THE CHALLENGES FOR LOYALTY MARKETING PROFESSIONALS DEVELOPING IMPACTFUL LOYALTY PROGRAMMES IN APAC AND MEA

Loyalty Marketing is on a significant growth path across APAC and MEA. But often (not always) they are cut and paste of their competitor programmes and lack deep customer engagement resulting in poor business outcomes and results.

My experience is that there are some fundamental challenges why this is the case and why brand are not seeing the true potential of loyalty. I see these as:

1. Education of the Business Decision Makers:
C-suite (or similar) buy-in and education is critical yet they are often not engaged fully at the outset and under value the potential of a loyalty programme. They hold the power over the scope, scale and purse strings which is needed to build a truly impactful and engaging programme. They need to see the impact these programmes have on customer lifetime value, increased revenue, and brand advocacy.

2. Build More Robust Financial Business Cases:
Even if a business case exist my experience is that most are inadequate to support the Loyalty Marketing strategy. Yet these are key to facilitating the decision-making at the senior levels / c suite and getting the right level of investment needed for more than copycat programmes. They need to be developed tailored to each company's unique goals.

3. Empowering Loyalty Program Owners:
The people within the brand/organisation that will lead the programme need better education (CLMP does a great job but a 3 day course isn't sufficient to have the depth and breadth needed). For example they need best practices in loyalty program design, customer experience, customer journey mapping, and data analytics and more.

4. Engagement of the Technology Owners within the Brands
In my experience in emerging markets many CTOs do may not have a deep understanding of marketing technologies including loyalty programs. This can lead to a focus on generic technical specifications rather than functionalities that drive customer engagement and often rely on long checklists of generic features, neglecting the specific needs of the loyalty program and its impact on customer behaviour.

5. We need more engaged / better (?) Industry Bodies/ Forums
The existing landscape is fragmented often catering to specific industries or marketing disciplines.
The level of development and influence of these bodies varies greatly. This is particularly true in developing economies that have limited resources and struggle to keep pace with the evolving marketing landscape.
Lastly, I feel that within these bodies they can be populated by people who want to use them for personal or specific business interest to the detriment of the whole industry.

I would be interested in what experience have you had in this area?