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Four loyalty programs worth following

September 18, 2014 by Rosemary

By Diana Gomez

Every day I read about how to grow your business and expand your clientele. And sure, getting new customers is an important factor in any marketing tactic, but what about the ones you already have?

One look at how phone companies are rethinking their treatment of already-loyal customers is proof that those are the ones who need attention. Don’t just give new customers the chance to get a new phone at a good deal. Offer those perks to the people who you already have on board, and they’ll be spreading the good news rather than telling their friends to steer clear.

Don’t limit yourself. Stop thinking of ways to get newbies when the key lies in your current customers — that is, if they’re satisfied. And they will be with a simple thank you. Reward them with experiences worth bragging about. Points-based loyalty programs are fine if the reward is clear, but it’s the reward experiences that will help grow your business via good old word-of-mouth, from your currently thrilled customers.

Here are some examples of companies that apparently get it:

Starbucks

It didn’t take much convincing for me when a cashier first told me how much I could save with My Starbucks Rewards. The idea is to download the app, which keeps track of every purchase. With each purchase, you get a star, and on the 15th, you get a free drink. Keep collecting stars and you can get extras at no cost. You know all of those adjectives we use to order a coffee? They cost money, and it all adds up.

So rather than pay extra for soy milk and vanilla, I accrued 50 stars and got all of that stuff for free. And it genuinely feels like I’m doing a friend a favor by informing them that their latte could be cheaper. Everyone wants a cheaper Starbucks coffee, don’t they? But get this: not only do you get rewarded for purchases through the app, but you can also make purchases within it and avoid the queue. Quite the game changer when you need a quick coffee en route to the office at 8:45 in the morning.

Orange

One of the most successful, widely used loyalty programs is offered by Orange. Formerly known as Orange Wednesdays, two-for-one Wednesdays have staying power with the deal of a deal: two movies for the price of one. Not only do you have to tell a friend (because you have to bring a friend), but that person will be equally enthusiastic about the reward of a free night out.

Wednesday is now a crazily crowded night at the theatre, but Orange also offers discounts on other events. From theatre to comedy to music, users get a chance to have all kinds of cheap nights out. Again, the idea of offering an actual experience proves effective in gaining loyalty. How many people stick with Orange solely due to the two-for-one deal? A lot.

KLM, and Most Airlines

Although airline rewards programs have been popular for years, they’re worth mentioning because it’s a tried and true example of how customers will keep coming back again and again if there’s a reward worth getting. And cheaper tickets, upgrades, and VIP treatment in airport lounges are definitely perks people want.

Sure, I can find a lot of great deals from a competitor, but wasting miles on an airline that I haven’t done a lot of business with is a no-brainer: I’d rather stick with the program I’ve built the most miles with. When those points accrue and inevitably pay off, it’s entirely worth it to get an entire free flight one day rather than a few slightly cheaper ones along the way.

Costa Coffee

So many people love a tangible rewards card, and the Costa Coffee card is a pretty popular one. Simply registering for a card alone will earn your tenth coffee on the house, and that immediate gratification is just the hook that will leave a customer instantly…hooked.

Keep using the card, and every nine hits gets you a free coffee. Sometimes, a simple free coffee is worth shouting about on a Facebook status. Anyone can give away things people may not need, but there’s a guaranteed smile in store for anyone whose day is made brighter by a complimentary cup of something that is entirely necessary for the day’s survival.

So there you have it. Follow in the footsteps of programs like these that have earned their own following and kept it, and you could very well see the numbers rise without spending a second focused on anyone other than the customers you’ve already snagged. Offer incentives that are actual experiences worth shouting about, and they probably will. People appreciate a thank you now and then, and showing that your company is generous will speak to your customers the most. Ultimately, the benefits will boomerang right back at you.

What loyalty program do you use the most?

Author’s Bio: Diana Gomez is the Marketing Coordinator at Lyoness America, where she is instrumental in the implementation of marketing and social media strategies for USA and Canada. Lyoness is an international shopping community and loyalty rewards program, where businesses and consumers benefit with free membership and money back with every purchase. Check out Lyoness on Twitter.

What Customers Already Know about Influence and Loyalty

April 24, 2012 by Liz

Time is the New Money: 7 Crucial Truths for 2012

The silos of thinking that made our processes work were great when we were building assembly lines and factories. The spreadsheets of data that sorted our thinking were fine when we were counting dollars and doughnuts and things that didn’t think too. Fear of change, love of past success, bias that interprets history in our favor leads us to repeat and re-imprint bad or outdated behaviors in our organizational brains.

