#130: 119 Loyalty Ideas to Beat Covid - 19 (Short Summary)

Speaker 0 (0s):

Let’s Talk Loyalty is an industry podcast for loyalty marketing professionals. I’m your host, Paula Thomas, and if you work in loyalty marketing, join me every week to learn the latest ideas for loyalty specialists around the world.

Speaker 1 (18s):  Faced with the reality of COVID-19 in May, 2020, I was joined by loyalty specialist, Adam Posner, to discuss a report.

He created entitled 119 ideas to beat COVID-19.

Adam is already well-known for his annual Australian loyalty report, cold for love or money, but this was a completely new book of ideas. He collected from loyalty professionals for loyalty professionals. He reached out on LinkedIn asking his network to help answer the question, how can we beat COVID-19 with the love of loyalty? He invited ideas of any kind, whether they were tactical or strategic short-term or long-term as long as they would ultimately drive customer loyalty. He set the target for 119 ideas and had contributions from 63 loyalty experts from around the world. So together we reviewed our favorite ideas, which Adam had categorized into nine themes, loyalty strategy, data analysis, program, structure, rewards, and benefits, customer experience, communication community team, and finally customer service. The strategy section was where we started. Adam’s favorite idea came from bill Hannifin from the wise marketeer, who focused on the ideas of helpful communications life hacks and time-saving services. My own favorite was actually around pivoting your business. For example, in the same way that Louis Vuitton started making hand sanitizer and Zara began making personal protection equipment ideas that were relevant and of course appreciated by consumers. Our second category was around using the time when members and stores are either quiet or closed to clean up your loyalty database and marketing permissions, validating members, contact details, and also collecting additional data. As we so rarely have the time to step back and do these hygiene checks, the polls that so many brands experienced in the early days of the pandemic was the perfect time to assess your data, how it’s used and how it’s governed across all of your communications channels. Our third category of ideas was learning from airlines and hotels who had been the first to extend tier status for their tough members, as well as an idea to perhaps create a loyalty scheme for local dealers, creating community loyalty, supporting local merchants who were many times struggling to simply survive the fourth category focused on rewards. And a great idea came in from the loyalty manager in Adidas who offered its premium subscription product completely free of charge for three months with no strings attached to help people to stay physically and mentally fit while locked down at home. There was also the suggestion to offer free or reduced fees for product delivery for a defined period of time. So that members of your loyalty program in particular can still purchase from you online and stay at home. Moving on section five was around creating great experiences for members and interestingly gamification emerged as one great way to create a bit more fun for members at a time when there was really so much uncertainty and worry category six focused on communication with advice to keep humanity at the center of everything we do. Loyalty programs can be our biggest assets in challenging times with the emphasis on using the right tone of communication. Our seven category was focused on community and perhaps turning our sometime self-centered objectives into more of a selfless approach. For example, using loyalty points to support charities. Even more than before, I loved an idea that loyalty program operators could actually donate all of the points that might be expiring in a given month to a chosen charity. It’s not something that could be done on an ongoing basis, but in these exceptional times, it would make a huge impact. If a brand was to do something like this. Our second last category of ideas was to invest in your team and build their understanding and belief in your loyalty program. Adam and I agreed that the influence of your staff at the point of sale is one of the biggest factors in convincing customers to join your loyalty program or not particularly in retail. Your goal must be for your staff to really be in love with your program. And Adam explained that within his consulting work, the team are always one of the key strategic pillars to success. Great staff can convince customers to spend their time, share their data, and finally give you permission to market to them. So truly they can convince the member that it’s worth their time to join. Finally, for the 119 report, we talked about the importance of listening to key customers, perhaps using this quieter time to pick up the phone and talk with them, certainly the least scalable idea, but perhaps the one with an even greater impact for exactly that same reason. In closing, we also discussed what Adam and his research team were learning from the annual research report, which is called for love or money with great new propositions emerging. And of course the trend towards more emotional loyalty rather than the transactional style of programs in the past for Adam, his intention is to keep learning. So please do check our show notes for links to everything we’ve talked about here. That’s it from this episode for Speaker 0 (6m 60s): Let’s talk a little loyalty and do join me later in this week to hear all about a fantastic loyalty program for an entire shopping center in Serbia This show is sponsored by the wise market here. The world’s most popular source of loyalty, marketing news insights and research. The wines marketeer also offers loyalty marketing training through its loyalty academy, which has already certified over 170 executives in 20 countries as certified loyalty and marketing professionals. For more information, check out the wise market tier.com and loyalty academy.org. Thanks so much for listening to this episode of let’s talk loyalty. If you’d like me to send you the latest show each week, simply sign up for the show newsletter on let’s talk loyalty.com and I’ll send you the latest episode to your inbox every Thursday, or just head to your favorite podcast platform. Find let’s talk loyalty and subscribe. Of course I’d love your feedback and reviews. And thanks again for supporting the show.

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