More than half of retailers in a recent study were found to be following loyalty program best practices by allowing customers to participate in the programs through multiple retail channels, AMR Research Inc. analyst Rob Garf says.
“We see this continuing to grow, as loyalty programs are available through catalogs and call centers as well as through stores and online,” Garf says. “It’s growing to be truly multi-channel.”
At the same time, 68% of retailers plan to revamp their loyalty programs with the next two years, AMR reports in the recent study, “Loyalty Programs That Actually Create Loyalty: The Retailer Perspective.”
“That tells us that current loyalty strategies are broken, and retailers realize they’re broken,” Garf says.
In addition, many of the loyalty programs in line for renewal are at least five years old, Garf says. “What retailers created five years ago doesn’t mesh with what customers expect today,” he says. “So retailers are stepping back and figuring out how to make loyalty programs more than just discount programs to ones that truly create an emotional connection with customers.”
Key to building more effective loyalty programs is deploying them in a multi-channel environment that lets customers earn and redeem loyalty points in any channel, including catalogs, contact centers, stores and web sites, Garf says.
To carry out true multi-channel loyalty programs, he adds, retailers need to have data storage facilities that maintain consolidated and clean information on customer shopping activity across all channels. “This allows real-time access to customer information recorded through any point of interaction, so that retailer can pull up purchase history in real time for any channel, including web, kiosks, call centers and stores.”
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