1Loyalty programmes are more about customer insight. Loyalty is a ‘mindset’ about building relevance for customers through ‘information’. So it is a larger transformation effort centred on creating an ‘information-led’ strategy with the customer at its heart.

Ensure that you have the analytics firepower to glean insights from the programme and apply the learnings to other parts of your business.

Don’t leave the insights to the marketing department alone.

2Having a loyalty programme without driving “relevance” for customers is no good. Use the information that a powerful loyalty programme collects to personalise the experience for your customers.

3Get more ownership of loyalty programmes at the front end. Often you walk into a retail store or bank and expect some form of recognition as a loyal member.

Can I expect to connect with a fashion-savvy customer care associate of a fashion retailer and seek his advice as I weave fashion into my life? Would a retailer formally allow their associates to build up such a customer relationship? And can that be a feature for “fashion-forward” customers in a retailer’s loyalty programme?

4Transform your loyalty programmes into digital-centric initiatives. Can I use digital to personalise my interactions with customers? An example is Target, which with the MyTargetWeekly Facebook application provides its fans a customised shopping experience with in-store deals that fit their wants and needs through a recommendation system that gets “smarter” as they use it. Another example is US retailer Tory Burch as a company using a private website with its loyalty data. The programme provides access to a secure area of its website for its better customers, where it shows designs that could be put into production.

5Loyalty points as a method of building loyalty is myopic. First build a robust programme and then leverage partnerships.

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