What are the Top Loyalty Trends of 2012?
Put Data Capture at the Top of Your Loyalty Wish List
Austin, Texas: There has been a great deal of discussion these days as to the newest loyalty trends for 2012.
The strongest new platform seems to be Near Field Communications (NFC) which allows smartphones and similar devices to communicate with one another when their distances are very near. I think this system shows a great deal of progress and will be making strong inroads over the next 12-18 months.
Location-based apps have had some success but I think newer technology will overtake it. Other than Foursquare, which has captured critical mass, most of the others will fall by the wayside.
Mobile wallet also seems like a trend that will continue to grow, as consumers are feeling more trusting of their devices for making payments. People have been purchasing music and apps through their smartphones over the past few years with little pushback, so the barrier for higher ticket purchases is not too real.
As these trends continue to build momentum, the one area that many businesses fail to put their most significant time and effort on is data capture.
By capturing and analyzing your customer data, you can more easily pick up trends, test market products and pricing based on your own pre-defined criteria and you can measure success.
Testing and measuring– these are the cornerstones of any social media campaign, as well as most marketing campaigns.
With proper data capture, you can target specific niches based on previous purchases or promote add-on sales to go along with previous purchases.
You can track which customers are loyal based on pricing specials alone vs. those that are loyal out of habit or for convenience.
Data capture allows you to target a specific loyalty program to specific audiences–making your offers more appropriate and more desirable to each subset.
Everyone tends to fall in love with the loyalty program itself — the big prizes, the exciting media campaigns, etc.
Few people get excited over data capture…..except the most savvy marketers.
This order should be reversed.
Spend your time on the back end (data capture) for a more successful incentive program on the front end.
Happy Promoting!
