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Our blog is a treasure trove of knowledge, waiting for you to uncover. Discover thought-provoking articles, hidden gems, valuable insights, expert strategies, and data-backed trends. Explore our latest insights on B2B loyalty, incentive rewards, and innovative strategies to drive business growth.

Nick Merry Nick Merry

David vs. Goliath: The Loyalty Showdown at CES

Welcome to the electrifying world of CES 2024, where the latest in tech innovation takes center stage! But it's not just about gadgets and gizmos; it's a deeper tale of loyalty. The tech giants, our Goliaths, use their legacy, innovation, and integrated ecosystems to maintain a firm grip on consumer loyalty ahead of the start-up David’s.

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The cost of running a B2B loyalty program

Part 1 of our cost of loyalty trilogy. We start with costs to consider when running a loyalty program. Firms have to navigate very choppy business waters these days. Markets seem to be caught in a broadening whirlwind of parallel crises that are systemically impacting business-as-usual. Covid, the War in Ukraine, the energy crisis, inflation, stagflation, the interest rate crisis, the soon-to-arrive mortgage crisis and, overall, a huge cost-of-living crisis.

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A Quick Guide to the Types of Successful B2B Loyalty and Incentive Programs

B2B rewards programs are customer retention solutions with specific features and loyalty logic designed to help the companies to establish brand loyalty with the businesses that they sell to. Organisations in this vertical aim at growing their market share, by ensuring that the existing clients or contacts stay loyal, satisfied, and engaged.

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Enablement, Programs, Rewards Nick Merry Enablement, Programs, Rewards Nick Merry

Ahead of the game! - When to introduce gamification to your loyalty program

Gamification is the use of game-play mechanics for non-game applications and it has grown in popularity as a loyalty program tactic. Indeed, when used effectively digital games have achieved fantastic results.

 Equally, there have been numerous examples where the gamification execution has failed to deliver. This can be extremely problematic for businesses as the financial investment and staff resources required to design and deploy gamification can be considerable.

 The top three reasons why gamification tactics and campaigns failing to deliver the desired ROI have been identified as:

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Research, Programs Nick Merry Research, Programs Nick Merry

Do B2B Loyalty programs? Overcoming the objections

Internal misalignment often begins with a lack of a strategic vision, while clarity starts with a clear sales, marketing and loyalty strategy. Developing a cohesive strategy educates the entire company on the expectations. A clear and complete vision of the program will pre-empt a “let’s-slash-the-loyalty-budget” attitude. Educating company stakeholders is an ongoing process. Like anything else, if they don’t understand its value, you are not going to get their buy-in.

A GOOD PLACE TO START IS TO IDENTIFY A NUMBER OF COMMON MISCONCEPTIONS;

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Programs, Research Nick Merry Programs, Research Nick Merry

Why you need to use gamification to increase e-learning engagement

Gamification is the use of game-play mechanics for non-game applications and there are many case studies illustrating the increased motivation when game elements are incorporated into work activities. The closed nature of the audience and our access to detailed analytics allows us to precisely manage the effectiveness of the use of games in our programmes.  

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Programs, Research Nick Merry Programs, Research Nick Merry

Embracing Social Loyalty

‘Social Loyalty’ has been gaining momentum over the past five years as an effective strategy to drive engagement, enablement and sales performance. Interestingly, many companies are still slow to embrace social media into their loyalty programs due to concerns that  they cannot control the conversation. However,  it is now apparent that participation,  as opposed to control, is the most effective way to drive participant behavior.

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How to make a ‘spectacle’ of your loyalty program

Loyalty and incentive programs attract, motivate and reward your best customers and there is no doubt that they can be very powerful marketing tools – their success has been well documented in industry case studies, academic literature and loyalty marketing awards programs.

Your best customers are the ones that listen to and respond to your loyalty promise.  But delivering on that promise is highly dependent on structuring an effective program. All too often loyalty programs fail to deliver their promise not only to participants; they also fail to meet the high expectations of senior management.

Thus, to deliver on the ‘spectacle’ of a loyalty program, it’s vital we work on the ‘science’ behind it. Here are 8 key elements to applying this science.

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They, Themselves and Your Loyalty Program - Selfies in Loyalty Programs?

The future of loyalty programs is mobile. This mantra has been reiterated across many loyalty marketing industry trend reports. It is a mantra that clearly has face value. In fact, it is a no-brainer, as much of our life now revolves around our little handhelds. Most loyalty programs are migrating to mobile platforms, allowing their members instant access any place, any time. Being able to check your points balance, the latest reward additions or quickly swiping through a learning module in a client’s parking lot definitely ups the convenience factor. But, it does not guarantee an engaging mobile program experience. That is why a number of forward-looking brands have started to engage their members by inviting them to share their ‘must-share-moments’ with the brand and explore the face value of the mobile camera.

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Enablement, Programs, Research Nick Merry Enablement, Programs, Research Nick Merry

How enablement drives loyalty

Our research has shown greater loyalty (measured by sales and other valued added behaviours) amongst program participants who are active in enablement tasks, compared to those who are not.  In looking at correlations between those participants who have undertaken enablement tasks, versus those who have not, we have observed three traits....

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