Coming up with brilliant product development and loyalty marketing strategy is the foundation for business success but diligent pursuit of flawless execution makes an idea come to life.

Just the other day, I received an email from Zavee.com which got my attention. Not only did the subject line “Top 5 Mystery Merchants of the Month” stand out in a pile of freshly delivered email competing for attention, but I was compelled to click through the boxes to see which local merchants in my area were offering 20 – 50% cash back.

If you live in South Florida and aren’t a member of Zavee.com, you’re missing the boat. With a merchant group that numbers over 500 and continues to grow each day, you’re probably shopping at merchants in the Zavee social shopping network and missing out on great cash back deals. Membership is free and all you have to do is register the payment cards you regularly use while shopping locally and you’re in the game.

My curiosity had me clicking through each box starting with the 50% cash back and working my way down. One or two of the offers were available on the member’s birthday, one was triggered by first purchase at the merchant, and the other was an “always on” offer.

For example, Tropical Smoothie was offering a daily-deal style 50% cash back offer on purchase made on the member’s birthday. Red’s Backwoods BBQ offered the always-on 20% off with a 5% additional bonus for Zavee.com Gold members. All deals were active for a twelve month period and some encouraged bounce back, being good “on your next visit”.

My enthusiasm for the Zavee email really driven by the effectiveness of the email itself. Though I’m not a copywriter and can’t claim to be an email marketing guru, I can tell you what gets my attention and how to create customer engagement. I can also tell you from client experience what works and what doesn’t. The Zavee email had a subject line that drew me in and  a clearly communicated offer that spoke as much through simple graphics as it did text.

Even the best strategies can fall down if they are not executed well. This Zavee email should be considered a keeper in the daily deal space or for anyone hoping to cut through the email marketing jungle.

The loyalty marketing landscape is changing – quickly and dramatically. Social Loyalty is a new concept to be understood and embraced.

Millennial marketing is a focus of Social Loyalty and I occasionally see posts about whether Generation Y (Millennials) can or will give their loyalty over a sustainable time period to any brand. Based on our study of Millennial behavior and backed up by recently published  research from Aimia on US and UK Millennials, we know that loyalty can be won, but not through traditional tactics.

One of the talked about tools to drive loyalty among Millennials is “Gamification”. The question is, how does game theory relate to loyalty marketing and how can it be applied in practice to get results, not just with Millennials, group but across the broader population segment known as Consumer 2.0?

I’m proud to be presenting “The New Face of Customer Loyalty: How to Engage and Motivate Customers in the Social Era” with a leader in the social loyalty space, Badgeville. The webinar will take place Tuesday December 6, 10am PST / 1pm EST and I urge you to register here to become part of the discussion.

Badgeville was recently selected to be part of Forrester’s annual list of social platforms for enterprise technology marketing in its report “Market Overview: 2011 Social Media Platforms For B2B Tech Marketing.” You can read more about that honor here.

There is a tremendous opportunity for leadership in this new world of loyalty marketing and I’m proud to be presenting tomorrow with Havy Nguyen from the Badgeville team to explore some of the possibilities.

Register here for this webinar and bring your tough questions about the future of Loyalty Marketing and Gamification to the event tomorrow.

I’m a former Borders customer and past member of the now defunct company’s Rewards Perks program. While I freely admit to moving a lot of my business to Amazon over the years, I was sorry to see Borders go.

Maybe it’s nostalgia, but every once in a while I like to walk into a book store, stroll the aisles, and leisurely look for a title or two I may have missed. Just like reading a physical book has a tactile advantage over an e-reader, I also think a physical store has a sensory advantage over a virtual storefront—which for me, unfortunately, ultimately gets trumped by the superior selection and lower prices of an Amazon.

But back to Border’s. When the pieces of the company were sold off, Barnes & Nobel made an important purchase that went beyond the chain’s physical inventory—they bought Borders’ customer contact info and importantly, their purchase history, giving them the opportunity to send out personally relevant communications.

