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Loyalty Newswire - April 8, 2019

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By: Wise Marketer Staff |

Posted on April 8, 2019

If you’re not launching or re-launching a loyalty program right now you may want to get on the bandwagon. UAL has an interesting pricing scheme. Bots are not your friend. And one U.S. legislator is talking about making executives criminally liable for consumer data abuse.  Here is what we’re following in Loyalty news …

AIRLINES

United Airlines Just Made a Huge Strategic Decision …

Quotable: “If families actually want to sit together, they should pay more for the privilege.”

Southwest Emails Free Companion Passes by Mistake

Quotable:  “A group of Southwest’s Rapid Rewards members received an email stating they had earned one of the most coveted perks of any airline loyalty program—the Companion Pass.”

How Bots Are Disrupting Airline Ticket Sales

Quotable: “The average amount of bad bot traffic across all industries is 21.8 percent, and 94 of the 180 airline domains observed in this study exceed this average proportion of bad bot traffic. On 51 of the domains, bots accounted for more than 50 percent of all traffic—80 percent of these were from medium and large traffic sites. The domain identified as suffering from the highest proportion of bot traffic was a European airline—94.6 percent of its traffic was bots, while humans accounted for only 5.4 percent of its traffic.”

SPECIALTY RETAIL

Nike to add perks to super-successful customer loyalty program

Quotable: “vending machines that disperse free stuff — as it finds that those users spend 40 percent more than other customers, according to Nike’s global vice president of direct stores, Cathy Sparks.  Indeed, about 50 percent of the transactions at its two flagship mega-stores in New York City and Shanghai — which both opened last fall — are coming from customers who use its app …”

Reebok’s hunt for a younger consumer continues with first foray into customer loyalty

Quotable: “In return they’ll be offered experiential and product‐based benefits’, according to a press release, such as access to VIP events, training plans and early product drops. Additionally, 25 partner brands – including the snack company ProBar and beauty label Tula – have joined the program via a curated program devised by lifestyle media brand Well+Good.

HOSPITALITY

Wyndham Adds La Quinta to Loyalty Program

Quotable: “Through the addition of the La Quinta brand, Wyndham Rewards members now have more than 900 new hotels where they can earn and redeem Wyndham Rewards points, including hotels in key destinations like Dallas, Miami, San Francisco, Seattle and Toronto, to name just a few.”

Preferred Hotels Launches ‘I Prefer Alliance’ Loyalty Programme in India

Quotable: “The company has launched its new loyalty platform called - I Prefer Alliance - that allows independent hotels and regional hotel brands to extend full benefits of I Prefer Hotel Rewards to members of their distinctive guest benefit programs. This is the first of its kind step towards empowering independent and regional hotels across destinations worldwide and in India to foster impactful guest loyalty.”

RESTAURANTS

Chipotle spurs 5x surge in loyalty app downloads

Quotable: “App downloads jumped 480% from the prior 12-month average to 14,400 a day, while daily active users surged 273% to 25,700, per Barclays' analysis of data from SimilarWeb.”

CASH

When cash is your enemy

Quotable: “By activating a mindset that is more focused on being prudent and less impulsive, we can increase the tolerance of pain from parting with cash …"

Why Even Cash Rewards May Not Turn Patients into Health Care Shoppers

Quotable: "I’d have no problem going to South Shore Hospital, Newton Wellesley, Beth Israel, Mount Auburn over Brigham and Women’s and Mass. General if I’m going to get 75 bucks, 100 bucks," Hurley says. "That doesn’t feel like a difficult sell."

TECHNOLOGY

Walmart Voice Order lets you shop by speaking to Google Assistant

Quotable: “Hey Google, talk to Walmart" and the Assistant will be ready to start adding items to your shopping cart. By knowing your shopping history, Walmart says it can accurately pick the right items as you request them. On that note, the retailer says: "The more you use it, the better we'll get.”

Virgin Money uses Jaywing artificial intelligence to analyse customers

Quotable: “Jaywing is helping Virgin Money to identify which customers are most likely to consider switching credit card provider with more accuracy than before. Jaywing says Archetype delivered a double-digit improvement in the ability to predict customers most likely to leave.”

