The Loyalty Post Magazine

Publisher & Editors Desk
LOYALTY ON A GLOBAL SCALE

Standing out in a world of choice isnt easy. Earning consumer devotion to a brand or store takes more than just
offering a good product. Price, packaging, customer service and reputation are just some of the factors involved in a
consumers decision-making process. Thats why getting to the heart of what makes a consumer stick or switch can
be the difference between flourishing and fading. While research shows that bigger rewards generally inspire higher
loyalty levels, loyalty programs are no guarantee of loyal behaviours.
How do you turn a fickle fan into a faithful follower? You start by understanding the needs and motivations that
drive their purchase decisions. And then you deploy the strategies and tactics that deliver the most value. Global study outlines the reasons
why consumers switch brands, service providers or retailers and identifies the loyalty program attributes that potentially have the most staying
power.
A new year. Who doesnt love a new year?! Its an opportunity to try new things, test new ideas, and really get after it. With the launch of The
Loyalty Post my team is excited for so many things as we roll into the new year. Weve got additions planned for our existing products, as well
as big plans around our resources and blog. We are excited by new trends in loyalty, and cant wait to see the industry take on some of them in
full form.
In this issue, Id like to run through some of the biggest and best trends we are seeing, and point out some advantages for jumping on the
loyalty bandwagon sooner rather than later. Here are the top five trends in customer loyaltywatch out 2015!
#5: Thinking outside your loyalty program
#4: Customer analytics takes center stage
#3: Personalization and cohort marketing FTW!
#2: Experiential rewards = biggest impact
#1. The thank you goes offline. Uhm what ?
Looking Ahead
So there you have it, our predictions for 2015. We think it will be a year of more data, personalized customer experiences, and big thinking, and
we cant wait to see it all unfold. One thing is for sure customer loyalty is a hot topic as the industry tries to crack the keep customers
around code.
Happy Reading
Harish Bhatia
Publisher & Editor
Executive Editors Desk
Year after year the Loyalty Summit has provided a platform for a large number of organisations to showcase their
loyalty products and service offerings. Similarly, a number of organisations have been attracted to the summit in
order to learn more or understand how to implement or improve the running of their own loyalty programs.
CEOs, CFOs, Loyalty, HR Managers, Channel Partner managers and even students have flocked to the 2 day
summit.
The Loyalty Summit is an annual event and a full year passes between one event and another. A lot changes in a
year and we thought it a great idea to bridge the time gap by publishing a bi-monthly magazine. This would keep
corporates and industry updated periodically on the happenings in the area of Loyalty, be it Employee, Channel
Partner or Customer.
So here we are The Loyalty Post. We are indeed delighted that at last there is an official magazine for the industry. While we acknowledge it
has a long way to go, the first issue itself brings together interesting subjects as well as basic principles on the subject. As we go further among
the contributors will be domain experts, on the job specialists, industry examples and loads of interviews. Our contributors come from all parts
of the world and will bring to the reader a global perspective and samples of international best practices.
We welcome your feedback, whether about content or subjects of your interest or any other issue you feel important. Later issues will carry
select letters, surveys and other interesting and engaging content that will keep the publication a buzz with excitement. While these are
serious subjects that require serious attention, we believe that creativity must remain the central thread.
Currently it wont be available on the stands. So do subscribe to the magazine, to ensure you get your copy and are not disappointed later.
I hope to see your contributions coming in, thick and fast. Content for the next issue in march must reach before 20th February 2015. If youve
got something to share that would interest corporates and professionals, on a related subject please keep your date with the editorial deadline.
May each month of this year be interesting and productive for you and your organisation.
Ciao
Girish Khare
Executive Editor.
Contents
20
INDUSTRY CONNECT
06 Preparing the organization for loyalty
by Ashok M.S
08 Loyalty as we know it, is dead, long live

Relevance
by Ajay Kelkar
10 We have it in us!
by Praphul Misra
28 Getting ahead of the game: Trends in 2015

by Aditya Bhamidipaty
34 Command loyalty, sure demand loyalty? NO

by Simeran Bhasin
PUBLISHERS DESK
03 Brand loyalty in the digital age
by Harish Bhatia
20 E-tailers go Mobile to draw loyal

customers
by Harish Bhatia
WORLD VIEW
38 The Focus for 2015 - A single window view of
the customer
by Paul Brown
30 The future of loyalty

by E.H. Gori
2 | January-February 2015 The Loyalty Post
January 2015
04
10
SPECIAL FEATURE
19 power of one- How an enterprise loyalty

16 The
program is helping Titan
LOYALTY BYTES
32 Nirmal Lobo, National Sales Manager,
Fastrack
TECHNOLOGY
12 Are you earning BIG VALUE from BIG DATA?
by Brian Almeida
FOCUS ON CHANNEL LOYALTY

