This week’s Loyalty Newswire is a picture of dynamism and innovation. Lots of loyalty program announcements, a handful of loyalty provider announcements, what data privacy looks like from the passenger seat, and the cannabis industry takes the award for headline of the week. Here is what we’re following in loyalty news …
LOYALTY STRATEGY
Customer Loyalty and Retention Takeaways from CommerceNext
Quotable: “Therefore, if I'm giving you cash back, it's really not going to get anybody off the sofa to come in and redeem a reward for like 60 cents off.” Instead, Walsh explained, for Party City customers, the brand needs to be at the right place at the right time when the customer is ready to have their annual party or event.”
How GNC Uses Post-Sale Communications to Drive Loyalty
Quotable: “Customers, says Diaz, perceive no difference in a brand whether it’s in a store or online. Not only should brands respect that, but it also can level the playing field for retailers going up against the big online merchants.”
Brands Need to Rethink the Conversation When it Comes to Customer Loyalty
Quotable: “Implementing text messaging into your loyalty program can be an effective and efficient tactic to answer simple customer inquiries like point balances, available offers and redemption codes — with no need for customers to remember login details or loyalty member ID numbers.”
5 Tips to Foster Brand Loyalty in the Age of Empowered Consumers
Quotable: “The legendary British comic book and media brand Beano has a panel of 20 children who they have a 15-minute chat with on a weekly basis. It also runs regular Skype user testing sessions with children from its target audience.”
Clearing the Way for a Smooth Customer Journey
Quotable: “The company has also added in-store cameras to count the number of people coming in and out, which enables them to keep track of new and repeat customers by using the new system to calculate the conversion rate and average ticket sales. “Our new software sends out survey questions after the sale that asks what initially brought the customer into the store,” said Rotman. “We can track the dollar value of the average ticket and even why they didn’t choose to buy something.”
CX
3 Ways to Improve the Retail App Shopping Experience
Quotable: “Traditional analytics for gauging experience — such as heatmaps and survey responses — have nudged brands closer to understanding what happens when a user interacts with digital properties, but these insights don't cut it for apps. Retailers must identify and understand digital body language to pinpoint negative experiences and resolve frustrations quickly, just like those in an offline setting would.”
Experience Analytics can Help Mobile Marketers Read Between the Lines
Quotable: “For most mobile shoppers, convenience is everything. It’s so important that, according to a recent study, 37% of consumers say they are happy to pay more for a product or service if the mobile shopping experience is better.”
DATA & PRIVACY
Cathay Pacific's New Privacy Policy: We are Recording You with Seatback Cameras
Quotable: “The Hong Kong flag carrier has amended its official personal data collection policy to allow the airline to compile a database with detailed information on passengers’ use of in-flight entertainment systems (IFE) – including, but not limited to, images recorded by seatback cameras, customers’ activities at airport terminals and even data obtained about membership activity in competing hotel and airline loyalty programs.”
Apple to Halt Human Review of Siri Recordings
Quotable: “Siri isn't the only voice assistant under privacy scrutiny this week. In Germany, the Hamburg Data Protection Authority ordered Google to stop human review of Google Assistant recordings under GDPR regulation following a data leak last month.”
Digitally Native Brands Show How to Use Consumer Data
Quotable: “Even with a limited set of customer profiles, brands can use third-party data to deepen their knowledge of customer behavior. There’s so much quality data available, even limited data sets can be appended to create a better picture of a brand’s audience.”
LOYALTY PROGRAM ANNOUNCEMENTS
- Natural Grocers Leverages Loyalty to Q3 Sales Gain
- Membership increased to 950,000 members in the third quarter, up 45% over the third quarter of 2018.
- Hyatt Unveils Redesigned Loyalty App
- New mobile app for Singapore Airlines customers
- U.S. Bank and BMW Partner for Enhanced Loyalty Rewards
- Friendly's debuts more functional, rewarding loyalty app
- Nékter Juice Bar Rolls Out Enhanced Loyalty Program
- Verizon celebrates the two-year anniversary of award-winning loyalty program
AI
How Bias Distorts AI (Artificial Intelligence)
Quotable: “The Algorithmic Justice League has also done interesting work on how to correct biased algorithms. They ran tests on facial recognition programs to see if they could accurately determine race and gender. Interestingly, lighter-skinned males were almost always correctly identified, while 35% of darker-skinned females were misidentified. The reason? One of the most widely used facial-recognition data training sets was estimated to be more than 75% male and more than 80% white.”
AMAZON
A Deep Dive into How Amazon Prime Members Shopped Prime Day
Quotable: “More than half (53.3%) of the Prime members surveyed said they shopped on the made-up sales holiday, up from 50.3% last year. Marc Mezzacca wrote in a post on CouponFollow.com that "42% of Amazon Prime members shopped because of interest in Prime Day sales" and "[22.3%] stated they shopped purely for Prime Day sales, while [20.8%] stated they needed something but were also interested in Prime Day sales." Another 10.2% of respondents said they shopped on Prime Day only because they needed something. Those who did shop, however, were largely satisfied, as 57.3% of Prime members surveyed rated the deals as "good or excellent" while 31% found them "so-so," and only 4% called them "terrible".”
LOYALTY PROVIDER ANNOUNCEMENTS
These 2 Companies Reap Rewards from Underpinning Retailer Loyalty Programs
Quotable: “Shopify, while obviously helping small businesses with their e-commerce presence, their payments solutions, they actually have robust loyalty program management as well. A lot of these small businesses -- if you're going online and buying something directly from a producer of the product, and you get a loyalty email from them, or sign up for some sort of program, that is more than likely managed by Shopify. And it's been one of the more lucrative aspects of their business.”
Loyyal Continues Global Expansion with Asia-based Investors
Quotable: “Having worked in Tokyo’s banking sector for several years earlier in my career, I’m intimately aware of how powerful loyalty programs are in the region. This perspective factored greatly to our initial concepts when creating Loyyal, so it’s a culmination of those aspirations to now have the support of Unblock Ventures, subsidiary of LINE Corporation, Recruit Co., Ltd., and Monex Group in expanding our growing client based across Asia-Pacific.”
APAC
Singaporean Shoppers Prefer Shopping in Store
Quotable: “The study also shows how much Singaporeans love to shop. Forty-five per cent of respondents said they shop because it makes them happy, and nearly half – 49 per cent – consider shopping a hobby. Of them, 55 per cent are women aged 25 to 65.”
CANNABIS
Infusing Marijuana with Data: Cannabis Industry Vets Aim to Clear the Haze
Quotable: “This past January, Headset raised $12.1 million to help expand its business. Two months later the company inked a key partnership with Deloitte and Nielsen to provide U.S. and Canadian pot manufacturers with a deep-dive into how their customers think about cannabis, how often they use it and which brands they buy, among other data.”
Read last week's Loyalty Newswire
The Loyalty Newswire is compiled and edited by the staff at The Wise Marketer.
