We're in the 4th quarter of the year and I thought it was a good time to update you on news around The Wise Marketer™ and The Loyalty Academy™.
During 2019, we have progressively sharpened our focus on the topics that you want to read. We have experienced tremendous growth in readership and time spent on the website and the numbers tell us that the content you stop by to read is worthy of more than a click or two during your day.
By: Bill Hanifin, Managing Editor
Original Content
Since the collective management of Wise Marketer Group (WMG) is composed of loyalty practitioners, meaning people who have rolled up their sleeves in planning, operating, and measuring success across a myriad of customer marketing initiatives, we are always mindful to reflect the best practices of the trade in our work here. One thing we have done is to maintain an active two-way dialogue with our newsletter subscribers, workshop attendees, and people we meet at conferences. We also reach out to our CLMP™ community and our content partners to generate feedback on how we can improve and serve the industry better.
We’ve been urged to sharpen our focus and to continue to generate original content on a global basis. We heeded that advice and believe the growth we experienced in 2019 has come in direct correlation to the quality of our content, as well as the investments we’ve made in our website and marketing platforms.
Loyalty Education, Certification, and Corporate Training
The significant progress made by the Loyalty Academy is supporting these trends. We held two successful CLMP public workshops during the year in Toronto and Fort Lauderdale. So far, we have another scheduled for Toronto in May 2020 and expect to be back in Fort Lauderdale in October 2020.
The most recent workshop certified over a dozen professionals and it was encouraging to see the demand for knowledge and education in customer engagement and loyalty marketing being satisfied in this format. There was energy and enthusiasm in the room and those who received their CLMP at the conclusion of the event are already contributing to the growing CLMP community of around the world.
Mike Capizzi and the Loyalty Academy team delivered several corporate training events during the year, and we see continuing demand by brands and providers to efficiently equip their teams with the essential tools of success in loyalty marketing. Somehow, Mike does this work while globe-trotting at a high cadence. He’s just completing an event in New Zealand and will be in Brazil later this month for the first ever CLMP workshop in that country, hosted together with the ABEMF (the loyalty marketing association of Brazil). And we have already scheduled two more international workshops in 2020, in Ireland and India, so the momentum continues.
Remember, the Loyalty Academy is the first and only reliable source of loyalty education in our industry and it resides here within the Wise Marketer Group.
Editoral Focus for November: Retail
As Managing Editor of the Wise Marketer, I’m concerned about covering “everything” related to customer marketing, while maintaining the quality we are committed to deliver. This month we are sharing stories about the Retail industry. That’s our focus for the month, as we head into the holiday shopping season.
To give you an idea of what’s to come in the balance of November, we will be talking about the evolution of the holiday shopping season. It wasn’t long ago that Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and Secret Sunday were separate events. Now they are molding into what is labeled as a “Golden Quarter” of retail sales.
While retailers scramble to win all available dollars of sales, we will explore what’s driving the mind of the consumer. We’ll review the latest findings on what among price, quality, experience, or brand reputation are the biggest drivers of consumer purchase.
Finally, we’ll look at whether brick and mortar retail can succeed without people and whether it should even try. We recently took a tour of retail concepts like Amazon Go and examined self-checkout apps at Sam’s Club among many other stops in a recent “tour de retail” covering New York to Florida. We’ll share our findings with you about striking the right balance between people and technology to craft the perfect CX for in-store experiences.
Pivoting from the Success of the Loyalty Academy Conference
We have made some big decisions as well. We've been on a 5-year journey with our annual Loyalty Academy Conference™. Coming out of strategic planning meetings, we realized that although each conference event has been highly regarded by those who attended and participated, our mission would be better served through a different form of public event.
That enlightenment caused us to rethink our approach to public events; and during 2020, we envision a series of half-day events (coming to a city near you) to tap local audiences, make travel easier, and to deliver high level content in intimate settings. For that reason, we are retiring our Loyalty Academy Conference and will soon announce plans for the first of these new tailored events.
We appreciate your support as we continue to pursue the mission to be the leading voice for Customer Engagement and Loyalty Marketing on a global basis. We will continue to deliver timely and unbiased global news, perspectives, research, insights, and educational products to a growing global audience of customer marketing professionals — and we are glad you are with us on the journey. Spread the word.
