Loyalty Marketing

Today’s retailers face significant challenges as online increases its share of wallet, mall-based stores stumble, technology requirements mount, and customer engagement remains elusive for many. The business environment is clearly marked by the need to rationalize store counts, headcount, and product count.
 
As management faces up to these challenges, they seek purposeful justification of expenditures, higher shareholder returns, and greater customer engagement.
 

GameStop is making some changes to its PowerUp Rewards loyalty program.
 
Starting June 6, all U.S. members can choose to save their points and make selections from the PowerUp Rewards catalog or receive $5, $10 or $15 reward certificates that can be used to make purchases in any GameStop store. Members can enroll at any GameStop store and manage their accounts online or within the free GameStop mobile app.
 

Retailers are fighting to engage customers and keep them from going elsewhere. And smart retail marketers know that nurturing existing customers to increase lifetime value is the fastest, highest-ROI route to near-term revenue growth.

Consumers love to shop and love using social media, but somehow the two passions are not connecting.
 
Twitter, which has been piloting an embedded buy button in tweets since September 2014, is abandoning the effort. Recent studies from Forrester and GlobalWebIndex indicate generally low consumer usage rates for social buy buttons, which are also offered by platforms such as Pinterest and Instagram.
 

Customers know what prompts them to make purchases, but the companies doing the selling may not be aware.

A global, cross-industry study released by technology services provider Mindtree, “Winning in the Age of Personalization,” shows that 78% of consumers indicate that personalized promotions encourage them to buy products and services they have purchased before. Almost as many (74%) say personalized promotions encourage them buy relevant products and services they have never purchased.

Retailers are fairly good about making sure buy online pickup in store (BOPIS) orders are ready in a timely manner, but lacking in other aspects.

According to a new mystery shopping study of the BOPIS offerings of 30 major retailers from omnichannel commerce platform Kibo, the e-tailing group and Multichannel Merchant, “Unified Commerce and the Customer Experience,” 75% of retailers evaluated had orders ready for pickup within 24 hours.

Increasingly, retailers are recognizing the need to remove boundaries between channels to maximize customer satisfaction.
 
According to the 2016 Customer Experience/Unified Commerce Survey from Boston Retail Partners, 51% of retailers indicate that creating a seamless experience across channels is their top priority. To support a seamless customer experience, 23% of the retailers surveyed have already implemented a single, unified commerce platform and another 52% plan to implement one within the next three years.
 

The story of the “mobile first” generation isn’t a new one. Retailers have been told for years that mobile should be at the forefront of business strategy in order to meet consumers’ evolving expectations.
 
Yet, there appears be a disconnect between existing mobile experiences and consumer sentiment.