Growing up in Cleveland, Ohio, I got used to my home town being the butt of nightly jokes on national television. “On a clear day in Cleveland…you can see absolutely Nothing!” was a popular refrain from Johnny Carson. The “Mistake on the Lake”, the flaming Cuyahoga River, a mayor who skipped a Presidential visit to [...]

I was dining with my wife at Carrabba’s recently and she asked me the BIG question, though it’s probably not one that you have in mind:  “So, do a lot of businesses still do this loyalty stuff“?
I had just written a post about new execution formats that Loyalty Marketing programs were taking in the [...]

“While not every business needs a Loyalty Program, every business does need a well planned and executed Customer Strategy.” This is one of the loyalty mantras that I share on Hanifin Loyalty and the statement represents a guiding light on the path to innovation in the next wave of Loyalty Marketing.
For some businesses, building a [...]

There’s a secret society that I wish to unmask. It’s not as menacing as the Knight’s Templars, but if you are tasked with selling consulting services, marketing technology or loyalty marketing solutions, you will immediately identify society members by their common behaviors.
It’s the “Society of Graduate Buyers“. These are the folks who, in the course [...]

“P” as in Profitability, that is.
Part of the challenge in playing the Loyalty Marketing game is that we, as strategists and solutions providers, tend to confuse the issue for our clients through our own marketing-speak. We spend too much time battling over semantics and definitions when all our clients really care about is increasing their [...]

One of the challenges in the Loyalty Marketing business is that few organizations share tangible results.
I still am occasionally asked the question “Does Loyalty Work?” and wish I could point to more specific evidence in public forum as an answer. Telling people that you are restricted from disclosure due to confidentiality agreements meets ethical standards, [...]

What’s Your Plan?
Contributed by Mike Capizzi
Economic tidal waves cause disruptive things to happen along the loyalty marketing shoreline.  Whether tsunami or riptide in magnitude, the resulting on-shore event carries the potential to drown the beachcomber or create a sea-side hero.
Which will you become?
The current economic environment has many loyalty marketers scratching their sun-burned foreheads.  Large [...]

Until very recently I worked on the acquisition side of an auto insurance account, where  these days it’s all about the price—with virtually every auto insurer claiming they can save you $400 or $500 (which makes you wonder, if everyone can save you money, which companies are ripping people off?).
But perhaps the most eye-opening aspect [...]

If you want to find the perfect boat, you’ve got to know what you want and make some tough decisions. The same holds true for setting the course of your Loyalty strategy.
Living in proximity to water, there are many excuses to buy a boat and, with two of the biggest boats shows in the world [...]

Three men walk into a bar. Sorry, that’s the lead-in to an old Irish joke. In this case, three practitioners of Loyalty Marketing (people who actually create brand loyalty for a living) are on their way to a Florida Marlins game after the conclusion of Loyalty Expo 2009.
Having no idea of the conversation that would [...]