So the afternoon at the NACCM Conference – after a lovely lunch in the sunny courtyard – was spent in the Uber Loyalists track talking about my favorite topic – creating the emotional attachment we call loyalty. Marti Beller of the Affinion Group shared her experience on Customer engagement and its many benefits. She confessed to being a passionate Mac enthusiast and talked about Apple’s ability to create a kind of loyalty most of us can only aspire to. She shared a statistic about banks that says that only 35% of consumers feel engaged with their banks – 56% could be swayed and 9% just downright dislike them. Glad to see there is so much room for improvement.
Marti also took us beyond the traditional 4 P’s of marketing (remember them? Product, Place, Promotion, and Price?) and added her own take on it.
The four P’s of loyalty are:
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Perspective – the Customers.
Look at your data and use it to learn more about your customers and why they buy – or don’t.
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Purpose –
know your brand and how it resonates with your consumers. From their perspective would they see you as best in class, standard in class or below class.
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Proliferation-
Customer engagement is an accumulated effect – use every channel you can get to communicate with them. Use every touchpoint to remind them of the benefits.
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And then, my personal favorite – Praise-
Reward your customers for their behavior – say Thank You.
When you do all these P’s there is another that will show up and that one is – Profit.
What is it that Ken Blanchard said at a NACCM long ago? Profit is the applause you get from caring about your customers and employees.
And the beat goes on…
Q’s? Start asking some different questions – one that will stimulate the thinking of everyone in your organization. One of my personal faves – How can we create a remarkable experiences worth coming back for and worth telling friends about?
More later.. looking forward for another fun and inspirational day!
