The good old Punch Card or Loyalty Card as some might know it has been around for years!! This is a great way to retain existing customers and ultimately to offer them something FREE for their continued support!
Today the the world is turning Mobile and people carry their Smart phones with them all the time. Because of this Loyalty Punch Cards also turning Mobile.
We are proud to announce the we also now offer this service to our clients!
Read more about this phenomenon below
Going mobile shouldn’t even be a question anymore
Surveys demonstrate that loyalty members are eager to merge their numerous membership programs into the mobile ecosystem – the average American today is a member of 15 loyalty programs.
Or, put another way, consumers want a one-stop-loyalty-shop – omnichannel loyalty, if you will – in an always-accessible environment.
Already, more than one in four members prefers to access a given loyalty program via mobile and nearly half – 47 percent, according to research by Banyan Branch and VIPdesk – of such rewards program providers have or are planning to develop a mobile loyalty app.
If you think about it, this is actually a matter of simple economics: the dollar value that the mobile environment generates is already a factor.
In the U.S. alone, mobile commerce is forecast to net $18 billion by 2014. And through its ability to link, sync, track and engage the consumer in real time at multiple stages throughout the customer lifecycle, mobile provides loyalty marketers with the perfect opportunity to drive loyalty-related outcomes.
The challenge for marketers, however, centers on capturing data across channels.
A May 2012 report, Omnichannel Loyalty: Designing The Ultimate Customer Experience, looks at the need for loyalty marketers to act on insights to deliver dynamic offers in real-time through behavioral triggers across channel, including mobile.
To say that loyalty needs mobile is putting it mildly.
Forrester Research recently stated that, in 2011, 21 percent of survey respondents agreed with the following statement: “Most loyalty programs don’t offer any real value.” This was up from 15 percent in 2008, a jump of over one-third.
The market researcher also said that only 35 percent of customers are members of a loyalty program, mobile or otherwise, and of those, under one-third redeem rewards.
What is more, Forrester says that an “era of pervasive interactivity” has arrived and that 60 percent of Gen Yers (23-31) and Gen Zers (18-22) are considered “always-addressable customers” (AAC). Mobile can and should be the answer for the AAC.
Still skeptical? Try this: of the 89 percent of tablet owners who use their devices at home and 79 percent use them in their bedrooms. If this is the type of device intimacy we are moving toward, then it stands to reason that loyalty should be inexorably linked.
Avoiding app apathy: Navigating loyalty’s mobile future
Of course, even as loyalty marketers embrace mobile’s potential, there are still other hurdles to overcome as the technological frontier continues to expand.
Not only do consumers want their loyalty programs mobile to lighten their cluttered real-world wallets, but the resulting app clutter is becoming an issue too.
Take the iTunes app store, which has enjoyed some 25 billion downloads since its 2003 opening, yet 26 percent of the time apps are ignored after their initial use.
App apathy is very real. Of course, integrating loyalty programs – thinking more enterprise – into already downloaded institutional apps as an “Update” helps cut app clutter as well.
As the numbers of apps and loyalty programs increase, reward program aggregators are beginning to play a role too, examples of which include Award Wallet, GoMiles and MileageManager.
There is also the hybrid approach of cluster programs, where the resources of different loyalty programs are pooled together, allowing users to accumulate industry crossover points.
Whether or not aggregator apps that combine multiple loyalty programs under one umbrella or cluster programs are good or bad remains to be seen, but clearly it is a development that should be on loyalty providers’ minds.
Regardless of anticipated future developments, maintaining loyalty program intimacy and arm’s-length mobile engagement is still key and comes down to upholding several loyalty basics—basics that should not be ignored especially as loyalty becomes increasingly mobile.
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