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Monday’s Marketing Minute: Elon’s Huge Legal Promise, AI Use Grows For All Age Groups, Meta Betting on AI Chatbots

Happy Monday, y’all! I hope everyone is having a great summer and is ready for another productive week! Here’s a few business stories that caught my eye recently, I hope you enjoy!

 

Elon is totally confounding me right now. Almost every day he makes a move that seems incredibly smart on the surface, then 10 mins later he will make another announcement that seems to undercut what he said in the first one. For instance, multiple users are reporting that accounts that they have held for years, were suddenly taken over by Twitter, with zero compensation. Of course that’s Elon’s right, but it is a terrible look and it makes it much harder to defend his future moves.

Then, he turns around and does this: Announces what he claims will be a bottomless defense fund for anyone who has been treated unfairly by their employer due to activity on Twitter.

 

According to eMarketer, AI usage across all age groups will spike roughly 1,000% in 2023 over 2022 levels. It’s not surprising, and given how immature the AI space is, that growth should continue for the next several years at least. If I’m reading the numbers right, it looks like almost half the population will be using AI in some form within 3 years.  I think that number might be low, if anything.

 

Keeping with the AI trend, Meta is looking for integrate personality-based AI chatbots into Instagram and Facebook. As the technology behind AI matures, I think you will see much more use of AI chatbots, I could see going to your favorite rock stars’ website and being greeted with an AI chatbot that lets you ‘chat’ with them.  At first it would be text-based, then add audio, then eventually video.

 

So that’s it for this week’s Monday Marketing Minute, I’ll have a new post up on building customer loyalty in the restaurant industry via digital up tomorrow and….I’m not sure what Thursday’s post will be yet. I want to do a case study post as I haven’t done one in a while, but I will have to find a good one I can share.  Saturday’s Bible study post will feature one of the most amazing stories of faith in the Old Testament, and probably the greatest foreshadowing of the coming of Jesus, hundreds of years before His birth.

So that’s what you can expect this week. As I wrote about last week, I am loving Claude as a tool to boost my writing output, here’s where you can learn how I am using it to write more.

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I Do Not Deserve to Suffer Like This…

Hello! In January, I made a commitment to start reading the Bible daily. It’s been a wonderful experience, and every Saturday I write a post sharing some of my thoughts on what I am learning. I hope you enjoy these posts on the teachings of the Bible, and you can read other posts I have written in the category Bible Study. I will return to posts on business, marketing and web3 news on Monday!

I Do Not Deserve to Suffer Like This…

At one point or another, regardless of which religion you do or do not practice, most of us have likely said something very similar to this. I have many times asked why something bad is happening to me.  ‘I am a good person!’, I exclaim. Bad things aren’t supposed to happen to good people.  You do good things, and you are rewarded for your good deeds.  This is the natural order of things.  Plus…doing good things then being rewarded simply shows to everyone that if you do good things, you will get your just reward.

I’ve mentioned before how much I am enjoying watching The Chosen.  It truly is the best series I’ve watched in years, and my appreciation for it has only grown since I first mentioned it. I am now watching Season 3.  One of Jesus’ disciples is James, or affectionately called Little James in the series. Little James was given his nickname because there is another James among the group of disciples who is much taller.

Little James is lame in the series, and walks with a noticeable limp and has a staff to help him get around. In one scene earlier in the series, Little James confides to another disciple that he is a bit troubled that Jesus keeps healing the sick and disabled, but has never offered to heal him. Little James decides that Jesus must have a reason for not doing so.

But early in Season 3, Jesus tells his 12 disciples, including Little James, that they will be paired up and sent out to spread the word about the coming Kingdom.  Jesus adds that he will give each of them the authority to cast out demons, and to heal the sick.

Little James is visibly shaken by the news that he will be given authority to heal others, while he is still dealing with his own disability. He comes to Jesus and asks Him to help him understand why Jesus would give him the power to heal others, while Jesus wouldn’t heal his own sickness. Which leads to this absolutely wonderful scene:

After watching this scene, I went back to study because I wanted to confirm that this wonderful story and interaction was actually documented in the Bible. I was disappointed to find that it was not.  In fact, little is told of James in the Bible, so little in fact that we aren’t even sure which James he is.  He may have been Jesus’ cousin or even His brother.  Or he may have been another James altogether.

And there is no mention in the Bible of Little James having any affliction or disability. I was quite honestly a bit disappointed in the series to learn this.

But then, I learned that the actor who plays Little James, Jordan Walker Ross, was born with cerebral palsy and scoliosis. As I watched the scene above, I couldn’t help but wonder how surreal it was for Ross to film that scene. I am sure he must have asked some of the same questions that Little James had asked, or at least I could understand if he had. I think the scene was handled absolutely perfectly on all levels.

One of the common themes I am finding as I am reading the Bible is how the believer is constantly reminded to focus on themselves, and their own path. We are reminded that we can’t judge what we do or don’t have in comparison to someone else. When we see that someone else has more than us, we aren’t supposed to envy their possessions.  When we see that someone has less, we are supposed to help them as best we can.

Suffering is a byproduct of living in a fallen world. I will suffer even though I do good works.  So shall you. Yet we often add to our own suffering via our assumptions. Or our misconceptions about why something is happening to us.  And why is it that someone else seems to have all the good fortune, while I am struggling? I do good works that seem to go unnoticed, while this person seems to get rewards that their works don’t seem to justify!

We are operating at all times on incomplete information. We don’t know what is happening to someone else, we don’t even know what is happening to ourselves. Perhaps a struggle we are dealing with today was given to us so that we would become strong enough to deal with a far greater struggle that will come our way in a year.

This again, is why God tells us to be faithful. Because worry and faith cannot exist in the same space. Our worry robs us of our happiness, our faith fills the space in our heart and mind where worry wants to dwell.

Suffering is a byproduct of living in a fallen world. Let’s not add to our own suffering by worrying.

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This is My Favorite AI Tool, and It’s Not ChatGPT or Bard

using claude to create content

So I’ve been using and loving a new AI tool the last few weeks. Before I get into what the tool is and how I use it, I wanted to talk about how I am using artificial intelligence tools to help me with content creation.