The wooing has begun, as B & N is now attempting to turn me from a qualified prospect to a customer. They’ve sent me a few e-mails to date and while I think my scant recent personal history prevents them from sending truly relevant messages, I do appreciate their efforts.

From a communications perspective, I think they’ve made a smart progression from showing sympathy over the loss of Borders, to being transparent when revealing the use of my Borders’ customer data, to being justifiably “retail-y” as they seek my business. See the messaging sequence below:

October 1: Sympathy Over the Break-Up

Dear Borders Customer,

My name is William Lynch, CEO of Barnes & Noble, and I’m writing to you today on behalf of the entire B&N team to make you aware of important information regarding your Borders account. First of all let me say Barnes & Noble uniquely appreciates the importance bookstores play within local communities, and we’re very sorry your Borders store closed.

October 15: Honesty and Transparency

Dear Borders Customer,

As a reminder, on September 30, 2011 Barnes & Noble acquired the Borders customer list. The transferred personally identifiable information in the customer list includes customer e-mail addresses and purchase history. No credit card data was transferred. If you would like to opt out of having your customer data transferred, please go to www.bn.com/borders by November 2, 2011.

November 7: Asking me out on a first date.
Subject line: Let’s get to know each other, starting right now.

You’ll always be welcome here. Nothing says welcome like an extra 30% off your first purchase at Barnes & Noble.

November 16: Attempt at a second date.

Subject line: A convenient 40% off at the always convenient BN.com

Your nearest Barnes & Nobel is open 24/7—at BN.com. Take an Extra 40%off one item.

I think Barnes & Noble is in a tough spot and agree with many that they’ll be the next domino to fall in the radically changing book industry. That said, I do think they’re doing a good job trying to convert prized prospects—former Borders customers like me—to the B & N fold. At least, they’re going down swinging.

“You are receiving this message because you sent me an email on either a Saturday or Sunday. Between Monday – Friday, we deliver good value to clients and generally outperform anyone we compete with. We also place high priority on our faith and our family and treasure 8 hours of sleep on at least 2 nights per week. We value your relationship and will respond to your message bright and chipper on Monday morning.”

That’s the out-of-office message that I have been considering placing on my inbox during the weekend. I imagine that its impact would be equally divisive as Tim Tebow currently is in the NFL. Some would quietly close their laptop and feel liberated to spend more time with their family over the weekend. Others would perceive my message as self-righteous or think I had gone wacky.

There’s a bigger thought to be shared here. In an always-on, always-connected world that increasingly treats instant gratification as table stakes, it is becoming truly challenging to engage people with messages that require more than a glancing read. USA Today conditioned the populous to seek news in snippets and now video is in high demand as many don’t even want to read, they want to listen to a message while they sip coffee, check email, and update their to-do lists in Evernote.

Old-school business machismo was represented by the corner office and liberal expense accounts. Today, the appearance of being ever vigilant over our digital empires and responding to inquiries with minimal latency is the source of business fist-pumping.

Given the tendency of business people to make the energizer bunny seem a slacker, it should not be a surprise that we have difficulty engaging customers to open our emails, sign up for our member clubs and trigger them into action with 2 for 1 offers on Wednesday afternoon.

If there was ever a time to replace activity and noise with transparency and trust, it is now. The more we stand under the information waterfall striving to absorb as much as we can and stay ahead of the information game, the more we are at risk of eroding our ability to form solid thoughts and create practical solutions for our business.

I’m all for meeting deadlines, over-delivering, and breaking new ground. That’s not in question here. What is becoming a nasty little habit for many business people is buying into the notion that we have to be everywhere, communicate in every channel, and never slow the cadence enough to hear what’s around us.

The noise we just might be missing is the voice of our clients and our customers. Marketers need to listen more, temper the cadence of communications and make greater impact with less impressions. I don’t want another solicitation letter from Southwest Airlines offering me their co-brand credit card. I have already put one per month in the shredder for the past 12 months. I do want to receive just one survey asking me about my favorite destinations, my hobbies and my opinion about what could improve their cabin service. That would make me feel more like they care about me and, depending on what they did with my survey response, would influence my next choice of airline.

