. Home pages are but a billboard to anyone who doesn’t know you, or if they are finding you in an offline environment.

Read this carefully.

by Mark H. Goldstein | CEO

No surprise that the real growth in payment types is in the debit and prepaid side of banking. Credit cards are increasingly feeling like ‘an old man’s product’ as the youth continue to use the debit card they were given at college, etc. The unbanked, non-resident population, and perhaps those with a blemished credit history, are seemingly gravitating toward some type of debit vehicle. The non-stop coverage this summer on excess credit card debt surely doesn’t help the marketing efforts for new credit cards either.

Read today’s article from Retail Wire.

by Joshua Tretakoff | VP, Account Management

Today’s Multichannel Merchant has a good article on a case study as to how marketers can use the various Web 2.0 and social media elements that are getting such press to tangibly build loyalty around specific products. In this case, they focus on the launch of last year’s Xmas hit, the Pleo toy dinosaur. By using a combination of online forums, Flickr, YouTube, Twitter, and other tools, they created a constant buzz in advance of the product launch that has continued well after, and translated into multiple referral and upsell opportunities.

Retail marketers are often jokingly referred to as “dinosaurs,” but it looks like we can all learn to leverage these exciting new tools to avoid extinction.

by Mark H. Goldstein | CEO

The retail paradigm continues to change. Its no longer OK to stack product and allow people to transact…not that this is a new observation but its a slightly different perspective for a geeky Silicon Valley guy.

The 50:50 Rule for Retail

 by Mark H. Goldstein | CEO

LiveNation gets to dump unsold concert tickets on out of town guests, Hiltons gets to rev its marketing and associate with good time rock n roll.

Rock N’ Roll This Summer on Hilton HHonors(R): HHonors Teams up with LiveNation.com to Give Members Complimentary Concert Passes to Live Nation Amphitheatres across the Country

 Hilton HHonors Members Earn a Complimentary Ticket to a Live
Nation Amphitheatre Event with Every Summer Stay

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–June 19, 2008–
Hilton HHonors, one of the world’s premiere hotel loyalty programs, has announced a new promotion with Live Nation, the world’s largest live music company. The promotion allows HHonors members to earn a complimentary, general admission lawn ticket to a Live Nation amphitheatre concert, when they stay at a Hilton Family hotel between June 16 and August 31, 2008. All members have to do is register via the dedicated enrollment page HiltonHHonors.com/RockandRollSummer.

Registered HHonors members who stay at a Hilton Family hotel between June 16 and August 31 will automatically receive an e-mail with a redemption code good for a complimentary general admission ticket to any concert at a participating Live Nation amphitheatre (subject to availability). To get a complimentary ticket, HHonors members simply enter their code at LiveNation.com/Hilton and choose a concert. Members will also be able to purchase additional general admission lawn tickets at the time of redemption. There are no limits on the amount of complimentary tickets that can be earned or number of shows members can see.

Live Nation offers performances by some of the world’s greatest artists at amphitheatres throughout the continental United States. With many of its participating amphitheatres close to major cities like Atlanta, Chicago, Denver, Los Angeles, Philadelphia and Seattle, they are also just a short distance to Hilton Family hotels, allowing members to stay near the venue while earning their next complimentary ticket.

“Hilton HHonors is always looking for ways to enhance our members’ travel experiences, and this summer we would like HHonors members to be our guest at some of the season’s most exciting events,” said Adam Burke, Senior Vice President, Customer Loyalty, Hilton Hotels Corporation. “We’re especially proud of this promotion with Live Nation because it gives our members a chance to earn complimentary concert tickets in addition to points and miles with each stay.”

“Collaborating with Hilton HHonors is just another way that Live Nation can connect music fans to their favorite artists this summer,” said Maureen Ford, President of Sales, North American Music at Live Nation. “With a variety of Hilton Family hotel locations near Live Nation amphitheatres, it’s a wonderful way to reward Hilton HHonors members with an exciting live music experience.”

by Joshua Tretakoff | VP, Account Management

Here’s a common refrain we provide when discussing loyalty programs with clients and prospects: the average North American wallet has 6-8 slots for cards. One is taken up by a driver’s license; one is occupied by your ATM card. 2 others are typically taken up by major credit cards. That leaves 2-4 slots for everything else. So, in designing a loyalty program, and making a physical card a requirement, why do you think that your card will make the cut? Let’s assume a grocery “loyalty” card takes up one. How about a Costco or Sam’s Club membership? That leaves room for almost…none. Is it any wonder that many people use an alternative identifier instead of the physical card?

Here’s another idea: using the hot new iPhone, one smart Dutchman has scanned in his lesser-used cards as images, allowing the barcode on each to be clearly read by scanners. Thus, he’s created a wallet of infinite size. Sure, he gets a few strange looks when he presents the “card” to be scanned, but hey, saves on wallet wear and tear, right?

The next step is clearly to have a company embrace this “trend” and start offering iPhone and Blackberry versions of their cards. Best Buy and more gadget-focused retailers and service providers, are you listening?

by Mark H. Goldstein | CEO

I simply wanted to post this on the blog for all to take notice. Like anything sweet—too much email is not a good thing! Email efficacy is way down and plummeting by the day……there are some merchants I will no longer visit because their email cadence was insulting. Think smart and show your customers respect.

by Mark H. Goldstein | CEO

Today I went to SocialMedia Business School. Cool school too; located on Pier 38 overlooking the Bay. I sat in a class with 100 other developers listening to what it takes to have a successful Facebook app. Produced by SocialMedia, the leading ad network on Facebook and a kick-butt startup…

Rule 1. In designing the app…MOST important thing to figure out up-front….”Why should every person want to tell everybody they know?”

Rule 2. 50% of your development team’s energy needs to go into analytics, constantly in real-time tweaking the app, tuning the invites, the data model, text, images, links based on the latest second’s data you have on your customers at your fingertips.

Rule 3. While the initial download is great, re-engagement is critical because it’s not about the downloads—it’s about the number of daily active users of your application. Why should someone reengage with my app? Can’t be one-time flash in the pan and ‘cute’, otherwise you fade fast.

Rule 4. The ‘pictures from last weekend’ is the killer content, in part why Monday and Tuesday are highest traffic days—it’s what everyone wants to see!

Rule 5. On Facebook, everyone is trying to ‘outsmart’ the other…the proving ‘I’m smarter than you’ is what it’s all about. Beat your friends at a game, outguess them in a quiz, rank your smartest buddies, find the hottest new thang……

Rule 6. Finally, despite Facebook’s clamp on spamming friends and some folks claiming ‘Facebook Fatigue’, developers I quote said ‘it’s still possible to be successful as a Facebook app developer’ but the ‘get a million users fast Gold Rush’ is a thing of the past.