How to Evaluate and Engage Your Own Loyalty Program

This article I wrote recently for Loyalty360 was published this week.  Here it is as well...

How to Evaluate and Engage Your Own Loyalty Program

By Richard Long, Independent Marketing Consultant 

Ok, so you just landed a new role leading an existing, established in-market loyalty rewards program, or perhaps, are providing consulting or agency services to evaluate, enhance and grow it.  Where do you begin?

Before we start, let’s first set the proper scope.  It is generally difficult and not recommended to isolate the loyalty club membership on its own, separate from the overall customer experience that the member has.  Membership is the entire experience, from their first encounter with the brand (usually occurring before you even joined the club) to hopefully them not calling to cancel one day and every point along the way.  Members, like all humans in general, naturally think in a holistic fashion, taking in each and every big or small, good or bad interaction collectively.  So, start by approaching this challenge (and opportunity) by evaluating the entire member experience.

5-Step Strategic Approach

1. Current Foundational Assessment
   Understand the current state.  Gather information and data.  Start by identifying all key stakeholders in the organization (or perhaps external) that may have an impact on the member experience and meet with them and listen.  Learn first-hand knowledge and insights around their responsibilities and how they (or their team) may directly or indirectly influence the member experience.  Important functional areas include some obvious ones like Customer Service, in-store/on-site personnel and Marketing along with the “behind-the-scenes” functions such as IT, HR and Operations.  For example, in reviewing HR loyalty program-related incentive strategies and one in which a staff member receives valuable compensation for each new member sign-up , does that overtly drive individual frontline behavior to put the “hard-sell” on potential new members, getting that new sign-up at any cost, even if they cancel the next day?  
   
   Included in this step is a Data Audit, both a collection of all information collected above from these stakeholders as well as an actual data inventory.  This includes gathering, analyzing and interpreting reports and primary/secondary research that may include: loyalty program member financial performance (transactional sales, customer value, revenue, margin etc.) and engagement  behavior (you may need to define), both overall and by segment or tier, if applicable; member persona profiling and RFM history;  retention/attrition;  industry/competitive market landscape; loyalty program industry benchmarking and best practices; member needs and satisfaction; customer service member FAQs, complaints, suggestions and cancel reasons; and social media monitoring.  This is not a complete data list, but you should try to obtain as much as possible.  You may also need to supplement any key gaps with new data requests or even doing your own field research.
   
   
2. Touch Point Map
   Document the member’s holistic experience, sequentially from pre-member to post-member interactions, based on the Current Foundational Assessment, to help you to make key observations and see big gaps and potential areas of opportunity.  If there are differences among key segments, indicate those too.   This touch point map of the member eco-system is not intended to be exhaustive of every single interaction, which can number in the hundreds or more.  If you do try, it generally results in a spaghetti bowl that is difficult to gleam any meaningful insights from other than there being lots of interactions.  Instead, to make this mapping more manageable to document, develop a method of categorizing/color-coding all interaction types.  Just a few example types include marketing communications, events and Customer Service.  Then, as you plot them, still list out specific touch points that fall under them, like the market launch prospect mailing, new member welcome kit, VIP event, birthday reward email or monthly account statement.  Once you have completed this, you might find big clues for answering some of these important questions:
   • Are there sufficient pre-member acquisition activities?
   • Is there an impactful, informative welcome experience?
   • Are multi-channel communications well-orchestrated?
   • How well are you trying to engage members once they are no longer new?
   • Are the communications, benefits and experiences the same for all members?
   • Are there any proactive efforts geared towards inactive or less-engaged members?
   • Are there any post-member re-engagement activities?
     
     
3. Gap Analysis
   Conduct a gap analysis between the current foundational state and a more ideal future state.  Organize your analysis around some of the same foundation assessment and/or touch point categories.  Use data and insights already gathered to begin pointing you down your roadmap path. 
   
   
4. Lifecycle Framework
   Is there a member lifecycle framework in place?  If so, do the stages match the reality?  If a framework does not exist, it is important to create one that allows you to more effectively set goals, plan, target, manage and measure that seamless member experience as they progress through their lifecycle.  Most frameworks begin with the Acquisition stage, soon followed by Welcome.  A final stage is usually Reactivation.  What’s in-between?  Depending on the dynamics of your program and degree of precision you can manage to, there may be other important stages that should be built in, like Trial, Assimilation, Engagement, Re-Engagement and Save to name a few.  The actual names you pick can vary, but conceptually many of the same lifecycle stages should still apply regardless of the industry or program.
   
   
5. Roadmap Planning
   Before you start your roadmap planning, do you know the company business priorities and financial goals, both short and long-term, along with any ones specific to the loyalty program itself?  Company ones are probably documented, but perhaps not always for the loyalty program.  If that’s the case, you should help to establish them, along with KPIs.  As you develop the roadmap, you don’t want to jump the guardrails and get out of alignment, nor be able to measure what is success.
   
   Develop a loyalty program roadmap template as you start the planning process of all new or enhanced strategies and tactics.  This will enable you to evaluate all roadmap considerations consistently.  Develop evaluation criteria that align with goals and objectives and other company priorities.  Such ones may include Potential Business Impact, Ease-to-Implement, Timing, Budget, Key Stakeholders and perhaps even a Comments section that will be useful as you begin to fill this out and later reference. 

All of your roadmap consideration strategies and tactics you list on the template can be informed from all of the work done up until this point, along with any additional brainstorming and ideation sessions.  Also, it is critical to include as much member input as possible to ensure you are evolving the program around them and their changing needs.  No ideas are bad ideas…just yet.  Once all considerations have been listed, you then evaluate each and begin the filtering and prioritization process.  Your final roadmap should end up being a realistic, actionable and aligned pathway to a more impactful and engaging loyalty program.  Now, you can move on to delivery! 

The depth, rigor and scope applied throughout this process may vary depending on resource, budget, timing and other parameters, yet the more thorough you are, the more informed your overall loyalty program evaluation will be along with the impact of future enhancement roadmap planning and delivery.

About the Author:  Richard Long

Rich is an independent marketing consultant based in Chicago.  Throughout his career, he creatively and passionately puts the customer at the center of strategic planning, decision-making and execution to drive meaningful engagement with all customers to appeal to their hearts, minds and wallets. Rich has gained a unique customer-driven business perspective acquired from roles in consulting, agency and corporate environments along with a broad marketing knowledge base gained from a very diverse set of industry experiences. 

http://loyalty360.org/loyalty-management/january-online/how-to-evaluate-and-engage-your-own-loyalty-program