Would you like flowers with your fries? That’s not a new menu item from your favorite purveyor of expedient nourishment. No, that is, in effect, the content of one week of e-mails from your favorite airline loyalty program which might feature floral arrangements one day, a grocery chain the next, and investment portfolio managers before the end of the week.
In the last holiday season, one could feel virtually mauled – as in virtual shopping malls. All of our favorite airlines and hotels exhorted us to buy our holiday gifts from our favorite retail stores via the shopping portal of our favorite loyalty program. When Valentine’s Day draws near we receive reminders to buy flowers from the usual floral suspects. The e-mails come addressed to “Dear Valued Member of Loyalty Program X” and talk about “quality products or services from Brand Y.”
Forgive us if we update our profile preferences to exclude offers from partners or we might even expand the criteria on our spam filters to include our formerly favorite loyalty programs. We know we’re not alone and that other Dear Valued Members are doing the same.
Customers do get tired of being solicited all the time – the more honest of our clients admit that open and click-through rates drop off for partner and weekly specials updates. It is sobering to note that in a UK survey of what 10 factors create distrust of a brand “Too many sales calls” was number 5, cited by 65% of respondents. That was well ahead of things that one would think would be more troubling to customers such as #6 "Inconsistent Quality" and #7 “Ingredients may damage health.” (Corporate Culture, January 2007)
Yes, you read correctly:
Customers said they are more likely to distrust a brand that tries to sell them too often than a brand that sells them something that could poison them.
The usual customer rationale given for making partner offers is that there is a convenient service provided to the member that also earns them more of their favorite points or miles. A case can be made that frequent flyers are on the road too often to drop by the local florist and therefore appreciate the opportunity to buy flowers online. But does it reinforce the brand of the sponsoring airline to offer flowers?
And yes, frequent flyers do stop at home occasionally to sign mortgages and may appreciate the chance to earn a large mileage bonus. Do airline travel and home mortgage lending make conceptual sense side by side? One is usually not considered to be at home when one is traveling (although there are some travelers who likely feel they’ve paid the airline’s mortgage as well as their own).
The point to take away from these rhetorical questions is the very simple platitude that corporations must look at their offering from the point of view of a customer. What a marketer perceives as offering a service can be viewed by consumers as too many attempts to sell to them and they are more likely to trust your brand if you sell them something injurious to their health.
In years of research we’ve done on what consumers value from a reward program, the top of the list after unencumbered cash is always the products of the sponsoring brand. Frequent flyer miles from anyone other than an airline come lower on the list, even for consumers who are addicted to airline miles. Partner rewards and benefits are lower still. Therefore, the customer is likely to feel that you are not providing them with what they consider rewarding if partner offers and communications form the majority of your communications with them.
Stop and think carefully about each partner in your portfolio or better, stop and think BEFORE you add a partner to your portfolio. We recommend asking the following questions:
- Does the product or service make sense with your product? Are you sure your logic isn’t a stretch?
- Is the image and brand positioning of your potential partner congruent with your own brand? Do you feel really good seeing every name in your partner portfolio next to yours?
- Are the target demographics of the potential partner congruent with the demographics of your own database?Or are you chasing a demographic that you think you’d like to have?
- Do your partners work together as a portfolio? Do you have instances of mixing flowers with your fries?
Remember that in the end, the customer’s first expectation is that you provide your core brand. They look to airlines for travel, to credit cards for credit and convenience – and to florists for flowers. Multiplying the ways you touch and serve your customers is a good idea…as long as it makes good sense for your product, your brand, and most importantly, for your customer.
Part One
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By
Kate Baumgart Hogenson
for Metzner Schneider Associates
Copyright 2008 Metzner Schneider
Associates, Inc. |
