Successful end-to-end customer loyalty programs check these 6 boxes
Improve customer engagement with breakthrough touchpoints
How do you measure customer loyalty?
Track these 5 metrics
Comparing customer loyalty providers: End-to-end vs. technology-only
Will a loyalty or engagement program better connect customers to your brand?
With 2024 starting to take shape, we’re seeing the customer loyalty landscape remain as exciting as ever. A changing digital landscape is in , which means cookies are on their way out, and that in itself is impacting the potential bond between customers and brands. Here’s what else is trending, and how it’ll impact customer engagement and loyalty strategies in the months ahead.
As the digital landscape continues to evolve, brands with direct connections to their end customers today are best positioned to continue reaching them tomorrow. Existing initiatives, like engagement and loyalty programs, are valuable tools to strengthen current connections, foster deeper understanding and personalization, and reach a broader set of consumers on a one-on-one basis.
As brand marketers in a digital-first landscape, it’s paramount to realize (and remember) that no amount of digital communication can replace the impact of, an experiential touchpoint, for example. Infusing elements, such as events, gifts and/or benefits like exclusive access, give the right balance and make it easy to scale to your most critical-to-influence customers. This positions customers to best connect with brands on an emotional level.
It’s no secret customer expectations are in constant flux. The loyalty offerings that benefited brands in years past (e.g. point awards/redemption) have become table stakes. Today's customers—even demand—a program experience that authentically exudes the brand. Amplifying your brand and aligning it with customer benefits is another key to customers’ long-term emotional connection with brand. It also brings long-term value creation for your business. ITA Group is excited by the potential of customer engagement and loyalty challenges and opportunities in 2024. We look forward to showing clients the benefits of an end-to-end loyalty partner, including minimizing administrative burden and maximizing customer experience and business results. Sound interesting? Keep reading to learn more.
02 Successful end-to-end customer loyalty programs check these 6 boxes
08 Improve customer engagement with breakthrough touchpoints
1 2 How do you measure customer loyalty? Track these 5 metrics
16 Comparing customer loyalty providers: End-to-end vs. technology-only
20 Will a loyalty or engagement program better connect customers to your brand?
By: Max Kenkel, Senior Manager–Customer Solutions
You may already have an exciting SaaS solution from a loyalty technology provider. But to truly get the results you want, there are five other key loyalty program components you can’t afford to miss, like program strategy and design, program operations, creative services, award fulfillment, and program analytics and optimization. Outsourcing those five pieces to more partners or managing it yourself only adds administrative burden and complexity.
Instead, an end-to-end loyalty partner gives you a single, trusted source to help reach customers at any point in their buying journey, strengthening the emotional connections customers have with your brand. Implementing an end-to-end solution ensures your loyalty programs evolve based on comprehensive data that helps you deliver a more compelling customer experience.
Check for a proven track record in these six elements of a successful end-to-end partner.
Gaps in your customer loyalty strategy can collapse your loyalty program. A strong loyalty partner will have a framework for understanding your brand goals and customer base, and proven methods to tailor a program to those insights. ITA Group uses a human-centered, proprietary approach that captures elements of the following elements.
> Empathy: Factors that drive behavior
> Purpose: Signature elements aligned to brand goals
> Impact: Desired business outcomes
> Context: Participant experience
The partner you choose should be able to target customer segments with personalized motivators by leveraging quality customer data. This allows customers to build a stronger emotional connection with your brand, and it differentiates you from the competition.
Technology platforms can make or break a customer loyalty program. At the bare minimum, a fully functional platform should allow for efficient promotions and effective reporting. But who wants the minimum? Ask your vendor about loyalty technology platform capabilities that drive customer results.
> Can your platform enable integrations and serve as a single source for all customer data and touchpoints?
> Does it use advanced tools, like AI and machine learning, to give you a leg up on industry competition?
> Is it flexible to run the kind of promotions and offers that your customers crave?
> Is it quick to configure or a manual nightmare?
A robust loyalty technology platform should enable:
Loyalty management
> Quickly create new promotions and offers targeted to specific customers
> Manage earning and redemption methods
Segmentation & tiering
> Upload existing segmentations or create groups on the fly
> Target people by geography, demographic data, etc.
