Customer engagement and traditional loyalty programs
For those retailers that have traditionally relied on spend behavior analytics as the intelligence for their customer loyalty strategy, the question arises if that’s enough in today’s world of customer engagement.
Here are a few examples to highlight the limitations of using spend only insights:
- Is customer centric merchandising possible without obtaining in-store, shopping behavior insights?
- Do loyalty programs tell us much about the customer’s profile, attitudes and interests?
- Can customer communications be personal and relevant without knowing the shopper journey?
Here is my take: as the data universe around the shopper expands, bricks and mortar stores are lagging behind online retailers for getting insights from combined spend, shopping, demographic and social data. With a fuller view of the customer’s in-store behavior, spend patterns and personal interests, online stores are realizing better engagement capabilities and ways to target shoppers in a meaningful way.
In fact, it could be argued that, as customers increasingly look for immediate deals during the shopping journey, spend side driven loyalty programs are actually contributing to an erosion of trust and loyalty – the opposite intended effect. Time will tell.
Read more about how a broader view of customer behavior can result in improved insight and engagement.
Go to SMI’s solution for customer engagement.