“The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step” – Lao Tzu (from Tao Te Ching)
“The higher your structure is to be, the deeper must be its foundation” – Augustine of Hippo (from The Confessions)
As 2024 moves closer to its end, businesses everywhere are feverishly devising and revising their 2025 goals, budgets, and marketing plans. It’s also time when a plethora of “Marketing Trends for 2025” articles begin to appear in trade magazines and on agency websites. Several that I’ve recently read predict declines in customer loyalty to brands in the new year. To my delight, a recent article from Harvard Business Review dove deeply into the topic of how “loyalty programs” aimed at growing customer’s allegiance often fall short, titled Why Loyalty Programs Fail
In the article, the authors identify pitfalls that have taken down many loyalty programs, then review keys to building a successful one. It’s a valuable read for any company looking to start, refine or revise their efforts to increase customer loyalty via a reward system. And in a world where tracking digital behavior via cookies will soon disappear, Empower works with our clients to deeply compile and utilize their first-party data, which is greatly enhanced by the addition of customer behavior data drawn from a loyalty system.
Empower views expanding first party data through loyalty programs as fitting perfectly with our mantra of “Grow Fearlessly” — but that does NOT mean grow recklessly or blindly. We believe in a carefully planned approach of testing and learning in steps, to build a loyalty plan that customers understand, that provides actionable data and that increases profits rather than leeches off them. Aligned with the quotes of Lao Tzu and Augustine at the beginning of this post, while the task of creating an effective scheme may be daunting, companies should not let fear keep them from starting, or let excitement make them build too fast before the necessary plan foundations have been laid. Cool-headed courage and careful planning are essential to fearlessly grow a loyalty plan that increases genuine customer affinity to a brand.
