How do you assess loyalty? What is loyal?
14 October, 2011 at 1:06 pm Tim Roberts ARTS Australia Leave a comment
How do you assess what is working in a loyalty program?
Of course, the first thing to decide is how you measure success.
It is often suggested that a loyalty program is working if it accomplishes at least one of two objectives:
- clients are either holding onto their customers longer or,
- are getting them to spend more with the brand.
Kobie Marketing believes that there is only one variable for measuring loyalty – engagement.
“Engagement is a minimum threshold variable that can measure individual member’s contributions to the program’s bottom line. In other words, if a member has an actively engaged relationship with the brand and program, we should measure their contribution. If the relationship is passive, we say don’t include them in positive performance metrics.“
McKinsey in The Consumer Decision Journey discusses these different kinds of loyalty – active and passive:
“Of consumers who profess loyalty to a brand, some are active loyalists, who not only stick with it but also recommend it. Others are passive loyalists who, whether from laziness or confusion caused by the dizzying array of choices, stay with a brand without being committed to it. Despite their claims of allegiance, passive consumers are open to messages from competitors who give them a reason to switch.“
This suggests that we may need the reality of a harsher measure of loyalty in the arts and entertainment to move beyond the false expectations of a fickle passive loyalty. Much of the shadow audience can only be considered passively loyal and the audience attracted to one of your shows only when it is a hit is at best – passively loyal. Actively loyal supporters are more valuable as they will support the challenging rather than just the easy or safe bets.
I have seen it quoted we should measure audiences not by tickets, but by customers. The view above adds another qualifier to measuring audience loyalty to only actually counting those actively engaged.
Entry filed under: audience development, CRM, Loyalty. Tags: audience development, competition, CRM, Loyalty.
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