By: Erika Stevens

Happy New Year!  We are 6 days into the new year and I am still deep in planning mode for 2011. 

It’s a new year which means not only time for reflection on the past year but planning for the coming year.  Brent’s blog post a few weeks ago highlighted several trends in loyalty marketing for 2011.  As I have been reading the top ten lists for various industries the same trends are being echoed.  One thing is for certain, mobile and social media marketing are on every one of those industry lists from retail to restaurants.  Last year mobile and social media emerged in full force with a number of applications, advancements and possibilities for use as marketing tools, but it was just the tip of the iceberg.   

Loyalty marketing seemed to increase last year as businesses started to recover from the economic crisis and focus money on marketing, but it wasn’t just the traditional points and discount programs.  Mobile and social marketing introduced a variety of ways to reward your loyal customers outside the box of the points program.  I believe this year we will see those apps and services refined to provide more analytics and integrations with existing loyalty programs.   

The introspective nature of a new year is beneficial for businesses as well as personal life.  In either instance it is a time to reflect on what you have done in the past year and how you would like to change in the coming year.  If you do not have a loyalty program now is the time to think about how your business could benefit from loyalty marketing.  Take time to look at your current marketing efforts and the customer data you are collecting to see where the gaps are.  Maybe it would be beneficial to survey your customers to gauge their reaction to implementing a loyalty program.  Start researching ways that businesses are using loyalty marketing along with social media and mobile marketing to learn as much about their customers as they can.