American Express Merchant Services has developed two videos on mapping customer loyalty. These videos are mostly oriented to small businesses and fall under the American Express OPEN banner, which is the small business division of American Express.
Besides the videos below, American Express offers an extensive FREE Knowledge Center.
The first video is Mapping the Customer Loyalty Cycle Pt. 1: Identifying Your Customer Types: “Your customers may fall into different loyalty categories: ambassadors, loyal, frequent, and win back. This video assesses the different loyalty types and explains how you can identify which of your customers fall into each category.”
The second video is Mapping the Customer Loyalty Cycle Pt. 2: Optimizing Your Customer Types: “Customers fall into different categories: advocates, loyal, frequent, infrequent and win back. This video will explain how best to communicate and connect with these customers and help drive sales.”
It is definitely interesting video, dividing customers fall into different loyal groups is more and more necessary in marketing strategy. You know that the marketing segmentation is strategy to segment customers according to the detailed information, i think the marketing segmentation is a strategy should be used at the beginning, and the mapping customers cycle strategy should be used at the development and mature stage, which will give more useful information about how to improve the relationship between brand and customers, and also to provide better service to customers.
Customer loyalty is very important to small business. Changing frequent customers to loyal customers and attracting unacquainted customers can directly increase revenue. As a loyal customer of some restaurants, supermarkets and wholesale stores, I admit that I usually was attracted by their coupons and sales at the first time I spent money in these stores. These two video give some basic ideas of enhancing customer loyalty. Personally, I would say the quality of product and service is the key to heighten customer loyalty.
Creating customer loyalty is very important within in a company because it creates life long customers. Loyalty within the company can generate both new potential customers and revenue that can positively benefit the organization. Being a loyal customer to some companies, I was attracted through there unique strategy of adverting that first brought me in. By watching the videos posted above, I saw how companies have the ability to enhance customer loyalty that can greatly benefit both sides.
Especially in smaller businesses, customer loyalty is a crucial part in in the success of the business. Customer loyalty can be seen through many different ways, whether they are telling their friends by word of mouth or through social medial, they are helping the business to get their name out there. However, with that, the small business needs to be successful in satisfying the customer. If the customer is satisfied they are more likely to spread the word. This is especially crucial for small businesses that are just starting out and are beginning to develop.
Customer loyalty and brand recognition are key parts of running a successful business. Take Apple for example, their ambassadors are the people that get the latest Apple phone or Macbook every year and don’t get anything else. The loyal customers are ones who only buy iPhones but aren’t brand loyal for all of their products (ie they may own Acer laptops, etc). As a small business, getting that group of core customers who will come back often is very important, because they will often post about it online or tell their friends, who may in turn become frequent customers. Obviously small business probably do not want to have to win back customers, but it can happen it just takes the right products and the right marketing. Larger companies probably do not have with win back customers as often as small business, because their other customer groups are large enough to sustain business.
Each part of the customer loyalty cycle is an important aspect of any business. Ambassadors swear by a business and will recommend others to appreciate the service or product and leave reviews. Loyal customer are satisfied with whatever the service or product may be but wont feel compelled to advocate however remain sufficed. Frequent customers aren’t as deep of a consumer or commitment to a business. Win backs help a business understand how they can improve and provide services or products to a wider range of people thus increasing the size of their loyalty cycle.
The customer loyalty cycle is a part of every successful business. After watching these two videos, it made me think about what kind of customer I am. I would say I could be considered an ambassador for Sephora. I am a loyal customer for Android. While I prefer android, I wouldn’t promote it. Im a frequent customer at forever 21, and a win back at macy’s.