Category: Customer Loyalty

Customer Loyalty Dashboard in Google Analytics

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How loyal are your customers? If you business is like most brands, your answer is probably going to be complex and constant in flux. To accurately gauge customer loyalty, you need data from a variety of sources such as customer transaction data, social media data, and customer survey data. But what If you don’t have such data readily available or if you don’t have the analytic capabilities to tackle such data? It is still possible to use common tools to form a crude picture of your customers’ loyalty levels. In this article, I would like to talk about creating a customer loyalty dashboard in Google Analytics.

This article assumes that your website already uses Google Analytics. If you use one of the other web analytics tools instead, the basic ideas should still carry, although the exact terminologies and metric definitions may be different. This recommended dashboard should be applicable to most businesses. But it is particularly relevant to businesses where visits to the website is an important part of how your existing customers interact with you. This may apply, for example, to an online store or an online content provider (e.g., a blog).

Google Analytics Dashboard Brief Overview

(Note: I am keeping this general introduction very brief as I assume that you are more or less familiar with Google Analytics already and may even use the dashboard function. If you are not, a great resource for learning more about Google Analytics is the Google Analytics Academy. If you want to learn about dashboards specifically, check out the “About dashboards” section in Google Analytics Help.)

Google Analytics dashboards allow you to assemble several widgets to create a quick overview of how your website is doing. Since multiple dashboards are possible, you can create individual dashboards around certain themes such as customer loyalty or business growth. To access Google Analytics dashboards, click “CUSTOMIZATION” then “Dashboards” in the left panel. (If you only see a list of icons instead of actual links on the left side of your Google Analytics screen, click on any of the icons will expand to the full menu.) Click the “CREATE” button to create a new dashboard. Select “Blank Canvas” and enter a name for the dashboard in the small window, and click “Create Dashboard”. This creates a blank canvas that you can add different widgets to. Continue reading “Customer Loyalty Dashboard in Google Analytics”

Should You Shorten Your Loyalty Program Expiration Policy?

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For many loyalty program providers, program financial liability is a serious concern. Since members can redeem their points for rewards anytime, the business carries liabilities toward these potential future obligations. Such liabilities can be quite large. For example, American Airlines’ 2017 10-K filing reports $420 million worth of loyalty program liability. For Hilton Hotels, the guest loyalty program liabilities are valued at $889 million, according to the company’s form 10-K. With new accounting guidelines for loyalty programs about to take effect, liabilities will become an even more salient issue for loyalty program providers.

One common way of limiting liabilities is to set a point expiration policy so that points automatically expire after a set period of time (or a set period of inactivity). If your program points do not expire or expire after a longer period of time than you’d like, you may want to consider tightening up the expiration policy. But how will that affect your customers? Should you make the switch? Let’s look at the pros and cons for such a policy shift.

Pros of a Shorter Loyalty Program Expiration Policy

  • A shorter expiration time reduces the number of redeemable points in the long run and decreases program liabilities.
  • Because of the time pressure, a shorter expiration policy discourages your customers from shopping elsewhere. If they want to earn enough points for rewards before the points expire, they may need to put all their eggs in one basket.
  • According to motivation research, cutting the expiration time may motivate members to work harder, either because of the increased challenge level or because of their desire to regain control.

Continue reading “Should You Shorten Your Loyalty Program Expiration Policy?”

Building Loyalty Program Partnerships Wisely

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In less than two weeks from today, Plenti, a coalition loyalty program, will officially shut down. Created by American Express three years ago, Plenti had an impressive roster of partners, at one point including Macy’s, ExxonMobil, Rite Aid, Hulu, Expedia, among others. Despite its high-profile start, the failure of Plenti shows the many challenges associated with loyalty program partnerships. If you ever consider loyalty program partnerships, it is important that you do so strategically and judiciously.

The Business Case For Loyalty Program Partnerships

On the surface, loyalty program partnership is a great idea. It allows consumers to earn points from different businesses, making reward earning easier and more relevant to more consumers. This expands the potential market for the program. Running a joint program reduces the operational cost for each business. In the case of a dominant business-peripheral business partnership (such as the partnerships airline frequent flyer programs form with smaller businesses), the dominant business can make good money selling its program currency to its partners. Airlines, for example, are estimated to make between 1.5 and 2.5 cents per mile. With all these benefits, what could possibly go wrong? Continue reading “Building Loyalty Program Partnerships Wisely”