Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

Forrester’s data shows that marketers have their sights set on improving loyalty in 2016. In fact, 80% of marketing decision-makers at large organizations call it a top marketing priority for the next year. And, my recent conversations with loyalty marketers reveal a desire to shift from transactional loyalty to more emotional loyalty. Marketers want a deeper, lasting relationship with customers that tugs on both emotions and purse strings. But are they actually executing on it? We surveyed 60 loyalty marketers from North America to find out.

From a strategy perspective, the marketers we surveyed aspire to, and are investing in, evolving their loyalty programs and initiatives. They turn to loyalty to drive multiple business outcomes, including retaining existing customers (of course), engaging customers, improving customer lifetime value, enriching relationships and even acquiring new customers.

Plus, they are invested in their current approach: literally and figuratively. Nearly 80% of survey respondents indicated that their programs and initiatives are effective at retaining existing customers, and a majority thinks they are effective at boosting customer profitability, improving share of wallet, enriching relationships and enhancing the customer experience. And, the majority of respondents plan to increase investments in important components of advanced loyalty, such as customer experience, analytics,...