Ask yourself how you get loyalty

Unless you live in a cave you’ve probably noticed the latest in a string of annoying advertisements from Coles, this one promoting their newly revamped flybuys program.

British comedian Dawn French has been flown out to spruik the thing and apparently we are all going to get the cards in our letterbox soon.

Another card in my wallet is the last thing I need, but I immediately started thinking about what we do to engender loyalty in our business – and you should be doing the same thing too.

Here are some questions to ask yourself:

• Do you keep a database of customers?
• How do your contact them?
• How regularly?
• Do you offer any form of benefit for ongoing purchases? Such as a discount, or special shipping terms, or free products?
• Have you made this into a formal loyalty program or is it more ad hoc?
• Do you track your customers buying habits? Could this help you tailor offerings to them?

I’m not sure how you’ll answer these questions, but I can tell you one thing – if you don’t have the data, it’s very, very hard to make improvements.

Get it done – today!