Businesses with loyalty programs that think they can just sit out the current cost-of-living emergency or simply cut the cost of their business will be sleepwalking into a huge loyalty crisis. The aspects that once were are no longer the prime drivers of the loyalty of your members. In addition to their minds, you need to carefully pay attention to winning their hearts. The following steps are essential for achieving this.

In these challenging times, businesses need to carefully balance loyalty and the cost of business. Central to this balance is the realisation that members also consider cost as a factor in determining their wish to engage with companies. So how do businesses ensure their members stay loyal to their brand at this time?

Part 1 of our cost of loyalty trilogy. We start with costs to consider when running a loyalty program. Firms have to navigate very choppy business waters these days. Markets seem to be caught in a broadening whirlwind of parallel crises that are systemically impacting business-as-usual. Covid, the War in Ukraine, the energy crisis, inflation, stagflation, the interest rate crisis, the soon-to-arrive mortgage crisis and, overall, a huge cost-of-living crisis.

Facebook’s latest re-branding to Meta has created both excitement and puzzlement in the global world of business. But what does this mean for loyalty marketing? Should loyalty marketing embrace this ecosystem and does it hold a strategic promise for corporate brands?

Just as the world began to see a light at the end of the Covid tunnel, along came the cost-of-living crisis, soaring energy prices, and a rapid rise in global inflation. It is potentially the tip of the iceberg and will inevitably lead to customers making educated decisions about what they spend their money on as costs continue to rise.That is why now is the time to make sure you continue to invest in your loyalty strategy. Rather than reducing focus and suspending elements of your loyalty program, this is the time for vigorous planning and innovative program design to ensure your customers still opt to buy your products and services.

Renewable loyalty still has a way to go to find all the pieces in the puzzle. At Motivforce R&D we are dedicated to helping clients, thought-piece by thought-piece. We are happy to share four of our thoughts:

Facebook’s latest re-branding to Meta has created both excitement and puzzlement in the global world of business. But what does this mean for loyalty marketing? Should loyalty marketing embrace this ecosystem and does it hold a strategic promise for corporate brands?

B2B rewards programs are customer retention solutions with specific features and loyalty logic designed to help the companies to establish brand loyalty with the businesses that they sell to. Organisations in this vertical aim at growing their market share, by ensuring that the existing clients or contacts stay loyal, satisfied, and engaged.

It’s important to realise that habits are developed and maintained through two mechanisms: nudging and gratification. To help you kick the habit of just focusing on true loyalty, we suggest you reflect on three key issues, and one caveat as follows:

There’s a range of loyalty program mechanics that are simple to use. Before you set up a loyalty program, there are also some simple tactics to keep in mind.

It’s a bit of an understatement to say that the global pandemic has caused challenging trading conditions for a lot of businesses. Lockdowns have meant drastically reduced or zero product sales. Customers have become less motivated to buy from you and are more cautious about their spending. And if your company runs a loyalty program, the knock-on effect may well be that program members have given up on it.

After a period of dis- or even un-engagement, cancellations, and plummeted sales figures, it is time to reconnect with your B2B loyalty program members.

‘How can rewards be used to drive effective loyalty programs?’. Answering this question, we once again turn to member psychology in relation to rewarded behaviour.

During the past decade, as loyalty programs have come to terms with analysing Big Member Data, it has been consistently observed that members increase their spending after reward redemption for a short period of time. This is part of the Motivational Cycle. So how can you use this cycle to your advantage?

Cash vs Experiences - Building meaningful and longer-term connections with customers through loyalty programs is an essential strategy for brands to survive in crowded marketplaces with little differentiation and low switching barriers. Rewards offer opportunities for unique relational positioning.

There are lots of different reasons why a B2B loyalty or sales incentive program may not deliver the results you are looking for. You could be targeting the wrong type of participant, or maybe the level of rewards isn’t worth the effort of taking part.