engage magazine issue 4: how do you retain the always-on customer?

Issue 4

2015

How do you retain the always-on customer?

The experts in insight CRM & loyalty marketing, delivering omni-channel, measurable and profitable ROI to your business...

In focus:Recognising loyalty

Customer engagement advice from the experts

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ContentsIntroduction from Lindsey 1

In focus; Recognising loyalty 2

Introducing Ikano Insight’s new video 2

How do you retain the always-on customer? 3-4

I’m thinking… We can help 5

Customer engagement advice from the experts 5-6

Simplifying big data to aide customer retention 6

Hi,

As we enter the second (and key financial) quarter of the year, I hope everything is going well.

In the last issue of Engage I touched on the importance of frequency of contact to maintain a relationship. What’s also true of the early stages of a relationship is the need to get to know someone and use your knowledge of them to nuture and grow that relationship further. In the same way you would do this with any of your personal relationships, this is what brands need to do with their customers.

Knowing your customers and meeting their needs is what gets that customer coming back to you time and time again. Many of you will be aware of the 80/20 rule – 80% of business comes from just 20% of customers. So rather than focusing on new customers it’s important to spend some time finding out about the customers you already have and give them a reason to keep coming back.

There are lots of aspects to customer retention and providing added value. We’re very excited about our new video, which explains these concepts and gives you a full picture into how Ikano Insight can help.

In some ways the rise of digital has made things more complicated for brands. The use of multiple channels is making it more difficult to make sense of your data and use it to keep your customers coming back to you.

Ikano Insight helps brands to understand their data, to produce a single customer view which helps you build a lasting relationship with your customers. Ikano Insight is very proud to have recently helped a leading UK fashion retailer identify a new customer base that were extremely loyal but weren’t currently benefiting from the retailer’s loyalty programme. Since their loyalty has been recognised, these customers have been ‘upgraded’ and customer spend has increased. You can read more about this on page 2.

This year we’ll be helping even more of our customers nuture their most important relationships and create lasting loyalty, and we can’t wait!

Thanks for reading!General Manager

Lindsey Ulanowsky

1.

www.ikanoinsight.com @ikanoinsight

Introducing Ikano Insight’s new video...

IN FOCUS

Recognising loyaltyIkano Insight has recently helped a UK fashion retailer to ensure their loyal customers were being recognised and rewarded for their loyalty. As a result customer spend has increased and is continuing to do so.

So how did we do it?

The Objective The programme needed to ensure long term loyal and highly engaged customers could be identified from the fashion retailer’s existing loyalty base and rewarded accordingly.

The Approach Having segmented the customer base into tiers, Ikano Insight developed and applied a bespoke engagement model to the existing loyalty base. This model was used to assign an engagement

score to each customer based on a combination of customer value and loyalty measures.

Moving away from the traditional value based segmentation approach, highly engaged customers were defined as those that shopped more consistently across the year. Using engagement as a core dimension Ikano Insight and our partner were able to define strategies targeted towards driving frequency, spend or protection of their customer base.

The Science By applying this engagement strategy to the partner’s base, Ikano Insight recognised a number of highly engaged customers that had not spent enough to qualify for the premium level of membership of the loyalty scheme at the point that tiering was introduced.

However these customers had previously displayed high value sales behaviour. From a customer perspective this meant that although they were highly loyal to the brand, the customers would not have previously been recognised based on value alone. This meant they would have missed out on the benefits on the higher value tier. Ikano Insight knew its partner placed importance on customers who displayed continued loyalty so as a thank you these customers were upgraded and given the benefits of premium level customers.

The Result Customers are now spending more per year. The average spend per customer for the upgraded “engaged premium level” was up 10% growth year on year.

Ikano Insight is excited to have launched a brand new video which can be found at ikanoinsight.com. The two minute video demonstrates in simple terms how Ikano Insight helps our partners understand and engage their customers.

Many brands know how to gather data and know how important it is to the success of their business. But once they’ve collected it they’re faced with the challenge of not knowing how to translate the masses of data and how insight can be used to benefit their business in the long term and stay ahead

of the competition. The video is a great way of showing how Ikano Insight can solve this problem.

With Ikano Insight keeping your customers happy and staying ahead of your competitors doesn’t have to be a struggle. No matter how you’re capturing your customers’ data, Ikano Insight can make that data work harder for you creating a single customer view so you can understand the true value of your customers and how they engage with your business. Using this insight Ikano Insight will help you create

a customer engagement programme full of exciting and innovative strategies to delight your customers and keep them coming back.

2.

3.

You need to know what your customers want

Any relationship requires communication throughout, but if you want the relationship to go further you need to nuture it. You need to consider the needs of that relationship to ensure both you and the other party are happy for that relationship to go further and ultimately, for it to be a long term sustainable relationship. This is no different when it comes to your customers:

• Find out if they want to hear from you, how they want to hear from you and through which channel.

• You need to find out what they want and need from you.

• How frequently do they want to hear from you? And what kind of information do they want you to send to them?

• Ultimately what do they want from you in order for them to stay engaged with your brand, keep coming back and spend more money with you.

If you are identifying and making plans for all of these factors, you will be in a better position to begin influencing and improve your plans to foster the relationship with the customer.

Engage your customers

Smartphones, tablets and apps have made it even easier for customers to shop online and on the move as well as in store, wherever they are and whatever the time of day. These devices also make it a lot easier for customers to browse any number of different brands’ messages, whether it be to compare price, quality or delivery times. The consumer now expects to be able to shop easily and seamlessly, so how can you ensure your customers stay loyal?

