By: Erika Stevens

Last week IDLoyalty exhibited at the Loyalty Expo in Orlando, FL.  Not only was the Florida sun a welcome break from the Minnesota winter, but Loyalty Expo was also a time to connect with both marketing and loyalty professionals from a variety of industries.  As exhibitors we were unable to attend many sessions since we had so much booth traffic.  I wanted to highlight a few observations from the sessions we were able to attend.  

After Mark Johnson’s keynote on Monday morning, Robert Passikoff, PhD and Amy Shea from Brand Keys spoke about How to Create Loyalty (and the Brands That Are Doing it Best).  After Dr. Passikoff explained the emotional and rational factors behind deciding the Brand Keys Customer Loyalty Engagement Index they shared the 2011 results.  Though most of the results were what I expected (Apple on top for computer laptop) there were some surprises (NBC on top for evening news show).  Regardless of which company has your personal loyalty the top companies for brand loyalty are examples of businesses getting customer loyalty right.

Evolution is a reoccurring theme on this blog.   I am constantly confused by the number of businesses that invest time and money in a loyalty program and then just walk away expecting it to keep working.  This was not the case with the businesses speaking at Loyalty Expo.  From the roundtable panel which included Stacy Speicher from Starbucks and Jenn McMillen from Gamestop to Tuesday morning’s session with BJ Emerson from Tasti D-Lite, businesses spoke about the success of their loyalty program initiatives.  Even with programs as new as Starbucks and Gamestop or as innovative as Tasti D-Lite the immediate success was not the end of the conversation as all of the speakers had something to say about enhancing and evolving their loyalty offerings.

A personal highlight for me was meeting Bill Hanifin from Hanifin Loyalty who writes one of the best loyalty blogs, The Loyalty Truth.  The Loyalty Truth is, as described on the website, a place for “unbiased insights on customer strategy & loyalty marketing.”  Bill also participated in a well attended panel discussion Harness the Power of Your Customers’ Social Networks with Social Referral Marketing that included Peter Oxley from RewardStream and Jackie Reid from Kiwi Collection.  The panel focused on the ways they are moving beyond points to find other ways to create and reward customer loyalty.  Even though traditional points programs do work in many situations the panel addressed the need to utilize social networking to reach not only your customers but their contacts and connections with their referrals. 
    
We made great connections and had many engaging conversations in and out of our IDLoyalty booth.  Thank you to Mark, Erin and the Loyalty 360 team for putting together a successful show.