One size fits one: Loyalty through hyper-personalisation
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Is Your Loyalty Strategy Future Fit?
The customer loyalty landscape has changed. Thanks in part to the pandemic, a quick and dramatic shift to online has resulted in consumers expecting far more sophisticated experiences across all digital interactions. This disruption has resulted in a generational shift in consumer behaviour – in turn, reshaping the discipline of loyalty marketing. As such, innovative and engaging strategies are now being employed by leading brands across all sectors. Our latest 5-part eBook series aims to explore what it takes to win in loyalty in today’s world of choice-rich consumers and key actions that businesses can take to gain back control. In this first instalment, we deep dive into the power of personalisation. In the age of the consumer, experience is everything; a positive customer experience ultimately increases retention and promotes loyalty. So, it’s no surprise that everyone wants to get closer to the consumer. But how will you get there first?
The Power of Personalisation
The crux of it: Loyalty redefined
Loyalty is generated through us feeling known and understood, and in turn having perspective acknowledged and our needs proactively served. An increased focus on the personal preferences of individuals rather than broad segments is enabling brands to deliver enhanced customer experiences. Each of us has our own perspective about what constitutes a meaningful experience, and that perspective includes personal attitudes to relevance, convenience and luxury. With this in mind, hyper-personalisation or the ‘segment-of-one’ is the holy grail that marketers aspire to. The term refers to an organisation’s ability to track and cater to the needs and preferences of each customer, one at a time. In the loyalty industry, segment-of-one marketing remains a futuristic goal; though innovations taking place in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and accelerated data analysis are helping reveal the possibilities.
Leading organisations are thinking beyond broad ‘target audiences’ and rigid stereotypical segments or personas. To identify and serve each customer in a distinctive way, they rely on two-way, interactive communication, AI, and the interrogation of sophisticated first-party and zero-party data to build a complete picture of an individual and their personality traits. The information held by a brand on their customers will in turn be enhanced through collaboration with like-minded brands; with each participating brand helping to build a more sophisticated Single Customer View – as a result, enabling greater awareness of an individual’s personal preferences and interests, and enabling a hyper-personalised ‘segment-of-one’.
Let Collinson help you stand out in a crowded market
For more than 30 years, Collinson has been at the forefront of loyalty innovation, continually evolving and building loyalty to meet the changing needs of our clients and their customers. We help enhance and run the customer loyalty programmes for some of the world’s largest airlines, banks, hotel groups and technology companies. Our global team of experts work with you to understand your goals, unlocking data from multiple sources, enabling you to transform your overall customer experience. This is delivered through innovative, multi-channel, highly personalised global customer rewards programmes that shape customer behaviour and customer loyalty. From an individual project, off the shelf or e-commerce solution, we drive engagement, value and customer loyalty.
Contact us
Visit collinsongroup.com to learn why the world’s most demanding brands count on us to deliver meaningful experiences that maximise the lifetime value of their customers.
Our technical and data proficient teams will work with you to analyse, sanitise and leverage your first-party data to lay strong foundations
Data-driven insights underpin your bespoke strategic communications blueprint to ensure context remains at the heart of your loyalty programme
Bespoke reporting proves the effectiveness of your strategies ,enabling you to adapt and scale your strategy to ensure it consistently delivers against your objectives
Consultative partnership
Data expertise
Human led, data informed
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While many consumers are wary of businesses misusing their personal data, they also acknowledge that refusing to provide data (particularly to digital brands) can undermine organisations’ ability to serve them fully. As a compromise, they are choosing to engage with brands they believe will manage their data responsibly and provide worthwhile, personalised experiences in return for their data – known as a fair value-exchange. As more data is collected and leveraged, respecting customers’ personal data will remain absolutely key.
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While data can be challenging, it is a critical factor in creating more meaningful relationships with customers and improving business operations. In turn, gaining the required context to define and apply urgent and effective loyalty programme updates. However, as access to third-party data is increasingly reduced, the insights and data gained through a well-managed, engaging and rewarding loyalty programme will increasingly prove valuable to brands.
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The key here is to build a clearer picture of your customers in order to continue delivering the experiences your most loyal customers have come to expect. In the world of personalisation, context is king. The same individual may be a business leader, a holiday maker, a parent, a sibling, and a partner, and in each of these contexts, their buyer behaviours create different data signals.
