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Omnichannel Loyalty in Practice: How Retailers Can Maximize Brand Allegiance Among Customers

Let’s face it: the retail industry’s first-to-market acknowledgement of the world becoming an ongoing 24/7/365 omnichannel experience has set the pace for how all industries should be thinking about changing the paradigm. Retail got it, mostly from that real life example of how customers can showroom browse the walls within a Home Depot and purchase by mobile from a Lowes simply because… they can. Omnichannel Retail is inescapable whenever you are in the retail B2B space—at conventions, seminars, corporate hallways and vendors’ shops. The Holy Grail is obvious: the brand that becomes the preeminent omnichannel retailer, will set the new market leadership position, raising the bar forever.

Now, enter Omnichannel Loyalty: the need for retailers to elevate their existing loyalty plays or programs to the enterprise level so that shoppers can access and engage in all that it offers, including promotions, earning opportunities, rewards and the overall shopping experience through every channel desired, simultaneously.

In other words, deliver everything loyalty marketing affords you — behavior tracking and analysis, improved engagement and customer experiences, business intelligence and true data analyses and multi-channel engagement that inspires customer love and brings them towards true brand affinity—everywhere they want and choose to be.

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This new thinking helps actuate existing multi-channel framework, one that is currently heavily dependent on expensive intellectual assets, evasive computational and shopper metrics and processing technology, the untouchable mobile revolution and the needs, wants and desires of increasingly tech-savvy consumers, equipped with the latest smartphones, tablets, gizmos and gadgets.

So as retailers seek new ways to interact and engage with their customers, the omnichannel loyalty frontier is arriving quickly — moving in as an aggressive partner that will provide the ultimate consumer experiences consistently across every channel.

Optimized For Omnichannel

As marketing channels evolve and converge into one seamless omnichannel approach, loyalty programs must be combined to engage shoppers at the earliest point in the purchasing lifecycle—and through multiple touch points simultaneously. It’s a simple thought really: get them engaged within a brand, pre purchase and get them excited about the brand promise. The end result is personalized needs being self selected by each prospective customer, helping them guide their own prophetic customer experience that will lead to conversion.

Omnichannel loyalty is about maximizing what multi-channel marketers are already doing—some much better than others. But it’s more of a quantum leap overhaul than a simple upgrade. The difference comes down to smart operations and using analyzed data. While retailers have been collecting customer data for decades, few have the right technology or dedicated resources to leverage their treasure trove because it’s not as easily tracked as a member-based loyalty program. 

Many retailers offer a traditional reward card and points-based loyalty programs—and attempt to enhance the experience through social media, email or SMS—but too often though there is a disconnect between the online or in-store experience and advertising campaigns or coupons simply because marketing and loyalty aren’t seamless. With a true omnichannel loyalty approach, that’s not the case. Every single marketing outreach is consistently communicated across all channels and, most importantly, personalized to each customer using the mode they prefer most. Of course these days we are more often than not talking about the ubiquitous mobile-carrying world as seen by 50% smartphone adoption rates today and what’s expected to be 47% tablet adoption rates by 2013.

Engaged Retailers = Engaged Consumers = Engaged Retailers…

Omnichannel loyalty stands to reinvent the retail experience as we know it and operationalize omnichannel retailing, while refreshing stagnant rewards programs and, frankly, reinvigorating the process. Greater engagement is exactly what the customer wants, and retailers are finally starting to get it. A recent Motorola Solutions survey found that 75% of retailers believe developing a more engaging in-store customer experience is vital to their business growth over the next five years. More encouraging, because 42%  believe sales will come from mobile, online and social commerce sites, the same proportion expect to adapt by delivering personalized product information based on previous customer behavior via these channels going forward. Progress indeed!

Done right, omnichannel loyalty provides shoppers the freedom to engage and interact with brands in a variety of ways; ways chosen by them through preferences set through robust loyalty profiles and surveys, that they are actually rewarded for doing. And it gives retailers an accurate picture of each shopper’s habits, using their buying history and typical price points to communicate relevant offers and rewards that motivate future behavior. Relevance and motivation are key; omnichannel loyalty is about enticing the customer to interact and engage with a brand across multiple touch points, but the missing link is receiving and earning timely and relevant rewards — tailored to an individual’s needs based on their preferences.

With omnichannel loyalty, the opportunities are limitless and extend in a cross-vertical fashion. Consider a retailer who with opt-in consent knows about a customer’s pending vacation destination and not only begins making product suggestions but contacts their airline of choice, which seamlessly finds the best air, hotel and rental car deal, and the most relevant local dining and entertainment offerings available.  

Omnichannel Infancy: First Steps

So how do retailers get there? It all begins with their initial customer dialogue, either directly through sales staff or indirectly as shoppers discuss brands with their friends via social media. That first dialogue must lead to an experience and begin to build loyalty on day one. So get them involved with your brand by having them build a profile and an account, before they ever purchase.

More importantly retailers must look in the mirror and ask whether their loyalty program is engaging customers through all touch points and if each is communicating with one another and every marketing effort. Put differently, the July 2012 Forrester Building A World-Class Loyalty Program report advises brands to “focus on defining clear objectives, deploying flexible technology and maturing the customer intelligence function first, and then apply best and next practices to take their programs to the next level.”

Nordstrom is a great example of a retailer moving toward omnichannel loyalty. The brand drives loyalty by providing one of the best customer experiences in the market today and through their Fashion Rewards program, which includes benefits like complimentary alterations (based on customers’ 1-4 engagement level and with equivalent dollar values ranging from $100 to unlimited) and concierge services that help members with party planning, unique gift purchases and tickets to shows and weekend getaways. Customers can further engage the brand—including through a free iPhone app—via its Twitter feed or Facebook site, which boasts 1.5 million “likes” and features a playful (and clever) “excuse generator” citing reasons why someone should shop at their anniversary sale.

Implementing Omnichannel Loyalty: 5 Key Action Steps

  1. A company-wide commitment from C-level executives to front line employees
  2. An honest assessment of existing loyalty program and technology platform, which typically means engaging an outside firm to provide the strategic management insight necessary
  3. A willingness to invest in the implementation of new loyalty strategies, seamlessly across all channels in a consistent manner, resulting in a program that delivers measurable incremental revenues and profits 
  4. The ability to segment big data into actionable intelligence that can be personalized and made relevant to each customer, using their preferred mode of communication, to motivate the desired behaviors
  5. The metrics and resources necessary to continually monitor and gauge effectiveness so that programs can be refined as needed and optimized over time 

The bottom line is that, once implemented, omnichannel loyalty becomes absolutely vital for shoppers and retailers alike. Customers benefit from a host of new ways to engage a brand in a seamless and un-intrusive one-on-one manner. And by offering the best loyalty experience possible, retailers gain brand allegiance and maximize the monetization of their customers.

As President of Kobie Marketing, Michael is responsible for leading all facets of the loyalty marketing organization including business development, IT initiatives, client services, as well as the overall direction of the Kobie brand. For 20 years, Michael has cultivated a rich background in client services, product development, marketing, technology and operations through several key posts.

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