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 keep his bowling night – it all added up.

At the other end of Lake Erie is Buffalo, New York. No stranger to ridicule, the area has struggled economically while maintaining a fierce local charachter as the home of hard-working, value-preserving Americans.

Imagine the challenge of the local newspaper in this area. The Buffalo News not only operates in a tough advertising environment, but is battling what all newspapers are facing – extinction as consumers prefer to get their news and information from digital sources.

Imagine my surpise when I learned that the newspaper had established MyBuffalo.com and started Rack’em Up as an incentive program to drive participation in “Western New York’s Social Network“.

The program is simple, but effective. People are invited to enroll in order to participate and are then able to earn 50 points each for a variety of activities. Participants accumulating over 500 points per week are automatically entered into a random drawing to win one of three prizes.  The earning opportunity results from posting on a blog, starting a discussion forum topic, posting a video or photo or inviting friends to join MyBuffalo.com.

In a day where creativity and innovation is demanded for survival, I applaud the use of social networking by MyBuffalo.com to create reader engagement. I’m sure that subscriber retention and advertising rate support are goals of the program. It will be interesting to see evidence of success in reaching those two goals.

In the meantime, Let’s Go Buffalo!

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 Big L and the Little L and I paused before answering her question.

That morning I had received a call at home from the Fort Lauderdale Sun Sentinel informing me of “Subscriber Rewards“. An insider’s club that offers “reader benefits and special privileges”, it was an intriguing pitch from a newspaper and I asked for more information. I haven’t received anything yet and can’t find anything concrete about the program on the paper’s website, but it seems to consist of merchant discounts offered on some exclusive basis to home delivery subscribers.

Just before dinner, we had strolled through Steinmart (did I say it was date night?) and, as I noticed the quality merchandise from well known brands offered at prices that should make mainline retailers shiver, I realized that Steinmart’s business model was its loyalty program. I have written about this before and believe that a points based program is not always mandatory to secure my return visit and longer term brand loyalty.

Steinmart punctuated its customer shopping experience with a personal note from the Chairman thanking customers for their business. Stacked by the check out station, it was a nice touch and something I had not seen at other retailers.

With these two examples in mind, I started to answer my wife’s question with an emphatic “yes” when I was interrupted by our server, cheerily asking if we wanted to join the “Amici Club“. Carrabba’s had apparently launched a customer club and had trained the server thoroughly in how to properly present it table-side and explain the benefits. I have a habit of testing the proficiency of front line staff in these areas and our server passed with flying colors.

My wife’s question had clearly been answered: Loyalty is alive and well and in favor with CMO’s who recognize the power of data-driven measurable marketing.

Indicative of today’s market is that I had seen three examples of brands in different industries launching distinct models. Here are some implications to consider:

• The Sun Sentinel might be seeking to increase renewal rates among home subscribers and to sustain advertising rates for merchants with its discount oriented scheme. Will they take a second step to query subscriber preferences and tailor the offers to make them more appealing and relevant?

• Steinmart’s merchandising and service model can create repeat visits but aren’t they leaving something on the table by allowing their customers to remain “invisible”? Sure they have a cobranded credit card, but shouldn’t there be something more fundamental in place and with a lower enrollment hurdle?

• Carrabba’s was taking the first step with highest potential in my opinion, seeking to create a platform for learning about customer desires and preferences. I’ve just received my first email from Amici and they offered me a free appetizer on a return visit in exchange for registration online. Simple, but a good start to create engagement. I wonder if they tested different incentives?

My free lesson in Loyalty at dinner reminded me that every organization can benefit from a sound Customer Strategy and that program designs will be more tightly integrated into the customer experience and shaped to meet unique industry needs. Tremendous opportunity remains in helping business leaders get the model right and design strategy that is complementary to their core brand.

I was also reminded that it pays to keep date night with your spouse on the calendar. You never know what you might learn!

