Unleash the power of loyalty program

Last week was a treat for us because we got a chance to interact with such amazing marketing professionals and to know about their journey. One of the professionals that inspired me the most was Lia Grimberg, she is the Divisional Vice-President, Customer Marketing, for Hudson’s Bay Company.?Lia is a data-driven marketing expert that translates customer needs into 1:1 personalized marketing communication that drives an improved ROI. ?

For me, she is a person who inspired us to challenge ourselves, to put ourselves in an uncomfortable place, to be pushed to learn something new every day.??

Here are some interesting highlights of the conversation with Lia Grimberg ?

In our conversation with Lia, she mentioned about top 10 companies including Amazon, Facebook, and Tesla that are 100% data-focused. She shared some amazing insights about how data can be an important asset for companies to create personalized and holistic marketing plans for their customers. Such information also helps to maximize effectiveness and optimize ROI (Return on Investment) for business. Moving on to The Bay, she spoke about how it leverages various sources of data to maintain trust and win customer loyalty. It all starts with a?collection of first-party data which is nothing but a pool of data that companies collect themselves about their customers. This data is divided into two parts:?

• Data which we as customers provide them like Name, address, email id, etc.?
• Data that the company collects on their own like transaction data,?date and time, item details, web browsing data, loyalty card data, and many others. ?

However, all this data is of no use as none of them at any point connected, they are just lying in the database. Despite having such rich data is impossible to understand the purchase behavior of an individual. So, what can be done? You need a unique key or a number that will connect all these factors to?your customer. This key will travel?everywhere with the customer, track every interaction with that specific brand. In short, connect all the missing dots and make sure to provide information that is more skin deep, and give out a clear picture of who the customer is, what their purchase behavior is, and their relationship with the brand. A loyalty program is a sophisticated way of doing that as it makes the process easier. ?

In addition to that, there are second-party data, which is also known as partnered data, and obtained when you have a specific partner or third-party data like likes, shares, psychographic data which can be purchased. Based on a unique identifier number of companies, only what you buy, but what you like what you share, and then it allows us to create predictive models. Once all these data are mixed that is when the magic happens. ?

But what about privacy? ?

With 70% of Canadians having concerns about their online privacy, they want their data to be safe, control over how their data is used, and a fair amount of exchange it is essential for?companies to protect their customer’s data. Thanks to the organization’s legal and ethical standards along with the protection act the data collected are secured and well protected which leads to maintaining consumer trust. Having said that Lia gave us an insight that these data?are only used by companies to understand business changes, predict the future, and provide recommendations to achieve a certain outcome.?

With trust follows loyalty. As loyalty is the only way to connect all the siloes. A?strong loyalty program brings a positive impact on the customer funnel as loyal members tend to be your best customers. It helps the company to?lower?acquisition costs, higher margins, and brand advocacy. That is where Loyalty programs come into the picture where these programs are used to drive specific customer behavior to meet company objectives. ?

Moving further into the conversation Lia highlighted the 4R’s of Loyalty programs that are essential to provide exceptional customer service. ?

The 4R’s of Loyalty Programs:??

• Recognition: Recognize your best customers and retain them till the end. ?
• Reward: Tangible or intangible customers love brands that reward them. A loyalty program is the best way to provide a useful reward system. ?
• Relevance:?It is when the brands collect all the data that can be leveraged to provide value to the customers in a meaningful way. This leads to a long-lasting relationship. This one is Lia favorite as in her words “loyalty at the end of the day is like a marriage, not a dating” ?
• Relationship: Loyal customers tend to stick around longer and later become brand advocates. ?

Diving deeper into these 4R’s of loyalty program Lia spoke more about how Relevance is said to be the most important out of all. Why? Because customers expect relevance, customers expect personalization, as in a recent survey, 41% said they will ditch a company because of poor personalization and lack of trust which makes a brand move towards personalizing their brand.?It is seen that brands that?use technology and data to offer customers personalized experiences can lift their sales by 5-10% and improve marketing ROI by 15-20% or more. ?

Moving on,?my best part of the conversation is Q&A with Lia. Lia was kind enough to patiently answer all our questions and guide us throughout. One of the questions that caught my attention was about the skills required to kick start our career in data marketing. To which Lia advised that as an analyst you should be able to tell a story with the data. We should have a good sense of business along with analytical knowledge. One of the key elements which need to be part of our resume is Growth Marketing. That is the area that I need to start working on to get into the analytical field. ?

Finally, what inspired me during the entire conversation was how well she used the power of Networking to be where she aims to be. Lia stated that be it, networking can be intimating for anyone, but the key is to get out of your comfort zone and put yourself out there. She told us that when things were rough for her career-wise, she knew that she still had a really, long road ahead of her from a career perspective. That is how she took up the challenge of networking and?started spending more time on LinkedIn. She started with a simple appreciation post for her colleagues, mentioning what inspired her or her admiration for her seniors. It was her way of creating a small online community for herself and her connections. By being consistent with her profile she started to gain traction. Moreover, this ended up connecting back with one of her old colleagues, and a friend, who ended up finding her a position at The Bay. That relation, along with online community and being consistent made her successfully land one of the highest positions at The Bay. “Start small”, she said, which inspired me to build my LinkedIn better, participate in the conversations, share my voice,?and?be recognized by my colleagues. ?

The session has helped us all understand that just like how data can change a brand's credibility, networking can change ours. Networking is all about getting out of your cocoon and putting yourself out there because just like how Grady Brooch said

“A fool with a tool is still a fool” unless you make the best out of it!??