Building a Loyal Customer Base: Hot Loyalty Trends for 2011

By Rieva Lesonsky

“Loyalty” is a hot business buzzword right now. If you want to get and keep loyal customers as we move into 2011, you need to know the top trends in loyalty marketing. Loyalty 360—The Loyalty Marketer’s Association recently released its top loyalty marketing trends for 2011 in Incentive Magazine. Here are the ones I think are key for small business owners in the next year:

1. Marketers will realize loyalty is a journey. Loyalty can’t be achieved overnight. As the growth of social media has shown, it takes time and experience to build trust with customers. In 2011, marketers will focus on building long-term relationships with customers, not on making the quick sale.

2. Loyalty will focus on emotions more than incentives. If the ultimate goal is creating engagement and making consumers passionate about your brand, behavioral economists say marketers must focus on the emotions since 70 percent of purchase decisions are based on emotions, not rationality.

3. Companies will assess how customer engagement and employee engagement work together. Employee engagement in a loyalty program is essential for it to succeed. Engaged customers won’t stay that way for long if employees are “out to lunch,” so both factors must be in place.

4. Customers want relevant programs. Customers seek loyalty programs that are “all about me.” Companies need to show customers that their loyalty programs are personal and relevant to customers’ specific needs.

6. “Moment” marketing is having a moment. Mobile and location-based advertising are hot, but Congress is casting its eye on restricting cellphone marketing. That means marketers need to assess all kinds of “moment” marketing—reaching customers at the moment, wherever they are, whether that’s in front of their work e-mail or using an iPad to read the newspaper.

7. Cause-related marketing will encourage Millennial loyalty. Cause-related marketing has grown in popularity among all age groups in the last few years, but Millennials are more influenced by it than any other age group. Social responsibility and green issues are key motivators for Millennials to switch brands.

8. Social gaming will be integrated into loyalty marketing. Some 200 million people play games on Facebook each month. When it’s done right, gaming can drive far more consumers to engage with your business than any traditional form of loyalty marketing.

What are you doing to drive consumer loyalty in your business?

Image by Flickr user pasukaru76 (Creative Commons)

This entry was posted on Monday, December 20th, 2010 at 10:30 am and is filed under Marketing, Thought Leadership. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.


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