“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 brand so strong, so magnetic, so powerful is the foundation of its Customer Strategy. Achieving this summit is one of the most challenging tasks in business and, if done successfully, virtually precludes the need for a formal loyalty program, certainly one with points or other promotional currency involved.

The World Triathlon Corporation, owner and organizer of Ironman® and Ironman® 70.3 branded events, has climbed this summit, having turned a quirky and semi-dangerous undertaking in 1978 into a worldwide brand that attracts a brilliant demographic and brings tremendous economic impact to its host communities.

With the addition of the Ironman® 70.3 Series, WTC offers more than 50 events on the calendar each year and has the support of advertising partners including Ford Motor Company, PowerBar, Timex, Gatorade, Janus, and Philadephia Insurance Companies.

Ironman Lake Placid is the oldest of 7 US based events, and I was fortunate to be in town for the 10th anniversary race this past weekend. The compelling nature of the brand was on full display with over 2,500 registered athletes and their friends and families burning off nervous energy by shopping in the Ironman® store and patronizing local businesses.

Consider that the entry fee is $575 and that the average tri-bike sitting in the secured transition area is worth $4,000 (my estimate) and you can see that over $1.4 Million in entry fees alone were collected for the weekend and over $10 Million in two-wheeled treasure was waiting for a ride. Multiply these numbers by the 50+ events per year and you begin to understand the magnitude of the Ironman domain.

Ironman may still be a quirky and puzzling event for outsiders to grasp. Some of my friends have challenged the Ironman passion as nothing more than a mid-life crisis for over 40 types, suggesting that buying a new Corvette would be a heck of a lot easier. Others snipe that triathletes are narcissictic, type-A personalities preening their zero-body fat physiques in high-tech fabrics before the crowds. (OK, you’ve got the Type-A part correct).

Let me dispel some myths. As I volunteered at an aid station on the run course this weekend, I saw every size, shape, age, and ethnic origin of athlete pass me by. I would go so far as to say that, if seen in street clothes, many would never be mistaken for Ironman athletes.

I’ve also found that while some of the younger age brackets are the most competitive (30 -39 for instance), I have also noticed that as one moves up in age group, finish times don’t always increase, i.e. there is much more going on here than just signing up for the t-shirt.

Fred Reichheld, the Godfather of Loyalty Marketing, sketched out a continuum of business benefit resulting from adopting an enterprise approach to loyalty. At the end of the rainbow are price premiums. I would venture to say that Ironman, given the nature of the event and level of entry fee, is effective on all levels of lifecycle marketing, (acquisition, usage, retention, cross-sell) and delivers on price premiums across the board as U.S. based events generally sell out quickly after race day each year.

All the praise aside, there is always room for improvement. There is probably a limit on the number of events that WTC can stage each year in the U.S., and more emphasis on triathlon as a youth sport would help fill the funnel with future athletes. The fee structure could price out aspiring Iron-athletes from participating in the future, and the cost of Ironman branded merchandise is obscene at times, spawning a mild “love-hate” relationship with the brand. For instance, a fellow volunteer (himself a 9:44 IM finisher) commented as he pulled on a dollar-store poncho to thwart a rain shower that it would have been worth $70 if it had the IM logo on board.

There are other iron-distance events on the calendar, but WTC has created brand-swagger and is enjoying the price premiums created with its highly emotional participants. The fact that WTC backs up the current frenzy for its branded events with tremendous athlete experience adds glue that keeps people signing up for more. Even their finish line announcer, Mike Reilly, is part of the experience. Mr. Reilly has been the main announcer at the Ironman® World Championships in Kona since 1989, and it is his unmistakable voice that welcomes athletes to the finish line.

There may be some danger to IM that it becomes an elitist event, but then again, maybe that’s what it is all about. The Ironman® distance triathlon is still acknowledged to be the most challenging one day endurance event on the planet, and “if it was easy, everyone would do it!”

I think it’s safe to say that the same applies to WTC’s Customer Strategy.

