Year: 2015

Brewing Loyalty

April 30, 2015 by

brewing loyaltyIf you know me, you’ll know my love for coffee. You’ll know that I need at least one cup coffee every day and that 3 cups is my morning maximum. You’ll know that I love black coffee, coffee with cream, hot coffee, iced coffee, or ice cream coffee (Starbucks Double Chocolate Chip Frappuccino—basically a milkshake, but better).  Some of my favorite coffee comes from Starbucks. Oh Starbucks, your variety of wonderfully delicious beverages just makes me smile. I drive by a Starbucks (actually 2) every morning on my way to work and use what little will power I have to drive by without getting anything. However, I recently became a member of their loyalty rewards program and it is great. You get birthday rewards, free in-store refills, and even free drinks and food. There are three levels (Welcome, Green, and Gold) and you move up according to how many ‘stars’ you earn. After joining the program, let’s just say there may have been a week when I visited Starbucks 4 times (3 times more than usual, that’s a lot for me).  I did exactly what a loyalty program should do; I fell into the ‘trap’. I’ve increased my visits (now at least once a week), started convincing people that’s where we should meet for coffee or grab a bite to eat, and try to inform everyone I know about this cool loyalty program. But enough about me and my love for coffee, here are some interesting facts about loyalty programs from this post on HubSpot.

  1. 38% of people feel that loyalty programs request more personal information than they are want to share. (Tip: Don’t be nosy. Let your customers start with a basic account and ask to provide more information as the program develops. You can always offer reward points for filling out surveys or mailing information, win-win situation.)
  2. 54% of people would consider increasing their amount of business with a company for loyalty rewards.
  3. 80% of your company’s future revenue will come from 20% of your current customers.
  4. 64% of U.S. customers said they joined a loyalty program it “makes it easy to redeem for a reward when you have earned it.”
  5. 93% of consumers think rewards are very important or somewhat important.

Creating a loyalty program could be the best thing you could do for your company…and we are here to help!

Program Design: Pulling the Right Levers

March 31, 2015 by

One of the things that I find most interesting – but also challenging –about the incentive and recognition industry is the wide variety of available economic “levers” that can be deployed for effective program design.  I commented on one aspect of this in a previous post entitled Balancing Meaningful Budgets and Measurable Expectations. A recent… Read more »

Registration is Key to Program Success

March 10, 2015 by

Regardless of the type of incentive or recognition program being designed, a key element of a successful program is successfully registering your targeted participants. In a recent blog by Roy Bergameska of Deluxe Corporation called “Reward Program KPIs: How to Measure Registration Success,” the author tackles this key element to getting a program off the… Read more »