Welcome to Let’s Talk Loyalty 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 from loyalty specialists around the world.
Hello and welcome to this week’s short episode of Let’s Talk Loyalty, episode 307. I’m your host, Paula Thomas, and today I’m looking back at my interview in October, 2021 with Richard Jones, Chief Marketing Officer of Cheetah Digital. It was a discussion focusing on the importance of collecting and using customer data in a much more compelling and engaging way.
Cheetah Digital’s research consistently shows how consumers are becoming more and more truly disillusioned with the idea of being targeted by ads on social media platforms like Facebook, where data is being harvested and used to target us quite relentlessly. Consumers say they’re beginning to resent the sense of having their privacy invaded when they see ads that are shown to them using the power of cookies.
And this sense of being snooped on creates distrust and impact our willingness to shop with those brands who are making us actually feel so uncomfortable. Richard’s view was that marketeers have almost become drunk on data. And he says that just because we can collect extremely high volumes of information, it doesn’t mean we should collect it or even use it.
Instead, we need to think about how we build relationships in real life, slowly getting to know each other and building trust over time. He highlighted how brands with strong, respectful customer relationships such as Starbucks, really suffer much less risk at times of crisis or dramatic market changes such as what we’ve just experienced with the pandemic.
Richard then explained his journey in the loyalty inustry. Having first built a software platform that offered marketers a way to use interactive and gamification led campaigns, which can be so much more fun than traditional points-based loyalty programs. His firm was acquired by Cheetah Digital. And now Cheetah Digital excels in helping evolve loyalty programs beyond traditional transactional mechanics into much more experiential programs.
Covid has certainly accelerated the trend towards gamification and customers increasing resistance to cookies is of course, driving the demand, both from consumers and brands for much more permission based marketing relationships. Even manufacturing brands like Unilever and Proctor and Gamble are now realizing the critical importance of the evolution from unknown customers to known customers. And games, surveys, and polls offer a really fun and engaging mechanic to capture data in a way that is both enjoyable for the customer and scalable for brands. Then once customers feel like their data is being used with their consent, they share more. So brands have an opportunity to understand their customer’s attitudes, behaviors, and desires, and then use it to personalize their experiences.
Truly, it’s a win-win value exchange. I guess Richard, in summary, believes that the whole etiquette around marketing is changing dramatically as customer values are changing, and there is a need now more than ever to ensure that our brand relationships are engaging, enriching, and empowering.
In closing, Richard explains the incredible content created by Cheetah Digital in their annual virtual content series called Signals 21. Now, of course, one year later available as Signals 22. Signals 22 brings together clients, case studies and industry experts both live and then on demand to create an incredible resource for loyalty marketers just like you. So I highly recommend you head over to cmgroup.com. That’s CM group.com, and check out the incredible content available in the Signals 22 hub.
That’s it for my short summary of my 2021 conversation with Richard Jones from Cheetah Digital. So I really hope you’ll head over to that original conversation to hear more. You can find it quite simply on letstalkloyalty.com/151.
Thank you again for listening to Let’s Talk Loyalty today. Tune in tomorrow where I’ll be talking with Dr. Yuping Liu-Thomkins from the Loyalty Science Lab. Yuping is sharing her latest insights on the importance of both monetary versus non-monetary rewards, and she explains which type of rewards your loyalty program should focus on, and when. Then on Thursday we’re back with our friends in the Loyalty Academy and the Wise Marketer to discuss their 2022 Delphi panel report entitled The Future of Crypto Rewards.
We’re looking forward to having you join us as we talk loyalty every Tuesday, every Wednesday, and every Thursday, every week.
This show is sponsored by The Wise Marketer, the world’s most popular source of loyalty marketing news, insights, and research. The Wise Marketer also offers loyalty marketing training through its Loyalty Academy, which has already certified over 245 executives in 27 countries as certified loyalty marketing professionals.
For more information, check out thewisemarketer.com and loyaltyacademy.org.
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