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Ensure customer loyalty is at the heart of your business strategy – versus a siloed, marketing-led concept. This requires an ‘all hands-on deck’ approach across the organisation to help to ensure your brand maintains an agile retention strategy, in turn reducing customer churn by remaining relevant, and thus maximising the lifetime value of the customer.
Put your customers first
Bespoke reporting proves the effectiveness of your strategies, enabling you to adapt and scale your strategy to ensure it consistently delivers against your objectives
"Loyalty is generated through us feeling known and understood, and in turn having perspective acknowledged and our needs proactively served"
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Keen to learn more about deepening customer loyalty? Read the second instalment in our five-part series, The Importance of a Fair Value Exchange
Our consultative partnership approach combines market-leading technology with more than 30 years of loyalty expertise to deliver customer experience strategies that adapt and scale for ongoing relevance.
"When a brand delivers meaningful, increasingly relevant experiences, customers will be willing to share even more personal information"
When you’re transparent and honest in your use of data, and you deliver meaningful, bespoke interactions and recommendations based on this data, your customers will learn to trust you and will be willing to share even more information; ultimately enabling perpetually enhanced brand encounters. It is a mutually beneficial value exchange that, over time, enables you to build increasingly richer customer profiles and create better, more relevant experiences. This is the virtuous circle that all brands should aspire to.
There is also an opposite phenomenon – a vicious cycle. If a brand misuses data, is not transparent, does not provide a worthwhile value exchange, or breaches data regulations, they run the risk of their customers mistrusting their brand and withholding their personal details. To avoid this, leading brands ensure permission to collect and retain data is sought and received, and in turn only use data in the way their customers have permitted. In the context of loyalty, this means providing superior and purposeful experiences in the context of a fair value exchange that benefits the customer at least as much as, if not more than, it benefits the provider.
Transparency is key
"Successful brands will know that the hyper-personalisation of customer journeys may involve consumers’ desire to associate with a like-minded community or ‘tribe’"
Looking to the future, over the coming two to three years, successful brands will know that the hyper-personalisation of customer journeys may involve an individual consumer’s desire to associate with a like-minded community or ‘tribe’, and to share experiences that are relevant and meaningful to that community. Some organisations will also focus on an authentic, transparent set of values that they share with their customers. This alignment of values enhances the sense of community, so customers feel that their relationship with the brand transcends their commercial transactions.
Expedited by the pandemic, customers’ behaviours and expectations have dramatically changed. The modern consumer today is highly sophisticated, demanding frictionless and tailored interactions, making loyalty marketing far more challenging than before. How can businesses gain an advantage, especially in such a saturated retail landscape? The key is to focus on building strong relationships by delivering intelligent experiences, while respecting and protecting privacy. In the second instalment of our 5-part eBook series that aims to explore what it takes to win in loyalty in today’s world of choice-rich consumers, the importance of a fair value exchange takes centre stage. Consumers are more aware than ever that their personal data has value. Choosing to share their information has become a deliberate exchange and in return, they expect businesses to use their data to create experiences that are personalised and add value. Businesses will need to ensure they do just that; reward and delight your customers but respect their data too.
The Importance Of A Fair Value Exchange
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Taking this one step further, businesses should also start thinking about taking an integrated, interconnected approach to truly achieve long-term customer loyalty. This means creating a seamless loyalty ecosystem that rewards customers for sharing information by partnering with complimentary brands to breakdown data silos.
As customers continue to think long and hard about sharing their information, especially with rising concerns around privacy and security, the way in which brands use customer data will inherently become a differentiator – with the ideal scenario for consumers being that the value provided to them is always greater than that provided to the brand – a fair value exchange.
The key is to maintain trust by providing a fair value exchange and be transparent by ensuring the value is clearly spelled out. Leading brands will respect access to personal data, only using it to provide meaningful, personalised experiences. In turn, trust and a deeper engagement will build through additional data sharing.
Relevance and convenience have become essential in a hyper-connected and fast-moving world. Customers expect nothing less; but at the end of the day, it requires them to share their data. This data helps to deliver real insight that, in turn, enables businesses to develop tailor-made connections with their customers.
