Actually, I’m just scratching the surface, but pose a few questions to improve frequent flyer programs and make airline travel a bit more bearable for the masses.
What if the airlines …… ?

… would allow frequent flyers to use miles to pay for a bag check charge or, better yet, waive them for higher tier members? [...]

Even though I come from the creative side of the business, I’m a big fan of customer data.
There’s no better way to build a relationship than using data to personalize communications according to a customer’s past buying habits. Amazon, of course, does a great job of this. So does iTunes. But is there such a [...]

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 [...]

One of the blogs I enjoy reading is written by Chris Brogan. He’s got some interesting takes on social media and a huge following.
Today he stepped in the Loyalty Marketing sandbox with his post The Myth of Brand Loyalty. I won’t recount the story here and encourage you to read it as well as [...]

“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 [...]

Have you ever had a retail experience that starts with a bang and ends with a thud?
That’s what happened to me recently at Wachovia Bank, and I share it as it illustrates a core practice of Customer Satisfaction surveys that needs re-engineering.
I had occasion to open an account at Wachovia and the experience was the [...]

“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, [...]