First, I am different from most content creators. When you talk to most content creators who blog, they will tell you they have plenty of ideas for blog posts, but no time to write them all.

I am the exact opposite. And I always have been. I have always struggled with coming up with ideas for posts. Once I have the idea, the actual writing of the post typically takes me an hour or so.  But I just cannot come up with enough post ideas to consistently post in anything resembling a consistent posting pattern. It’s one reason why I love writing Monday’s Marketing Minute: The format picks the ‘topic’ for me, and it’s much easier to write a weekly post summarizing a few news stories I have read that I feel will be relevant to share here.

A big part of my problem is I feel like if I have ever written about a topic before, then it would be repetitive to cover it again. Yes, I know how stupid that sounds to say that I can’t blog about the same topic twice on a blog that’s almost 15 years old, but that’s where my mind goes. I feel like covering the same topic twice is doing a disservice to the reader, so I try to find a new angle on each topic, a new case study, example, etc. And those don’t always readily present themselves.

So prior to a few weeks ago, I’d always struggled come up with post ideas. But all that changed when I discovered Claude. Claude is somewhat similar to ChatGPT, but where it excels is analyzing text. This is where it has been immensely helpful for me.

When I first started using Claude, I told it to analyze my website, tell me what it saw.  It would point out my perceived strengths and weaknesses based on the content I was creating.  Then I said go through my content, and tell me which industries I should be focusing on, based on my content, my services and my experience. And it gave me a list of several industries that were a good ‘fit’ for me, I whittled that list down to a few that I thought were the best fit for me, and that was my focus list. If you’ve been reading this blog for the last couple of weeks, you can make a good guess at what industries are on that list.

Once I had my list of industries I would be focusing my content on, I needed to drill down on the type of content I create for those industries. I went back to Claude and asked it to give me the top concerns facing decision-makers in those industries. It gave me 5 or so concerns for each industry. Some of those concerns overlapped with the type of services I offer, and some did not.

So I went back to Claude and told it to give me the top concerns for these industries BUT restrict those concerns to areas that overlap with my services. Then in seconds, Claude gave me a list of dozens of pain points that industry professionals are dealing with, that perfectly overlap with my skillsets and services.

Each pain point was a blog post idea. Prior to working with Claude, I had never planned out my editorial calendar more than a week or two in advance. In fact, if I had anything scheduled ahead of time, I felt accomplished.

Thanks to Claude, I now have my editorial calendar here full for the rest of the year. This would have been all but impossible on my own, but thanks to Claude, my content creation is set for months.

Here’s How I Am Using Claude to Create Content

So here’s where the rubber meets the road. I’ve talked about the potential perils of AI for content creators before. One of my main fears is that content creators simply let an AI tool write content for them.

And it’s insanely easy to do just that. It took Claude just seconds to give me dozens of post ideas.  For each post idea, all I have to do is ask Claude to write me a post on that topic, and it will spit out the post in seconds.

Of course the potential problems with this approach are obvious. You lose any sense of ‘your voice’ in your content. Your content could be inaccurate, believe it or not all AI tools commonly used today are quite prone to sharing false information (called ‘hallucinations’). And it’s simply not very ethical at all to pass off the work of an AI tool as being your content.

My stance has always been that you shouldn’t view AI tools as the content creator for you, but rather the content editor. Here’s an example:

For this post on the technology industry, I asked Claude to give me a 1,000 word post on the topic. Which it did in seconds. I then used the post that Claude gave me as the outline for the post I would eventually write. Instead of publishing the post as Claude gave it to me, I basically stripped all its guts out and rebuilt it from the ground up. I did keep the structure of the post more or less in tact. But almost all of the content ended up being changed.

The post that Claude gave me was around 900 words. The finished post I published was 2,500 words. And I ended up removing at least half of the words that Claude gave me.  And the few sentences I did keep were left alone because I read it and thought “Ok that’s similar to what I would have said here anyway.”

But what Claude gave me was the structure for the post. That was immensely helpful to me. I learn by observing, if you give me an example of how something works, I can quickly understand it. By writing a post for me, Claude helps me easily see the type of post I want to write. If I had started out on my own to write the same post without Claude, and only had the post topic, I could have done it, but it would have taken much longer. And I’m not sure the content itself would have been any better. It might have been worse.

So How Does Claude Compare to Other AI Tools Like ChatGPT?

ChatGPT is the AI tool that most people are familiar with if they have been using any AI tools. I have been using it a lot this year, and while I do still use it and find it useful, I prefer Claude’s ability to analyze text. Especially large amounts of text, I believe Claude’s current version can analyze up to 100,000 words of text at a time.

ChatGPT I use more in a ‘conversational’ way to help me work out ideas in my head. It helps with ideation for me. And I still use it regularly for that purpose.

Bard.  Bless its heart, but Bard is just bad. So I was writing a post on loyalty programs with Claude, but I decided to do some research with Bard for the post. I asked Bard to give me the average ROI for a loyalty program. Bard told me it was 25-30%. That figure sounded impossibly high, so I asked for a source. Which Bard said it couldn’t give me. I kept asking in different ways and Bard finally admitted that it made up that 25-30% figure for the ROI of loyalty programs. Bard said the REAL figure is 10.4%. I said great, what’s the source for that figure, and Bard cited a 2022 study from the Aberdeen Group.  I googled it, and sure enough, that study doesn’t exist.

Bard is from Google, but Google also purchased a 10% stake in the company behind Claude earlier this year. I suspect we will see a massive upgrade to Bard soon, I mean it’s so bad now we almost have to. And since Google is now investing in Anthropic, the company behind Claude, I have to wonder if some of the same technology that powers Claude might find its way to Bard in some form.

So my advice for content creators when it comes to AI remains the same: Learn how to use these tools but use them for ideation and editing of your content, not for content creation.

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Your Guide to Leveraging User-Generated Tourism Content to Drive Higher Engagement and Referrals

user-generated tourism content

User-generated content is vital to the tourism industry. In fact, 83% of travelers make booking decisions based in part on reviews from travelers like themselves.

But there’s another reason why user-generated tourism content is so important, and it’s unique to the tourism and travel industries.