> Intuitively manage simple and complex tier structures
Member profiling
> Add new customer data to records in real time
> Collect first- and zero-party data from customers
Strategic communications
> Send messaging from within the platform
> Share seamlessly with your existing MarTech platform
> Deploy a mix of digital and physical touchpoints
Awards & experiences
> Offer almost any award to any customer with ultimate flexibility
> Pre-integrate with multiple award solutions for more choices
Reporting & measurement
> Manage budgets easier with built-in financial reporting
> Convey at-a-glance program metrics in simple visuals
An end-to-end loyalty partner should make your job easier. So. Much. Easier. You’re still in charge of decision-making, but a strong partner can excel at the day-to-day nuances of managing a best-in-class program.
Seek out a service provider than can help you collect, track and act on zero-party data; flag changes in customer sentiment; and address those changes with new promotions and offers tailored to the audience (or even down to the person). By outsourcing daily management to a trusted consultive partner, your team can invest more energy in high-level initiatives that drive your business.
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In a perfect world, your brand is building customer loyalty with every point of contact. But in reality, digital saturation complicates efforts to stay in front of customers across channels. And increased competition makes retaining those loyal customers more challenging than ever.
Look for a loyalty partner that can expand your team’s capacity to emotionally connect with audiences. That full-service support should start with overall messaging strategy and extend through execution, developing cross-media campaigns that encourage and sustain program participation.
Inundating your audience with promotional emails isn’t the best way to build trust—and it could get you blocked from their inbox for good. Breakthrough customer experiences that go beyond digital touchpoints can increase market share, ROI and customer loyalty.
These surprise-and-delight moments can be a proactive part of the customer’s onboarding journey or used in customer retention as a timely response to a service issue. Sending a creative, tangible gift (think: “We’re Sorry" and "Dinner’s on Us” packages) can recapture clients’ accounts—and hearts.
Customers are searching for authentic brands they connect with. Brands that appreciate their business and share their values. An end-to-end loyalty partner should help you prove to customers why your brand will meet their needs by offering a truly integrated and flexible award solution.
You want a partner to tap into customer motivations to incent and reward behavior change. Program design should prioritize the customer experience and offer a seamless redemption process. Offer curated award options so customers can self-select what’s meaningful to them. Then sleep easy knowing that every time your customers use that cool award, they’re increasing their connection with your brand and positively reinforcing your desired loyalty outcomes.
The buyer’s journey is changing rapidly. You need real-time insights on your loyalty program performance to make informed decisions about budget allocation, future promotions and more. An end-to-end partner should offer both technological solutions and analytical expertise to continuously evolve your program. A well-aligned partner should have the skills to deliver data in a digestible format that allows your team to take timely action. Sometimes that's a good-looking dashboard. It could be a push report. Some situations might call for an ad hoc analysis or a series of promotion recaps. Ideally, that partner should also be able to act on behalf of you as an extension of your team.
Is your organization outgrowing your current customer loyalty solution? Remember, there’s so much more to a successful customer loyalty program than most providers can offer. A slick loyalty technology platform only checks one of the boxes. If your team has been feeling the burden of management, it’s likely because you’re missing:
1. Program strategy and design rooted in research
2. Operations support to remove administrative burden
3. Creative services that personalize the customer experience
4. A flexible award solution that conveys customer appreciation
5. Real-time analytics and optimization offer insights into effectiveness
With all six elements and a solid collaborative relationship in place, your brand can begin to realize the benefits of end-to-end support.
By: Sarah VanDerHart, Insights & Strategy Leader–Customer Solutions
Customer engagement trends and best practices are constantly evolving. As we see brands shift their customer engagement strategies to focus on specific customer needs, we want to empower marketing teams to work smarter, not harder. That means reevaluating how you’re engaging existing customers and considering a partnership with a company that can help you elevate the customer experience.
It’s common knowledge that it’s less expensive to retain a customer than go after a new one, and it’s an especially efficient strategy when paired with a customizable customer engagement program. It can also result in some big wins, like deepening customers’ emotional connection with your brand and increasing customer retention and revenue.
As marketing executives are tasked to do more with less, they’re leveraging strategic partners to help them effectively reach customers. Customer engagement areas, including customer segmentation, event and incentive travel experiences, and ultra-creative, surprise-and-delight communications are all areas a strategic partner can help navigate.
Expanding your team’s capabilities with the right partner leads to more effective processes and gives you more time to focus on other business goals.
Our team works closely with clients to get results during impressionable moments in the customer buying journey. By using breakthrough touchpoints when it matters most, brands can effectively reach their customers in meaningful ways. If you’re not already, consider using beyond-digital breakthrough touchpoints like:
Foster long-term brand loyalty through ongoing, personalized customer engagement.
