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
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.
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?
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.
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.
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