Build a mutually-beneficial relationship
Keen to learn more about deepening customer loyalty? Read the third instalment in our five-part series, From Siloes to Multi-Brand Ecosystems
From Siloes to Multi-Brand Ecosystems
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In the post-pandemic landscape, brands have had to rebuild relationships with their customers, presenting unique opportunities and challenges like never before. Ensuring that we can deliver relevant offers to our customers remains vital in driving deeper brand engagement, loyalty and sales. In our previous two eBooks in this series, we’ve talked about hyper-personalising experiences to win hearts and minds and the importance of creating a carefully balanced value exchange with your customers. What’s next? Consider boosting your value proposition with third party partners. In fact, some of the best loyalty programmes rely heavily on partnership models with third parties. This brings us to the third instalment of our 5-part eBook series which aims to explore what it takes to win in loyalty in today’s world of choice-rich consumers and key actions that businesses can take to gain back control.
For organisations to future-proof, loyalty must be placed at the heart of business strategy. It’s all about continuously learning about your customers through data and insights, as well as encouraging regular feedback and dialogue to better understand their behaviour and in turn, better contextualise and deliver relevant rewards at the right time and in the right place. Previously, many organisations viewed their customer loyalty strategy as a nice to have, almost peripheral component of their marketing plan. It could be a distinct programme managed by a handful of employees, and would affect only those customers who might be convinced to become programme members in exchange for points and prizes. Today, loyalty must be a prevailing organisational focus, involving every department and job function. Leading brands position loyalty as an important agenda item in boardrooms and an organisation-wide priority rather than a separate, siloed function. Every interaction a consumer has with an organisation – from initial brand awareness to product or service research, transactions, consumption and follow-up service – will contribute to their overall customer experience and the degree of loyalty they will feel over the longer term. Increasingly, organisations are viewing happy, retained, loyal customers as their most valuable assets – devoting a significant portion of their time, investment and thinking to maintaining and maximising the satisfaction of these customers. Much investment is also being channelled into achieving a single customer view across the organisation, enabling the delivery of integrated, personalised, timely experiences at every relevant customer touchpoint.
Delivering value and loyalty through partnerships
"The character of each loyalty ecosystem will be fluid, taking the form of decentralised communities where each customer can curate the combination of brands they wish to interact with"
Single-brand experiences are also becoming the exception rather than the rule. Leading organisations are already regularly collaborating with other like-minded brands, often across industries, to create blended loyalty ecosystems where compelling experiences are crafted to match the needs and specific lifestyle profiles of individual customers. The character of each ecosystem is fluid, taking the form of decentralised communities where each customer can curate the combination of brands they wish to interact with. The notion of brand integrity, and even the alignment of different brand images, will become less important than the ability to deliver the personalised experience each customer desires; as long as that experience maintains the loyalty of the individual to all the brands within the ecosystem.
The rise of blended loyalty ecosystems
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With the continuing development of artificial intelligence and automation, the opportunity for brands to help connect like-minded individuals through ‘tribes’ will enable ‘segment-of-one’ marketing and further re-pay customers for enabling data sharing in the future.
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When more data, automation and artificial intelligence are used, more customers will come in, and more value will revert to the partnered brands. As more analytics are employed, more meaningful information can be generated, enabling more customers to be matched to more partners and more enhanced experiences enjoyed. And so on.
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The most powerful loyalty ecosystem will be one in which more partners joining will lead to a more complete picture of your joint customers through access to more data points and in turn, more content being produced and more touchpoints for engagement.
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What could they offer your members that would complement your services? It’s important to choose the right partner for loyalty collaborations based on your customer profiles and target audience. In a world of decreasing attention spans and increasing variability of content, the right partners will help create competitive advantage and boost brand equity.
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You don’t necessarily need to find all loyalty benefits from within. The ability to identify and forge symbiotic partnerships with complementary brands to deliver the personalised experiences customers expect will increasingly take prominence.
Upgrade your loyalty programme
Stay tuned for the fourth part of our eBook series, where we continue to explore new ways to unlock the loyalty code in today’s challenging and dynamic landscape, with a focus on looking beyond the traditional one-dimensional points and rewards platforms.
