Looking to improve customer loyalty? Here’s what 5 experts advise for 2024 and beyond

Customer loyalty can be an elusive benchmark for a brand, one that requires continuous planning, research, and testing. In a world of daily viral moments, consumers are flooded with an overabundance of choices and trends, many of which change overnight. With that in mind, brands need to be particularly savvy in how they attempt to cultivate loyalty. 

The old way of courtesy cards and contact information collection isn’t cutting it in these highly competitive times when consumers are wary of gimmicks and more protective of their personal information. 

Successful brands today invest significant resources in exceedingly authentic and engaging methods to inspire customer loyalty. Which is why it’s essential to stay ahead of the curve. That means keeping up-to-date on the latest innovations, understanding the cultural climate of your consumers and industry, and becoming increasingly more creative and purpose-driven in the nurturing steps you take toward greater customer loyalty.   

With this in mind, the Reaktor team brought together several of our leading experts in business, design, branding, technology, and data, to create The Latest on Loyalty, a whitepaper that delves deep into the nuance of loyalty from multiple vantage points to give you a 360-degree jumping off point to action improvements in your loyalty strategy and approach. Download it here. 

What are you doing to bring your customers together? What unites them? What common interests do they share? In a digital landscape that has the ability to connect people like never before, many times consumers feel disconnected and alone. Fill this void and you’ve provided an additional benefit that your competition may lack. Matilda Kivelä, Reaktor’s senior creative and brand strategist, suggests a shift away from product-focused to a more community-focused model. Citing Seth Godin’s “connection economy,” for inspiration, her guidance suggests a move that focuses on how you can contribute to forging community rather than promoting products. 

Think of the Nike Training Club fitness app that supplies workouts and a community forum, the GoPro Awards program, which encourages users to submit videos for recognition, or Harley-Davidson’s Harley Owners Group (H.O.G.), which organizes rider events across the world. What community can your brand create?

Data – when it comes to customer loyalty, there’s constantly changing perception as digital advancements grow and evolve. As senior data scientist Janne Sinkkonen points out, one moment data can be our best friend, and the next moment we’re frightened by its power. That’s why, he says, brands that value customer loyalty know to wield it carefully, with the greatest care and responsibility. Cultivating loyalty begins with trust, and as AI further advances, customers will become more cautious about how their data is used. Download the whitepaper to read Sinkkonen’s take on urgency and small data sets for some additional inspiring commentary. 

Reaktor’s principal business strategist Olof Hoverfält made international headlines for his creation of the Wardrobe Diary Project, which encourages users from across the globe to track their daily dressing habits (spoiler: in terms of clothing, we don’t wear NEARLY as much as we purchase). This endeavor has given Hoverfält a unique insight into consumer behavior and values which he shares in our whitepaper. As consumers become much more invested in social causes and the impacts their purchases make on their environment and family, sustainability becomes nearly impossible to ignore for businesses. One thing Hoverfält suggests is to address their concerns about excess head-on by being part of the solution. What happens to your products after they have lost their usefulness? What can you do to be a part of the aftermarket story to prevent waste? Today’s consumers are educated and have had their trust eroded by greenwashing efforts, so consumer loyalty rests firmly in authentic and transparent acts rather than empty marketing jargon. Hoverfält’s “traditional” vs. “future view” chart is not to be missed for greater inspiration. View it here. 

Finally, Reaktor’s Tech Lead, Dirk Geurs, gives us some straight talk about just how challenging it can be to create an omnichannel loyalty program. If you’ve ever wondered why it takes so long to make one work correctly, Geurs has the answers. By walking us through the logistics of an interconnected web, mobile, and retail program, a better understanding and appreciation for the task at hand can be gained. But that’s not to say it isn’t well worth the effort, because today’s consumers expect brands to be able to seamlessly marry in-person shopping with mobile and web features in a user-friendly fashion. Geurs suggests a Data Mesh architecture to provide a more decentralized governance for sharing data as opposed to a centralized team. You can read more of his tech recommendations for program fluidity in Section 5 of the whitepaper.   

As you can see, customer loyalty depends on a multidisciplinary approach that brings together UX/UI, consumer psychology and sociology, sales and marketing. Add to the challenge that the rules keep changing as technology advances and consumer expectations evolve, and it’s no wonder that a business needs to constantly be looking to the future to reinvent its customer loyalty outreach efforts.