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 of a sales or capabilities presentation, ask the tough questions and take “poker face” to a whole new level. Ask them for a detailed description of next steps at the end of the meeting, and they will immediately defer to the procurement officer sitting at the end of the table or indicate that the decision makers are going on vacation for the next week or two and “we’ll get back to you”.

Seasoned salespeople are used to the process and have developed thick hides, therefore you’ll understand that I’m just having some fun here. In fact, if you don’t get frustrated by the white collar version of a “stiff arm”, you can learn a thing or two.

In a recent meeting, one of the client group threw me a curve ball, asking if I had experience with both “Big L and Little L” loyalty programs. He went on to explain that, by his definition, Big L programs feature an explicit value proposition with a promotional currency (points, miles, stars, credits) while Little L programs score member behavior and use the data to trigger promotions, offers, and communications without full transparency to the consumer.

The answer of course was “yes” as I’ve worked to leverage behavioral and attitudinal data to create value propositions articulated in many forms besides points. I would include viral, word-of-mouth, and social media programs with a data backbone in this group. The client must have been a consultant somewhere in his past as giving something familiar a catchy name is part of the trade (ever hear of the Loyalty Asterisk™?).

The lesson I learned from this encounter was simple:  loyalty marketing is anything but business as usual these days and practioners need to constantly test themselves to stay abreast of how the market perceives our craft. We also need to expand our definition of how customer loyalty can be created, and embrace that we have the tools to achieve multiple goals across the business from acquisition to retention and cross-sell.

I’ve added the “LIttle L” to my loyalty glossary and have pledged to give the next set of Graduate Buyers the benefit of the doubt. Never know what I’ll learn next!

“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 bottom line. An article in this week’s Wall Street Journal “Why a Loyal Customer Isn’t Always a Profitable One” is a great example of how the debate can send the wrong message.

The article is attributed to a group of four led by Tim Keiningham, Global Chief Strategy Officer at Ipsos Loyalty and author of the newly published book Why Loyalty Matters. The premise of the article is that many companies incorrectly associate so-called “loyal” customers with profitable ones. The article states that “most company surveys wrongly define what constitutes a business’s most loyal, and thus desirable, customers” and goes on to make the valid point that “when customer value is included in the measure of loyalty, the goals of improving loyalty and financial performance are synchronized”.

So far, so good, but the article centers on the phrase “loyal customer” as if there is a consistent definition of the term in Websters and Wikipedia. There is no universally accepted definition of a “loyal customer” (is loyal defined by “x” transactions per month or a Lifetime Customer Value forecast in excess of “Y”?), only agreement on how to determine success in what we commonly refer to as a loyalty program.

The business has always been about creating profitable behavior change across a designated customer group. Existing customer behavior is assessed and objectives set for the program in terms of a percentage or numerical increase in activity (increase transactions from “A” to “B” or average purchase amount by “C” percent)  over a specified period of time. Distinct goals are set by segment or subset of the overall customer base and the potential for incremental revenue by each group influences the level of investment justified by the program sponsor.

For more on the monetization of loyalty, read Michael Hemsey’s article just published at Loyalty360.org. Michael is President Kobie Marketing and knows the business very well.

In my opinion, the WSJ article painted the industry as missing the point about connecting loyalty and profitability.  Consider this quote: “Creating and nurturing real customer loyalty requires satisfying customer needs and wants at a sustainable profit. Too often, customer-loyalty experts have ignored the latter in the belief that loyalty and profitability are synonymous“.  Best Buy certainly understood the relationship between customer profitability and loyalty after learning that “as many as 100 million of its 500 million customer visits each year are undesirable”. The electronics retailer subsequently took lots of heat in the press after rolling out its new “angel-devil strategy” during 2004.

I can personally attest that most organizations have a high level of awareness that building loyalty is not about creating emotions which somehow equate to profits. On the contrary, they understand that the game is about marrying qualitative (attitudinal) data with quantitative (transactional) data to create a compelling value proposition that, when sprinkled across portions of a customer base, will return measurable ROI.  The smarter practitioners are in analyzing results and evolving promotions to maintain the attention of most valued customers, the longer we sustain the behavior change.

