Another successful Customer Relationship Management Conference (CRMC) is in the books! It was an eventful three days in Chicago, full of in-depth brand presentations and great networking opportunities with retail’s best and brightest at the beautiful and historic Hilton Chicago. 

I was thrilled to hear from many attendees that our presentation with NASCAR was one of the best sessions of the show and included awesome swag and ticket giveaways to attendees (thanks NASCAR!). I was joined by Incendio’s Jenn McMillen and NASCAR’s Donald Baal as they provided an inside look into NASCAR Fan Rewards, a one-of-a-kind engagement program. If you missed us on stage, you can check out our presentation at https://www.thecrmc.com/agenda.  (direct link)

Throughout our numerous conversations with retailers, partners, vendors, and other industry leaders, common themes consistently emerged in the dynamic and ever-evolving retail landscape: 

Personalization: Marketers are still looking for ways to add more personalization and customization to their customer engagement and experience strategies – both in-store and online. Nothing new in the industry, and some marketers struggle to provide personalized experiences to their customers because they lack customer data (especially real-time access), a true CDP, or their data does not provide a 360-view of their customers. 

In a crowded market, retailers need to stand out from their competition. Personalization seamlessly integrated into a loyalty or customer engagement strategy is critical and expected in today’s marketplace. If your brand is still not getting personalization right, you are falling lightyears behind your competitors. 

Loyalty Program Strategy: Many marketers are looking to adjust their current loyalty program or find bite-size ways to make their program different and unique from their competitors. To truly stand out, a loyalty program must constantly evolve and add additional benefits and value to keep customers engaged and continually interacting with the program and overall brand. We tell clients that they need to keep their program fresh with new features, experiences, and more – in a regular cadence. Stale programs typically plateau 6-12 months after the initial program launch, so creating a loyalty framework that incorporates enhancements throughout the life of a program is critical. 

ROI of Loyalty: Marketers are starting to confront incoming pressure from leadership to validate the return on investment (ROI) of their loyalty programs. This increased pressure stems from the need to demonstrate that the program’s health is not cannibalizing regular sales but instead generating incremental value. 

At Capillary, we use LDS (Loyalty Delivered Sales) to determine the financial impact provided by your loyalty program. Our LDS strategy solves a long-standing question on every CMO’s mind about delivering ROI, measuring true Loyalty Delivered Sales (LDS), and showing the difference in sales between the two groups. When measured as a % of total sales (LDS%), it quantifies the financial impact of the loyalty program. Capillary has different levers we combine to achieve top-line loyalty maturity for your brand, driven by customer behavioral and transactional divergence. Companies can unlock up to 20% top-line growth using this strategy and take advantage of study-based LDS benchmarks for seven different elements of loyalty programs. If you are having difficulties measuring your ROI for your loyalty solutions, reach out to us today. 

If you missed us at CRMC this year (shame on you for not enjoying the tasty Rainbow Cones we distributed in our booth!) feel free to contact us now. We’re changing what it means to be a loyalty partner, truly becoming the only SaaS player with an end-to-end loyalty stack of capabilities and services. We’d love to connect you with our loyalty experts and solutions that can help propel your brand in this ever-competitive and evolving industry.

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Ned has supported loyalty efforts for brands across a wide variety of industries since 2014, with expertise in both strategy consulting and program design and loyalty technology selection and implementation. Prior to joining Capillary, Ned led sales and partnerships at PK and ICF Next, both Forrester-assessed “Leaders” in the loyalty space.