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.

I woke up yesterday with enthusiasm for the day. It was St. Patrick’s day. Whether you have any real “green” in your blood, its a festive day to be sure.

Going though an inbox full of messages, I found an offer from a local coffee shop offering a free coffee with purchase of a breakfast sandwich. It was simple and straightforward, but caused me to make a slight detour on the way to the office to take advantage.

After ordering, I showed the coupon on my smartphone to the counter-person who promptly told me that I needed to have printed and presented the actual coupon to take advantage of the offer. Only due to my cheery nature at that time did I politely change my order to a coffee and leave.

Meanwhile, the Loyalty Asterisk™ was dancing in my brain while my loyalty antennae were on high alert. Small business and local merchants are striving to have their voices heard. Email marketing is an inexpensive way to connect with local customers and create repeat visits at low cost. These merchants have the tools, in this case Constant Contact, to deliver the messages, but many times don’t know how to execute to make the customer experience reinforce the offer.

A few thoughts:

1. In a world with increasing smartphone penetration, why would a merchant need to do anything other than see the coupon in vivid color in the customer’s hand?
2. “Going green” is not only sensible, but a positive sweetener for many brands. Why force a customer to print more paper that gets reviewed once and placed in a drawer?
3. When misunderstandings occur, why not allow the customer their promotional reward, rather than smacking them on the wrist?
4. If the owner was worried about fraud, I could have calmed his worries in three easy steps.

If we insist on speaking that “the devil is in the details”, then we should equally agree that “there is glory in flawless execution”.  Merchants need to complete their planning cycle and think through how a promotion plays out at the counter.  When they do, they will witness their customer satisfaction reaching new heights.

Over the years, my wife and I have signed up to receive e-mails from quite a few retailers. The list includes: Solutions, Ann Taylor, Eddie Bauer, Land’s End, Sephora, Bath & Body Works, Williams-Sonoma, Victoria’s Secret, Wine Library, Crate and Barrel, Gap, Old Navy, Wine.com, Pottery Barn The Discovery Store.

It wasn’t hard to pull the preceding list of retailers together—all I had to do was open my inbox. It represents just some of the companies that have sent me e-mail pitches in the past 24 hours. The other day I woke up to a record 76 e-mails, fully 90% of which were promotional in nature.

Stacks of gifts under $25,  Last Chance for Free Shipping!,  and 20% off all items read a few of the subject lines. After a while, they all begin to blur together, the electronic equivalent of shouting carnival barkers on the midway.

Now, I realize in the immortal words of Buck Owens “Christmas time is near”, and these stores are desperate to make their numbers for the year. But I wonder about the sheer velocity at which many of these retailers are blasting out e-mails. Virtually every retailer I’ve mentioned is sending out a promotional message a day, some two a day. It’s email marketing “gone wild”!

My main point of contention with this e-mail deluge though, is the non-personalized nature of the communications. You see, my wife and I have done business with all of the companies I mentioned, some several times over the past year. But judging by the content of the e-mails, you’d never know it. I’m quite certain I’m getting blasted with the same messages as the other 10,000 or 100,000 people on their e-mail lists.

There’s a better way to communicate with me as a customer, especially a customer who has an existing relationship with you.

Here’s what I believe these companies should be doing:

1. Send me personalized content — I should be receiving a least some content based on my purchase history. If the wine merchant knows I have a penchant for red Zinfandel, send me e-mails about red Zin. Look at my past buying behavior so you have some idea of what I’ll be shopping for in the future.

2.Ask me how much e-mail I want — Give me the choice of how frequently I receive e-mails from you. Maybe I want to hear from you every day—or maybe I only want to hear from you once a week or once a month. Engage with me when I want you to, and I may not tune you out.

3. Surprise and delight me — Offer me something different than the other guys. Give me free gift wrapping. Present an old item in a new way. Try less selling, and more telling. For most of us, a good story works better than a hard sell.

The bottom line is if retailers want to prevent me from clicking on the opt out button, they need to do a better job of engaging with me – the customer. Remind me why I did business with you in the first place, and why I should do business with you again.

A final note: Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all!

Oracle is increasingly active in the Loyalty Marketing industry and has reported success in providing technology support for some of the largest frequent flyer programs in the US.

I recently ran across an Oracle blog that recounted how Alaska Airlines upped its email game, adding a greater degree of personalization by replacing a legacy mainframe loyalty system with Siebel Loyalty and Siebel Marketing. Going beyond the sales driven copy in the post, I was interested to hear Steve Jarvis, Vice President Market Sales & Customer Experience – Alaska Airlines speak about the airline’s commitment to provide “proactive customer service” and “superior customer service and innovations” to the over 22 Million passengers they fly annually.

