By now you’ve discovered that loyalty management is a process like no other. Beyond the typical marketing campaign, your role as a loyalty marketer shifts to one of a shepherd for the flock under your care and watch. The audience expects more from the data they have given you, and the expectations of what you know about them. So how do you manage these high need groups effectively? Here are three secrets to managing a loyalty program.
Set a sustainable marketing pace
It’s easy to get excited about every data point you know about your customer and neglect to think about which of the data are relevant. You have control from the very beginning to set the pace on how much data you collect and what you do with it. Aim for a pace that aligns with the pace of the customer. If you are a once-a-week purchase retail, look to that frequency as a guideline. Be careful not to exceed your customers’ pace or purchase cycles too aggressively or you’ll find them on the opt-out list. The goal should be to have them looking forward to your emails, not being weary of them.
Hold regular loyalty management status meetings
You work with vendors, agencies, and internal staff to make your loyalty program work for your customers. Once the process of setting up all the connections is complete, the focus shifts to the day-to-day activities. Having regular meetings with the whole team, allows for communication and goal setting. You can do this in a large conference call format, or even by taking one day a month to reach out to each one of them. In your meeting, ask three critical questions. One, what are the statistics on the past month’s activities? Know every month how each portion is performing. From email open rates, to reward fulfillment, know the status of the entire lifecycle, so you can identify areas for growth. Two, ask them where they are going to focus on improvements in the next month? and lastly, ask them if they have any feedback on the program as a whole? You may have a fulfillment vendor who sees something in your member site that could streamline your process. Use these meetings to define status, but also to grow the team and program as a whole.
Define loyalty program success and manage it
Loyalty programs can have many goals and once a program gets started, other initiatives and goals can creep into the loyalty program that don’t belong there. From the outset, you should have a tiered goal plan that delineates what the goals are for the overall program. With that established, you can use those goals to define success and the relationships you have with everyone in your program both internally and externally. For example, if your main goal is to increase frequency of purchase, than your activities should revolve around that, and the effectiveness measured for that response. If someone mentions trying to increase the spend of your loyalty group, you will know right away that you are conflicting your base goals, and would water down your efforts. Define the goals, solidify the approach and execute. It’s easy to get distracted once the program gets going, so clearly define your goals and don’t deviate from them.