14 Engaging channel partner
by Girish Khare
24 Integrated channel loyalty management an

idea whose time has come?
by N. Ram
REWARDS & MORE

04 How to make use of your hard earned loyalty
points ?
by Rahul Rana
36 Corporate rewards program

by Rahul Rana
22 AIMIA at work
Fueling next-generation reward design

Excerpt from the AIMIA bulletin 2015
Publishers Desk
Loyalty in
the Digital Age.
Brand
What it is and how can brand earn it

We often hear it said that consumers are less
loyal to brands in this digital age because the
cost of switching is decreasing, decision-making
is more transactional and people are more
difficult to attract. A recent survey by Retail
Week says that Overwhelmingly, the
challenges outlined in the interviews focus on
the ability to connect with consumers and build
loyalty, and the hurdles posed by the
multichannel age.
out on a better deal, which in itself is rewarding. In a more

literal sense, maximizing a persons experience with the
added extras of loyalty programs is also very rewarding.
To overcome these challenges, brands need to

turn the concept of brand loyalty on its head.
The reality is that very few brands have or have
had peoples true loyalty, brands have enjoyed
beand-habituality, and some have earned
loyalty to its brand purpose.
The Android brand is open source because it was created to

equalize the opportunity available to everyone in the digital
space, and people loyal to this purpose are loyal to Android.
Because people are vocal, about their loyalties, the cost of
switching is heightened, in our example, switching from
Android to the elitist iOS cost far more than money, it would
cost people their ideals. On the other hand, if Android were
to build a walled garden like Apples, making Android less
inclusive, the cost of switching away from Android would be
negligible for people. In order to earn peoples loyalty,
brands must have a clear brand purpose and obviously act
upon that purpose in everything they do.
Encouraging brand-habituality
If you look at brand loyalty as building the
need in people to habitually return to your
brand, the strategy changes. Habits are created
when the reward center of the brain is
stimulated by a particular behaviour, thus
encouraging us to repeat the experience. For
brand to become habitual choices, marketers
must understand what rewards consumers so
they can leverage it to form habits. Consumers
are rewarded by inspiration, information,
comparison and maximisation. Fresh content
from great sources inspires people so they
widen their horizons. Reports on whats hot
and whats not would do this. Information like
product reviews, how many of their friend
bought a product and how it rates, help people
make more informed choices. Giving people
the ability to compare choices helps savvy
shoppers conclude that they are not missing
Mr. Harish Bhatia

Founder and CEO
Kamikaze B2B Media
Loyalty to a purpose
Loyalty is a bigger cause than ourselves and it forms our
moral code. If I m loyal to an ideal and you ask me to do
something that would contradict that ideal, I am unlikely to
do it.
People are more promiscuous because brands

are failing to interest them
With all the data available to us, it is easy for brands to
understand what consumers are leaving for. Find out what
tempts consumers away and turn crisis into opportunity by
using them as attractions towards brand.
In this digital age, brands should think about building
loyalty in four ways:
1. Make each connection between the brand and consumer
build brand habituality by giving generously in exchange
for peoples attention.
2. Act on the brand purpose, and ensure that it is felt in every
experience people share with the brand.
3. Recognize that choosing brand is not a transactional,
commoditized process, but a decision that people see as a
reflection of their identity
4. Ask not what is relevant to brand, but what is interesting
to target audience.
The Loyalty Post January-February 2015 | 3
Rewards & More
How to make use of

your hard earned Loyalty
Points ?
Mr. Rahul Rana

MD and CEO
PAYBACK India
Have you always wondered why companies give

reward points? Have you also received reminders
about your loyalty points and have deleted those
mails? You then have also thought about how reward
points work and if they help at all?
Well, the science behind loyalty points is simple and
if used optimally can help you avail several deals,
discounts and benefits by leading brands.
HOW LOYALTY REWARDS WORK ?
The number of points earned on each transaction
depends upon the product category, amount
involved, type of card used and at times on where
the transaction is done. Typically a card member
can get one point for every RS 40-50 spent.
Reward points on co-branded cards can be 2-5
times the points earned on other cards.
The product category being bought and associated
margins also decides the number of reward points
you earn.
One can also get bonus points for using cards on
special occasions. For example, this Valentine's Day,
some reward program might offer 50 bonus points
on first online transaction. Some premium cards
give bonus points on joining their network too.
Rewards & More

