Loyalty matters: How better data drives more loyalty and more revenue

With a 24/7 shopping cycle and an increasing number of digital channels at their disposal, consumers are more empowered than ever before and forcing businesses to adapt to their wants and needs. Yesterday, Shirley Zhao, Content Marketer, and Melanie Clark, Retail Partner Manager presented a webinar, “Loyalty matters: How better data drives more loyalty and more revenue.” The webinar covered loyalty program statistics, the importance of cleansing and deduplication technology, and one key way to increase the success of your loyalty or customer engagement program.

In late 2014, we did a research study in the U.S. to look at current approaches to data quality. We had 200 respondents and they were in fields like marketing, data management, sales and finance across industries.

Here are a few interesting facts that we learned about loyalty programs:

• 91% of respondents stated that they have a loyalty or customer engagement program in place today.
• Reasons for having loyalty programs varied: 67% stated customer retention as their main driver, 54% wanted to drive revenue, 53% aimed to increase lifetime value and 51% wanted to promote their brand.
• 69%  of companies are tracking the lifetime value (LTV) of each customer. For those tracking LTV, the average value of a customer is $1,803.
• The most popular piece of information that companies want to collect from customers is email, which is requested by 81% of organizations today. That is followed by name (73%), phone number (59%) and address (58%).

Implement cleansing and deduplication technologies

When kicking off a loyalty program, it’s necessary to start with an accurate, consolidated and accessible database. Everything from removing duplicates or inaccurate information, and validating customer contact information such as email, phone and addresses will help improve your data for a top-notch loyalty program. 

And the #1 way to improve your loyalty programs: Know your customer

In order to increase your loyalty or customer engagement program's success, it’s essential that you know who your customers are—where they're from, how and what they buy and what they want to receive from you. Once you know that you can start to enrich that data, enhance your campaigns and targeting, as well as optimize your loyalty program.

You can watch the full webinar recording here, or the slide deck is available below.

For more information on improving the quality of the email addresses you are collecting as part of your loyalty program, check out our email verification solutions.