Have you ever heard the saying “Money can’t buy you happiness?” Science has proven this statement is correct, with a pretty big caveat: Money CAN buy you happiness IF that money is spent on EXPERIENCES. If money is spent on products, the satisfaction you have with the purchase typically is at its peak at the moment of purchase, and it continues to fall over the lifetime of the product as its usefulness fades.

Yet when money is spent on experiences, such as when traveling, the opposite occurs. Because those experiences become memories and those memories are shared with the people who traveled with you, and with others. This is why user-generated tourism content is so important; it’s a wonderful selling tool for your destination or attraction.

Let’s explore proven ways travel brands can effectively source, showcase, and maximize the impact of user-generated tourism content:

Strategically Sourcing Relevant UGC

The first step is developing ongoing streams of authentically created, relevant user-generated tourism content you can pull from. Some key sourcing tactics include:

  • Actively encourage visitors to share photos and experiences during their trip through prompts, signage, and incentives. This captures UGC directly. Along with this, regularly survey your visitors about their activities at your destination in order to uncover where visitors are creating content organically. For instance, if your visitors are telling you that they frequently stop to take a picture at a particular point, add a prompt or sign to encourage this behavior.
  • Monitor traveler review sites, Instagram hashtags, Facebook groups, etc. to identify photos, videos, testimonials to potentially feature. This allows you find UGC directly, but it can also give you ideas about the type of content that travelers are creating. Also, it can help you identify potential travel ambassadors that your attraction or destination could work with.
  • Run UGC contests and campaigns where travelers submit entries for prizes. This incentivizes volume and quality. The tourism case study More Fun in the Phillipines is a classic example of utilizing UGC from travelers, as well as locals.
  • Contact recent visitors who created stellar content for permission to feature their posts. Seek varied perspectives. Never assume that because a traveler posts content that you can grab it and use it as you wish.  You can’t, but this will likely lead to huge online backlash against your attraction or destination if you use someone’s content without permission. Always contact visitors about any user-generated tourism content, and you may actually begin a working relationship with that traveler!
  • Source user-generated tourism content tied to your unique selling points – ex. family-focused for resorts, honeymooners for tropical locales, adventure for outdoor spots. This helps you stand out from the pack. You can also brand your destination to particular groups. Such as how Gulf Shores and Orange Beach Tourism is promoting Alabama’s white sand beaches to females for a ‘girl’s getaway’. I think this is a great example of tailoring your destination to a specific audience. (Disc – I have spoken at a Gulf Shores and Orange Beach Tourism conference on tourism marketing before).

The wider the content sourcing net, the more diverse and engaging user-generated tourism content you’ll have to leverage across all your channels.

Showcase UGC Prominently Across Touchpoints

Now that you have a library of user-generated tourism content to choose from, amplify it where travelers are engaging and converting:

  • Create website galleries and testimonial sections to build credibility and expectations during research. Let your best salespeople, your happy visitors, sell for you.
  • Feature photos and stories from recent visitors in your email newsletter. This is a great way to effectively promote your destination and create more content as well.
  • Paid social posts should heavily utilize UGC rather than purely polished ads. Real photos from real people are shown to drive higher levels of engagement.
  • Retargeting campaigns reminding potential customers of real traveler perspectives. Consider promoting the testimonials or other UGC in your website galleries as mentioned earlier. This makes a past visitor to your site aware of new content, coming from visitors instead of the destination itself.
  • Local display ads featuring UGC paired with special offers target nearby travelers. This can be particularly effective if paired with UGC or a testimonial from a local traveler who would be known in that area. This can create additional word of mouth for their inclusion in the ad.

The more platforms where you feature user-generated tourism content, the greater the exposure and impact.

Optimize UGC for Maximum Discoverability

Making your user-generated tourism content more discoverable in organic search and on social media enables broader reach and engagement.

  • Add UGC galleries and sections optimized with relevant titles, URLs, metadata, alt text. Pro tip: Publish blog posts that focus on these relevant keywords and phrases, married to the corresponding UGC that has the same focus.
  • Encourage travelers to use your unique hashtags when sharing on Instagram, Facebook, etc. to associate the content with your destination or attraction. Sharing content that includes your hashtags also encourages other travelers and visitors to use your hashtag organically with their content.
  • Syndicate UGC on travel info sites optimizing with keywords travelers are searching for.
  • Ensure experiential UGC is easily shareable to encourage word-of-mouth.
  • Leverage geotags and location categories so UGC appears in relevant results.

Precision optimization makes your user-generated tourism content work harder as travelers often search destinations, attractions, experiences, and more. Taking into account visitor behavior and tailoring your UGC for the traveler’s needs is simply smart strategy.

Motivate Referrals and Loyalty with UGC

The benefits of user-generated tourism content extend beyond the initial prospect. UGC also fuels referrals from happy past visitors and nurtures their loyalty.

Some ways to maximize lifetime value include:

  • Contacting recent visitors to thank them for UGC contributions and encourage sharing with networks. Reward the behavior you want to encourage. Simply saying ‘thank you’ goes a long way.
  • Featuring UGC from loyalty program members to make them feel recognized. Additionally, if a particular ambassador or member of your loyalty program excels in content creation, acknowledge them for their content. But also, point out why their content is exceptional. This makes the member feel appreciated, but it also communicates to the other members how to create better content. When the Alabama Mountain Lakes Tourist Association sends out a ‘welcome pack’ for its ambassadors, it includes instructions on how to better create content and post on social media.
  • Sharing visitor content contributions when announcing new offerings, events, etc. as social proof. This can serve to remind your followers and subscribers about your destination or attraction, but it also attaches content from your best salespeople to your new offerings.
  • Reward repeat UGC contributions with loyalty perks, profile badges, and recognition. Also, vet these contributors as candidates for your ongoing brand ambassador or advocacy program.
  • Repurpose visitor content across multiple channels and touchpoints to reinforce memory of positive experiences. Visual content such as photos or videos can perform better on social media sites like Instagram and Twitter, while a long-form story or testimonial is perfect for a blog post or an issue of your email newsletter.

