In a previous post, I introduced to you a joint effort by the IE marketing department and Travel-Club, the purpose of which was to study consumer loyalty (for more details, see here).
In this post, I am excited to present to you the first results!
The IE research team(marketing professors Dilney Gonçalves, Shameek Sinha, myself, and our research collaborator David Santos), leaded by the head of the marketing department, professor Teresa Serra, started investigating a key question: Do loyalty programs really work?
To respond to this question we have analyzed a database of near 4 million of real customers’ transactions, which took place in the multi-sponsor loylaty program Travel Club (www.travelclub.es), the greatest experts in loyalty programs in Spain, recently collaborating with one of the leading international loyalty agencies – Aimia.
Some of the key results so far are:
- Use the channels efficiently: Communication with customers is the key of the program (optimizing the number and the timing of offers and communications does increase memberspending)
- Use the rewards strategically: Give a final push to members who are close to getting a reward.
- Use the presence of other partners in the program wisely: Having more partners in the program can increase the members’ spending through cross-selling.
In summary, loyalty programs really work only when they are used strategically, taking into consideration the needs and behavior of the program mebers, and being with them as much as possible, not only at the time of a transaction.
For further information, and for a full report of the results, you can visit directly: www.catedrafidelizacion.ie.edu (only in Spanish – sorry 
)
No doubt, that with such great infornation on such an interesting and important topic, you will be hearing from us more in the future!
Let me wish Merry Christmas and a Happy New year to everyone!
Antonios (Adoni) Stamatogiannakis, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Marketing IE Business School – IE University
Antonios . Stamatogiannakis @ ie . edu
*This post is co-authored with David Santos
