In these challenging times, businesses need to carefully balance loyalty and the cost of business. Central to this balance is the realisation that members also consider cost as a factor in determining their wish to engage with companies. So how do businesses ensure their members stay loyal to their brand at this time?

We are increasingly seeing a number of companies start to experiment with the metaverse as an environment to support their loyalty marketing strategy.

Here are four such trailblazing examples of how to explore the metaverse to boost loyalty.

There are lots of different reasons why a B2B loyalty or sales incentive program may not deliver the results you are looking for. You could be targeting the wrong type of participant, or maybe the level of rewards isn’t worth the effort of taking part.

As loyalty marketers it is hard to not fall asleep at the wheel and lose sight of the bigger picture. But if you sometimes do, be prepared to make the business case for your program when you hear the call from the C-suite. That is why we present you with a nudge - a marketing metrics refresh

One of biggest fallacies about loyalty and incentive marketing programs is that they will be a cure for all your business challenges. When this is the belief there is a tendency to quickly launch a program targeting everyone with aspirational rewards and benefits. Customer acquisition is the primary goal but quickly turns to disillusionment when all those that have signed up fail to get engaged.

One of the reasons for this disillusionment is that loyalty programs are designed to appeal to a certain segment of your customer base. In other words they are not applicable to everyone. So who should you target?

The light at the end of the Covid-19 tunnel. As countries start the process of emerging from lockdown, many C-suite executives will be struggling with challenging cashflow positions and your loyalty program may still run the risk of being deemed ‘non-essential’. So, we felt we needed to go further than offer well-meant advice.

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.