Apparently, Alaska could only reach the 2 Million flyers enrolled in its frequent flyer program and was suffering from the same problem encountered by many retailers – how to identify the customer and create customer engagement. The Siebel installation apparently changed all that as Steve Jarvis relates in this video.

Alaska’s new-found ability to reach its customer base with targeted emails and promotions made me think – which pattern will they follow? Will it be a judicious email policy adopted by the legacy airlines or the firehose approach adopted by the newer “discount” airlines, in particular Spirit?

Hanifin Loyalty recently completed a survey of the use of email as a communications vehicle across the loyalty programs of 22 companies in the Airline, Retail, and Hospitality industries. Full results of the survey will be published in the very near future.

As a preview of the findings, the airlines had the highest rate of email issuance at 5.4 per month. 35% of the emails were related to program membership (meaning statements and newsletters) while 56% were purely promotional and 6.75% were pitching cobrand credit cards.

Sadly, less than 1% of all emails had evidence of a behavioral trigger (i.e. the customer did something that triggered a promotion or offer) and surveys were rare indeed.

The biggest contrast stood out between legacy and discount air carriers with legacy (American, Delta, US Airways) issuing 3.5 emails per month & discount carriers 7.3 per month. Spirit stood out among all airlines surveyed with a whopping 14.8 emails per month.

The results of our email survey pointed out the importance of cadence and relevancy in managing email campaigns. Spirit certainly displays a consistent cadence with an email almost every other day. Trouble is, how many “Red Light Specials” can the recipient endure before she reaches for the delete button every time Spirit shows in the Send field?

For loyalty program sponsors, in this case airlines, two huge areas of opportunity exist.

1. Use the data they possess to send fewer emails with higher relevancy. This is the antidote for customer attrition.
2. Make it bleeding obvious (as my UK friends would say) that something the customer did triggered the email.

I want to know that because I visited the Delta Crown Room in LaGuardia that I later received a discounted offer for annual membership. Better yet, I’d like to see that my survey response indicating St. Croix as a favorite destination with American Airlines resulted in a packaged offer of hotel and discounted airfare.

We recently published a new Case Study examining the competitive scenario between two leading retailers of cycling gear and supplies – Bike Nashbar and Performance Bike. There is a de-facto advantage to one of the players and a key channel that the other can leverage to fight back.

The ultimate question: What would you do if wearing the moccasins of either Chief Marketing Officer?

Loyalty Truth recruited a panel of experts to review this Case Study and offer insights into what it will take for Bike Nashbar to put forth a differentiated Customer Strategy and how it should revamp its email marketing strategy. Now that all 3 of our experts have weighed in, look for a compilation of responses in our Resource section soon.

Loyalty Truth is proud to share Stephanie Scuderi’s thoughts on this case study as our newest contributing author. Please read more about Stephanie, a veteran of the Loyalty Marketing industry, at the end of this article.

In the age old challenge of newcomer vs. established brand, the newcomer, or Bike Nashbar in this case, has the ’scrappy’ advantage.  Without the momentum of established brand experience, Bike Nashbar’s brand strategy is a clean slate – nothing terrible to overcome…and a point of established relativity – or Performance Bike in this case. Creative ideas quickly fall into acquisition, brand and customer strategies. At a high level, the following considerations could be explored.

Brand Strategy

• Give it a personality…if Bike Nashbar was a person, who would they be?
• Appeal to the segment – sponsor or be a founding partner of global amateur racing – designed for the wealthy who are looking to blend experience with exertion
• Enlist a spokesperson relevant to the target – Instead of Lance Armstrong, get Jack Dorsey (twitter founder) or someone equally contemporary, making a difference, using his head, thinking out of the box, and oh yea, biking off the steam.  Publish his race times or self-bests — how do you stack up?

THEN…within that framework…

• Take it offline:  make the relationship tangible – can be done with a physical mailing – cleverly designed or worded.
• Partner with biking merchants to create a Bike Nashbar network.  BN becomes the face of all mom and pop shops online…providing a few templates, BN essentially private labels their web site to shops who couldn’t otherwise afford the complexity afforded in a co-op structure.
• Host “the world’s largest recreational biking” party – all members invited to the local Bike Nashbar network partner – with streaming video, a la the You Tube Symphony – get everyone across the world together – have it be newsworthy enough that the press alone is value.

