Archive for the ‘Customer Insight’ Category

Written by Paul Avery, Business Development Manager, San Francisco, ICLP

Having recently attending the Social Media & Mobile Strategies for Travel event in San Francisco, I noted many discussions based around the possibility of achieving lifelong loyalty in today’s increasingly promiscuous, price-sensitive and deal-driven digital world. It has never been more evident that mobile device proliferation and the social media phenomena of recent years will continue to have a strong influence on the ways in which brands engage with customers. Especially within the travel industry, understanding how these areas can transform marketing strategies or even business models is key in differentiating in a competitive environment and ultimately developing longer and more profitable relationships with both new and existing customers.

Some of my key takeaways from the event:

Understanding the mobile consumer

More than 50% of US travellers are now browsing for travel on mobile devices and 15% are actually booking via their mobile …

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Written by Gunjan Kumar, Sales Director, ICLP Mumbai

ICLP recently attended and sponsored the Loyalty Summit, a 2-day conference in Mumbai, India. The strategic loyalty marketing event is now in its 6th year and brings together multi-sector B2C brands to focus on customer engagement and loyalty marketing strategy.

Following our attendance and speaking session at the event, Gunjan Kumar, Sales Director for ICLP Mumbai shares some key take-aways from the conference and offers some insights into loyalty in India.

The Loyalty Summit

As the only dedicated event for loyalty marketers in India, the Loyalty Summit  was attended by loyalty practitioners, CRM, Social Media, eCommerce and technology specialists. It was really encouraging to see that brands from the public sector such as BPCL, HPCL and ACC were present together with private players like Jet Airways, Dish TV, Shoppers Stop etc. The conference also drew some new younger companies like Games 24X7 and Fun Cinemas who stand …

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Written by Stuart Evans, General Manager, ICLP UK

How do you build loyalty in a world where brands no longer own and control their own messaging? A world where — like it or not — consumers share information, insights and opinions on social media platforms 24/7.

Traditional approaches still have their place. However today’s loyalty strategy goes beyond the transaction. Social interactions are becoming the new currency. Many brands are playing catch-up, evaluating how they can mine valuable social data and use it to re-evaluate how they best engage with customers in these and all channels.

New expectations
Today, customers have a 360 degree view of your company. They expect to have an ‘always on’, consistent, value-added and interactive multi-channel customer experience. In today’s digitally-connected society, weekends and evenings are times when customers are looking for information, sales and service. Engaging with them during normal office hours is no longer good enough.

Many brands have …

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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 …

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The opportunities The golden CHANNEL of social media, the importance of mobile (“talking to me on the move”),the increased value of a brands-owned media properties, and the all-important value of lovely “sticky” content–to attract, and grow a brands equity, and further build a quality exchange between a brand and a customer, are for me, the [...]

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 …

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By Mignon Buckingham, Managing Director

With the stagnating economy and increasing competition, what does the future of loyalty look like for global brands?

In the old world of loyalty, points and miles were the mainstay of any popular relationship programme – and to an extent this is still the case today with many brands finding it difficult to progress from outdated business models. Although clearly there is a place for reward propositions that include miles or points, in today’s digitally connected world, brands across all sectors need to evolve their loyalty strategies and raise their game or risk seeing their loyalty strategies become outdated and overlooked.

Brands risk losing vital customers if they fail to innovate and differentiate their offering over competitors. This could include embracing the complex, interconnected benefits of the evolving social media world. Customers already love and include online social communities in their everyday lives, so brands that understand …

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By Stephen Hay, Regional Director, ICLP Asia Pacific.

You see it everywhere, and probably, we all do it. People reading their email on their mobile devices, be it iPhone, Blackberry, or any of the new phones that are hitting the market. Making sure that our email is still effective and getting its message across in that very small number of square inches of display space can be a challenge.

With the increasing quality of mobile displays, HTML emails will be scaled down to a beautiful microscopic detail, that’s very clever but can leave an email almost unreadable. And in today’s time pressured society, if it’s hard, people likely will not bother.  Text based is obviously a practical alternative, but it does take a lot of the life and passion out of your email.

A better understanding of customer behaviour, technical constraints of space, and the fact that we can detect different operating systems, ensure …

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One of the world’s most intriguing nations and cultures, China has risen to become a global economic powerhouse in little over 10 years. With a remarkable sheer size and rate of growth – developing at double or even triple the rate of most other western countries, China continues to generate significant opportunities for both domestic and international brands.

Yet in such a large and complex market with 350 million strong and rising middle class, and where over one million people have wealth in excess of RMB 10 million (USD 1.5m or GBP 1m)1, there has been a long-held simplification of the Chinese consumers. In order to grasp future sales opportunities, brands will need to better adapt to the ever-changing Chinese consumer to increase their market share and improve their competitive position.

But what are those key elements shaping the forthcoming expansion for brands in China?

The evolving Chinese consumer

The Chinese consumer is evolving …

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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 …

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