by Ann Pruitt

Recent research from the CMO Council tapped into the insights of over 600 marketers regarding their use of customer loyalty programs. Unfortunately, marketers are not giving themselves high marks in meeting the needs of their business, and question their ability to meet the needs of the customer. They have challenges to face, but the rewards are worth it. What can marketers with loyalty programs do to leverage their customers’ loyalty?

1. Marketers need to extract greater value from customer loyalists. When it comes to in-depth profiling of customers, the vast majority of marketers still only aggregate and analyze limited customer data sets. Seventy-three percent collect basic demographics and 68 percent track the location of members, but critical insights – such as advocacy rates (14 percent), brand loyalty and attachment (27 percent), personal preferences (31 percent), satisfaction levels (33 percent), and product preferences (38 percent) – are  not being leveraged.

“Relevant profiling data continues to be a limiting factor in customer engagement,” said Donovan Neale-May, executive director of the CMO Council, “Without a deeper customer insight, marketers will be limited in their ability to do meaningful predictive modeling, market segmentation and revenue forecasting. Better understanding of customer behaviors, predispositions, intentions and preferences enables more effective and relevant messaging. It is also an essential part of customer revenue optimization and lifetime value building,” Neale-May adds. 

2. Be aware, loyalty program operations are increasingly challenged. Some of the challenges:

• Acquiring and retaining motivated and engaged participants is the number one problem facing 46 percent of marketers.
• Measuring marketing value and effectiveness (42 percent)
• Collecting, integrating and maintaining customer data (41 percent)
• Deriving valuable insight and intelligence (38 percent)
• Delivering more personalized offers and inducements (34 percent)
• Creating more customized communications (33 percent)

With 79 percent of customers saying they are very satisfied, or pretty satisfied with their loyalty programs, marketing professionals have a real opportunity to further build their customers’  trust.

Don’t miss this opportunity – get more information about those customers!

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This content is from The Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Council , which is dedicated to high-level knowledge exchange, thought leadership and personal relationship building among senior corporate marketing leaders and brand decision-makers across a wide-range of global industries.

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Monday, March 8th, 2010, 7:51 am   |   General Marketing, Marketing Best Practices  |  RSS feed |  Respond  |  Trackback