Exclusivity is Loyalty’s Greatest Reward.

By: Ray Chelstowski / Hilton Barbour

The traditional construct of loyalty programs had customers earning points, miles, or some other manner of token and when they hit a particular threshold, a panacea of rewards would be unlocked for them to choose from.

While many businesses have retained that type of transactional relationship inside their loyalty programs, true loyalty between a brand and a consumer isn’t gained when those who actively participate feel that the rewards are ho-hum, generic and cookie-cutter.

We can hardly be surprised that 50% of members are inactive in most loyalty programs. Do all that work, shop frequently at a particular business, explicitly (or implicitly) give them tons and tons of personal and transactional data. For what? Generic, uninspired and unexciting rewards.

As my Mom likes to say, “the juice ain’t worth the squeeze”

What’s missing in many of these programs – and we hear this frequently when we talk to participants, particularly lapsed or inactive members of loyalty programs – is that they lack several important things.

Some creativity

Some inspiration

And, more often than not, some measure of exclusivity

So why is exclusivity so important and so motivating for loyalty program members?

Because the idea of receiving something unique – versus something generic - is a far stronger driver of new or different customer behaviors (which is the ultimate objective in any of these programs is it not) than simple catalogue of discounts.

More specifically building more Exclusivity in your loyalty efforts can deliver:

Richer Emotional Connections

People connect differently to brands when they provide experiences that present a different value proposition than just savings. Savings have their place for sure – particularly as inflation starts to bite at the grocery store and the gas station – but savings alone don’t cause excitement and anticipation. Experiential rewards create memories and connections that last longer than a single LTO or dollar off transaction.

Stronger Brand Value

We all know that sustained discounts or perpetual promotions can dilute the value of a brand and create a new lower mental benchmark for what customer believe is the legitimate price point for a product. Once customers are “trained” to believe that they should pay less for a brand it becomes extremely difficult and costly to reverse their thinking. Exclusivity protects you against the brand erosion than comes from perpetual discounting activity.

So, what’s the solve?

At Kognitiv we’re keenly aware that many loyalty program managers are facing stiff increases in their cost of goods, increased uncertainty in their supply chain and operations and the same inflationary pressures their customers are facing.

All these factors impact how you fund a loyalty program – and that funding, or lack thereof, impacts what you can offer to your most important and most loyal customers.

With our unique collaborative commerce model and platform, we enable non-competing brands to collaborate and work together to build fresh new funding models – and unique and differentiated rewards – that can’t be created by one brand working alone.

The collaborative commerce model also works differently to tired, and uninspired, partnerships and coalitions in that participants can work with multiple different brands simultaneously. Rather than being stuck with cumbersome, slow and unwieldy partnerships, you can turn on the collaborations that deliver results. Turning off the ones that don’t.  

Kognitiv’ s collaborative commerce alternative offers new flexibility and new freedom for business leaders who recognize that same-ole, same-ole loyalty programs are never going to drive the participation and growth their businesses demand. 

There’s a word for that type of impact on a business.

Exclusive.

ray.chelstowski@kognitiv.com

hilton.barbour@kognitiv.com