Why We’re Thankful for Loyalty Marketing

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By: Bill Hanifin, CLMP™ |

Posted on November 25, 2021

Did you know customer loyalty is a win-win-win business?

We are celebrating Thanksgiving Day in the US today. But, since the Wise Marketer and Loyalty Academy serves a global audience, we understand that most of our readers are hard at work on what happens to be simply the last Thursday of November.

Even though we don’t all share the same holidays, I encourage you to consider that any day is a good day to celebrate gratitude for all that comes our way. It has been a challenging time for many people and businesses for almost two solid years, therefore an affinity for gratitude might not come easily for everyone. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to summon up the sentiment. It’s a healthy pursuit.

Our gratitude list starts with you: our readers, subscribers, and sponsors. The conversations we have and the numbers we track tell us that our consistent efforts to publish timely, intelligent, interesting and, maybe not often enough, provocative content is being recognized. You are engaged, and provide us feedback that is essential to informing us about the topics that interest you and the discussions that need to be explored.

We’re going to keep listening and incorporating your interests and preferences into our growth. After all, stimulating a meaningful dialogue is a fundamental feature of a loyalty strategy that is both successful and sustainable over time.

We are also grateful for this business in which we all participate — loyalty marketing. No matter where we are in the business cycle, smart executives recognize that the customer comes first. That is such an easy statement to make but as we know, there are as many ways to reach and retain customers as there are paths to follow in a fall corn maze. Connecting these dots is both our challenge and our opportunity as an industry.

We are playing in a game that is “win-win-win” like none other. Advertising hopes to influence but its messages come with a heavy dose of buyer-beware. Cookies and other online tracking measures feel increasingly invasive and creepy. In fact, the retirement of the cookie should be a welcome step towards managing customer data with greater transparency. Loyalty marketing creates benefits for customers, brands, and solution providers. It is the most impactful, rational, and financially accountable tool for any brand. It’s a lot of fun as well.

Managed at the highest level of proficiency, loyalty marketing fuels strong relationships with customers that translate to higher profits and market valuations. We know the future will revolve around an increasingly mobile customer who is becoming more self-aware each day of the value they represent to the brands that pursue them. It’s up to us to manage their data and create promotions, offers, and campaigns to give them the value they seek while smartly contributing to the brand’s bottom line.

We are grateful to be on this path with you and will continue to bring ideas forward that will help all of us win-win-win.

Happy Thanksgiving to our North American friends and to all in our valued community, make the most of this fantastic Thursday!