Keen to learn more about deepening customer loyalty? Read the fourth instalment in our five-part series, Beyond Points and Rewards: Why Status-enhancing, Value-aligned Experiences Win Hearts and Minds
Beyond Points and Rewards: Why Status-enhancing, Value-aligned Experiences Win Hearts and Minds
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In today’s challenging business environment where brand promiscuity is rife, unlocking the loyalty code will require an even deeper understanding of your customers on an individual and personal level. Businesses will need to work harder to attract and manage long-term loyalty, particularly when customers expect brands to know what they need next – before they even know themselves. Despite continuous efforts to innovate with promotions and offers, many businesses struggle to retain their customers. What makes customers truly loyal? Beyond points and rewards, experience still matters; but what does this really mean, and are you getting it right? We take a closer look in this fourth edition of our 5-part eBook series, which aims to explore what it takes to win in loyalty in today’s world of choice-rich consumers.
Any loyalty programme must, at its heart, be a carefully created and even more carefully calibrated value exchange mechanic between a company and its customers. It requires a balancing act, with a harmonised level of desirability and affordability on both sides. Customers need to feel that they’re gaining from the benefits available via a loyalty programme – a true high perceived value-add that enhances their lives, or makes life easier – which can then be used to motivate profitable customer behaviours. In order to achieve this, it’s necessary to understand what your customers feel is valuable to them as individuals. With the growing digitisation of customer interactions, in part due to the pandemic, there will be even greater opportunity to collect new data, in turn allowing brands to get to know customers’ wants, needs, preferences and expectations all over again. Loyalty is therefore a long-term strategy; complex, integrated and a bespoke fit for your specific business needs and opportunities – which align to and are led by the values your customers hold. Providing consumers with access to money can’t buy, VIP or sustainable experiences (particularly those that enable consumers to better support a cause that resonates with them) help create value that can’t be copied or reproduced by another brand.
Finding the sweet spot
"There will be a strong emphasis on inspiring confidence, where customers will choose brands that can deliver happiness, recognition and status benefits"
Finding the ‘wow’ factor – or high perceived value – today means looking beyond just rewards. Experience is everything, customers will remember their experiences with a brand over discounts or similar financial benefits. Customers will choose brands that can deliver happiness, recognition and status benefits.
In a highly competitive landscape where loyalty can be fickle, VIP or ‘money can’t buy’ rewards will prove fundamental for brands. Focus on looking to help raise your customers’ status – and in turn, their loyalty level.
Attention to continual evolution and improvement is key when looking to retain your most valuable customers. The journey doesn’t end once you have determined your pertinent set of customer groups. Timely, relevant interactions need to be provided to your most valuable customer groups in order to obtain – and most importantly, retain and grow – their loyalty and engagement.
Build emotional loyalty, with two-way interaction, personalisation and combining a human touch with data and analytical rigour. By showing that you understand and care about your individual customers’ unique interests, needs and values, a deeper emotional bond between brand and buyer is established; in turn ensuring they continue to choose your organisation long into the future through truly valuable, life-enhancing and well-timed experiences.
Consumers increasingly engage with brands today to access a lifestyle or experiences they otherwise don’t have access to. Loyalty programmes that have fallen victim to one-dimensional, points exchange platforms have the opportunity to enhance their approach by switching to status recognition-led programmes.
Raise the loyalty bar
Keen to learn more about deepening customer loyalty? Read the fifth and final instalment in our five-part series, The New Era of Loyalty: An Innovative and Frictionless Future
The New Era of Loyalty: An Innovative and Frictionless Future
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Many brands today are already taking a different approach to their loyalty offerings. Embracing digital innovation and the Internet of Things (IoT) are no longer nice to have, but a necessity to survive. In this competitive digital environment, unique and innovative experiences will disrupt the world of loyalty like never before and become a powerful engine for growth. We’re talking about enhancing the real-world with home automation, wearables and, increasingly, multi-realm experiences. Brands must act now to avoid falling behind in the pursuit to nurture their most valuable customers in the new era of loyalty.