But when it came to predicting human behavior, teaching and training leaders, or bringing together teams in collaboration,

Big data has crashed through the halls of our silos.

Now through weird combinations of buying habits Target decides that we’re pregnant. For as much as they’re right, they’re wrong too. Just ask my friend who isn’t pregnant who’s getting samples from Similac.

Why don’t they just ask if it’s true? We talk to people who ask us more than we talk to people who tell us.

Find out about Influence and Loyalty

Once in the world of broadcasting, companies could control the conversation. Is it that habit of controling that keeps them secretive about asking?

The older, the larger that business has grown the harder achieving that new culture must be;
that is … they have more past success, more to lose, more to fear, fewer models of trust and collaboration.

Yet the business that will win my trust and gain my influence will be a role model, leader, learner, teacher, guide to the use of its product or service. If you want your company to embrace the social web, champion these ten roles as an action plan …

It’s important that we recognize that customers already know …

Influence is more than moving people to click on an add or retweet an offer. We might do those. We might even write a blog post. Hand us a free phone and we might use it, but that doesn’t mean will carry your banner of influence.
Want me to tell my friends about you, evangelize and spread the word to others who I hardly know? You have to be even better than your product. Understand what it means for me to put my seal on your product. I have to trust that it won’t show up broken, or break when someone first uses it. I have to know that my good experience wasn’t just a fluke. I want to know that you weren’t only extremely to me, but that you’re extremely professional to everybody.
Loyalty is a relationship based in trust. Lasting loyalty isn’t tied to price, points, or other forms of bribery.
The “tools of social media and social networking” are as important, but not more important than other social tools and venues through history, such as cave paintings, paper and pencil (or crayons), print communication, the telephone, radio, television, the neighborhood bar. Loyalty is a belief that you’ll be there and be the same person even when I’m not around to see you.

We are influenced by our friends because they are predictable. We know which ones always buy the first of everything and which buy after the sell-by date. We don’t follow the fickle ones blindly. We don’t follow the judgmental ones to places where we disagree.

And we don’t follow people who tell us what to think without finding out who we are.

Just yesterday, I heard someone who spends no time online talk about “companies that don’t ‘get’ it.” What she meant is that her favorite store changed a policy in a way that served themselves not their customer.

What customers know about influence and loyalty is that we don’t like companies who are selfish.

Are you sure you’re serving your customers?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!

Buy the Insider’s Guide to Online Conversation.

Irresistible Consistency: Are You Suited Up for Soccer When Golf Is the Game?

September 20, 2011 by Liz

Right People, Right Positions, Right Game

In the NYTimes bestseller, Good to Great, author Jim Collins laid out the foundation of an outstanding enterprise class organization. When I heard him speak, last October he said that the winner is the one with the best team. To achieve the best team,

A leader has to identify the right people who are the smartest.
A leader has to put them in the right positions.
A leader has to value, reward, and celebrate teamwork.

Those who change the world are enormously consistent in how they do it. The signature of mediocrity is chronic inconsistency. â Jim Collins, World Business Forum, 2010

It’s my experience that Mr. Collins’ short list brings constant improvement in situations where the game never changes. The hidden assumption is that the playing field, the conditions, the climate, the trends, and rules of business remain the same.

They didnât. They don’t. They never will. They won’t.

Are You Suited Up for Soccer When Golf Is the Game?

I don’t doubt for second that Mr. Collins knows that and chooses his people to match the game that’s currently in play. Yet, when I work on strategy with big corporations and small business, too often I find their still suiting up and running the plays for the game that was on the field yesterday. It doesn’t work if you’re suited up for soccer and golf is the game.
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The Internet has moved the field, changed the rules, disrupted conditions, upset the culture, sparked new trends, shifted the playbook with new models and more flexible teams, and relocated the executive locker room.

The consistency that was a strength also built silos, sales scripts, and standard procedures that has lead some of those âsmartest peopleâ not to see what they see and not to know what they know in deference to rules build to ensure one-size-fits-all consistency.

Those companies suited up for a highly consistent playing field are finding their sales numbers and their service reports frustrated by customers who value responses that are custom-made for what they need. Because to over-value consistency is to focus on process, when it’s people who help a business thrive.

