Loyalty Lab Blog

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.

by Joshua Tretakoff | VP, Account Management

Many of our clients focus on new and innovative ways to connect with their loyal customers, as part of the strategies we help craft for them. One surprisingly underused way is the mere peeling back of the inner workings to expose the thought process through running blogs. Movie makers, such as Peter Jackson and Bryan Singer have been doing this for years, making the fans feel like they are part of the process, and building up hype, to boot.

This week, the big retail daddy of them all, jumped in: Wal-Mart now has a Blog for their buyers to express their thoughts on upcoming items, reviews of current items, and more. The Blog, like most effective blogs, is surprisingly frank. RetailWire, for instance, highlighted one of the Blog entries about a buyer regarding Microsoft Vista: “Is it really all that and a bag of chips? My life has not changed dramatically – well, for that matter, it hasn’t changed at all.”

This combination of honesty, insight, and sheer information can have a dramatic effect on the customer’s loyalty. Wal-Mart already faces intense competition, and has been known for more aggressive tactics to combat it; this more comprehensive view is one that, frankly, I wish more clients would embrace: you can never go wrong by being honest with your customers, and the more your customers understand about how hard you work to deliver the great values, the more loyal they will be.

By Joshua Tretakoff | VP, Account Management

How often do you see rewards programs with a reward that is actually fun? Think of it: many programs are “aspirational,” as you earn towards a goal. But what makes programs really stand out are the fun extras: contests, giveaways, sweepstakes; all introduce a level of engagement that really elevate above the fold.

For instance, take these three examples:

1. AirTran Airways dressed up gate agents as Danica Patrick, the Indy Car race driver, to promote a sweepstakes, exclusively for members of their frequent flier program, to watch a live race from Ms. Patrick’s own pit crew.
2. JetBlue celebrates their eighth year flying with a giveaway of 800 free roundtrips, exclusively for TrueBlue members. The name of this promo? “All You Can 8.” Groan.
3. Red Lion Hotels is offering a Leap Year promotion for loyalty program members: make reservations for Feb. 29, and get 2900 bonus points, a 29% discount on the room, drawings for prizes every 29 minutes…and a free pair of slippers.

Where does it say these programs all have to be boring? Mark, our CEO, has long been an advocate for the wild promotions, and he’s got a good point. Your program is only as good as how much value your participants place on it. With Loyalty Lab’s new Ready, Aim, Engage approach, these types of engagements are the ones your customers are sure to remember, not how many points they earned last week. The key is a combination of good value proposition, excellent communication, and excitement.

Now, please excuse me, I’m off to try to meet Danica.

by Mark H. Goldstein | CEO

This has been a busy week so far, especially for January, and there are a few things going on that have juggled my thinking.

The first thing is the appearance of Faith Popcorn’s latest thinking. I know Faith and think she is one of the clearest futurists on the planet. Whatever the trend, she predicts it a year or two before we are to live it. I’m spending a lot of my time marketing to brands that market to women and this reads to me like a Holy Grail.

Second is the piece on tracking the social graph. I’m on the Board of Rapleaf.com, which is making nice headway in this. The key is appending the social graph with the other, in many cases more important, data you collect on a customer (transactional and other behavioral data) in a way that a holistic view appears. We are working on this opportunity at Loyalty Lab in very meaningful ways.

By Mark H. Goldstein | CEO

Hey all … America has voted and the winning viral apps are incredibly stupid, dumb as dirt but funny as all hell for about 15 minutes. Andy Warhol again has been proven to be a genius, this time in the high-tech age in that good software now only needs its 15 minutes of fame! Adweek writer Brian Morrissey sums up the trend nicely in this week’s Adweek.

By Mark H. Goldstein | CEO

The Wall Street Journal carried a story that every consumer brand marketer should love. Even states are getting into the game of retention marketing by enticing former residents to come back to the ‘hood. Retailers with win-back strategies have always known it’s lots easier and cheaper getting a customer to re-buy than buy anew. Of course there’s a difference in what they’re marketing. I’m a loyal customer, but I’ll never move back to Pennsylvania!