The more you spotlight satisfied travelers in ongoing communications and marketing, the deeper their engagement becomes while spreading positive word-of-mouth among current and potential visitors.

UGC is the Authentic Storytelling Today’s Traveler Craves

At the end of the day, user-generated tourism content is your destination’s best marketing. Leveraging real stories, stunning visuals, and genuine advocacy directly from past visitors forges an emotional bond and credibility that your brand alone cannot manufacture. Smart tourism marketers understand this, and are willing to cede some communication control to their visitors, in order to realize more revenue in return.

With abundant sources and creative presentation formats, user-generated tourism content provides a foundational ingredient to engage and convert audiences across multiple online touchpoints covering the entire travel journey. Are you leveraging UGC to inspire travelers and build visitor loyalty? The rewards make the strategy well worth the effort.

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Monday’s Marketing Minute: Threads’ Userbase Collapses, Data Marketers Use to Personalize Ads, Meta’s Ad Rev Up While X Offers Discounts

Happy Monday, y’all! I hope you had a wonderful weekend and are ready for an even better week! You can just feel social media going through a midlife crisis right now, trying to reinvent itself, not sure what it wants to be. And it seems like most of us who have been in this space for years are looking around wondering what happened to all these sites I used to love? It seems the space is ripe for disruption, but I’m not seeing any serious contenders at the moment.  Let’s hope that changes and social media gets back to being social and fun, soon!

Meanwhile, here’s a few news and business stories that have caught my eye:

 

I have a confession to make: I’m not on Threads and have no intention of joining. Now, Meta is announcing that most of you that flocked over on launch, have already bailed.  BTW I love Zuckerberg’s reaction, yeah, how do we maybe Threads STICKIER???  This reminds me of a brilliant post written eons (in social media terms) ago by Tara Hunt. If I remember correctly, she was in a website design meeting where similar questions where being asked about how to make the site ‘stickier’ and keep users on.  She blurted out ‘Where is the ability to throw sheep in this plan?’ Which was an allusion to the feature Facebook had years ago that would let you ‘throw a sheep’ at someone.  It’s a reference to those playful little features that help us build connections and community, which is how you build and sustain growth on a site or social platform, much moreso than ‘stickiness’.

 

Interesting stats on the data that marketers use to personalize user experiences. As I was looking at this list, I’m thinking about what data I would want marketers to use, versus what they prioritize. For instance, my transaction history and any preferences I set sound good to me. But if they get into areas like my social media history or website activity, then I am less receptive. I’d be curious to see how others feel about this.  Hmmm…this may warrant a standalone post at some point.

 

So Meta’s ad revenues get a nice bump, while Twitter/X is having to slash prices to get advertisers back on the platform.  Could these two stories be related? Quite possibly, as I am sure some of this is simply a case of ad dollars being transferred from Twitter to Facebook. While I do believe Elon will eventually get Twitter/X on track, the rest of the year could continue to be very bumpy.

 

So that’s it for this week’s edition of Monday’s Marketing Minute, look for a new post on tourism marketing tomorrow, and I think one on artificial intelligence on Thurs. I’ve been experimenting with a new tool the last few weeks that’s been a godsend for my writing productivity. I can’t wait to share with you what I’ve learned.

Till then, have an amazing week!

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5 Loyalty Program Hurdles That Retail CMOs Must Overcome

retail loyalty program

Loyalty programs have become ubiquitous in retail, with brands large and small launching initiatives to incentivize repeat purchases and gather customer data. But even as adoption grows, retail CMOs grapple with lingering concerns around cost, complexity, sustainability, and more that come with implementing a productive retail loyalty program.

Let’s take a closer look at the Top 5 concerns that CMOs have about launching a retail loyalty program, and find a solution for each:

1 – Concern Over High Costs

Rolling out a loyalty program requires significant upfront investment in the underlying technology infrastructure and integration needed to run the program, track activity digitally, and surface data insights. Ongoing costs also pile up for funding rewards, customer service, marketing and other program elements. Especially given slim margins in retail, proving a positive ROI can be difficult. Still, the average ROI for loyalty programs is approximately 10%, and roughly 80% of companies with a loyalty program are planning to up their investment in that program over the next 3 years.

Strategies to Address Cost Concerns:

  • Start small and scale program complexity over time rather than overinvesting initially before proving value. The reality is that whenever any new marketing initiative is launched, mistakes will be made at first. And mistakes cost money. Launching your retail loyalty program with a more limited scope allows you to lower the initial investment, while more easily proving ROI. This will make it easier to justify a greater investment to scale out the program as it grows. One company that utilized this strategy in launching and growing its retail loyalty program is Walgreens. The retailer rolled out its loyalty program in select markets first, then scaled program aspects to the national level, after worth had been proven.
  • Offer tiered benefits aligned to reasonable repeat purchase levels rather than overextending perks. Remember to balance rewarding customers for purchase behavior they are already engaging in with trying to encourage new purchase levels. If customers can see the benefits from additional purchases as being helpful, they will pursue them.
  • Leverage lower cost digital rewards like free shipping, exclusive content, early access along with discounts. For example, Publix’s Club Publix loyalty program gives members a sneak peek on the weekly ad. Every Tuesday, members can access the new circular that will publish the following day. This not only gives a tangible benefit to members at very little cost to Publix, but it also makes members feel appreciated to get early access to upcoming sales.
  • Closely track attributable lift in purchase frequency, order values, and margin impact from the program. Keeping a closer eye on what’s working (and what isn’t) for members allows you to be more engaged and flexible in pursuing incremental improvements to program efficiency.

2 – Anxiety Around Execution Complexity

Well-planned loyalty programs require tight integration of technology systems across channels, extensive employee training, setting program policies and architecture, significant customer education, and complex point tracking and redemption procedures. That’s a mouthful of a sentence, and it can easily become a headache for the retail CMO that’s trying to take a loyalty program from the drawing board to implementation.

