Paula: Welcome to Lets 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.
This episode is brought to you by Epsilon and their award-winning People Cloud Loyalty Solution.
Epsilon has actually just released a guide on the topic of contactless loyalty, which explores how marketeers can create human-like connections with their customers in an increasingly contactless world.
I would highly recommend you have a look, so to download the guide, visit emia.epsilon.com forward slash letstalkloyalty and you’ll find the guide in the resources section.
Welcome to Lets Talk a LITTLE Loyalty, my new shorter show for loyalty marketing professionals.
In this week’s episode, I’m reminding myself and everyone listening about the interview with Mike Atkin, known around the world as The Loyalty Guru, as he has advised over 85 loyalty programs in his 30-year career, across every vertical market that you can imagine, from retail, finance and banking, through to FMCG, airlines and telecommunications, as well as fuel retail and utilities.
His clients have included the Tesco’s club card program, BP, Shell and Boots.
And he has also assessed and benchmarked 65 of the world’s best loyalty technology solutions, creating a database of all of the capabilities available to support loyalty programs around the world.
Because of all of this work, Mike is also affectionately known as the Godfather of Loyalty.
In this episode, we began by talking about the mindset and the approach that companies should adopt if they want to earn customer loyalty.
Firstly, they need to develop a clear and compelling strategy to retain customers, as so many unfortunately are focused on acquisition and they do neglect their existing customers.
This is true in some sectors more than others and happens even though brands typically have everything they need in terms of technology and data to capture compelling customer insights.
But he believes that these systems and insights are not being leveraged to their full potential.
A second challenge is how often loyalty is seen as just another marketing campaign that the marketing department has to deliver without the dedicated loyalty training and resources it needs.
So it’s very often quite neglected.
Mike’s advice was firstly for anyone moving into the loyalty sector to upskill with training programs like the Customer Loyalty Marketing Professional or CLMP, which can be done online with the Loyalty Academy.
And this really helps to standardize and professionalize the whole industry.
Mike explained that a great loyalty program can create new revenue for brands by driving desirable behaviors.
He explains that many companies focus on collecting transactional data, but the real opportunity is collecting lifestyle data and understanding what your customers like, love or maybe truly dislike.
As a final point, Mike believes that too many loyalty programs focus exclusively on their top tier customers and neglect the vast majority of lower tier members.
But they also represent a huge opportunity for the brand.
As a result, most members are often disappointed and disengaged, and then the program simply doesn’t deliver what the business expected.
His final comment is to focus on planning and delivering a truly customer-centric program, evaluating it honestly as an individual to see if it’s being run in a way that’s compelling for members.
If not, the true power of the program is being missed and opportunities to win customer loyalty are being lost.
So, this is our short summary of my interview with Mike Atkin The Loyalty Guru.
If you’d like to hear more from the Godfather of Loyalty, head over to letstalkloyalty.com and find Episode 4 with Mike Atkin.
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 170 executives in 20 countries as certified loyalty marketing professionals.
For more information, check out thewisemarketer.com and loyaltyacademy.org.
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