You probably won’t see that out-of-office message from me any time soon. My Smartphone represents too great a temptation to respond to emails in the moment, and my natural desire to serve those who trust me makes clamming up until Monday just a quaint thought.

Still, I know that customers are out there talking. And I plan to listen. How about you?

As I scanned the rapidly moving traffic on my Twitter feed the other day, there was one tweet in particular that caught my eye. It was from the journalist David Carr who was quoting Adam Moss, the editor of New York magazine:

“I think the advertising business is in greater upheaval than the journalism business.”

As an ad guy, I had to dwell on that one for a moment. When I think of industries in crisis due to the onset of the digital age, the newspaper business—which is bleeding customers to free online news sites—pops up neck and neck with travel agents. But after careful consideration, I realized that Moss had a point.

Putting aside for a moment the dismal state of the economy and its impact on ad spending, the upheaval in advertising has been going on for several years. First it was a move away from traditional advertising vehicles (TV, radio, print) to online media (e-mail, banners and Web sites). This set off the first wave of “advertising is dead” claims.

In 2005, with an article titled “Chaos Scenario”, and with a follow-up in 2007 called “Chaos Scenario 2.0”, Ad Age columnist Bob Garfield wrote about “a post-apocalyptic media world substantially devoid of brand advertising as we have long known it.” In 2009, IBM issued a white paper titled “The end of advertising as we know it” that discussed, “the shift in consumer attention from television to other media formats.”

But these commentaries, while pointing out the move from traditional media to digital, only hinted at what’s taking place in 2011. Today, the really big change involves the continuing evolution of social media and consumer review sites.

Some pretty big names in the world of marketing are again saying it’s the end of advertising, but their message has been tweaked a bit. The claim: the ever-rising influence of Facebook, Twitter and now Google Plus, and consumer review sites like Yelp, Angie’s List and Trip Advisor, have made advertising obsolete.

Here are a few notable, recent examples of those who’ve jumped on the 2011-version of “advertising is dead”:

• In May, at ad:tech San Francisco, Antonio Lucio, the global marketing chief of Visa, claimed that “recommendations are the new advertising”.  Lucio and suggested that brands develop “an army of advocates” to promote their products via social media in lieu of traditional media.

• In June, writing in Forbes, the head of global agency Gyro, Rick Segal, extended the “advertising is dead” claim to B-to-B marketing. He stated that: “Death was inevitable when people began carrying their telecommunications and computing power with them.”

• In September, at the interactive OMMA Global conference, futurist Faith Popcorn got even more declarative. She said that with arrival of the “hyper-connected” consumer “advertising is so over. If the consumer believes you’re paying for their time, they don’t really believe in it.”

Add to this scenario several years of shrinking advertising budgets, and it’s easy to see how some might gravitate to an “advertising is dead” mindset. After all, it’s easier and cheaper to plow your limited marketing dollars into social media and gaming the consumer review sites than trying to target a market whose media choices are increasingly fragmented.

My take: advertising will survive—but it’s morphing into something new.

Traditional advertising—and I think that category now has to include e-mail and Web banners—will stick around. After all, social media alone is not right for every business, every target market and every marketing situation. But there’s no doubt that the way we reach customers is continuing to change, as we recalibrate the best ways to reach customers in a personally relevant and timely manner.

A good communications program is still about engagement, our ability to attract new customers and nurture relationships with our current customers through a compelling and strategically sound message. And when it comes to achieving these aims, there’s no one-size-fits-all solution. Especially with the ever-changing way customers digest their information.

A surprising recent study (albeit, by the US Postal Service) showed that direct mail was actually preferred over e-mail by the Gen X demographic. And social media burnout has been well-documented, with a groundswell of people choosing to shut down their Facebook and Twitter accounts—or at least interact with them a lot less frequently.

So in the future, I think that successful marketing campaigns will be as diverse as the audience you’re trying to reach. It’s as likely to include a personalized e-mail as a promo on Foursquare, a targeted mail piece as a video on YouTube. The key is in finding the right mix for your target market, and making sure that your communications are as compelling, timely and relevant as possible.