Here’s Some Ideas For Simplifying Rollout:

  • Conduct pilot programs with small customer segments to refine operational processes before full launch. Recall the example of Walgreens above, it selected individual markets to test run its loyalty program before going national. This process helps give your retail brand tighter control over the process at launch, and lets you make ‘smaller mistakes’, before a more grand rollout.
  • Invest in user-friendly program management software and automated tracking to streamline administration. Employee training will be key and help create a smoother launch.
  • Create detailed protocols for customer service teams to easily explain program policies and procedures. Integration is key, when a customer contacts your support team, they need to understand all aspects of the loyalty program so they can give the same level of support as with all other areas of your business. A consistent experience across all brand touchpoints is vital to customer satisfaction, and creating customer loyalty.
  • Minimize complicated tier structures and redemption options that create friction. Prioritize easy enrollment.  Target has simplified its loyalty program down to just Target Circle, which allows for digital registration. This greatly reduces signup friction and gets members onboarded and in the program quicker.

3 – Fear of Diminishing Engagement Over Time

Even successful loyalty launches see attrition as customers initially excited about perks and benefits lose interest when the novelty wears off. This is because poorly designed loyalty programs build loyalty to a particular offer or sale, not to the brand. You build loyalty AFTER the purchase, not before.

Strategies to Keep Members Loyal to Your Loyalty Program:

  • Continuously add new benefits and offers rather than remaining static after launch. If the majority of the perks of your loyalty program are tied to short-term sales, members will lose interest once those sales expire. Find ways to tap into existing behavior and encourage more participation.
  • Provide surprise bonuses and value-adds at random to reengage lapsed users.
  • Remember that your loyalty program will work best when it is rewarding existing behavior, versus attempting to incentivize new behavior. If the member views the perks of your loyalty program as a reward for activities they are already taking (such as purchases), this encourages them to continue to engage in those activities.
  • Mine your data and determine where you are losing members. Find the churn points and work to eliminate them.

4 – Concerns Around Data Privacy and Security

Collecting customer transaction data, contact info, and purchase patterns raises obvious data privacy considerations. Ensuring data practices are transparent, securing sensitive information adequately, and avoiding misuse are top-of-mind for your program’s members, as they should be for you.

Best Practices for Data Protection:

  • Provide easily accessible and understandable privacy policy explaining data practices. Clearly explain what data is collected, and how it will be used. Also, make sure your loyalty program’s data collection policy is easily accessible to all members.
  • Allow customers control over data sharing preferences and opt-out abilities. This will help alleviate concerns over your data collection policy, and help establish trust.
  • Limit internal data access to essential personnel, with air tightsecurity and usage protocols. Safeway ensures that only key decision makers have access to member data.
  • Any member data that is stored in conjunction with your retail loyalty program should be secure and encrypted.

5 – Questioning Long-Term Program Sustainability

If your program’s benefits focus heavily on discounts or giveaways, margins can easily erode. An additional problem will be that members will become more loyal to the giveaways or discounts than the brand itself. And if stringent requirements make points redemption difficult, perceived value diminishes. Achieving optimal behaviors to drive growth long-term is an elusive balancing act.

Steps for Building a Lasting Retail Loyalty Program:

  • Structure rewards aimed at driving incremental visits and purchase rather than discounting. Remember, we want to reward members for behavior they are already engaging in, instead of trying to incentivizing new behavior. Remember earlier I mentioned how Club Publix members get a sneak peek at that week’s sales. This is a simple way to give a tangible benefit to members that ties into existing behavior without trying to force the member to do something new in order to get a ‘treat’.
  • Measure cost per point redeemed and adjust accrual rates and caps to maintain profitability.
  • Monitor program analytics closely to identify perks and behaviors with highest ROI. Likewise, identify the activities that aren’t producing, these could actually be contributing to member churn.
  • Continually experiment with reward types and messaging to refine most value-driving features.
  • Ask members for feedback! Regularly survey members and find out what features they like and dislike, as well as any suggestions they have for additional perks or benefits. When you can add a member-suggested feature, make sure to communicate this to members. Letting members know you are listening and implementing suggestions as you can is a great way to build trust and…loyalty!

 

One Final Note About Building a Successful Retail Loyalty Program

Whenever I first begin working with a client on structuring a retail loyalty program, I remind the client that there must be a clear benefit to both the retailer AND the member for participating. As long as the member can always easily understand how the program benefits them, they will stay a member. So have that in the back of your mind at every stage of planning, development and execution; How will this change benefit the member?

As long as you can consistently ask and answer that question, the potential for success for your retail loyalty program will always be higher.

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7 Ways Tech Brands Can Build Customer Loyalty Through Digital Experiences

customer loyalty technology industry

Building customer loyalty in the technology industry can be quite the challenge. The industry marketplace is crowded and this creates a very competitive environment for customer attention, much less loyalty. Unfortunately, the days of simply building a better mousetrap and reaping the financial rewards are long gone. Over two decades ago, Apple carved a niche in the music industry for itself with the iPod. Despite being a technically inferior product to competitors, Apple better understood WHY customers would want its product, and that made all the difference.

The reality is that today, you need a superior product AND a focus on designing superior customer experiences. Couple a great product with a great customer experience, and you can create genuine brand loyalty and turn current customers into passionate fans that love your brand. Let’s look at 7 ways that your technology company can tap into digital experiences to increase customer retention, loyalty and advocacy:

Leverage Social Media to Its Fullest Potential

Social media optimization is an easy starting point for a better digital experience. Still, you don’t want to simply create a presence on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram and call it a day.  Remember that technology customers tend to be more analytical. They are more interested in diving deeper into topics and 101 level content that can be found on some social media sites may not be their cup of tea.  For instance, if you want to stay up to date on the latest technology news, you are more likely to hang out on Reddit and LinkedIn than you are on Facebook and Instagram. No matter what industry you are in, always keep in mind what type of content your customers are looking for, and where they would expect to find it. Ditch the boilerplate when it comes to planning your social media strategy!

