All marketing specialists are in the business of customer loyalty one way or another. But many expect it without really giving anything of value to their customer. My personal belief is that you can’t demand loyalty before demonstrating it first with customer relations. As marketers, we can show loyalty by learning about customers using the massive amounts of data our brands generate. Yet, most marketing programs – even the ones tracking and analyzing their data – still have very little to do with consumers and everything to do with channel optimization.
Why don’t more enterprises use data to build and nurture customer loyalty? My answer is they don’t know how to properly organize, manage and analyze the data they have. That is where technology comes in.
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How Data Can Help Promote Customer Relations and Loyalty
Every interaction between your brand and a customer generates invaluable data that tells the story of who your customers are and how they learn about and buy products. All of these points are important. Loyalty starts to build from the very first experience that a consumer has with your product or service. From the time they register or subscribe, they need to feel seen and known. Your interactions with them should be personalized and exclusive.
There are several important attributes of a successful loyalty program: seamless onboarding, personalization and exclusivity, consistency, fair value and, of course, rewards. And with “loyalty program,” I don’t mean a free t-shirt with a company’s logo on it. A good loyalty program has to have a clear value for the customer. Otherwise, why join it at all?
Customer Data Platforms (CDPs)
We already talked about the value of each interaction. Now imagine thousands and thousands of customers and interactions. It’s also important to remember that consumers don’t stay the same: their needs and wants change, sometimes very fast. And your programs must reflect that.
Today, nobody expects marketers to organize and analyze all of the data themselves. There are tools that vary depending on organizational needs and the technology’s capabilities. For a brand to be successful, it needs to both gather real-time data and use analytics. Only then can you build a consistent customer journey that will impact loyalty. Successful loyalty programs are all rooted in well-organized and analyzed data.
This is where customer data platforms (CDPs) can be an indispensable tool. CDPs can gather information from across all communication channels in real time to create a comprehensive portrait of each customer and their unique features. Unlike traditional data platforms, CDPs provide a unified customer view, breaking down silos. CDPs allow marketers to go deeper and avoid superficial customer interactions. Companies that create CDP-based loyalty programs get access to accurate and timely customer data from across different sources to create hyper-personalized experiences. These experiences, in turn, deepen customer connection with your brand and lead to loyalty and revenue growth.
People Behind Numbers
Whenever I get asked about effective personalization, I recommend starting with data, because data helps understand the person behind the screen. Data helps marketing teams to see customers as unique individuals and not just as a stream of revenue.
Marketing used to be just about translating one message – the same message – to all potential and existing customers (be it through a billboard or a TV ad). Now marketers have all the tools to really know their consumers and the context they operate in, so there is no reason why brand communications should stay at a surface level. Now, we can have a meaningful dialogue about customer relations across different channels and at a time that’s right for each consumer.
