As part of Omnichannel Loyalty Week, we heard from Forrester’s Emily Collins. A repeat Signals speaker, Emily works as an Analyst and Interim Research Director. She is a leader in the loyalty space and helms a team of B2C marketers that develop marketing strategies that enable marketers to drive customer obsession and growth. Collins has been at Forrester for over a decade and has spent much of her time focused on researching and sharing her findings on customer loyalty trends, technologies, services, and analytics.
Emily spoke at length about how earning a customer’s loyalty demands more than just implementing a rewards program. Needless to say, listening to her speak about trends and observations is always interesting!
“A loyalty program is a tactic, not a strategy in and of itself.”
Best-in-class loyalty approaches: master six core competencies
These six core competencies are not just boxes to check off — they are a crucial part of any successful loyalty strategy.
Another key takeaway is the idea that you must have a loyalty company mindset vs. a rewards and incentive mindset. Instead of thinking about purchase thresholds and tiers, instead consider the whole customer experience.
One of the most-discussed ideas internally at Cheetah Digital by Marigold recently is the loyalty maturity model. It encompasses three levels, and if you watch Emily’s presentation, she goes into depth about each one. Thinking about the loyalty programs that I engage with personally, I am much more likely to be influenced with loyalty programs at the advanced level! Starbucks, I’m looking at you.
37% of US online adults say they want to prevent their online and mobile activity from being shared with advertisers. -Source: Forrester Analytics Consumer Technographics Benchmark Survey, Part 2, 2020
If you want to learn more about loyalty programs in general or find out what leaders in the space are doing, Forrester research really leads the way. You can find more research on Forrester’s website, or by watching Emily’s presentation.