Loyalty points are truly rewarding! This is because
every partner brand of your loyalty card pays back
towards your point-bank. How? Typically, a business
spends an average of 1-2% of its total revenue on
creating customer loyalty, including the software,
computing equipment, value to consumers etc.
Parts of these investments are passed on to the
consumer by the loyalty program, and as a ball park,
a member easily saves anywhere between 0.5%-2%
of the total billed amount by actively engaging in a
loyalty program at the base level, which can go upto
4%-5% with bonus coupons and even more if you
aggregate the power of multiple brands on a single
transaction. For instance if you shop at Central, using
an ICICI Bank card and have activated coupons in
the middle of a 3X campaign you get away with 5%
worth of rewards. Aggregation!
Leverage the Power of Accumulation: Choose a

loyalty program that enables you to collect
points at a rapid pace. To accomplish this
objective, evaluate the accessibility of the loyalty
program. Always choose a loyalty program that
has multiple touch-points which are in proximity
to you, such as in-store, online, kiosks, mobile,
and thereby render the possibility to increase
frequency of usage while exploring the
maximum potential of the loyalty program. Very
frequently, it is noticed that when there is slow
points accrual, consumers lose interest or old
points expire by the time new ones are
accumulated hence never undermine the role of
points accumulation.
Flexibility is Essential: For transactions made,

you should have the option to use any payment
modes cash, cheque, credit or debit card and
prepaid cards, across the partner network of the
loyalty program and still be rewarded. This adds
to the convenience quotient of the shopping
experience thus encouraging regular usage of
loyalty program. Further loyalty card that
allows instant redemption provides real-time
saving, as it facilitates shopping when you want.
Keep it Simple: Avoid confusion of using and

carrying multiple cards. Choose a loyalty
program that is recognized across brands, stores,
e-commerce platforms and locations. This will
not only help you explore and utilize all the
benefits of the program, but also avoid the
fatigue of undergoing different processes with
various brands, flexi-options for redemption,
increase in number of offers and to emphasize
again, keeps things simple and practical.
Convert every Opportunity into an Advantage:

A good loyalty program will provide a high
degree of personalization to suit individual
needs after understanding your demographics
and spend patterns. To enable shoppers to enjoy
more offers, bonus points, discount coupons and
thus earn better. Ensure that you plan your
shopping in such a manner that you convert
these exclusive offers to make the best of them
Try it! It can be a very rewarding experience.
HOW TO REDEEM ?
Identifying the right loyalty program is the key to
this whole denomination. Follow the below
parameters to ensure you make every transaction a
truly rewarding experience:
Leverage the Power of Aggregation: The real

potential of the loyalty program can be leveraged
best with a multi-brand loyalty program, which
provides the possibility to draw benefits from
various categories.
A good loyalty program

should bring together
numerous brands from
across categories who wish
to reward their customers
for their continued
relationship
The four essential pillars of a loyalty program are
thus finance, retail, telecom and fuel. These
categories capture 70% of an average Indian
consumers wallet share; and this will ensure
you earn rewards on majority of the expenses
incurred during an average day. Benefits or
Loyalty Points earned through transactions
made across partners, spread across categories of
day-to-day requirements will then aggregate
under the same loyalty program, ensuring more
collection options.
Loyalty programs have gone beyond earning and

redemption of points; campaigns are being designed
strategically to bring more power in your hands as a
customer. Multi-brand loyalty programs are today
the new norm helping you to redeem points in
segments of entertainment and travel beyond the
regular shopping basket. For that matter loyalty
points also allow you to explore your charitable side
by redeeming it for donations.
Industry Connect
organization
for Loyalty
Preparing the
Most organizations today understand the importance of building customer

loyalty and engaging with the best set of customers. However to actualize
customer loyalty is an arduous task and companies need to prepare themselves
well for sustaining the hard built customer loyalty. So what do companies have
to do to prepare their organizations for loyalty ?
1. Define customer service standards
Mr. Ashok M.S
COO
Accentiv
Setting expectations for customers is an important first step in

achieving customer loyalty, for most churn emanates out of a
dissonance between the expectations set and what is delivered
on the ground. The organization should undertake an exercise
of defining customer service standards with full participation
of the front end staff, as they have first-hand knowledge of the
customers expectations. Once the standards are defined, there
should be a conscious exercise of communicating the
standards across the organization and reiterating to the level
where these are ingrained in the staff at all levels.
2. Train the front end franchisees and their

staff
Once standards are set, it is important that these are also
communicated to the franchisees and their staff, as the
franchisee network plays a very important role in delivering
the brand promise to the customers. Training the franchisee
staff in delivering the customer service standards, is a
challenging task and this is best accomplished when the
functional training is bundled with behavioral inputs to these
staff. The behavioral inputs should be to enhance the esteem
level of the franchisee staff, so that they understand their role
in the whole chain in delivering the brand promise.
3. Create multiple channels for customers to

reach you
Post rolling out the customer service standards across the
organization, you would sense that the customer response to
the enhanced service levels being very good. To maintain the
service levels, it is important that you establish a direct contact
with the end consumer to capture feedback both positive and
Industry Connect
4. Empower front end staff to resolve