Here’s some tips to optimizing your social media efforts:

  • Responding promptly to comments, queries, and feedback shows you are listening. Don’t let mentions go unanswered. Warning: Make SURE the information you give is correct, and if you make a mistake, own it and apologize. Technology customers will often know your product as well as you do. So if you give incorrect information, they will call you out on it. However, if you can quickly correct any misinformation and act on the customer’s feedback, you will often win their approval and advocacy as a result. I’ve worked with technology companies like Dell that realized the benefits in real-time of connecting with customers and utilizing instant feedback from customers and acting on it. It can create big loyalty and advocacy wins for your brand.
  • Proactively highlighting and thanking followers who post about your brand or share content. I have a saying I tell all my clients: Reward the behavior you want to encourage. There is no easier way to encourage customers to create MORE positive content about your company than thanking them. Whenever you see any customer on any social media channel saying ANYTHING positive about your company, thank them immediately. You would be amazed at how many companies ignore customers who positively promote them. It’s the lowest hanging fruit in social media. Learn to say ‘Thank you!’ early and often.
  • Featuring user-generated content like reviews, unboxings, or creations showcasing your products. User content builds authenticity, and it is viewed as being more credible than content that comes from the brand itself.
  • BONUS TIP: Don’t be afraid to promote content from your customers who are promoting your brand. If a customer has written a blog post that includes an endorsement for your company, then promote it on your social channels! Ford used one of my tweets waaaay back in 2010 as a Promoted Tweet! The automaker was using content from fans and enthusiasts, as a way to draw attention to others who were talking favorably about the brand. As I said, it’s all about rewarding the behavior you want to encourage.

The more you reward and spotlight social media advocacy, the more it will grow.

Optimize User Experiences Across the Entire Journey

Every touchpoint that customers have with your technology shapes their loyalty. Ensuring seamless, frictionless experiences is crucial.

This means obsessively optimizing key user interactions like:

  • Onboarding – Making the setup, installation, and initial usage intuitive and simple. Remember that the first experience that customers have with your technology product or service will greatly impact their perception of it.
  • Education – Providing easy to follow instructions, tips, and how-to’s guide users in becoming experts. Additionally, giving customers easy access to help can not only divert customer support inquiries, it can help boost customer loyalty and advocacy!
  • Support – Fast, effective technical troubleshooting and customer service keeps users happy when issues arise. Make sure your CS department has easy access to Subject Matter Experts who can provide more technical support if necessary.
  • Upgrades – Migrations, new releases, and added features should build on the familiar and avoid disruption.  As long as the upgrade feels like an improvement, it will be welcome and lead to higher levels of customer satisfaction. But if every upgrade feels like ‘starting over’, it will lead to a frustrating experience for the customer, and could even prompt them to explore competitor’s offerings.

Mastering end-to-end user experience removes adoption barriers and frustration while exceeding expectations. Delighted users then pay it forward with referrals.  Remember, your best salespeople are your current, happy customers!

 

Build an Engaged User Community

What’s the difference between an audience and a community?  With an audience, all the interaction is one way, from the stage toward the seats.  With a community the interaction is happening from person to person. Creating a community around your products and services is one of the best ways that a technology company can build loyalty and advocacy from customers.

Consider digital community building strategies like:

  • Hosting user forums and groups to share tips, product hacks, feedback, and more. Let users help each other. BONUS: Over time, elevate the most proficient contributors to your group to the role of Moderator. This encourages more engagement from the group, and it signals to your user group that its users will share ownership of the group along with your company.
  • Promote user-generated content and reviews. Even if it promotes the creator as much as it does your brand.  Also, don’t be afraid to highlight 4-star reviews. Most customers actually view 4-star reviews as being more credible than 5-star reviews. If a product or service has all 5-star reviews, it looks suspicious. But if the reviews are excellent overall, a few 4-star or even 3-star reviews sprinkled in can actually make all the reviews as a group seem more credible.
  • Holding live or virtual events and meetups to cultivate relationships between fellow users and the brand. These can be intimate gatherers with a few customers, or massive user conferences like Adobe Summit. Remember, any time you can get your passionate customers and users together in the same place and interacting with each other, it’s good for your brand loyalty.
  • Private community groups on Facebook or Slack for power users. VIP access builds exclusivity, and is viewed as a perk or reward for your most passionate users.

Bringing users/customers together is a wonderful way to build affinity and loyalty toward your brand. Look for ways to connect your most passionate customers to each other, it will pay for itself every time.

Develop a Customer-Focused Content Strategy

Can I let you in on a secret? (Leans in) Content that’s useful to your customers makes it easier for them to trust you.  If you constantly create content that’s relevant to your customers, then they will actively seek out your content and it will reflect positively on your brand. It will also make your customers more receptive to all your brand’s communications.

Valuable types of loyalty-focused content include:

  • “Insider tips” or “pro tips” articles with advice for power users. This is content that’s targeted at your current customers, who have a higher degree of awareness and knowledge of your products and services.
  • Step-by-step how-to tutorials for maximizing capabilities. Become users’ go-to resource. Let’s say you buy a graphic design program for your mac. After a few weeks of using it, you feel like you have the basic functions and usage down, but you want to learn more. So you will start to seek our deeper dives and more detailed how-tos. Why not give your customers and users the content they will be looking for?  If you don’t give them this content, they will find it from another source, or another customer. And that customer might suggest using a competitor’s design program instead. Something to think about.
  • Sharing inspiring user stories and creations featured in the community. Applaud their innovation. Remember earlier how I talked about rewarding the behavior you want to encourage?  This is a perfect example of doing so. When your users create amazing content or art or whatever by using your products or services, put the spotlight on them! Make them feel like rock stars, because they are. All this will do is encourage and inspire more users to create more content with your technology.
  • Insights from product designers, founders or engineers. Pull back the curtain, make your SMEs (Subject Matter Experts) accessible to your community of users.
  • Sneak peeks and early access to new features or product roadmaps. This will be viewed as a perk by your users and they will greatly appreciate your brand giving them access that the ‘general public’ doesn’t have.

Content acts as fuel for loyalty when it highlights common user pain points and fulfills unmet informational needs.

 

Launch a Formal Loyalty or Brand Ambassador Program

Once you have identified your most passionate users and customers, it may be time to create a formal program to manage your ongoing relationship. This can be a loyalty program, or something more in-depth such as a brand ambassador program. In either event, you want to create an ongoing relationship with these customers where you can more easily access feedback from them as well as stay connected. Being in closer contact allows your brand to leverage these special customers to more easily communication key messages to the larger marketplace, as well as collect valuable feedback from your customer and userbase.