Reward and Recognize…

• Set a goal to get to know customers – and communicate with them with respect to the relationship they have with you…don’t send everyone the same emails…they’re not sending you the same amount of business – reflect knowledge and insight in messaging.
• Set up a program that motivates people to spend more with Bike Nashbar — and reward for bike-related activities – even if they aren’t a direct revenue stream.  Jack Smith completed his first race, give him bonus points to congratulate him and get him to race another…the more he races, and the more he knows you’re in his corner, the more he’s going to spend with you and tell you about his experiences.

Finally, the Acquisition Strategy…with ideas for brand direction and how to keep customers in the loop, how to attract those prospects?

• Start a “What was your first bicycle?” campaign to get people to go online, register, and indirectly get acquainted with Bike Nashbar.
• Take them back to the beginning…ask the question why they fell in love with biking…I’m not a biker, other than around the neighborhood with my son on his tricycle, but I still remember my first bike, it was yellow with a black racing stripe and training wheels.  Then, I graduated to a Huffy Sweet Pea (yellow and pea green – loved it).  Point being, by tapping into a basic memory, prospects who aren’t currently avid bikers may be lured into the brand introduction experience and fall into the fold of occasional customers — who can then be targeted for growth in spend.
• Conversion:  be a race portal
• Create a race log…have all “registered” bike races online, with registration forms
• Partner with bike racing organizations to automatically load all times for racers belonging to Bike Nashbar network
• Users can link with bikers of similar skill/time level to see how others like themselves are training to improve

Success lies in the blend of meeting basic needs with a new twist — elegant new ways to do and think about everyday things associated with the sport and hobby of biking.  By re-engineering its brand, Bike Nashbar has an opportunity to reset expectations and redefine the biker’s experience.

More about Stephanie Scuderi: Currently focused on business development and marketing for Centennial Bank, a $2.7 billion financial institution, Stephanie has deep roots in data-driven business development strategies that build engagement and drive customer loyalty.  Having worked with Brierley & Partners, Frequency Marketing, Inc. and Alliance Data’s Colloquy consulting group, Stephanie has developed customer strategies for a diverse group of companies including Verizon, classmates.com and JP Morgan Chase.

We recently published a new Case Study examining the competitive scenario between two leading retailers of cycling gear and supplies – Bike Nashbar and Performance Bike. There is a de-facto advantage to one of the players and a key channel that the other can leverage to fight back.

The ultimate question: What would you do if wearing the moccasins of either Chief Marketing Officer?

Since I don’t have all the answers, I recruited a panel of experts to review this Case Study and offer insights into what it will take for Bike Nashbar to put forth a differentiated Customer Strategy and how it should revamp its email marketing strategy.

Tom Rapsas, a Contributing Author to this blog and an independent Creative Director, Writer and Strategist offers up some powerful suggestions here:

I’ve got just one question for the marketing folks at both Performance Bicycle and Bike Nashbar.

Where’s the passion?

As Bill points out in the Case Study, cycling now ranks as the second most popular recreational activity in the U.S. and is growing in popularity among the racing/triathlon set who are plunking down on average $3,500 per new bike. Yet, judging by the non-stop stream of promotional e-mails these retailers are sending out, they’ve decided to play a “lowest price wins” game.

This is further evidenced at their respective Web sites. During a visit to Bike Nashbar, I was greeted by a colossal 90-point headline that read “TAKE AN ADDITIONAL 20% OFF!” Not to be outdone, the primary image on the Performance Bicycle home page was “FREE SHIPPING.”

If the Web-only Bike Nashbar wants to truly separate itself from its bigger, bulkier competitor, it needs to lead not with price but with passion. It needs to make an emotional connection with its customers, by showing that it knows and loves the sport of cycling as much as they do.

This approach starts with something lacking from both Web sites–attractive, compelling images that show the target market at play, whether it’s recreational cyclists, weekend warriors or competitive triathletes—or some combination of all three. Sure, I know you want to show me the goods, but you can make an emotional connection as well, by showing me the joy and excitement of cycling, the camaraderie, the beautiful places it can take me.

Then, start sending me e-mail communications tailored to my personal interests. Base it on my past purchases or browsing history, or better yet ask me to take a survey to find out if I’m a recreational or competitive cyclist, if I’m a street or trail rider and if I’m in the market for a new bike or specific accessories. Then, keep me posted on the latest products and trends that most interest me.

You’re not done yet, Bike Nashbar. Take the steps necessary to become the “go to” source for biking information and education.   How?

• Post Web-based cycling tutorials on your site and YouTube.
• Add employee reviews of products.
• Send out regular updates on bike races, trails and events in each customer’s geographic area.
• Start a Bike Nashbar blog manned by your company’s most avid cyclist (don’t have one? hire one!) and invite a dialogue with your customers.