Truly engaging customers can call for a strategy beyond a transactional points-for-purchase program. Follow this journey to see a robust customer engagement strategy that rewards customer behaviors and personalizes their experience with your brand.
> Mailing creative packages that surprise and delight customers after the purchase
> Giving customers the opportunity to earn an incentive trip experience they couldn’t create on their own, which leads to strong emotional bonds with the brand
> Reaching out to customers after a poor experience to authentically apologize
Foster
Truly
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for a
It’s these tactics’ timing, creativity and personalization that allow brands to break through the digital noise and create deeper meaning for their customers.
For a deeper dive on how to apply breakthrough touchpoints throughout the customer journey, check out our infographic.
info.itagroup.com/customer-journey
To help spur engagement ideas for your organization, check out these short client stories that highlight several notable results from using breakthrough tactics during the buyer’s journey.
1 2 3
An automotive manufacturer saw a 400% ROI and a 15–20% increase in sales year over year by offering an incentive trip accompanied by a strategic direct mail campaign that generated excitement.
A financial services company saw a 75%+ redemption rate, positively engaging with 90,000+ customers, resulting in hundreds of positive comments after their efforts to resolve a customer service issue.
A pest control company saw nearly $50K in revenue and a 9:1 ROI after mailing customers a "Dinner’s on Us” gift in exchange for renewing their subscription.
To earn these results, our clients trusted our process, starting with a client discovery meeting that led to the creation of custom communications and fulfillment. Whether you need to develop a new engagement program or amplify your existing one, we can help.
By: Max Kenkel, Senior Manager–Customer Solutions
People crave human connections. They have an innate desire to connect with like-minded people and brands that align with their values. With so many product and service choices available from thousands of brands, building customer loyalty is critical if brands want to stay relevant. While businesses tend to focus on transactional metrics such as retention, purchase behavior and incremental sales, there is also monumental benefit in looking at emotional components.
To get the most out of your measurement plan, look at a combination of customers who act loyal (behavioral) and customers who feel loyal (emotional). The ideal overlap is customers who both act and feel loyal, but there isn't always a direct correlation between emotional and behavioral loyalty.
Here are five areas to measure customer loyalty. Note that each metric might have many others that roll up to one overarching KPI.
While loyalty is an outcome of a great customer relationship, it’s something brands should track. Repeat purchase rates are a great metric to include here. They’re the percentage of customers you retain who come back to place another order.
Think of it like this: “Once is chance, twice is coincidence, third time is a pattern.” When a customer chooses you several times, you can self-assess why.
> Is this customer looking at you because you’re positioning on price?
> If you’re a premium brand, are they having a positive experience each time leading them back to you? (Note: Transactional brands can also deliver amazing experiences.)
> What’s the timeline between purchases? Are they always choosing you or just buying a lot of products? Your brand’s sales cycle needs to be a consideration.
Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) represents the total amount of money a customer will spend in your business or on your products during their lifetime. Admittedly tricky to calculate correctly, but math is on your side. And if you can’t calculate the entire lifetime, tracking value increases (and decreases) over shorter periods of time is still relevant. It also helps you decide when and where to insert promotions and offers that keep value high.
> Identify value you can track (purchases, repeat purchases)
> Pay attention to and track fluctuations in value
> Incorporate test and learns into your communications and promotions, like subject headings, messaging and offers, to influence value across your customer base
Tracking engagement recognizes customers for every interaction (across any channel) they make with a brand.
> Understand how often your customer thinks about you. How long is the purchase window for your products? Is it something you buy daily? Weekly? Monthly? Yearly? Once every 10 years?
> Stay top of mind. If you’re a once-every-fiveyears product, customers likely start the search with you, meaning it’s your consumer to lose.
> Implement trackable ways for people to interact outside the purchase cycle. Then, tie it back to your CLV measurements.
Customers are always willing to listen to their friends. Tracking influence—and metrics that identify influence— can grow your customer base.
> Track referrals to put a dollar value on influence
> Follow social media activity, order insight, (purchases, combination of purchases, etc.) campaign interactions and more to identify likelihood of a customer to promote your brand
> Use tracking information to create opportunities for customers to share their personal experiences about your brand on socials
In the past, people measured customer loyalty solely by customer behavior. A new understanding of customer loyalty and access to more insights means that today’s customer loyalty metrics include emotional connections as well. Some experts argue that even though emotional loyalty may be harder to measure, it’s necessary to build a true loyalty measurement equation.