Tactics such as:

  • A tiered-points system with points/credits earned for actions like reviews, referrals, UGC. More engagement means more perks.
  • Early access to new products and sales. This could also include special access to your brand’s SMEs, designers, engineers, etc.
  • Swag, discount and free services. Also, create free swag just for your members. It will make them feel special to get a piece of clothing or device that the ‘general public’ doesn’t have, but it also creates word of mouth. People will ask where they got that special item, which then gives the user a chance to brag on themselves for being a member of your program and having ‘special access’!
  • Free products to review or prime positioning in marketing content. One year I worked with a tech company to facilitate an on-site customer event at its world headquarters. As part of the event, a camera crew was on hand to record the sessions and discussions. The following year we had the group back again, and I was again on hand to moderate the event. Part of the event included a sneak peek at a new commercial that the brand would be releasing that included some of the video that had been shot at the previous year’s event. While showing the commercial, one of the attendees suddenly burst into tears, and exclaimed ‘I just saw myself in the video!’ The brand had included a short clip of her speaking at the previous year’s event. Needless to say, it made a VERY positive impression on her!

Creating a well-structured brand ambassador program can greatly amplify your ability to engage your most passionate customers and boost customer loyalty. BONUS: Here’s how a brand ambassador program can work for a technology company.

 

Get Creative with Contests, Games, and Activities

Gamification, when done right, can tap into users’ competitive spirits and drive more active engagement with the brand.

Some examples can include:

  • Photo contests for fan art, or video contests for best product demo. Let users showcase their skills, let the larger community vote on the winners. Promote winners on the brand’s main marketing and social media channels, and use entries as repurposed content throughout the year.
  • Leaderboards and badges for top forum contributors. This is a great way to encourage more community involvement, plus badges and ‘digital flair’ serve to drive online word of mouth. For instance, give top forum contributors a badge they can display on their blog.
  • Referral and feedback quests with prizes or charity contributions. Increase advocacy behaviors.
  • Easter eggs hidden in products, packaging or content. Add an element of surprise and delight.
  • AR experiences along with virtual quests. These help add entertainment and functionality to your technology, along with giving unique digital experiences.

With a little creativity and strategic planning, your technology brand can develop endless quests and challenges that not only entertain users but get them more invested in your brand.  And a deeper investment leads to higher levels of loyalty.

 

Pull Data Insights to Refine Your Loyalty Strategy

The beauty of digital channels is the ability to closely track activity and glean actionable data insights that fuel constant optimization.

Analyze key metrics like:

  • User retention rates (churn rate) over time and after milestone actions. Keeping a close eye on churn, and what is prompting it, let’s you identify bottlenecks in the brand loyalty journey.
  • Web traffic source patterns showing top referral channels. This data gives you insights into where your most loyal customers and users are spending their time. This also helps you refine where your brand spends ITS time, so you can better connect with your customers where they are.
  • Behaviors that correlate to the most loyal vocal advocates. By constantly tracking and engaging with your brand advocates, you can build a persona and understanding of who they are, and the behaviors they engage in.
  • Touchpoints users frequently interact with. By mapping all touchpoints along the customer journey, you can identity where conversions are happening, and where churn is as well.
  • How advocacy amplifies at different customer spend levels.

Crunching user data identifies what is moving the needle on loyalty so you can double down on what works and change course when needed.

 

The Never-Ending Quest to Earn Customers for Life

True brand loyalty and advocacy cannot be bought. Consistently exceeding expectations and nurturing community are the digital building blocks for creating passionate fans that love your technology brand. While challenging in competitive, noisy tech environments, putting the customer first both on and offline establishes genuine connections.

With people increasingly turning to peers for product recommendations, earning customers for life through loyalty and advocacy is the most powerful marketing strategy you can pursue. Once again, your best salespeople are your current, happy customers. The strategies and tips listed in this article will give you the framework to begin cultivating an army of customers who are also advocates for your brand.

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Monday’s Marketing Minute: Twitter Becomes X, ChatGPT Usage Falls, Marketers Say Relax About AI

Happy Monday, y’all! Hope you are having a great and productive week! There is SO much happening in the news right now, in politics, in business, in world news. Here, we will focus on the business stories and let the talking heads argue over the other stuff! Let’s dive in!

 

Elon is making moves to rebrand Twitter into X. I’ve been writing about Elon’s plan to create the X ‘everything’ app for a while now, but it looks like he’s moving forward with his plans. It’s honestly a bizarre move that seemingly throws a ton of branding around Twitter down the toilet. The speculation around Elon’s plans for X mostly centered around would he change Twitter into X and build it out from there, or create more apps with additional functionality, and fold them all together as a suite with Twitter that collectively would become X. I assumed he would move toward the latter, with Twitter remaining a standalone app.  Maybe that’s not what he’s planning.

As I was telling an industry friend earlier, this is the most chaotic I can remember the social media space being in at least 15 years. It’s a lot to digest, with Twitter, Threads, everything. I do wonder how many people are getting tired of trying to keep up, and are simply opting out of social media in general.

 

Did you know this? Traffic to ChatGPT and Bard actually FELL in June. There’s been much speculation as to why, the main reason seems to be a perceived decline in the quality of responses given. There’s also been speculation that ChatGPT in particular has been slammed with server usage issues, and is having to scale back as a result, which has lead to a decline in quality.

Personally, I am hopeful this decline is simply because people are figuring out that getting these AI tools to give you useful information truly does require you to spend a good bit of time with them. You have to invest in having deeper ‘conversations’ with these tools to get meaningful outputs.

 

And marketers are seeing the same things I am, AI will assist with most tasks, but won’t supplant humans. It feels like the initial hysteria over AI taking over the world is dying down a bit as people become more versed in using the tools. As I’ve written here before, AI is capable of being a powerful tool if you use it correctly.  I’m using it in my work as basically a conversational search engine. It’s making it much easier to get more relevant information, however I still have to fact-check info I am given. I’m currently experimenting with ChatGPT, Bard and Claude.  Of the three, Claude is my favorite for now, but I want to start playing with some a few new tools before I pick my fav.