What do you think?

Of all the social media communications channels I invest in, Twitter is the most enigmatic to me.

I use it and find value in posts from both followers and those I follow. At the same time, I encounter quizzical looks from friends who think I am somehow child-like and time-wasting to be spending time writing updates that are always compressed, sometimes cryptic and on occasion in-decipherable.

I’ll admit to a few things:

• Twitter presents the constant temptation to become a one-way broadcaster of self-promotional messages. All I can say is resist, resist, resist. In real life, people don’t fall in love with others who talk about themselves constantly. Why should it be any different online?
• I don’t always engage in conversations. Because there is such a thing as “real business” to attend to, I can’t sit and watch the stream all day, responding promptly to replies, DM’s, and other comments. Thankfully, there are some really great tools to help you manage your social medial channels and I use one of the best, Sprnklr. I do respond to just about everyone, but with timeliness that is often suspect.
• I’m not consistent. Social Media muse @TheDudeDean told me long ago to tweet consistently. I do my best, but there are gaps. This week is an example with cross country air travel and day-long meetings cramping my Twitter style. I acknowledge this but don’t necessarily apologize. We’ve got to have priorities and Twitter should not rule your life.

I read an article this week which mused that Twitter could be destined to “occupy a niche as addiction to few and irritant to many.”  I’m quite comfortable with this reality and take it into account when recommending communication strategies for clients.

It is not mandatory that every customer facing marketing strategy incorporate Twitter, Foursquare, or even Facebook. While it is absolutely right for some, others will find it a waste of time and resource.

If your customers are all online, talk to them through that medium. If they are sitting at the kitchen table reading their mail, you better find your way to that venue. Usually it is through a mix of several channels that you can create customer engagement. The big challenge is to identify which ones matter and to prioritize their importance.

To sum it up, there is wisdom in discerning between “everyone is doing it” and “I need to do it”.

Sounds like Twitter material to me!

Someone help me. I’m being bullied by Southwest Airlines.

Actually, a better set of descriptive terms would be pestered, annoyed, or amused, depending on the day.

The source of my discontent is my mailbox. Southwest has sent me a solicitation for its frequent flyer cobrand credit card at least once per month for probably the past 2 years. The mailers are varied in style, size, and color, and each are of high quality. I know the airline is spending significant money on each piece. What’s your guess as a direct marketer? $1? $3?

Whatever the price, it’s all being wasted on me and if they continue to send these mailings, I am going to dig out a receipt for the shredder I recently purchased and send it to them for reimbursement. Their mailers being a big contributor to shortening the lifespan of my shredder, it only seems fair.

In all seriousness, I spend a lot of my time sorting through customer transaction data to create Customer Strategy. When we begin to address how to translate strategy into visible campaigns, we focus on a number of tactical elements, forming a program blueprint for operations. The communications strategy is one key step in the process and I am sincere in attempting to help clients manage their finite marketing budgets to their best advantage. The first step to managing resource allocation is to decide “who” to mail and “what” we should mail to them. There are always value thresholds that trigger certain mailings as well as limits to how much we advise to invest in a specific group of clients.

For instance, if we see a segment of customers attractive to the business on any number of metrics, we’ll test various mailings across the group and measure results. I am pretty doggone sure that if I noticed a segment that I had mailed consistently for more than 1-2 years with no response, I would drop them from the list, at least for a while.

None of what I have just written will surprise an experienced direct marketer. Why then does Southwest continue to mail and mail and mail?

Don’t get me wrong. I’ve come to like the airline and its in-flight experience. And their recently re-launched Rapid Rewards program was extremely well communicated via email and print mail.

Southwest is doing some things well, but inexplicably is impacting my impression of its brand with these non-stop credit card solicitations. Maybe the answer is that their bank partner is driving the mailings, and the partner’s desire for new cards outweighs any concerns about customer experience.

