B2B Loyalty Marketing in the Post Covid-19 Era

By Ko de Ruyter, Debbie Keeling and David Cox

At the start of each year, we stare into our crystal ball and predict the top trends that will emerge in the loyalty marketing space over the next 12 months.  But the current Covid-19 crisis has dramatically changed everyone’s professional and personal lives on a scale that no one could have imagined back in January. Any loyalty marketing trends we foresaw for 2020 have been postponed indefinitely.

So, what does the future hold now for loyalty marketing? We decided to put our thinking caps on and reflect on what’s in store because it’s important for loyalty marketers to prepare for the post-coronavirus period. What will the reality be in which customer loyalty has to operate? What will customer loyalty mean? 

We will attempt to address these issues by offering a glimpse of five trends Motivforce has observed from lockdown.

Now is the time to invest

As Covid-19 continues to create chaotic and challenging business conditions where many industry sectors are forced to close, suspend or modify their trading options, now is the time to invest in your loyalty strategy.  Rather than reducing focus and suspending elements of the program, this is the time for vigorous planning and innovative program design so that we are in the prime position to cash in on the tsunami of pent-up demand that will follow when the virus has passed. When the demand returns, we need to ensure that we have a strong and engaged audience that is clear in its focus of what products they need to purchase. Those companies that take the time now to invest and structure their programs will be in the strongest position to increase their market share. If we are to escape a continued recession as a result of Covid-19, demand will start as a trickle as the first pioneers emerge from their forced hibernation and start to purchase goods and services that they have been without for the quarantine period. This trickle will grow as the critical mass starts to follow. A strong loyalty program will ensure that all opportunities are directed towards clients sponsoring a program. Conversely, if there is a prolonged downturn in the economy as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, then you want to make sure that the motivational effects of a well-structured loyalty program direct any potential business opportunity towards you.

Generation Zoom has been born

Since we were about to reach the end of the alphabetical generation labels, it is important to realize the lockdown has fast-tracked the need of online connections. So, customers are re-evaluating the importance of making deep connections. And it is not just with your loyalty program. They expect to tap into the information, social support and energy of fellow program members. Social distancing has restricted physical contact, but this has been overcome by online comms technologies. This means that you need to get serious about turning your program into an interactive community. When customers see that you do what it takes to facilitate deep connections, they will be willing to pledge allegiance to your brand and offerings.

Generation Zoom has grown up fast and will expect to seamlessly continue their sharing experience. In addition, lockdown has opened up customers’ eyes to a much broader palette of possibilities. Did you ever consider ordering toilet paper online before the crisis happened? The crisis has taught people the value of digital events and skills development. Uptake of physical and incentive travel and events will be slow and likely remain at a very different pace to what it has been. Online events and enablement will become the new norm, as people have become aware of the ironically positive effects of Covid-19 on the planet. You absolutely need to get the digital touchpoints and processes in place in your program and make them flawless. Think about ways of connecting with these Zoomers. And oh yes, this does spill over to your employees.

Expertise will no longer be just an opinion

Across the world there has been a reliance and reappreciation of science and medical experts in attempts to battle the crisis. Hot air loyalty consultants will be biting the proverbial dust. Influencers, who needs them, when you can get guidance from scientific insights? The rigor and robustness of academic analysis, diagnosis and advice during the Covid-19 crisis has emphasized the need to rely on evidence-based data analytics. You will be expected to implement such a scientific approach to the deployment of your loyalty strategy. Advanced analysis will help you identify which comms and offering to use with which customers. Your loyalty marketing decisions need to become data-driven. This will result in flattening the curve on loyalty marketing switching behaviour and providing your customers with a seamless and more fulfilling loyalty experience.

Ask your loyalty agency to run sensitivity analysis, optimize your comms strategy based on propensity matching analysis and determine your customers’ preference with conjoint measurement design. If they respond with wide eyes, a sweaty upper lip and fumbling for words, move on and contact us.

Revisit your loyalty marketing strategy, but now with feeling

The Covid-19 crisis has made it absolutely clear; there is nothing more important than physical and mental health and well-being. This will have a profound effect on expectations and perceptions of customers. If your company is perceived to help customers to realize these, they will reward you with their loyalty. The stress and sheer angst brought about by the crisis will make your customers looks for new values, such as compassion, grace, selflessness and consistency and value the human touch. There will be moral winners and losers. Lionel Messi donated a large portion of his salary to enable FC Barcelona to keep paying its receptionists and pitch maintenance people. Meanwhile, Tottenham Hotspur manager Jose Mourinho, “The Chosen One”, got caught and fined breaking the lockdown rules by training in a London park. Who would you trust?

Mind the gap: Purposeful engagement

Perhaps one of the few good things about a crisis is that it allows companies to show that purposeful engagement is not just lip service or something that gets lost in strategy speak with no content or authenticity. You need to find a voice that expresses purposeful engagement. And it is important to remember that it is all about grand gestures, not grand words. This fundamental pillar of loyalty marketing is embedded in the following short story, which we love. It is about the mantra of the London underground and Embankment station. It is the story of Margaret McCollum who asks a tube platform guard what happened to the voice that tells people to ‘mind the gap’, which has gone. The man in the yellow jacket hasn’t even noticed that the analogue announcement has been replaced by a computerized voice. With tears in her eyes, Margaret explains that the voice behind ‘mind the gap’ was that of her husband. That when she would miss him, she would come to the station to hear his voice and find a little comfort. This touches the people at Transport-for-London deeply. A recording of her husband’s voice is delivered to Margaret’s home. But that’s not all. A group of employees gets together and reprograms her husband’s old recording as the voice of Embankment.

The hope for positive change after the crisis is our mantra at Motivforce. We are convinced that the way forward is in the small steps of the two-meter-economy and finding a new voice that speaks to the loyalty of customers. Distance does not mean that we have to lose touch!