Answering Your Questions about Creating Loyal Customers through Behavior Change

(Note: This post was authored by Bill Hanifin, Managing Director, Hanifin Loyalty.)

We had a number of great questions from attendees at last week’s Double Your Engagement: Create Loyal Customers through Behavior Change webinar. (You can see the full webinar recording here. Check out my previous post for a brief recap.) Because we could answer some during the event itself, I’ve captured a few more here, to help anyone learn just a bit more about Contextual Loyalty and how game mechanics double your engagement and create loyal customers in your business.

Question 1: Would you say Data/Social/Mobile are the same loyalty success factors in the B2B space?  Do you have an example of a B2B company who does this well?

Answer: Data should always be at the core of program strategy design. Most brands have massive data stores on hand from past customer interactions, and even entry-level segmentation exercises can extract great value to influence strategy.

Mobile is the preferred communication channel among most customers and should be considered part of the delivery chain for loyalty programs. Identifying which social channels are most preferred by your customers is a key to success. Rather than connecting to all channels, adopt a “less is more” approach to improve engagement results.

One great B2B example is the work EMC did in applying game, reputation and social mechanics to their EMC Community Network. They increased participation in their Jive-powered customer, partner and employee communities, seeing results including a 10% increase in documents created, 12% increase in page views, 15% increase in discussion replies, 19% rise in files downloaded and 41% increase in videos watched. Even more interesting, though, in addition to layering gamification on top of their online portal: they tied in mobile functionality by measuring and rewarding real-world behavior at their EMC World event.

Question 2: How can you use some of these in B2B loyalty programs? What does or doesn’t translate from B2C?

Answer: The core concepts of strategy and program design all translate between B2B and B2C environments; B2B marketers are already adopting the approaches we discussed. Game mechanics can be effectively used to energize the competitive aspects of channel incentive programs. The difference we have seen between B2B and B2C is in the reward mix offered.

Consumer programs are more discriminating in judging reward value, and pencils have to be sharpened in assembling a mix of extrinsic rewards. Intrinsic rewards are motivating in both environments, but the greatest potential lies in the consumer area. Wise positioning of intrinsic rewards can drive results while reducing marketing expense.

Question 3: Can you speak to how your services work for small to medium business?

Answer: The best place to start is with a discussion of your business objectives with the program designers at Badgeville. Investing some time in setting objectives, doing some overview of the available data, and understanding stakeholder goals accelerates the planning cycle and improve efficiency.

Question 4: I think it is a great idea — how much does it cost?

Answer: One aspect of the early discussions mentioned in answer #3 is to do some work around the feasibility of investment in customer loyalty. Costs are variable and affordable for most size businesses. The important thing to remember is to evaluate this investment in light of the projected return on investment. We’ve had many clients be pleasantly surprised by the magnitude of ROI these programs can generate.

If you were part of the webinar and have another burning question, please let us know and we’ll get you an answer. Thanks again for participating!