> Uncover specific areas for improvement, track gaps in service and product, and identify where you are outperforming the competition
> Empower your field with data that lets them go above and beyond
> Provide customers with an experience that promotes satisfaction and encourages loyalty, then invite them to make referrals
> Use a survey to ask customers about an interaction or purchase with your brand (i.e., sliding scale [quantitative] or an open-text response [qualitative])
> Put measures in place for recovery and retention
Customer journeys are changing rapidly. You need real-time insights on your loyalty program performance to make informed decisions about budget allocation, future promotions and more.
By tracking and measuring behavioral and emotional metrics, you can tap into customers’ motivations easier. This results in reduced marketing costs, increased profits and a more predictable revenue stream. It’s tough to beat that!
A true loyalty program should address every phase in the buyer’s journey, with not only different tactics by phase, but different tactics and journeys by customer type.
By: Max Kenkel, Senior Manager–Customer Solutions
Not understanding the difference between working with an end-toend customer loyalty partner vs. a technology-only customer loyalty solution can cause issues: friction with customers, stress for your teams and additional expenses for your organization.
Missing pieces of a comprehensive customer loyalty solution opens gaps for your competition to target. But often, organizations are slow to make a change (if ever).
They get by with manual workarounds on a dated platform because they’re worried about the time and cost to switch to a newer, more flexible solution with a partner who can help manage all aspects of their program. These are just excuses. Recognizing a need before it becomes a pain point for customers is critical. For some organizations, a great customer loyalty technology platform could give them everything they need. Leading brands need to ask for more.
What sets an end-to-end customer loyalty partner apart from a technology-only solution?
The value your brand receives from an end-toend customer loyalty partner is quantifiable. Look at the differences to the right.
Included
Sometimes included
Not included
With an end-to -end loyalt y partner, your entire loyalt y program is designed with the big picture in mind so you achieve your business objectives . ITA Group has the stra te gic and creative resources to help your te am design a new loyalt y program or re invigorate an existing program so it fosters stronger emotional connections with customers.
ITA Group’s customer loyalty technology includes all the market-leading loyalty capabilities that technology-only solutions offer and our in-house team can handle integration to your source systems (which is often an incremental cost from technology-only providers)
Technology-only loyalty solutions typically require one of your marketing team members to become an expert in their technology. ITA Group offers intuitive self-service technology with the option of full-service support from our in-house client success team (they’re set up to serve as the day-to-day operators of your loyalty program)
ITA Group’s full-ser vice creative team has expertise in both digital and physical touchpoints , and can deliver all the creative assets from strategy through exe cution for your l oyalt y program.
End-to-end providers simplify the complexity of award fulfillment by managing all the details. ITA Group can handle any program, no matter the redemption method (e.g., in-house awards, POS redemption, points, merchandise or experiential rewards). Access to ITA Group’s award catalog is integrated into the technology platform and accessible to your program.
The ITA Group Analytics team enables clients to gain the full insight of what ’s working best to optimize the program for increased success. And, our plat form is equipped with multiple self-ser vice reports. We help you better analyze data, forecast results and derive the next best action to improve your program in real time
It shouldn’t be. But transitioning from one loyalty technology provider to a new partner might feel like an overwhelming process. When you’re talking solely about switching software providers, migration can be a huge project to manage. Let’s break down a few common misconceptions.
Large organizations often find that an end-toend provider saves them money compared to a tech-only solution. Especially when a comprehensive contract is weighed against the need for multiple tools and the time and effort of managing numerous vendor relationships.
Plus, a better total customer loyalty experience drives stronger purchasing behavior, which offsets the investment. How much are you losing in incremental revenue by not having a flexible, well-managed program uniquely of and for your brand?
In some ways, the difference between using a technology-only solution and working with an end-to-end provider is like going to a favorite restaurant vs. having a personal chef. Tech providers might have a great “menu,” but it’s limited. Chefs listen to your unique needs and preferences; do the shopping, prep, and cooking; and deliver custom dishes when and how you need them served. They clean up, too!
One of the benefits of working with an end-toend partner is that they handle the heavy lifting commonly associated with replatforming. A strong partner should be able to make the transition totally seamless for your customers, too. That doesn’t mean your team won’t have some work to do helping to connect APIs, answering questions, etc., but a strong partner will have a plan and lead the integrations and transition to a clear delivery date.
