Loyalty – Battleground or playground

Yesterday, I received a newsletter from the Colloquy entitled “Loyalty marketing is the central battleground for companies today” and this made me reflect on a presentation last week by Anna Pollock where she talked about the language of business and how it has a military tone – battle, identify target, go in for the kill….etc 

So are the loyalty companies and loyalty teams within organisations really paying attention? 

They want to go into BATTLE with each other to gain our loyalty – with that approach are they going to beat us into submission OR are they going to try and “understand our needs”, “engage with us”, “tailor their service to our needs” and look to “build a long term relationship” – all phrases which support the notion of a “personal relationship” – do you go into battle with the individuals you have a personal relationship with – you may differ in your opinions or disagree but do you really BATTLE?   I don’t and I don’t want the company who is providing me with a product or service to battle over me.  I want them to understand my needs, be available to engage with me, when I choose to engage with them and I want a service which is as close to my needs as it can be for the price I am willing to pay and if I have an ongoing need for that product or service and my experience with a company is a good one then I will choose them again and again based on my experience with the organisation, developing a relationship based on past experience and future expectations.

From what I see, I am fairly typical in my approach to purchasing products and services and when you look at where we are engaging online, many of us are using the web to connect socially as well as from a business point of view and a place to learn about people, company’s products and services.  There are some people who vent on some sites, but generally the ones where you connect with friends, relations, business colleagues and acquaintances – the communication is friendly, engaging and fun – no guns knifes or ammo!

Maybe the loyalty companies and loyalty managers should spend some time looking at the bigger change which is taking place with us humans and learn from our behaviour and the way we communicate, not just the numbers in the market research – we are doing a lot more talking, interacting and learning before we hand over our money – but I dont see us going into BATTLE – do you?

Have a look at Gerald Zaltmans books about “How Customers think” and “Marketing Metaphoria” interesting insights in to the complexity of engaging with consumers.

    Supporting Transient Communities with Twitter

    Over recent weeks and months there has been a significant increase in the number of Twitter users and in the various ways individuals and groups are tweeting.  One of the exciting ways to use Twitter is to be able to use the tool to harness knowledge and information from a community, large or small, which forms at a point in time.  For example, at a conference, seminar, exhibition or other educational, business or sporting event.  

    Through using #tags as a means of isolating tweets relating to a specific subject, for example #ecsm http://twitter.com/home#search?q=%23ecsm was the tag for the social media conference I was a speaker at last week in London and a friend of mine is attending a conference in San Francisco http://twitter.com/home#search?q=%23wbenc

    The communities which form around these events are transient and temporary, however the #tag allows all attendees to be connected for the duration of the event and provides a way to retain the communication about the event to all ettendees and offers an opportunity for others to access the conversation and also the links to other resources including the speakers, attendees, interested parties following the event and also links shared through twitter on the subject of the conference.

    This ability to harness knowledge and connect with individuals who are interested or participating in a subject matter enables us to filter the noise on the web and enable us to develop our knowledge and understanding of a subject through others with a similar interest.

      Unicom Engaging the Customer Conference

      Last week, I was asked to speak at Unicom’s Engaging the Customer Conference, this was an excellent event for a number of reasons, good speakers, interesting topics, enthusiastic debate but mostly due to the social nature of the conference and the structure of the sessions chaired by David Gurteen.

      The whole event was interactive and social due to the Twittering which was going on by both attendees and speakers using the tag #ECSM

      Below are some of the presentations from the event. The first one is my presentation from the event:

      Business Value Through Customer Engagment

      Next up was Ian McNairn from IBM, who talked about how IBMers current and alumni are using social software both inside and outside the firewall to marketing themselves.

      Using Social Software to Market yourself – inside and outside the firewall

      Will add a couple more over the next couple of days as they become available.