"Consumers will embrace smartwear and home automation in search for more personalised experiences"
With consumers increasingly becoming comfortable with digital disruption and engaging with innovative technologies, brands continue to integrate smartphones and wearables to deliver experiences that build loyalty. These same organisations are also investing in technology that, in future, will blur the lines between realms. For many, the metaverse and Web 3.0 remain a future concept. However, in the not-so-distant future, it is anticipated that almost everyone will be living in across-realm or multi-realm environment. Fast-forward to next year, and almost all industries will be experiencing the convergence of the physical ‘real’ world and online. The experiences of leisure, socialising, business, retail shopping, tourism, escapism and activities that enhance status will occur in any and all realms. Retaining loyal customers in the metaverse will therefore be as important as it is in the physical realm. Today, loyalty best practice is increasingly involving the use of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) as a mechanism to tokenise offline, online and metaverse experiences, status and rewards with irrefutable ownership. The smart contracts offered by NFTs give consumers access to unique value. With many brands suffering from ‘bland loyalty’ – cookie-cutter programmes that threaten to devalue even the most stand-out brand marketing efforts – providing consumers with access to money can’t buy, VIP or sustainable experiences (particularly those that enable consumers to better support a cause that resonates with them) help create value that can’t be copied or reproduced by another brand. While points and prizes will remain relevant for the foreseeable, programmes centred purely around this will play a decreasingly important role.
Loyalty transformed: Multi-realm experiences and more
"Loyalty best practice will include NFTs as a mechanism to tokenise offline, online and metaverse experiences, status and rewards with irrefutable ownership"
With the evolution of Web 3.0, the blockchain, decentralisation, crypto-entities, the metaverse and token-based economics, loyalty will increasingly become a diverse, sometimes complex undertaking. The trend will, of course, raise as many questions asanswers about the ongoing relationship betweenbrands and consumers. Questions could arise around whether consumers will have the power and autonomy to decide for themselves if they’re a brand advocate or not – as well as who ultimately owns that personal data, the consumer or ‘Big Tech’. It might be necessary to introduce new regulations – similar to those now in place around ‘open banking’ in the finance space – that enable consumers to share their personal data with a range of accredited providers to potentially improve their experiences.
NFTs also have the potential to promote the development of communities, such as tribes of fans who follow famous personalities. For example, an NFT that represents partial ownership of a singer’s new album might be a highly-sought-after item among the members of that singer’s fan base. Increasingly, consumers’ cars, refrigerators, washing machines, heating controls, showers, doorlocks and lights – alongside their smartwatches, fitness trackers, and soon even the shirts on their backs – will feed data to their smartphones and ultimately into the cloud storage of big technology companies like Google, Apple and Samsung. These companies will then have a 360-degree view of each consumer’s purchasing activity, content consumption, daily schedules, visited locations, as well as their shared preferences and expectations – a view that will eventually lead to even more personalised relationships.
With Google’s undertaking to phase out third-party cookies, the value of high-quality first-party and zero-party data is increasing exponentially. The effective management of data – and appropriate related technology solutions – will play a greater role in enhancing and personalising the customer experience, but only if applied in conjunction with relevant human skills and processes.
Organisations that deliver multi-realm experiences via digital channels will need to remember that consumers are people – they still crave human interaction, not just automation and convenience. It’s a careful balancing act, but if done correctly, will achieve a value-exchange that enhances lifestyles while generating a true connection that benefits both parties.
Prepare to curate unique multi-realm environments – enhancing reality with virtual elements. Consumers are confidently starting to embrace Augmented Reality (AR), VR, IoT, smartwear, and home automation with voice connectivity. They will be loyal to the brands that use these technologies to seamlessly deliver personalised services and experiences over and above the physical world.
While still a future concept for many, Web 3.0 is increasingly pervading our day-to-day lives, and as such, consumers’ expectations regarding digital innovations enhancing all stages of the customer journey are ever-increasing. Invest in embedding consumer-grade innovations to ensure even the most demanding customer expectations can be met.
Harness the power of digital
In conclusion, loyalty is ever-evolving as it’s led by human activity and interest. For brands to provide relevant, impactful loyalty programmes, an understanding of customer needs – and an ability to react to these needs and evolve – is essential. Enriching your customer interactions with hyper-personalisation is key, as well as building trust and delivering fair value exchanges – uniting with relevant brands to further boost insights on customer desires. Increasingly, looking beyond points and rewards to elevate experiences and enable the lifestyle your customers aspire to is the route to take, while harnessing the power of digital to stay at the forefront of change.
Achieving life-long customer loyalty
Revisit our earlier instalments on the key loyalty must-haves to win in today's world of choice-rich consumers
The Importance of a Fair Value Exchange