Ensure you are ‘omnipresent’

You need to be everywhere your customer is. You need to ensure you can deliver what your customer wants, to all the online channels they visit. To deliver the very best service you need to be providing the best experience on every channel. Providing the best experience in store only is no longer enough. The last best experience your customer had, whether it was with you or not, will have set an example for their next experience. The challenge is making sure you consider your customers’ needs wherever they are and whatever device they are using, and making sure they are always getting the best service.

How do you retain the always-on customer?


4.

But keeping your customers happy doesn’t have to be a struggle

By analysing the huge range of data you have gathered through the different channels your customers are using, Ikano Insight can help you find out what your customers’ specific needs are. With this information Ikano Insight can then help you build lasting relationships with your customers, to keep them coming back for more - time and time again.

Give your customer more than they expect

Everyone likes the unexpected every now and again. Relationships

that are the same day in and day out can go stale, end up

with fatigue and ultimately a break-up. The unexpected

adds that extra sparkle and keeps your

relationship going. When it comes to your customers, retention is about more than giving your customers what they expect. It takes work but you need to ensure you exceed your customers’ expectations so they become loyal advocates for your brand. Creating customer loyalty is

about putting your customers’ needs first.

It’s about focusing on customer value rather

than just maximising your profits. Looking after your

loyal customers will provide you with a return on investment

in the long run.

Answer: In the same way you nurture a relationship


That’s a really good question and one I am asked all of the time! Ultimately you need to think about your objectives of running a programme. What are you trying to achieve and what is best for your customer and their experience?

We have found from a recent consumer survey that over 90% of consumers have cited points delivering discounts and rewards as the most

On 25 February Ikano Insight held its latest free seminar on driving profit and ROI through optimised customer loyalty and engagement, at the Direct Marketing Association in London.

Effective customer engagement transforms your customers into advocates that love your brand. This seminar aimed to demonstrate to both B2B and B2C businesses how to boost their profits by making the most of their customer data.

By focusing on a range of topics, including the need

Q. We are thinking about launching a loyalty programme but unsure as to how we might reward our customers as we feel having a plastic card and issuing points feels a bit out of date these days?

for customer loyalty, the importance of data to drive loyalty and engagement and how to add value to the customer journey, Ikano Insight was able to provide the intuitive insight that will drive a brand’s ROI and incremental revenue.

Speaking at the seminar were Ikano Insight’s Lisa Fowkes, Lead Marketing Strategist and Barry Smith, Senior Consultant. Of the seminar Barry said: “The seminar had a brilliant turnout demonstrating just how important customer engagement is to brands.

’m thinking… we can help

In each edition of Engage we will be inviting readers to ask us a question about customer engagement, loyalty, CRM, data marketing etc.

Effective engagement programmes are not only key to enabling brands to collect accurate customer data but also in allowing brands to provide personalised communications to engage with their customers on an individual level and build a lasting relationship. Ultimately this will help brands increase profit and grow the ROI of their marketing spend.”

If you’d like to attend our next seminar in May, make sure you register your interest at IkanoInsight.com/seminars

Barry - Senior Consultant

Customer engagement advice from the experts

5.

“Very clearly constructed and helpful seminar acting as a great guide for the next steps we should take in business”

CRM Executive at MatchesFashion.com


IN FOCUS

Simplifying big data to aide customer retention

important aspect of a loyalty programme. Of course your customer demographic may be varied and so are consumers’ preferences. We have found that the younger a customer is, the more important free gifts with purchases become. Older age groups view early access to sales, double rewards and new season launches, along with specific offers more important than younger customers. The biggest challenge of a none points programme is giving your customers a reason to swipe every time they transact with you, allowing you to

collect all of those valuable transactions – these can be linked to swipe for a surprise, prize draw entry or free gifts such as tea and coffee. Any customer engagement or loyalty marketing is a commitment and has a related cost. Typically we find the average cost works out to be circa £2- £4 per customer per year, which, compared to their annual spend, is minimal towards driving measurable incremental revenue.

Do you want to ask a question? Tweet us or email your question to [email protected] @ikanoinsight

Digital interaction and social media have fuelled the exponential growth of data, making it much more prolific than it was five years ago. But data doesn’t have to be scary.

When it comes to collecting and using data, no one wants to be in a position where they don’t capture something that might turn out to be really useful. At the same time it is important to be smart and realistic regarding the data

you collect, where you store it and crucially how you intend to use it – the data you store ultimately needs to deliver a stronger return on investment.

At Ikano Insight we consistently focus on what is right for our partners’ business. It’s all about understanding customer behaviours and personalising your marketing to the few, not the many. You want to target the individual based on smart data.

If you try to capture every bit of data available your whole world becomes complex and difficult to understand. So if it’s not relevant to your business objectives, for example return on investment, then don’t collect it – a maxim you should always keep in mind when considering what data sources to use.

6.

Ikano Insight is awesome with numbers, but even better at relationships.And that, ultimately, is what turns customer loyalty into a business’s success

No matter what stage you are at with your customer engagement we have the intelligent, intuitive insight to help you achieve ROI and drive incremental revenue:

Do you want to build a new loyalty or customer engagement programme?

Do you want to improve an existing one?

Or do you simply want to turn customer into actionable insight?

For more information please contact; Barry Smith - Senior Consultant [email protected]

07551 671 825 0115 850 3644
