Tuesday, July 27, 2010

Customer Relationship Management Strategy: Does The Loyalty Card Has A Value?

There is a lot of innovation regarding loyalty reward programs. This tool remains one of the most appealing CRM project, even though new kind of CRM has appeared with new media. At the beginning, one of the main component of this kind of CRM was the famous loyalty card, which was the symbol of the relationship established between one customer and a brand.

Now the new era of customer relationship management implies to set mobile strategies. Indeed, mobile phones thanks to fast technology improvement have become the best tool to be on customer’s at all time.

Thanks to mobile loyalty reward programs, you may propose to customers more added value than a simple plastic card: you may access your points information, promotions, special features, tools to help you buy more.

Now the thing is that for some people, or at least some marketing directors, the loyalty card has steal a value: An emotional device which marks the relationship between the customer and the brand. With mobile phones, you may have several loyalty cards in the same handheld. But there is no challenge to become one of those card that customers are proud of owning in their wallet. I remember how proud people were to be part of the club Fnac program. They feld somekind of elite, due to the fact they were loyal customers to a retail which was considered as the best in the culture industry.

But to be honest, there is a very few number of companies that could actually set a premium loyalty reward programs which would be rewarding enough to get such a success. Hence I believe that the loyalty card, as we have known it, is on its way to vanish.

What do you think about it? I’d be delighted to share with you on the topic.