Loyalty & a fragmented transport network won't work!

I recently read an article on Wired.com about how USA-based transit providers are offering loyalty rewards to encourage usage of their services.

In my opinion royalty rewards are offered for only two purposes:
1. In exchange for customer data (e.g. give us your email for 10% off first purchase)
2. To change user behaviour (e.g. get 20% off rail fares for travelling off-peak)

However, this article got me thinking about how a multi-modal (rail, bus, subway, ferry, etc.)  transport network could never hope to implement an effective loyalty scheme if it only had one mode... in other words in a fragmented area, such as Scotland, could this work?

So here's my article on Linkedin explaining this in more detail:
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/supporting-loyalty-rewards-fragmented-transport-hayden-sutherland/

In reality... of course I know it won't work unless:

• All operators share the same technology/software/account application (and I know how unlikely that would be in a privatised industry)
• There are ways for all these accounts to integrate together, so that an aggregated view of all accounts is possible in one place.
  And I think it is for this purpose that an Open Transport API should work towards.

Make Customer Experience Management easy for real people

It seems like the world has suddenly woken up to the concept of "the customer journey", the idea that users have specific processes and tasks that they go through to achieve their goals via multiple touch-points & channels.
I must have heard the phrase more in the last few months than I have in the preceding 10 years. It's like every middle manager thinks they have only just invented the term... But that's OK, these people can catch-up with the online industry. We've been using: personas, customer process flows and transactional funnels for over a decade, with great success.

But now things have changed in that time. The idea that the user follows a linear journey is a simplistic model that takes no account for the multiple user types, needs, loyalty, etc. There's also a lot more data available via analytics now can be interpreted, analysed and even processed in real-time to create a dynamic site experience (e.g. product recommendations and multivariate testing) and automate various marketing processes (retargeting, etc.).

However, for all the fancy integration and mathematics behind the scenes, these complex systems still need a non-technical person to manage the experience day-to-day. Normal humans (not rocket scientists) are needed to change assets, conduct conversion experiments and approve content updates. In short, the very person who has now got excited about the improved user experience, now needs a simple way to manage the data-driven customer experience.

In the future this will all be...

Ever wondered what is going to happen in the next few years or beyond that? Well, with my digital crystal ball I’ve come up with a thought or two on where things are headed.

1. The future is going to contain more technology.
It’s going to be faster in its processing (and therefore seemingly more ‘clever’), more usable and even more ubiquitous than it currently is. However (because of this and other factors) it is also going to be more complicated and connected, meaning that even the word we live in now will seem like a pre-industrial medieval state in just a decade or two.
From clothing embedded with NFC chips costing only a few pence that tell you they’ve been at the bottom of the washing basket for over a week, all the way through to comparison websites that automatically compare the information from that telematics insurance box now built into your hybrid electric car.

2. Data is going to be the most valuable currency
We already know that the huge valuations of online services such as Google and Facebook are not just because they have great functionality (such as to link us to our friends & old colleagues) or a great way of finding stuff…  but because they collect, use and continue to build up data on individuals and their habits, preferences, friends and what they had for breakfast. Amplify this fact by an increased population which is online more often via more devices, collecting even more data and you really start to understand how (after water and  perhaps actual currency) data is going to be the most valuable commodity there is.
I’m not suggesting you will always be able to pay for a bottle of water in a street café by giving them your date of birth… but is it that hard to imagine a time when you will be able to use your Starbucks loyalty card to get a free bottle of water in return for signing-up for their new improved reward programme, which just needs to know one piece of information…. Your birthday??

Multi-channel retail meets Shopper Marketing

For many of us who come from the digital world, the mere existence of a whole area of retail analysis called Shopper Marketing is a bit a surprise.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shopper_marketing

And even those like me who are aware... but talk, write or generally think about multi-channel retailing, tend to focus on digital first and in-store second.

But if the statistic in that above Wikipedia article that '70% of brand selections are still made in stores' is to be believed... then online needs to get realistic about the influence it really has at the point of sale. Now I've no actual evidence to contradict this figure, but it does feel a rather high percentage... given that a lot of people will already have made their choice up about the brands they want before they get to the point of purchase.

Over the last few months I've built up my understanding of Shopper Marketing, having worked alongside an agency that specifically does that sort of thing. I actually have to admit I am actually quite impressed with some of the outputs of their work; producing empirical results from their in-store analysis which puts a lot of website testing to shame. For example, heat maps are carried out on different product aisles in various stores from a selection of viewer angles.

In short, digital user experience practitioners could learn a lot from the effort that goes into store planning (where to put products and how customers get to them).

So it does raise the important issue of how these two disciplines come together to:

• Understand the roles that in-store and online now have
• Map the Paths to Purchase (both Digital to Store and Store to Digital)
• Grow customer loyalty and retain existing customers

In short, multi-channel retail / eCommerce and shopper marketing now need to merge into a single area of specialisation... Multi-channel shopper marketing.

Digital customer retention

You've no doubt read my previous postings on digital customer acquisition, via a complex toolkit of PR, marketing and conversion. However, I've not really mentioned the online tools for retaining customers once you've got them.

My original thought for this posting was to list and explain them all, as I've done for other stages within the customer acquisition lifecycle. But after thinking through this subject in more depth, I came to the conclusion that there really is only one main digital retention tool ..... email.

Well, if you think about it, how do you typically get contacted by an online retailer to suggest another product from their new range you might like? How do you find out your favourite band is touring again (if you're not already browsing their website, most likely during work hours)?

Sure, you have other methods.... (and I need to ponder subsequently the value of social networks such as Facebook for creating customer loyalty) however in my mind the principle digital tool for customer retention is email.

Does anyone disagree?

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