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

PAULA: Welcome to Let’s Talk Loyalty, an industry podcast for Loyalty Marketing Professionals.

PAULA: I’m your host, Paula Thomas.

PAULA: And if you work in Loyalty Marketing, join me every week to learn the latest ideas from Loyalty Specialists around the world.

PAULA: As the world faced into 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.

PAULA: Adam is already well known for his annual Australian Loyalty Report called For Love or Money.

PAULA: But this was a completely new book of ideas he collected from loyalty professionals for loyalty professionals.

PAULA: He reached out on LinkedIn, asking his network to help answer the question, how can we beat COVID-19 with the love of loyalty?

PAULA: 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.

PAULA: He set the target for 119 ideas and had contributions from 63 loyalty experts from around the world.

PAULA: 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.

PAULA: The strategy section was where we started.

PAULA: Adam’s favorite idea came from Bill Hanifan from The Wise Marketeer, who focused on the ideas of helpful communications, life hacks, and time-saving services.

PAULA: My own favorite was actually around pivoting your business.

PAULA: 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.

PAULA: 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.

PAULA: As we so rarely have the time to step back and do these hygiene checks, the pause 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.

PAULA: Our third category of ideas was learning from airlines and hotels, who had been the first to extend tier status for their top members.

PAULA: 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.

PAULA: 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.

PAULA: To help people to stay physically and mentally fit while locked down at home.

PAULA: 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.

PAULA: 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 is really so much uncertainty and worry.

PAULA: Category six focused on communication, with advice to keep humanity at the center of everything we do.

PAULA: Loyalty programs can be our biggest assets in challenging times, with the emphasis on using the right tone of communication.

PAULA: Our seventh category was focused on community, and perhaps turning our sometime self-centered objectives into more of a selfless approach.

PAULA: For example, using loyalty points to support charities even more than before.

PAULA: 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.

PAULA: 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.

PAULA: Our second last category of ideas was to invest in your team and build their understanding and belief in your loyalty program.

PAULA: 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.

PAULA: Particularly in retail, your goal must be for your staff to really be in love with your program.

PAULA: And Adam explained that within his consulting work, the team are always one of the key strategic pillars to success.

PAULA: Great staff can convince customers to spend their time, share their data, and finally give you permission to market to them.

PAULA: So truly, they can convince the member that it’s worth their time to join.

PAULA: 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.

PAULA: Certainly the least scalable idea, but perhaps the one with an even greater impact for exactly that same reason.

PAULA: 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.

PAULA: For Adam, his intention is to keep learning.

PAULA: So please do check our show notes for links to everything we’ve talked about here.

PAULA: That’s it from this episode for 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.

PAULA: This show is sponsored by The Wise Marketeer, the world’s most popular source of loyalty marketing news, insights, and research.

PAULA: The Wise Marketeer also offers loyalty marketing training through its Loyalty Academy, which has already certified over 170 executives in 20 countries as certified loyalty marketing professionals.

PAULA: For more information, check out thewisemarketeer.com and loyaltyacademy.org.

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