#196: Loyalty Statistics and KPI's for Success (Short Summary Show)

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

PAULA: 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.

PAULA: Hello, and welcome to this week’s short episode of Let’s Talk Loyalty, where I’m looking back on an interview from late 2020 with Mala Raj, a seasoned and highly respected loyalty consultant working with Strategic Caravan in India.

PAULA: I had noticed a LinkedIn post by Mala on World Statistics Day, which was celebrated on October 20, 2020, as an initiative by the United Nations to connect the world with data we can trust.

PAULA: What I really liked was Mala’s clarity on what loyalty statistics she believes are the most important to track and her estimates of what success might look like.

PAULA: To start off the conversation, Mala told me a lot about the loyalty landscape in India, and it’s definitely a country I’m not familiar with professionally.

PAULA: Mala mentioned some of their key clients and how huge the customer numbers are for some of the most popular programs.

PAULA: With a population over a billion people, some key programs have membership bases in the hundreds of millions.

PAULA: Mala shared her six favorite key loyalty statistics, and we had a great conversation about them.

PAULA: First, we covered member activity level.

PAULA: And Mala’s view was that in general, 60 to 70 percent of your member base engaging is good.

PAULA: This is a very widely used statistic, of course, and that number really will vary across verticals.

PAULA: But I do agree, it’s a bullseye KPI that companies should focus on.

PAULA: A second statistic that Mala shared is the lift in member value, which she says should be 7 to 9 percent over and above the natural growth of the company in year one.

PAULA: It’s really hard to get figures like this, of course.

PAULA: And perhaps in India, natural growth is easier to come by.

PAULA: But particularly, this uplift is really important to understand, measure and be able to attribute to your loyalty program.

PAULA: Thirdly, we discussed a reduction in member churn.

PAULA: Mala says programs should see a 10 to 12 percent reduction in member churn within the first couple of years.

PAULA: We agreed that loyalty is an increasingly accountable discipline and it varies hugely across verticals.

PAULA: Churn is closely monitored in some industries, but in others, like retail, for example, member activity levels need to be assessed with some understanding of how often people typically shop with you in any given calendar year.

PAULA: We also talked about shift or new customer acquisition and making sure you can measure if your member base is growing faster than your customer base.

PAULA: Another one that’s hard to benchmark, especially across industry.

PAULA: In my experience, I have talked a lot with convenience retailers, and I found that they were very different even to grocery retailers, even though they really do sell similar items.

PAULA: Identifying customers with game changing technology, like my own favorite called card linking, does make it easier to engage more consumers.

PAULA: But Mala pointed out that India in some ways is still less advanced, and many retailers still use very basic identifiers like phone numbers.

PAULA: Second to last, we talked about redemption rates.

PAULA: Mala told me that she believes program operators should target at least 80% of points issued being redeemed.

PAULA: Anything less means your program is just not engaging enough.

PAULA: Mala’s advice was that it’s important to take care of both the redeemers as well as the long-term savers.

PAULA: And I know in lots of categories, I’m a long-term saver, for example with airline miles.

PAULA: But it’s also important to delight every type of collector, especially those who do like to redeem more frequently.

PAULA: Lastly, we covered program penetration of total sales.

PAULA: And the statistic Mala used was that your program should account for 70% to 80% of your total sales.

PAULA: Of course, it sounds like quite a high target, but I do believe your offer should be so compelling that your customers not only want to be involved, but as Jeff Bezos said about Amazon Prime, it should be actually almost irresponsible not to join.

PAULA: My conversation with Mala Raj was really interesting, and I really hope her statistics are useful to all of you listening around the world.

PAULA: If you want to hear the detailed conversation, please do listen to the original interview, which you can find at letstalkloyalty.com forward slash sixty six.

PAULA: Finally, I invite you to join me tomorrow and again on Thursday this week.

PAULA: Tomorrow, I will be talking all about the loyalty industry in Poland.

PAULA: And on Thursday, you’ll hear from Billy Louizou from Cheetah Digital, talking about why loyalty is perhaps the most important tool for any marketeer in 2022.

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 245 executives in 27 countries as certified loyalty marketing professionals.

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

PAULA: Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Let’s Talk Loyalty.

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