 

So that’s it for this week’s edition of Monday’s Marketing Minute, I hope you have a wonderfully productive week!

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Monday’s Marketing Minute: Threads’ Rocky Launch, More Twitter Woes, Facebook App Store Soon?

Happy Monday, y’all! We are now into July, which for the South means Summer is halfway over! Thankfully we have been spared the brunt of the heat and humidity so far this year, but I suspect it’s coming by the end of this month and into August.  Ugh….till then, let’s try to cool off with some hot tech news. And oh my is the social media space having some growing pains right now…

 

Threads officially launched a few days ago and you are likely either thrilled with this news, or pretty indifferent. My take on Threads launching is pretty much the same as when Bluesky launched:  I didn’t trust the guy in charge when he ran his previous site, so why would I trust him with a new one?

It seems my fears over Threads were founded, as many users began noticing that they were being censored as soon as the joined Threads. Some were being flagged before they even posted!

Additionally, Elon is making a move to block Threads, and has already sent Meta a C&D letter.  Which honestly is just free publicity for Threads at this point.

So we will see where this slapfight between Elon and Zuck goes next. I’m on the edge of my seat and I’m sure you are as well.

 

Speaking of Twitter, the site continues to have many issues. Recently, it was revealed that there were still shadowbanning codes found within the sites programming even though Elon had claimed to remove those. Apparently even Elon was being censored at times!  Additionally, Elon recently started ‘rate limiting’ users from viewing a certain number of tweets.  The reasoning given was to address bot activity on the platform.  I’m honestly not sure if this is still being practiced as I’m not spending enough time on Twitter these days to hit the limit (I’m neck deep in website maintenance this month).

 

Finally, Meta is making moves to launch an App Store for its platform. These seems like a move that should have been made a long time ago, but will no doubt be a money-maker for Zuck if he decides to move forward with it.

 

So that’s all I have for this edition of Monday’s Marketing Minute.  As I eluded to earlier, I am in the middle of my annual website maintenance, so I’m spending WAY too much time with Google Search Console and SEMRush these days, but the results show it’s paying off.  I will probably write a post with some takeaways to help the rest of you, in a few weeks.

Till then, thank you as always for reading, and have a wonderful week!

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Jesus’ Model For Creating Advocates Via Word of Mouth

Hello! In January, I made a commitment to start reading the Bible daily. It’s been a wonderful experience, and on Saturdays I like to publish a post sharing what I am learning from reading scripture. Hopefully these posts will resonate with you. If not, don’t worry, I will return to discussing business, marketing and web3 on Monday!  Thanks for reading! You can view all of my posts on the teachings of the Bible here.

The last week I have been binge-watching a spectacular series on the Bible called The Chosen. Hopefully you have heard of it and possibly even watched it.  If you have not, you are in for a treat, you can watch it at their site. Thanks to generous donations from supporters, you can watch The Chosen for free. I downloaded Angel Studios’ app and watch the episodes with it.  You don’t even have to sign up, just watch.  When you watch an episode, it will tell you who donated and made it possible for you to watch the episode for free, and gives you an option to write them a thank you note, which I think is a very nice touch.

I am a few episodes into the second season right now, and I am loving it. Watching The Chosen is actually helping me better understand what I’ve already read in the Bible. For instance, there is the story of Jesus attending a wedding and turning water into wine. I read this multiple times in the Bible, but seeing the story retold in The Chosen helped me better understand why this miracle was so important, based on the role that wine played at a jewish wedding in this day.

As you know, I love the study of how brands can better connect with their customers to form advocates for their message and brand. It’s main reason why I wrote Think Like a Rock Star, to give companies a framework for building better connections with their most passionate customers. This group is often overlooked, and if a company is smart enough to reach out to their loyal customers, those customers will happily sing their praises and market for them.

As I’ve been reading the Bible, and watching The Chosen, I have been struck by the people that Jesus chose to be the advocates for His message. Jesus repeatedly stresses that He did not come to teach to the righteous and the healthy, but that He came for the sinners and the sick. In one episode of The Chosen, Jesus and his disciples are planning a trip to a nearby city. One of the disciples says that the quickest route to the city is to take a particular road, and the other disciples agree.

But Jesus says that instead, they will take another path, which will make the trip longer, and will bring them dangerously close to a violent city. The disciples immediately protest, fearing for the safety of their Teacher. Jesus explains that He wants to take that path because He needs to have a meeting with a very important person along the way. The disciples are puzzled, but they go along with their Teacher’s plan, and set out on their journey.

At one point in their journey, they come to a well near a city.  Jesus tells His disciples to go to the nearby city and buy supplies for them, and leave Him there. The disciples again protest, but Jesus says He will be fine. The disciples leave, and eventually, a surly woman comes to the well carrying jars to collect water from the well.

Jesus asks her for a drink, and she asks why a Jew would dare talk to her, and asks if He knows who she is and what she has done. Jesus tells her He does, that He knows her sins, and then He tells her everything she has done that she is ashamed of. Jesus then tells her that her well gives you water but you will still be thirsty, and then Jesus tells her that He can give water to her that when she drinks it, she will never thirst again.

At this point, the woman realizes she is talking to the Messiah, and becomes overjoyed. She tells Jesus “I am going to tell everyone about you!” and begins to run toward the nearby city. Jesus replies “I am counting on it!”

Here is a blog post from Angel Studios about this scene and the relevant scripture it comes from. When I saw this scene, it helps crystallize for me why Jesus said He came for the sick and the sinners. What Jesus was saying was, He came to give hope to the hopeless.

Think about this from the perspective of wanting to create advocates for your message.  If you give hope to someone who feels hopeless, how would they react? They would obviously be overjoyed, and want to share what you had done for them, with the world. They would be far more appreciative of the gift you had given them, and as a result they would be far more committed to telling others about you.

This is why Jesus picked the sick and sinners to meet. To talk to, to heal.

To save. Because He wants us to stand up, and go running into the world so that we can share the Good News with everyone.

Here is the trailer for The Chosen. If you haven’t watched the series yet, you are in for quite a treat!