It is easy to point towards an assortment of companies that rely too much on customer satisfaction surveys to predict loyalty and also too many convinced that answering “one question” will reveal who the loyal customers are. My confidence level in saying that business understands the connection between profitability and marketing investment in its customers is based on having to justify the ROI of my proposed solutions to companies across industry and in different geographic markets for the past 12 years.

I only wish I could get away with justifying the proposed budget for a loyalty marketing solution with the same fuzzy metrics that are accepted when evaluating branding campaigns, general advertising, and even social media (so far). If the Ipsos article were fully on target, my job would have been a heck of lot easier over these past dozen years.

Take it a step farther and I’ll assert that while every company doesn’t need a “loyalty” program, EVERY company needs a well planned and executed Customer Strategy. Imagine if our industry ditched the “L” word and adopted a more inclusive term. The semantics debate might be de-fused and we could get down to business.

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, but is frustrating.  And, the information shared at conferences is typically sanitized in case competitors are listening.

The dearth of proprietary data shared by program sponsors makes continuous improvement in our sector a bit problematic. That’s why Hanifin Loyalty is fortunate to be able to share the results of Zion Bank’s merchant funded rewards program launched in 2005 in a new case study published on our web site.

Merchant Funded Rewards models represent the innovation of choice among today’s card rewards programs in North America. It’s not a big surprise as “Pay for Performance” affords benefits to participating merchants, card issuers, and cardholders alike.

At the same time, merchant funded programs have proliferated so quickly, almost exclusively centering on online shopping, that banks are challenged to differentiate their offers.

Zions Cash Rewards is unique in that it centers its value proposition on an extensive brick and mortar network of everyday spend merchants which brings high relevancy and interest to the bank’s cardholders.

Documenting this case study would not have been possible without Cynthia Smith, SVP & Director, Bank Card Products and Services Zions Bancorporation and Kelly Passey, EVP, Access Development. Thanks to them both and to their organizations for supporting this effort.

I hope you will download and enjoy this detailed Case Study which shares results of the collaboration between Zions Bank and Access Development to achieve success.

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 enterprises with well established loyalty marketing program strategies may not weather the tidal wave.  If their firms become subject to an inevitable round of cost cutting, dilution of the loyalty program value proposition and abandonment of best customers, then bodies will be washed ashore by the pounding surf.  Call the ambulances and the shore patrol.  Please bring a few extra body bags.

Loyalty marketing service providers who feed off of the large enterprise client will be companion victims.  How do you resuscitate the relationship and corresponding revenue potential when your client is on life support? Don’t scratch your head or reach for the sunscreen; you should be well entrenched in your “Baywatch” plan.  Otherwise you’ll fall victim to the never ending cycle of the rise and fall characterized by the coastal tides.

Simply stated, what’s your plan?

If you are on the client side, get ready for the merger and acquisition tidal wave.  You have a loyalty program, you have a team in place to manage it, you rely on your loyalty marketing service provider to deliver.  You understand best customers, you reward and recognize them appropriately, you have the metrics to prove it.  Who cares?  Here comes the judge and he ain’t pretty!  He carries an axe in one hand and a spreadsheet in the other. When you are merged, taken over, re-structured or otherwise displaced, will anybody care about your past accomplishments?

Of course they will if you have a plan.  Best customers always deliver disproportionate value to the enterprise.  Can you prove it?  Can you articulate the merits and shortfalls of your own loyalty program initiatives versus the concepts and ideas of the acquiring entity? How would the programs best be merged?  How will customers benefit?  Which segments overlap and where is the real potential for incremental revenue post merger? Which service provider or technology platform is best equipped to handle the combined loyalty program databases?  What does the transition roadmap and timeline look like? If you don’t have answers, or at least well thought out opinions, then proceed directly to the unemployment line.  Do not pass go.  Do not collect anything except severance.