Cobrand relationships carry inherent conflict of interest and must be carefully managed. The bank’s desire for new cards can negatively impact customer impressions of the airline itself. Most consumers will only notice the Southwest branding all over the envelope. The bank’s name is relegated to fine print inside the envelope.

Given this scenario, who do you think stands to gain most from mailing me to death, and who is really taking the risk from a branding perspective? Personally, I would like to be removed from their list and have Southwest award me Rapid Rewards points in exchange for all the money they will save on me.

As Paul Harvey says “now you know the rest of the story”.

What do you do when you have a solution in your hand in search of a problem?

If you’re the creator of the solution, you sell, sell, sell, crafting magnificent stories describing the power of your solution to change lives and create profits. That approach is mandated by fiduciary responsibility to those investors who brought your solution to market. The effort and persistence are admirable, but in time the substance of your solution will come clear, as will the reality of market demand for that which you are selling.

There are lots of examples of solutions seeking problems to solve. At the moment, contactless payment, many online reward applications, and almost every piece of exercise equipment sold through infomercials come to mind. One exception in the exercise category is TRX, which I’ve used and think is worth every penny.

I’m also thinking of QR codes.

I’ve written about QR codes before, highlighting the digital curiosity they can create and some practical uses they can provide to connect local merchants to their customers and enhance the value of print media at a time when it is teetering on the edge of destruction.

American Airlines seems to agree with my take, as the envelope I received this month with my AAdvantage frequent flyer status inside carried a big fat QR code on the back. If you own a smartphone and have just a wee bit of marketing curiosity in your blood, I don’t know how you could not click through the code.

I did and it took me to a landing page online which featured special fares and offers that American Airlines is promoting at this time. It took me all of 30 seconds to look at the offers and, while it wasn’t for me this time, I would check back for future offers if presented in the same way.

American’s use of the QR code is a practical example of how to create customer engagement and how to reap a little better return out of every piece of direct mail stuffed in the box. After all, there was nothing but white space on the envelope before this QR experiment, and the ROI calculation must be astronomical as the denominator (cost) is minuscule.

While solution sellers carry on with big promises, brands and marketers are wise to sit back and determine how they can put new technologies to use to meet their own needs. Often the answer is not the one being sold by the creator of the solution.

Some new technologies won’t survive your next brainstorming session. Others, like the QR code, can be selectively used to create customer engagement and help create incremental revenues.

Carrabba’s Italian Grill stands apart from many of its chain restaurant competitors. Sure, the food is freshly prepared, the wood-burning grill adds ambiance to the setting, and the service is excellent, but I was thinking about their approach to building customer loyalty.

Looking at several national competitors in quick-serve (QSR) and white-table restaurant chains, I found that Starbucks, TGI Fridays, Dunkin’ Donuts, Tasti D-Lite all had rewards programs offering points for dollars spent in the location. Crate & Barrel as well as a host of national specialty retailers are partnered with Shopkick, offering Kick Rewards for purchase transactions as well as checking-in at the store and scanning selected product bar codes.

Carrabba’s has selected a different path, one that is principally communication driven, using direct mail, SMS and location based services to deliver offers, promotions and – just this week (see graphic) – money off coupons.

The Amici Club was launched in 2010 with enrollment available both on-line and in restaurants. I encountered the program as I suspect many people did – by filling out a 3×5 card placed on the dinner table. Talk about old school, but Carrabba’s says it has enrolled over 1 Million people to date.

Since my enrollment, Carrabba’s has been a cautious new friend, treating me with respect. I’ve received mostly emails and a few direct mail pieces offering something special related to a holiday or inviting me to a cause related fund-raising dinner. I’ve been paying attention to their mailings because they are not beating me to death, assuming that just because I signed up that I’m their newest “best friend”.

The parsing of the direct and email invitations I have received is a good example of how to manage a customer communication stream. Smartly coordinated communications can move people from enrollment to purchase to survey, leading to additional visits and a willingness to recommend the restaurant to others. In sum, Carrabba’s is effectively managing the customer loyalty lifecycle.

