Loyalty Marketing and Implications on the Interactive Industry
I attended a new marketing conference in Orlando earlier this week called “Loyalty Expo” (www.loyaltyexpo.com). Did you know there is a whole segment of the marketing world just focused on loyalty marketing? I bet your average interactive marketer doesn’t spend much time thinking about loyalty marketing. Although this particular conference was generally geared at marketers in the banking, travel, and retail industry that typically have utilized loyalty marketing as a core part of their strategy, there were a few key broad takeaways internet marketers should take note of:
- It is far easier and less risky for a marketer to do a ‘milk run’ than to build a new book of customers. Jack Welch commented on CNBC on November 5th that Obama’s Presidential campaign was astonishing, given he had to beat the Clintons’ “milk run” (i.e. raising money from the Clintons’ pre-existing sources) by building up his own book of business. This is really the exception to the rule as Welch points out, and most marketers know this too. If you are facing a cash crunch in your own marketing budget, better to do your own “milk run” than to scramble to add new customers. Given the focus on measuring campaign effectiveness, like interactive media, loyalty marketing should be a bright spot in an otherwise difficult environment for marketers.�
- Marketers who aren’t necessarily “internet marketers” are generally open-minded about emerging interactive channels and utilizing new technology platforms to access these new channels efficiently and effectively. Nearly all of the loyalty marketers I either spoke with or listened to were trying to figure out how they could leverage mobile and social media, as well as trying to figure out the next “big thing” coming out of interactive industry. Nearly all seemed open to using outside technology platforms to gain access to these same channels. This is good news for the interactive companies providing the technical tools to various other businesses around the world. The bad news is that these same marketers are going to be even more skeptical over the short term on trying new, unproven tools given the squeeze on their budgets due to economic pressures.�
- Other marketers are very ROI focused too. In my experience, internet marketers tend to operate in a vacuum and think they are the only ones who crave instant performance feedback on their marketing campaigns based on measurements that they are focused on. This flat out isn’t true. Loyalty marketers have some pretty sophisticated databases as well. This is probably why some of the loyalty marketers see adopting internet marketing as a pretty straight forward concept.
From my point of view, desktop and browser plug-ins may be the next big thing for loyalty marketers and internet marketers alike. Next week I will blog more on the current use of desktop and browser plug-ins used by loyalty marketers.
Rob Weber, Vice President of Business Development and Co-Founder, W3i, LLC
Rob is an Internet marketing pioneer with over eight, profitable years evolving W3i (owner of Freeze.com) in the Integrated Interactive Media industry.
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