Part of my random browsing Amazon, I tripped over this book and it looked so interesting from the cover. I read some reviews then found that it is worth reading. I read it few months back, and here is some ideas from the book. It is highly recommended.

Background
Its been implemented everywhere, from airlines to the mini market in our old town, loyalty, discount-cards, cashback cards or whatever names there might be, in principle it pushes same concept , the race for promotions. You understand that showing your loyalty card at Carrefour

cashier line is only after the 10% discount, because if Another hypermarket offers 10.5% loyalty card you will forget about Carrefour all together. While it is a tedious process to implement such programs spending billions of dollars, still it is creating loyalty for business not for best offer!

New ideology
According to Nielsen 92 % of consumers trust peer recommendation compared to 29-47% trust rate for company advertisements, so do you want to continue broadcasting your what or wanna engage more around why!

Building blocks of loyalty 3.0 – motivation -big data -gamification

Regardless of the way or the system used to implement loyalty programs , now it is clear that the approach has to be different and cuts through the clutter by innovative solutions. We have seen how Foursquare has become the best location based recommendation tool, that its service and number of active users are growing to lead this segment most of the times engages with users and get them to advance in their use and adoption for the platform while enjoying achieving more and more by first, competing with their friends second, by collecting badges..as loyalty3.0 demands instant feedback and updates, Foursquare users are in the know all the time and can see their ranking and badges easily. The virality is at its best as the platform encourages users to share and invite others to cultivate the social factor.. It motivates users by contesting against each other and getting instant feedback, it utilizes big data to understand behaviors and patterns then suggests and pushes communication to engage more, and it has the gamification aspect through each and every feature in the app to be more fun.

Good example also photoshop levelup program , it is a full interactive online tutorials program, aims to teach people how to use photoshop even if they didn’t buy the license, and the ultimate result was many people who enrolled to the free program ended up buying the license, after many steps and stages through the learning game.there is no direct sell messages in the program and it capitalizes on , if you spend much time using and learning it, you will eventually buy it.

In the US disengaged employees cost corporations billions of dollars as the only promote unproductivity and it goes viral from one department to another.  So organizations have to figure out how to engage with their workers more and more through the systems they use on their day to day operations. As Millennials represent more that 45% of workforce in emerging markets, companies have to be smart about it and harness the massive adoption of gaming and MMORPG massive multiplayer online role-playing games. Still many executives thing that having a functional system to run business is enough , while it has to be usable, simple and engaging. Salesforce’s work.com ,Globoforce,Achievers,Perks.com, and TemboSocial are all tools to use to enhance workers engagement and put them in a big game that is fun and social same time. Imagine a sales team that has goals and targets and the system simulates the game stages based on quotas and number of deals closed and contacts added to the database. The nomination and recognition happens virtually and peers will be competing in a game-like platform and in real world. In the age of distraction knowledge is key for progress and advancements to achieve more, yet its challenging to allocate time for learning while working, but innovative solutions through elearning platforms have enabled workers to have fun learning as it is fully gamification lead platform, that makes it simpler and more engaging for employees to enroll themselves to.

Four Tiers of Loyalty
1-Inertia Loyalty , it mandates barriers to exit as the brand demands that , so it becomes difficult to exit the program like in the airlines industry. Not because it is so irresistible but because it is inconvenient to exit.
2- Mercenary Loyalty, it is basically the points and ratings based program where customers get rewarded if they buy more or get freebies. While it creates emotionally shallow loyalty, it is the most common for of loyalty program out there.
3- True Loyalty, brand reach this stage when a customer has a compelling reason, typically emotional stake in the brand, that wont get affected if competitors cut prices or have promotions. Starbucks!
4- Cult Loyalty, ever seen anyone with Harley Davidson tattoo on their body! This is the stage where it becomes part of customer’s values, so abandoning the brand is like abandoning core values.. Apple is a good example too. At this stage it grows organically and can be cultivated.
The three building blocks of loyalty 3.0
Motivation , Big Data and Gamification

Loyalty road-map 1-plan 2-design 3- build 4- optimize
Plan 1-identify the problem 2-audience 3- desired audience behavior 4- key performance indicators 5- mission statement 6- understand playing field 7-sell it to internal stakeholders..

it is an interesting concept and as you have seen in the quick examples i highlighted above it is working and growing so fast in different industries around the world. it is highly recommended, check it out.