So how can we use Jim Collinsâ Good to Great research and insights to leverage the opportunities of the new people-focused game — the social business culture, changes in the way companies and customers communicate, constantly moving metrics and toolkits, trend shifts, and elastic team dynamics of the 21st century online and off?

What Are the Highest Values of Your Business?

For 21st century organizations to move fluidly and fluently through multiple platforms and cultures, we need to look at the old short list in a slightly new way. The winner will still be the one with the best team, but now to achieve the best team, leaders will ignite communities of like-minded leaders at every level inside and outside the organization — employees, partners, vendors, customers, evangelists, friends, and fans who also want to invest in taking something from good to great.

Long-term, loyalty — trust — is a value-based relationship.

Live your highest values.
Be able to recognize the people who share them.
Invite those people to help build your business.

Consistency will win — a consistency of valuing the people who share your highest values is irresistible business strategy.

What are the highest values of your business?

Be irresistible.
–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!

Buy the Insider’s Guide to Online Conversation.

Right People, Right Positions, Right Game

21 Tweeters and What’s Wrong with Viral Marketing

February 8, 2011 by Liz

Last week, I was invited to speak at an interdepartmental off-site. People from product, IT, marketing, sales, research, design, and PR were involved. The SVP who designed the event set up the room in teams in which one person from each department was represented. She arranged the day to be filled with interactive information and conversation so that ideas could grow.

The week before the event, I’d had lunch with that SVP to talk about what her goals were for my presentation. She talked about how rumors spread and how people connect. She also used the word “viral” in the proposed title of my talk. I asked if she minded if we edited that word out.

Communicating the nature of viral marketing, was going to be an important goal of my day.

What Is Viral Marketing?

The morning of the off-site I checked into Twitter before I left and thought, Here’s an opportunity to bring social media in action and authority other than my own into the room.

So, I tweeted this question.

I favorited the responses, pulled them up in my @mentions list, took two screen shots, and made a two-page handout to share. The folks who responded are people I follow on Twitter and after you read what they said I’m betting you’ll want to follow them too, so I’m including links to their Twitter accounts. Top down the tweets are in the order I received them. [Thank you all for making my quest easier, faster, and more meaningful for me and the folks I’d soon be talking to.]

@michaelport I’d say if I knew the “secret” I wouldn’t be here today.
@steveplunkett “being in the right place at the right time, with the right thought” or “controlled manipulation of people online”
@shivya You can’t call it viral until it is viral. The secret is engaging, entertaining, informational, sharable content.
@egculbertson be authentic, be humble, be relevant to your audience, and be funny or approachable. then, hope for a stroke of good luck.
@ElysiaBrooker in the (paraphrased) words of
@unmarketing : MAKE AWESOME CONTENT and the rest will happen naturally.
@RobPene a video of cute cats dancing to Snoop Dog lol 🙂
@jenniferwindrum I would tell them the only thing that could potentially “go viral” is their stupidity. No secret there. 🙂
@tbains That there’s no way to predict or manipulate what goes viral. Instead, focus on quality first. Lame but true
@chris_c_lucas Do cool sh*t and do it consistently. Then let other people talk about it. It’s simple 🙂
@TheStudioNH Viral marketing makes me get an anti-buy-otic.
@_Signalfire_ like a virus spreading, the right conditions must exist with the right host. It’s all up to the community it’s introduced into.
@DeniseWBarreto Be authentic and have a real desire to better the lives of your target otherwise clever, cool but false intentions #fail
@EOC_jmello Viral Marketing does not actually exist. It’s about having the right content, right audience, at the right time.
It goes along with agencies that tell clients they can make something go viral. BS! Sometimes luck plays into it too.
@katyboog123 humour is a good one, also shock value.
@minormusic Viral mktg is not a substitute for quality face time w influential ppl in your market. Ur reputation still proceeds u.
@mikecassidyAZ enlighten, enrage, engross, or make ’em smile.
@scotmckee Secret to viral is remembering that the crowd decides what goes viral – not you. 🙂
@DavidFord83 Absolutely true! RT @MinorMusic: @lizstrauss Viral mktg is not a substitute for quality face time w influential ppl in your market.
@AWomansWork Forget viral & think what’s relevant & interesting to your audience. That, or leprechauns.
@TourismCurrents Yesterday we tweeted that the term “viral campaign” needs to be taken out and shot. No change in our position. 🙂
@jason_baker Is it just me or is “creating viral campaigns” in a job description a bit off?! 😉

The problem with viral marketing is that it focuses on the product and the message and not the people we want to share that message. If we want people to listen, engage, and share what we’re doing, we have to make it about them.

