Archive for the ‘customer engagement’ Category

Written by Stephen Hay, Regional Director – Asia Pacific, ICLP

Playing games is in our DNA; we cannot help but like it. As children, it’s how we learn and practice engagement with our peers and adults. And as grown-ups, the corporate world is full of game-play techniques as we war-game and role-play our way through work. Airline pilots spend much of their time playing multi-million dollar flight simulator games. A word we are seeing more and more is gamification. What does this mean for the customer relationship?

So what is it?

Gamification is the use and adoption of game techniques and mechanics in non-game applications to engage users and solve problems. While it has broad application in a number of fields, for example, education, brand building, and science, we are seeing some of the most rapid adoption and development in the management of the customer relationship, CRM, or customer loyalty.

There are elements of …

Read Article

“Our CEO doesn’t believe in ‘brand.’” During the last few months, I’ve been in new business meetings where I’ve heard this comment from potential clients. Most of the time it’s accompanied by a furtive look or preceded by a frustrated sigh. Every tim…

Written by David Langton, Luxury Specialist, ICLP

After recently attending the Walpole Luxury e-Business Forum in London, it was clear to see that luxury brands are still grappling with some key issues in and around their use of digital, and in particular social, as part of their overall marketing mix. It stimulated some interesting thoughts and discussions – most notably around the use of Facebook – and a big question still remains around delivering real, tangible value (i.e. revenue) back to brands.

There was no magic answer from the Retail Industry lead at Facebook or anyone else for that matter – engagement has value of course, but ultimately marketers are still searching for the justification that social activity has a direct impact on the bottom line.

Luxury brands need to use digital media increasingly more to target affluent consumers

Looking back 7 years, Facebook had only just been born. Only the true pioneers …

Read Article

Written by Stephen Hay, Regional Director, Asia Pacific, ICLP

A recent Burson Marsteller Social Media Check Up reassuringly trumpeted that big corporations (Fortune Global 100 in their case) have truly embraced social media. Consider;

- 87 percent are using social tools and channels in one form or another

- 79 percent have YouTube channels, up 39 percent on the previous year

- 74 percent have Facebook pages, with a corresponding strong growth in the numbers of “likes” from users

All very impressive. But, are we for the most part missing the point about social media by adding it to the already long list of one-way communication and PR channels that we use to direct messages to our customers?

While there are some notably good exceptions, mostly consumer brands like Coca-Cola or what Nutella calls its kitchen table, a typical corporate Facebook page can be a pretty disappointing mix of:

- Press release-like statements about …

Read Article

Whether labeled as corporate social responsibility and sustainability initiatives or corporate citizenship, whether engaged (or not) in corporate philanthropy, employee crowd-sourcing or cause-related marketing efforts, one thing is undisputable: socia…

I recently attended the Customer Engagement Technology World (CETW) conference in San Francisco. During the conference I presented some of the work that Siegel+Gale has been doing with Bloomberg to create a cohesive brand experience through social medi…

Phil Seward, ICLP’s General Manager for the Americas, tackles the controversial subject of offering discount coupons through a loyalty program.

Black Friday – the day after Thanksgiving – kicks off the traditional holiday shopping season and is the biggest day for retailers in the United States. If early indications are anything to go by, 2011 has seen a distinctive uptick with 227 million shoppers(1) spending an estimated $52.4 billion(2) over the four day weekend alone, representing a 6.6% year-on-year increase over the same period last year.

At the same time online spending is demonstrating even greater growth, including the best Cyber Monday (the Monday after Thanksgiving) results on record with $1.25 billion(3) in one day, with an equally high probability that total online sales for the holiday period will go on to break all records.

Increased consumer spending in an economic downturn

Whilst the general outlook for the US economy has deteriorated during 2011 …

Read Article

I think we would all agree that a vending machine isn’t a place you go looking for a positive and enlightening brand experience. Even if a machine is appealing from a graphic and industrial design standpoint, you’re already mentally preparing yours…

Mobile phones have become a ‘game changer’ for loyalty marketers, with consumers increasingly using smartphones to gather information, compare prices, place orders, redeem offers, check-in, check-out, and check their points balances. Gartner estimates that 468 million smartphones are already in use worldwide, and Juniper Research predicts that mobile payments will grow by 40% by 2015 to some US$2.5 billion globally.

The mobile channel not only saves on costs such as plastic cards and mailings but it also makes it easy to gain a competitive advantage that can be quickly adapted when competitors catch up. Most consumers carry their mobile most of the time, making it the perfect channel for customer loyalty initiatives, offers and rewards. Targeted, personalised offers and incentives can be sent to and stored on the customer’s device, ready to be redeemed with a quick scan of the screen.

So whether your target audience is best served by a …

Read Article

Today’s highlighted Exchange member is Holly Krenek, a member of blur Marketing’s Exchange, and works for digby, the leading provider of mobile commerce and mobile in-store customer engagement. The last Friday5 blog post got more than 1,100 views – let’s see if we can top that with this edition. ONE: Holly, you say that you’re [...]