Carrabba’s has also encouraged check-ins with Foursquare and has used both the location based marketing channel and SMS to communicate offers when customers are ready to dine. That’s a great example of social loyalty at work – creating an exchange with a customer near the point of purchase, hopefully presenting an offer that will influence subsequent purchase behavior.

Now, Carrabba’s has taken the Amici Club a step further, sending a direct mail offer for $10 off specific appetizers or a complementary appetizer or dessert with purchase of an entrée.

Carrabba’s has been building its relationship with customers through the Amici Club thoughtfully and gradually, and is presenting a good example of how to engage with Consumer 2.0 using Social Loyalty tactics.

I’m going to continue to pay attention to Amici Club. Let me know what you think.

I borrowed the headline above from a recent B-to-B article by Jeff Ernst, a principal analyst at Forrester Research. I think it perfectly underscores something I’ve been saying for a while now: It’s about the power of the idea, not the tactic. (My compadre @billhanifin has a similar mantra: Technology enables. Imagination wins.)

While most companies are now testing the social media waters with a presence on Facebook and Twitter, it’s best to have a strategic plan of attack before diving in. In the words of Ernst, “Starting with tools and tactics spells disaster. You need to start by understanding the social behaviors of your target audience and defining the big ideas that will attract and engage them.” But before discussing big ideas in social marketing…

First things first: you’ve got to show up.

To paraphrase Woody Allen, “90% of social marketing is just showing up”, and by that I mean being active on whatever social media tool you’re using. That means starting conversations, answering queries, and when necessary, defending your company or brand. To do this, you’ve got to set aside a small portion of your day to social media activities. (For me, its 20 minutes each morning.)

Next step: you need a big idea.

What’s a little more challenging is the next 10% of the equation—coming up with the big ideas that give your customers something to talk about. As Jillian Ney pointed out in a recent post on Social Media Today, “The motivation has been to collect fans and followers, which have resulted in many branded social spaces not actually providing any entertainment or value.” In many ways, a great social media campaign has much in common with a great traditional ad campaign—the best ones are centered around a big idea. To achieve “big” status, your idea needs to have the power to inform, entertain and/or engage your customers, while getting them to take a desired action, whether it’s signing up for e-mail, retweeting a message or checking in with you on Foursquare.

Here’s are three social media ideas that I think work hard for their brands.

Why? They go beyond simply blasting messages into the social media space, and actually get people to interact with the brand. They also leverage ideas that are natural tie-ins to the image and essence of the brands being promoted.

• Paula Deen and “the real women of Philadelphia”. A promotion for Philadelphia Cream Cheese, it invites customers to submit original recipes using Philadelphia brand products, with 16 finalists selected to join celebrity chef Deen in a live “Cook Off” where four grand prize winners will be chosen. While I’m not a big fan of celebrity endorsements, this one feels like a natural, since it’s easy to imagine the down-home Deen actually using Philadelphia Cream Cheese in her recipes. Importantly, the site has done a nice job of putting Paula’s ebullient personality to use through online videos and social media like a “live chat” on Twitter.
• Coleman, “the original social networking site”. Coleman, the camping gear company, has done a great job of tying their brand into social networking, starting with their clever “original networking site” positioning. A Facebook page promotes their easy-to-build tents with a “Summer Time in no Time” giveaway. There’s a Twitter page that could be a little more active, but does address the occasional customer query, plus a YouTube channel and Twitter app that fittingly let you check out “creepy campfire stories”.
• Fair Tweets from Ben & Jerry’s. Another big idea comes from Ben & Jerry’s. We think of Ben & Jerry’s as a very socially conscious brand and they prove it with Fair Tweets, which uses Twitter in a way I haven’t seen before to promote Fair Trade, a global organization that works to get better deals for farmers. It works like this: You go to the Ben & Jerry’s Fair Tweet page, and being typing in a tweet. The site then “puts your unused Twitter characters to use”, by turning any leftover characters (from your 140 character cap) into a message about Fair Trade. 33 characters left? A 33-character message is tacked on to the end of your tweet. Very cool and an ingenious way to spread a public service message.

How about you. Have you seen or worked on any big social media ideas lately?