By making an emotional connection with its customers and winning the passion game, Bike Nashbar has the opportunity to escape the no-win “our prices beat their prices” approach. As Bill once reminded me, there can be only one WalMart in any category–and Bike Nashbar, I don’t think this is the game you want to compete in.

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

We recently published a new Case Study examining the competitive scenario between two leading retailers of cycling gear and supplies – Bike Nashbar and Performance Bike. There is a de-facto advantage to one of the players and a key channel that the other can leverage to fight back.

The ultimate question: What would you do if wearing the moccasins of either Chief Marketing Officer?

I recruited a panel of experts to review this Case Study and offer insights into what it will take for Bike Nashbar to put forth a differentiated Customer Strategy and how it should revamp its email marketing strategy.

Michael Della Penna, the Co-Founder & President Aiti Solutions, LLC offers up the first round of insights and critique here:

Five Email Marketing Fixes for Performance Bike & Bike Nasbar:

The experience Bill observed from both Performance Bike and Bike Nasbar is not uncommon.  As brands increasingly look to grow sales and reduce costs in a tough economy, many are turning to the power of email to do so.  Email’s proven ability to drive ROI seduces many of us to send more to sell more without thinking about the consequences.  As a result email marketing is losing its effectiveness.  In fact, the DMA projects email will generate $43.52 for every dollar spent in 2009.  Not bad, but this is down 10% from the $48.34 reported in the 2007 study.  The DMA also goes on to predict emails steady declines through 2013.  With cluttered inboxes and a continued batch and blast mentality, it is easy to see why.  So what should Performance Bike and Bike Nashbar do to grow the success of their e-communications program?  Re-examine their approach for one.

Email is about building an ongoing dialog and relationship with your prospects and customers.  To do so requires both companies to take a new look at their email marketing strategies and tactics.  Here’s how.

1. Audit the customer experience: Step into your customers shoes.  If you were in their spot would you find the emails timely, relevant, valuable?  How do the communications compare to others you’ve seen and appreciate?  If you can’t be objective hire a third party to conduct that audit for you – you’ll be glad you did…remember the internet is social and the cost of not fixing a bad situation can be detrimental to your brand.
2. Think strategically:  If you have a successful website you’ve probably done some research on who visits, common paths and activities they take and perhaps even built some personas and “day in the life vignettes” to design a great experience.  Now its time to leverage all that great work to think about how you build a complementary communication program.  That program should speak to those various customers throughout the purchase process and customer lifecycle.  Email is about building relationship, not just selling – a successful lifecycle program should include acquisition, conversion, retention and winback communications that speak specifically to the customer’s needs, interests and mindset.
3. Nail the tactics:  Exception email is all about the details.  Be sure you work with someone who is going to help you maximize your programs success by providing strategic pointers, best in class practices, deliverability and creative expertise and new ideas.  Remember once you get in the inbox you need to stay in the inbox and get recipients to open and respond to your offers.  Make sure that partner is someone who has the experience and know how to help you scale your dynamic communications and stand out from the crowd.  It is also important for that partner to work with you to set some ambitious goals that can also be measured, so you constantly push the boundaries and ultimately establish your brand as the benchmark for all others to follow.
4. Expand the footprint & encourage participation:  Email is a wonderful communications and relationship platform.  Encourage users to participate with your brand and others.  Include forward-to-a-friend mechanisms and share to social features that allow users to write reviews, share feedback, and post email to their social networks.  Email users are typically your most loyal users so why not engage those users by getting them to participate with your brand.  With their help and participation you may just find that next great new product or promotional idea that further sets your brand apart.
5. Analyze and Optimize:  Email derives its great advantage from the power of immediacy.  Every email communications offers an opportunity to learn something.  Implement a robust testing strategy that helps you optimize every aspect of your communications including creative design templates and offers.  Use surveys to get inside the minds of your users and leverage data and customer actions including website activity to sense and respond to customer needs.

Ultimately email offers a great opportunity to build a relationship and drive sales.  To be successful, you need to break out of the push promotional mentality and embrace email as a participatory medium where the recipient is an equal partner in the dialog.

Michael Della Penna is co-founder and president of SuiteDialog (www.suitedialog), a participatory marketing company that helps leading brands build interactive marketing program that engage users in an ongoing dialog.  Michael also writes a monthly column for eM+C that highlights the strategies and tactics behind exceptional email communications.  Michael’s column can be found at www.emarketingandcommerce.com.