By Joshua Tretakoff | VP, Client Services

In many loyalty programs, the main “hook” often comes down to two different directions: should the program look to capture your loyalty by reducing the cost of doing business with you, or should it offer a suite of additional treatment that can’t normally be attained? As the airline industry is often cited for it’s efforts in this regard, you can usually do either: spend your miles on a flight, or use them for upgrades to higher classes of service.

Now the movie theater industry is getting in on the act. With the exception of record stores, very few retail business segments have been under siege as much as movie theaters over the last 5 years. Skyrocketing ticket prices, combined with incredibly short windows before the latest blockbuster is on DVD, have taken their toll. Add in the home theater explosion, and people are clearly willing to wait a few months so they can have the catered movie watching experience they prefer. What to do?

National Amusements is launching their foray to combat this. Called Lux, it offers a “first class” movie watching experience, complete with in-seat dining and alcoholic beverages, that you order wirelessly from your plush seat and are delivered by a server to your private Lux balcony. There are actually a suite of complimentary services, including exclusive parking, coat check, and more. The cost? $10 more per ticket, with a $5 off coupon for refreshments.

Now imagine Lux is a success. You can easily see National Amusements rolling out a frequent moviegoer program that offers upgraded Lux seating to frequent visitors. Or, offering Lux members private viewings or exclusive “first look” showings. What’s clever here is that, by simply packaging a suite of services and making a modest commitment to facilities (food, seating), they have introduced an experience that will not impact their bottom line, but will grow their top line. In fact, they have also set the stage for a retention platform that can be just as easily leveraged as most airline programs, with even greater frequency.

This goes beyond the promotional efforts we have seen in the past by theater chains, such as showing baseball games, videogame projection, or hybridizing theaters and eateries. I hope they succeed, and I hope other theater chains look to do the same, as this is a model ripe for growth.

by Mark H. Goldstein | CEO

Wal-mart has announced their intention to get increasingly brand friendly by inviting brand partners to be a part of their core marketing message, per the Arkansas Democrat Gazette. However, Brent Chism, senior marketing manager for The Coca-Cola Co., said Wal-Mart has been clear it wants a concise brand message. “We still build our brands,” he said. “But when it comes to Wal-Mart, we made sure that we’re onboard with what direction they’re going to go with their big events and find the right items to put in at those events at the right price.”

Consultant Carol Spiecker-Man, who works with Wal-Mart suppliers, said Wal-Mart is integrating its marketing and merchandising and expects vendors to do the same. “You have these power vendors who are creating their own marketing plans, which they should, way in advance,” she said. “But Wal-Mart’s message is, ‘those need to be integrated with Wal-Mart’.

The message to big brands and their retail partners … we are open to all forms of collaboration so long as we are all communicating the same message.

by Joshua Tretakoff | VP, Client Services

Interesting article in today’s Promo Magazine e-newsletter. Traditional loyalty programs reward you for purchases or ongoing spend, but increasingly, we’re seeing clients who understand there is so much more value to be derived from a loyal customer. Take SpiffyBaby, for instance: their program not only offers credit for dollars spent, but also for reviews of the products purchased. Simple, straightforward, and valuable.

Loyalty Lab has partnerships with leading review providers for our clients, such as BazaarVoice, for just this reason. As reviews establish credibility and encourages customers to buy, integrating reviews and feedback into your loyalty program is a no-brainer. After all, your most loyal customers will be the most trusted reviewers, right?

by Ed Martin, VP Engineering
I’m always looking for interesting ways we can deliver reward functionality to our clients. Here’s one I ran across on SFGate: Cell phones find niche in retail coupon market. Since everyone has a cel phone, sending a text message with a coupon code to a cel phone seems like a no-brainer. The customer could just look up the code in his phone and apply the discount at point of sale. This would work for brick and mortar, catalog, as well as on-line.