What invitation, reminder, or question might you offer to help us all stay focused more on the people and less on the message?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!

Buy the Insider’s Guide to Online Conversation.

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Change As Influence: Get the Attention of Deniers, Followers, Dreamers, and Leaders

January 18, 2011 by Liz

(Updated in 2020)

10-Point Plan: Influential Leadership to Grow Business

Change Is Influence

Every now and then, something happens that pulls the rug out from under us …
The printing press is invented.

400px-handtiegelpresse_von_1811 — Printing press from 1811. Photographed in Deutsches Museum Munich, Germany

A golden spike in a railroad track connects what had never been connected.

449px-golden_spike_neil916 — A second “golden spike,” identical to the original used in the celebration of the transcontinental railroad in Promontory, Utah, is on display at the California State Railroad Museum in Sacramento, California.

A stock market crash blows entire economies to smithereens!

unemployedmarch — (The Depression) The Single Men’s Unemployed Association parading to Bathurst Street United Church. Toronto, Canada

Those same sorts of changes didn’t just happen then, they’re happening now.
Change is constant. If anything, the state of change is accelerating with our ability to connect and communicate with increasing reach and speed.

Change is the ultimate influence. When change happens, people respond.

Hiders, Followers, Dreamers, and Leaders

The quickest way to change someone’s is to behavior is to change their environment. Change the lighting, change seating, change the way you interact with them. Change causes us to reconsider what we took for granted. It can cause us to stop and evaluate the new circumstances. Our behavior is influence simply by encountering something unexpected.

How we’re influenced depends on our maturity, our world view, our expertise, our experience, and our belief in what we’re building. Our response to change reveals the traits of a hider, follower, dreamer, or leader. Here’s who we are and how to get our attention.

Deniers, Hiders and Whiners. When change interrupts and disrupts some folks try to pretend that nothing’s different. Some deny it. Some hide from it. Some whine but don’t do anything about it. They hunker down and do more of what they always did. They run their wagon trains across the country while their customers move to the safer, more comfortable rail cars that get to their destination much faster. They keep making huge books and printed inventory, while ignoring the faster, easier information available on the internet. While they’re hiding their profits drain out while their furniture and assets move to museums. It’s hard to find new ideas or growth inside a closed system that won’t pay attention.To get the attention of a denier, whiner, or hider, the first challenge is to show him or her the safe and predictable benefits of moving into a new world view.
Followers. Followers sometimes think they’re leaders, but their leadership is stuck on a set path. When they’re hit by an influential change — even a positive change — they choose to do more of what they’ve already been successful doing. Give the best person a promotion. Does she keep doing the job she left instead of the new one? Move a music teacher to a farm. Does he try to teach the pigs to sing?To get the attention of a follower, the first challenge is to show him or her the advantage of looking for new paths and partnering with people who’ve got more experience at testing and trying new things.
Dreamers. Dreamers often have ideas about change. Dreamers love ideas and no lack of imagination. They see opportunity in every occasion. Change inspires them. Some dreamers are lost in their dreams. Some fall in love with an idea just because they had it. Others are moved to action with out considering whether their idea has any traction. What they have in common is that they mistake the idea for a plan. As the Little Prince said, “A goal without a plan is just a wish.”To get the attention of a dreamer, the first challenge is to show him or her the way the dream will benefit by learning from, planning with and including people who have built similar things. .
Leaders. Leaders carve their own path, but a true leader isn’t a loner. Leaders are learners. They reach out and reach up to build something they can’t build alone. Change is information and opportunity. Leaders understand deniers, hiders, whiners, fighters, followers, and dreamers because they recognize when they have had similar thoughts and feelings. They respect and honor the people who feel differently and choose words and actions that make change easier for them.To get the attention of a leader, the first challenge is him or her see the benefits of participating in what you’re building. Share your values and your vision. Then invite the leader to join in.

Change is influence. It’s our response that makes it an obstacle or an opportunity.

Change has always been a constant. If we make it part of our toolkit we can manage change to create influence in the positive direction. All it takes is valuing the values of the people we want to influence.

How do you get the attention of people who might not want to do what you need them to do?

Be Irresistible.

–ME “Liz” Strauss