If you are a service provider, the picture is even gloomier.  Who is the incumbent loyalty partner and what strengths, weaknesses, competencies, do they exhibit vis-a-vis your own organization?  What do they charge?  What is their cost per point?  How do they add value?  What can you do to position yourselves as the effective and efficient alternative to the incumbent?  If all of this is overwhelming, I understand.  If you are not ready to deal with the impending surge, or prefer to bury your head in the sand, then get ready for the unemployment line.  Bring muffins and a no-whip latte for your ex-client.  You can meet and sympathize with each other every Tuesday morning.

My point in all of this is that you must have a concrete plan.  In writing. With supporting business case tools and logic.  Loyalty program change management is not a new thing; although the art may be lost the artists still remember.  When the tsunami strikes, you will either float to a higher ground or sink in the swell of the salt water.  Victim or hero.

What’s your plan?

Mike Capizzi is Managing Director of Marketing Strategists LLC, an independent consulting practice which focuses on best customer marketing.  Often called the “Loyalty Evangelist” by his industry peers, he has written, spoken, advised and educated on the topic of loyalty marketing programs around the world for more than a decade.

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 of auto insurance marketing is the lack of respect paid to retention. After all, if you believe the accepted adage that for every $10 spent to acquire a new customer it takes only $1 to retain an existing customer—why are auto insurers plowing so many millions into acquisition and spending next to nothing on retention?

It’s especially important to have a retention strategy these days because of the changing relationship between auto insurance buyer and seller. Once upon a time, most drivers had insurance agents who they had a one-to-one relationship with—but now, with independent agents becoming a shrinking breed, and with the rise of direct-to-consumer providers like Geico, 21st Century and Esurance, times have changed. Most customers have no interaction with their insurance company, unless they have an accident or are mailing in their premium check.

Seems to me it’s time for auto insurers to take a fresh new approach to retaining customers, one that begins building a relationship well before the auto policy is about to expire and the customer can be swayed by the latest “you can save hundreds” TV commercial.

Thought one: Adding a message on a bill insert, while a no-brainer, will do absolutely zilch to build a relationship with best customers. What’s needed is a more robust approach that includes a regular stream of print and/or e-mail communications with relevant information drivers can use like:

• Invitations to online or offline tutorials on choosing the coverage right for me and my family
• Info on safety recalls and maintenance tips for my particular vehicle
• Safety advice for teenage and senior drivers on my policy
• Reminders of why my insurer is the right choice and what it offers that the competitors don’t

Thought two: Start engaging via social networking tools. With people so often confused by their auto policy details (collision? comprehensive? low or high deductible?), it seems like there’s an opening for an auto insurance provider to become the online source for honest, helpful information. So who will step up?

While some auto insurers are moving in the right direction by gravitating toward the communications opportunities offered by Web 2.0, many of the executions are weak at best and some companies have chosen to do nothing at all.

A few quick observations:

• Market leader Geico barely exists in the Web 2.0 world unless you want to count a blog for the Miss Geico offshore racing boat—and a few “Screw Geico” entries from unhappy customers out in the blogosphere. Kash, the bug-eyed stack of money that stars in Geico’s goofy TV commercials, does have a Twitter account—but has just a single tweet over the last 4-months. (Kash may be the quiet type, but one tweet?)
• Esurance icon Erin, animated hero of the company’s television commercials, has her own blog on the company Web site—but after a fast start in 2005, it seems like Erin may be all blogged out—she has a woeful total of three blog entries in 2009. (Is she busy on a TV shoot? Have her write from the set!)
• Then, there’s Allstate. Very active with Twitter, they appear to be doing a bang-up job of responding quickly to customer comments and concerns. They also appear to be the only insurer to set up an online community which can be found at goodhandscommunity.org. The community gets an A for effort, but the execution?

In my next post, I’ll give it a full review … to be continued.

Tom Rapsas is an independent Creative Director, Writer and Strategist. He can be reached at tomrapsas@gmail.com.