Yes—in a good way. As customer expectations trend toward a total loyalty experience, even the biggest brands struggle to deliver. An end-to-end partner becomes an extension of your organization's team, adding capacity and expertise. Since programs maintain the look and feel of your brand, customers might not sense a difference right away. Smoother redemption processes and data-informed program evolutions just indicate your brand’s commitment to connecting and strengthening customer loyalty. As your new partner helps you act on more data, your customers should feel a greater emotional connection with your brand through better personalization, more opportunities to engage, and a seamless experience with your brand, regardless of how or where they interact.
By: Shawn Gannon, Senior Strategist–Customer Solutions
Loyal, engaged customers are the bedrock of any successful business. Implementing strategies to nurture and reward those relationships helps deliver a standout customer experience, while prioritizing customer retention allows you to increase their lifetime value.
Brands want customers who would rather drive across town to their location than support a competitor. Customers who click “subscribe” so they never miss an opportunity. Customers excited to download their app—and encourage others to do the same. They want customers who connect emotionally with their brand.
The good news? Well-designed loyalty and engagement solutions can get you there.
Creating stronger customer relationships allows brands to better understand what matters most to customers and how to deliver on their expectations. Their feedback helps organizations align on all aspects of the customer experience to offer best-in-industry products and services.
Which, in turn, keeps customers coming back again and again. (And talking you up. Word-of-mouth referrals are an excellent source of new business.)
So how do you choose between creating a customer loyalty or engagement program? We outlined the differences between the program types and offer strategies and considerations for companies looking to launch a customer retention solution.
But we won’t bury the lede: The best programs combine aspects of both to create emotional connections with customers, wherever they are in their journey with the brand.
Loyalty and engagement programs are marketing strategies that encourage customers to purchase or participate in brand offerings. The key difference between the two is in the approach.
Customer loyalty programs focus on driving purchases and frequency of purchase, often through awards. These transactional tactics might look like offering frequent flyer miles and exclusive airport lounge access, special discounts and coupons, or early access to products.
> Focus on driving frequency of purchase and incremental spend
> Clearly define the benefits and awards offered to customers
> Personalize the awards and offers based on customer behavior and preferences
> Make it easy for customers to redeem awards and track their progress
> Offer exclusive benefits and experiences to loyalty program members
> Continuously communicate and promote the program to customers
> Collect and use customer data to improve the program over time
Customer engagement programs focus on nurturing the relationship to create a deeper emotional connection with customers, building advocacy for your brand.
Think: A post-flight personalized thank you note, an unexpected gift, virtual communities and special event opportunities.
> Focus on driving the key behaviors from customers that lead to incremental customer value
> Set clear goals and objectives
> Understand your audience and their needs
> Provide valuable content, awards or experiences
> Use multiple channels to reach your audience
> Encourage two-way communication and feedback
Traditional programs silo these two approach types. Yet anyone who has owned a dog knows you can’t buy loyalty. (Treats do help, though!) Not to compare customers and canines, but coupons only go so far in earning genuine brand affinity.
Integrating aspects from each approach holds many benefits. Businesses can improve customer satisfaction and build brand ambassadors by rewarding reliable customers and encouraging them to engage more frequently with a business. Loyalty programs typically reward repeat purchases, while engagement programs aim to increase customer brand interactions through activities, experiences and awards. Taking a more holistic, data-driven and relationship-centric approach drives measurable outcomes.
ITA Group helps organizations use data to understand, redirect and amplify their loyalty and engagement programs. Our goal is to help you truly connect with customers. This requires:
> Brand differentiation and customer engagement strategies
> A technology solution that facilitates the program
> Assistance to manage the day-to-day business of a program
> Collecting and acting on data to deliver rewards your customers value
> Going beyond digital-only tactics to deliver unique experiences for your customers
> Continuously improving and adjusting your approach
> Measuring and analyzing the success of your program
The time it takes to recognize results from a loyalty or engagement program can vary depending on several factors, such as the program's design and the target audience. Designing programs that deliver begins with identifying program KPIs and goals.
Define your organization’s goals and the target audience for your loyalty and/or engagement programs
Gather insights from customers through surveys and focus groups to determine what awards are relevant to them
Research and analyze competitors' programs, and determine the resources and budget needed for implementation and ongoing management Factor in the technology or platform you’ll use to track and measure program success, and the types of awards or incentives that will be offered
Use data analysis around redemption patterns and purchasing behavior to understand the loyalty program aspects most important to customers to then deliver a more personalized customer experience
Listen for their challenges and make improvements accordingly
Seek out and share testimonials and stories of exceptional customer service to inspire even more brand-building behavior
Which customer experience solution is right for your organization? Take our quiz to find out.
info.itagroup.com/experience-quiz
