Loyalty and Rewards programs are evolving - are you ready for 2022?
Image credit: Loyalty Summit
Five takeaways and key trends that I learned from Loyalty Summit
Last week I attended Loyalty Summit and it was nice to connect with so many industry leaders in the loyalty and rewards program industry. I took pages of notes throughout the day, and was able to reflect on them over the weekend to draw some key trends that companies should pay attention to as we head into 2022.
Loyalty starts internally
Customer loyalty is ultimately about the relationship with the institution, and that starts with your employees, who are your biggest brand ambassadors at the end of the day. The loyalty program is at the center of every brand and growth strategy. The data that loyalty programs bring in informs every other aspect of the business. Knowing that, your loyalty team cannot sit as a silo in an organization. It has to be embedded and considered in every aspect of the business in order to be truly successful. Bringing the experience of other disciplines and understanding the overall economics of a rewards division is important to ensure buy-in from the rest of the company.
Invest in and leverage mobile
Loyalty programs should have their own app, brand, and focus. If not, they risk getting buried in your company’s overall messaging and prioritization. This is how you get users to engage more frequently outside of events, like a hotel stay or travel.
In a time of information overload, it’s getting more challenging to get people to open promotion/company emails. Connecting on social media is a much more effective strategy for engagement. Enabling your users to show their loyalty on mobile and social media needs to be a much higher priority. Get more mobile in every way you can. Everything is phone-centric for younger generations and is only going to get more so. Simple, consistent delivery is very important, while inconsistent delivery has a far more negative impact on the experience. Let your customers have access to your programs in the palm of their hands.
Be prepared to be more agile
I know... We’ve all heard this many times, but it’s important enough that I need to reiterate it again. The rules of engagement are constantly changing, and those that can be agile to meet the changes in the market will be the winners in the loyalty space.
Focus on what you can offer. For example, loyalty and rewards have increased in merchandise purchasing because customers haven’t been able to spend as much on experiences. Those companies that can accommodate the ever-changing landscape have much more engagement and success. Accommodating also comes in the form of different comfort levels. Guest experience isn’t universal, so having the flexibility for personal preference that is quick and efficient going to make or break businesses moving forward. At the end of the day, it’s all about choice.
Use data more strategically
Collecting the data is half the battle. Being able to do something with it is an entirely different effort. Companies can access a lot of data, but they historically don’t do a good job with it. How can we do better? There has to be more trust in the technology.
Something mentioned was that the most efficient use of the platform is to target the most engaged and frequent users to improve their experience in order to engage them more. One would think it would be destructive to target highly engaged existing customers, but the data has shown they have one of the best ROIs.
We are moving into a cookie-less world where we have fewer touchpoints, and customers have to opt-in to data share. If you are going to ask for their data, you have to return on it in a meaningful way. This leads to my final point...
Personalization is the gold standard
Having a better understanding of where you are in your customer’s share of wallet will make all of the difference in a rewards strategy. AI and ML allow loyalty to be reactive and provide relevant offers rather than proactive and guessing. To stay relevant and keep customers engaged, you need as much data as possible on each customer to be able to understand their needs, so you can pivot accordingly.
Personalization based on generation is key because generations look at rewards very differently. For example, you have to make your program easy to join. If it takes more than two pieces of information, millennials and Gen Z will be much less likely to join.
If you do personalization right, it’s not noticeable to the user. Netflix does an amazing job of this. Not only are they personalizing titles, but artwork and logos are different for the same title based on the user.
If you can take away one thing from what I learned at Loyalty Summit, it’s that there is so much potential in the industry because of technology, customer expectations, and partnerships. I think we will see a lot of growth in 2022, which means more innovation in how loyalty and rewards companies engage with and retain their customers.