80% of large companies set loyalty as top priority

Forrester’s latest ‘State of Loyalty Strategies’ report has found that 80% of decision-makers at large organisations have set customer loyalty as their top marketing priority for the coming 12 months.

However, while the common parameter for loyalty is retaining customers, many respondents to the study stated that their coming loyalty initiatives were not solely designed for this purpose.

Indeed, 47% see ‘engaging customers’ as a key objective, while 33% saw acquiring new customers as central to their coming loyalty programme plans.

80% of respondents plan to increase loyalty spending in the coming 12 months, while 74% plan to invest in advancing analytics capabilities and 70% in enhancing mobile loyalty capabilities.

40% see personalisation as seen as the greatest challenge to loyalty schemes, followed by measuring the ROI of their initiatives.

A viable exercise?

There are said to be roughly 3.3 billion loyalty programme members in the US alone - representing an average of 29 per household.

However, in the UK, this overdose of reward in retail has led to nearly half (48%) of us failing to claim points or paper vouchers through loyalty schemes we’re signed up to, according to research from iVend Retail.

Despite this, a plethora of brands have launched or relaunched new loyalty schemes in recent months. Marks and Spencer launched its Sparks loyalty card late last year, and Nectar has announced it will be making some digital upgrades to its programme.

In March, Starbucks announced changes to its existing programme, basing the earnings structure on the money spent rather than the number of visits.