Aligning Customer Loyalty With Brand Identity

In the past few decades, incredible advances in computer and networking technology have provided easy access to an exponentially increasing amount of information to millions of consumers at relatively little cost. Through mobile, digital, and social channels, consumers are becoming more intelligent, fickle, and demanding. As a result, many brands are acquiring technology and data necessary to meet those demands and retain loyal customers.

Aligning customer loyalty with brand identity then becomes a pivotal piece of the puzzle for loyalty marketers.

Loyalty360 will host a webinar on Tuesday, Oct. 3, 2017, titled, “CMO Challenge Report: Aligning Customer Loyalty With Brand Identity.”

The report was sponsored by Baesman.

Loyalty360 CEO and CMO Mark Johnson will be the featured webinar speaker and he will discuss various brand responses to the following question:

We continue to hear about brands that are looking to create alignment between their customer loyalty efforts and the brand promise. Should all brands try to become the next “Apple” or “Amazon?” Or is it more realistic and beneficial for brands to understand their unique brand identity, and then define objectives, process, and programs that align with that unique identity?

The responses align according to five key principles:

• Knowing the Customer and Your Brand, Then Staying True to Both 

• Right-Brain Marketing

• Good Customer Experience Comes through Good Systems

• Corporate Alignment

• Being Pragmatic

Here are a few of the brand responses from the report:

Stephanie Cohen, senior director, consumer initiatives, Aetna Insurance: “Your experience, your loyalty strategy, your consumer strategy, and your customer strategy needs to align with the brand and be an amplification of that brand. Wal-Mart should never be Apple, and Amazon isn’t eBay although they may be very similar companies. They each have their unique brands, and people shop at them for different reasons. I think when we’re looking at our industry and our company, we don’t compare ourselves to others. We’re not trying to be another brand; we’re really trying to amplify who we think we are and who we want our customers to think we are. We need to make sure our brand is unique to us, resonates with our consumers. How our consumers engage with us really serves as an amplification of that. Everything must be aligned because consumers are becoming much savvier.”

Tori Willis, marketing coordinator, San Francisco 49ers: “Apple and Amazon are pinnacles in the branding world for the seamless way they mesh their brand with their product and their vision with their action. While we admire these companies, among others in their respective industries, it doesn’t make sense for us to be the next pioneer in anything but our own 49ers world. We continue to develop new ways to interact with our fans and we reach this by sticking with our mission and goals, similar to what Apple and Amazon do with their own organizations. “The not-so-secret sauce to running a successful program is tailoring decisions for development specifically for a product within a company’s business model. What works for another NFL team won’t necessarily work for us, so we spend more time focusing on our goals and organizational priorities.”

Neil Wieloch, director insights & strategy, 1-800-Contacts: “I think it comes down to a very simple proposition: Always looking to deliver a simple exceptional experience for our customers. The other is employee engagement. It’s in our DNA and has been since the day we started. You take care of your employees so they can take care of your customers and we do everything we can do to take care of our employees. I think when you think about wanting to be an Apple or an Amazon, I think that’ probably the wrong question to ask. I think it really comes down to what your brand purpose is, what is your core of who you are and how you can most effectively deliver that every day.”

All webinar attendees will receive a copy of the report after the event.

The CMO Challenge Webinar Series has received an overwhelmingly positive response and can be streamed on-demand on the newly renovated Loyalty360.org.
 

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