First-Time Purchases Can Predict Loyalty

Quotable: “Based on his findings, Simester advises retailers to target first-time customers “with programs designed to reduce the probability of attrition. Most obviously, do not highlight or promote these products when targeting prospective customers.” Instead, “focus on the products that loyal customers purchased on their first visits and avoid harbinger products …”

The evolution of mobile wallets

Quotable: “more than half of those consumers expressed a desire to use their mobile wallets for functions other than payment. Things like digital loyalty cards, coupons, order delivery updates, boarding passes, ID cards, event tickets and even reminders about coupon expiration and loyalty card balances are all native elements of the mobile wallet ecosystem.”

Meet BreadCrumbs

Quotable: “These choices are often made quickly and subconsciously,” says Crymble. By understanding behavioural psychology, brands are able to significantly improve consumer decision-making towards their products.”

CONSUMER BEHAVIOR

Two in five consumers feel no loyalty to fashion retailers

Quotable: “New research into customer expectations of brand loyalty has found that 42 percent of consumers feel no loyalty to any fashion retailer, while nearly half of UK consumers (47 percent) believing it no longer pays to be loyal.”

Shoppers leave brand websites to check Amazon

Quotable: “Episerver, which polled over 4,500 consumers around the world, found that nearly a quarter (25%) of shoppers “always” compare products they find on brand websites to products on Amazon and another 44% “often” do the same.”

Spending Power in the “Attention Economy” 

Quotable: “the emergence of the “attention economy,” in which loyalty is built through purposeful engagement rather than consistent purchase, makes it critical for brands to rethink traditional ways of capturing spending power.”

5 Ways to Save Loyalty Programs in 2019

Quotable: “But times are changing. Growth in loyalty programs has slowed significantly – what stood at 26% growth in 2015 had slowed to 15% by 2017.”

CONSUMER DATA

Elizabeth Warren Plan Would Jail Executives for Consumer Data Violations

Quotable: “Democratic presidential hopeful Elizabeth Warren released a proposal that would hold executives criminally liable if their companies violate state or federal laws affecting consumers’ finances or large batches of personal data.”

California law threatens customer loyalty programs

Quotable: “The law, which was passed last summer and is scheduled to take effect in January 2020, places sweeping restrictions on how retailers and other businesses can collect and use information about consumers. The letter emphasized that retailers gather data about consumers primarily to better serve them, in sharp contrast to other industries that gather consumer data primarily to monetize it by selling it to other businesses.”

LOYALTY PROGRAM LAUNCHES

TravelCenters' Quaker Steak & Lube Restaurants Launch Rewards Program

Quotable: “TravelCenters of America LLC's (TA) Quaker Steak & Lube restaurant brand is launching a new rewards program, Revved-Up Rewards, which allows customers to earn loyalty points that are redeemable for menu items and a variety of other perks earned at certain point thresholds.”

TrustSpot Launches Lootly

Quotable: “With Lootly, a business can create a customized customer loyalty program in minutes, leveraging tools like points, VIP tier rewards and referrals. With one click, Lootly integrates with all of the popular eCommerce, email providers and social media platforms.”

Loblaw Unveils New Loyalty Program

Quotable: "Loyalty programs have historically provided benefits to customers, rewarding them for the information they provide to a company," said Uwe Stueckmann, SVP, Marketing, Loblaw, in a press release. "We're extending that same idea to advertising. Our members will see more relevant ads while browsing online and we will reward them for allowing us to use their data and advertise to them."

Miles, A Loyalty Program For Everyday Transportation, Raises Additional Funding 

Quotable: “That type of reward, of note, is typical within the Miles ecosystem. Since users aren't really funneling money directly into the Miles network (users are, ostensibly, the product) the type of rewards that Miles offers is typically a coupon code or a percentage off of a subscription service – not something tangible like a free pizza or set of headphones. That said, many users may find that selling their location data all month for $35 in Zipcar rental credit (for first time users only) has plenty of value.”

LOYALTY STRATEGY

Starbucks keeps reinvesting heavily in its four-pronged tech innovation strategy

Quotable: “At the heart of that strategy is what the company calls its ‘digital flywheel’ The digital flywheel consists of four digital competencies that cut across the business: rewards, personalization, payment, and ordering.”

Why Customer Loyalty Is the Lifeblood of D2C Brands

Quotable: “For D2C brands, this knowledge should be intuitive. We ask ourselves, “How would we like to be treated by others?” One-time buyers rarely become loyalists of brands that make them feel pressured or unimportant.”

The Loyalty Newswire is compiled and edited by the staff at The Wise Marketer.