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 on the doorstep, the range of choices is incredible. Let’s say you’re in the market for a center console outboard fishing boat, somewhere between 21 – 32 feet. The Fort Lauderdale International Boat Show and the Miami International Boat Show offer a breathtaking array of options.

By the time you have scoured these shows and are nursing the blisters on your feet, you will realize that there is not one boat that will “do it all”.  With every salesperson claiming their boat offers a “dry ride and fish-ability”, you have difficulty choosing a favorite and rationalizing a wide range of prices.  The happiest boat owners I know solved the problem by refusing to compromise. They knew what they wanted and landed on the boat that was the best in their chosen niche.

For example, the best flats boat available (in my opinion) comes from Egret while the offshore boat of highest magnitude is made by Yellowfin. These boats not only ooze quality but deliver on their promises, and are guaranteed to evoke complements and knowing glances when at the local marina or boat ramp.

Sponsors planning their Loyalty Marketing strategy are in much the same fix.  A quick story illustrates the point. A short while back, I worked on the frequent stay program for a mid-size hotel chain that wanted to stand out in the crowd and attract the “road warrior” customer that was their bread and butter. Dutifully, our team delivered a competitive matrix of programs in the market capturing all known features and benefits.  Looking at the final product, nearly every box was checked in the grid. That’s meant to say that all the major brands had tried just about everything and “copycat” was the favorite play of the day.

We affixed the chart to the wall of our planning room and named it the “what not to do” matrix. The sub-title was “what we won’t allow ourselves to do”, meaning that we would not let the client fall into the trap of sameness that saturated their business. After some work, we recommended a loyalty program design that was unique and it was successfully launched and operated for a number of years. It survives in the market today with some modification.

Having just read Seth Godin’s gem of a book The Dip, I think he would agree the loyalty business is living through a “Loyalty Dip” at the moment. Sponsors who adopt a generic strategy to “reach everyone” will meet with disappointing results and providers that stick with the tried and true may find themselves in a dead end. Those introducing innovation to the business (e.g. through the mobile handset and with social media) will survive the dip and emerge as leaders for Loyalty 2.o.

The point is, be an Egret or a Yellowfin, but please be somebody.

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 ensue, I commented that I did something surprising the weekend before, pay a $25 membership fee to join the Barnes & Noble Member Program. “I got half the annual fee back in one purchase” was my justification.  I also knew that with purchases pending to buy the kid’s summer reading books,  it wouldn’t be long before I recovered the entire fee. Add to that the convenient location of B&N to my house and it was an easy decision.

My friend riding shotgun retorted, “I’d never pay a fee because Borders lets you register for free and I can wait for those 40% off coupons they send by email”.

Not to be left out, our backseat companion added “I always buy my books from Amazon because they have the best prices, but I always wait until my order is big enough to get the free shipping“.

Suddenly we had a mini-focus group at work in a car full of Bibliophiles. Who knew that Loyalty Marketers were such avid readers? More importantly, I realized just how challenging it is to create a value proposition that attracts a wide enough audience to make inroads into competitive offers.  We had three examples right before us, each with an instructive lesson about consumer purchase behavior:

• The straightforward “pay now and recover as you shop” approach from B&N is sure to attract a self-selecting crowd, but does it shift share once the fee is earned back?
• Borders makes it easy for anyone to play, but numbs its membership with a repetitive cycle of discounts and sales that train customers to wait for the one they like best.
• Amazon builds on a low-price model with benefits like free shipping, but will share shift occur when these perks aren’t available?

Each of these strategies has its limitations and there is one common element missing from each program – Participation. My quick take on the Participatory Marketing value chain leads off with Awareness, creates Engagement, and leverages Word of Mouth and Viral effects to create Community and ultimately long term Loyalty.

I may not have these elements in just the right order and possibly abused some buzzwords, but its clear that each of the booksellers that were the talk of the evening needs to take a step beyond promotion and introduce mechanisms for customers to stay with them in between purchases and when the optimal deal is not front and center.

How do you buy books and from whom? Do any of these programs stand out for you, and why?