customer issues immediately
Having created channels for customer
communication and actively inviting customer
feedback, it is important for you to empower front
end staff to resolve customer issues promptly and
adequately. This could range from authorizing them
to replace a product or taking back returns, to
providing a value voucher for bad or indifferent
service. While many companies hold back such
empowerment for fear of misuse at the front end,
what such companies do not factor in is the value of
loss due to dissatisfied or more importantly
customers who have not been assuaged inspite of
complaining about bad service.
5. Maintain constant engagement with

your customers
negative and also to measure the consistency of the
delivery of the service levels across the network. Given
the plethora of options today, you need to activate as
many channels of communication as possible for the
customer to reach you, including but not restricted to
E-mail, Voice helpdesk, Facebook page, SMS etc. There
has to be constant monitoring of the feedback received
through these channels and complaints/ feedback acted
upon quickly to make customers feel it worthwhile to
provide the feedback.
All of the above lay the foundation for building a

strong and meaningful ongoing engagement with
your customers. Such an engagement can create a
virtuous cycle when your staff and franchisees are
aligned, front end staffs are empowered and
customers are willing to provide feedback, which
you then act upon.
If all of these are done well, then you would have
created the right environment to launch a successful
loyalty program.
Industry Connect
Loyalty as we know it, is Dead,

Long live Relevance
oyalty cards seem to be everywhere! It all started
innocently enough. It seemed like no big deal
when airlines and hotels embraced the
'frequent' traveller rewards programs. We consumers
loved the idea of earning rewards for our travel. Soon
as we added banks, hotels, and retail cards, the
number of loyalty cards that we held crept into the
double digits.
US cos spend almost $50 billion a year on loyalty
programs & some top programs like Marriot Rewards
have over 30 million customers. Loyalty programs in
India are still evolving & loyalty marketing research
firm colloquy estimates the number of loyalty
programme members in India to be over 35 million
only.
Metrics around measuring loyalty are also very fuzzy.
Some Retailers with mature loyalty programs claim to
have nearly 65 to 70 % of their total sales coming from
their loyal consumer base. But it is incorrect to look at
this metric. What should be tracked are the Sales
accruing from customers who have come more than
once. New loyalty customers should not be counted!
More importantly, how do companies view loyalty?
Should companies build strategies to be loyal to
customers or do they really only expect customers to
be loyal to them!
But when you look at the benefits that the loyalty
programs profess, there is a large vacuum. You get
minuscule points for your purchases, hardly a reason
for you to come back. And companies hesitate to give
you real benefits wondering whether they can
actually differentiate amongst customers at the store
front or in the bank. Loyalty programs which have
been launched as yet another tick mark in a marketing
arsenal are bound to fail. The program needs a wider
commitment within most companies for it to give
real benefits back to customers. After all what is the
point of a loyalty program which does not give me a
separate checkout line in a retailer or give me a

preview sale with relevant offers.
Loyalty programs are meant to break down
barriers between customers and your business &
yet charging a fee is not a bad idea. In some
circumstances, a one-time (or annual) fee that lets
customers bypass common purchase barriers is
actually quite beneficial for business and customer
alike. By identifying the factors that may cause
customers to leave, you can customize a fee-based
loyalty program to address those specific barriers.
Not enough thought is being given by marketers to
the softer benefits that loyalty programs can
incorporate. Patagonia, an eco-friendly outdoor
apparel company, realized that their customer
needed more than just points and discounts from a
loyalty program. So the company implemented its
Common Threads Initiative. In it, they partnered
with eBay to help customers to resell their
highly-durable Patagonia clothing online through
the company website. While consumers love
discounts, you can get them passionate about
incentives for living a healthier lifestyle, for sharing
on social media & for participating in social
responsibility programs. I have yet to see
substantial innovation around this for loyalty
programs in India.
There is so much talk about Coalition loyalty
nowadays. Almost every large global company in
the loyalty space is here & batting hard! Does
Coalition loyalty work in India? Will marketers
cooperate & align together or will multiple
program partner interests be too complex to
manage. Or will the Indian crab syndrome come in
the way!
India is seeing a plethora of

Coalition loyalty companies
Industry Connect
Can they improve the quality of programs that exist?
Payback has been the early coalition entrant. Some
reported figures place the transaction throughput via
Payback to be around $350 million (Rs 1,500 crore to
Rs 1,600 crore) every month. Research suggests that
in India, around 35 to 40 per cent of the loyalty points
that are given by Payback to its members is
redeemed, while in Germany, about 95 per cent of the
points given by Payback are redeemed.
Breakage is simply the amount of points or credits
that expire or never get redeemed. Along with gift
cards and cash cards, it is widely associated with
Loyalty and Rewards Programs. The biggest question
is How much breakage is optimal? If the breakage is
low, does it mean that the program is a success, and if
it is high, is it because members do not care about the
program? This is not always easy to answer, as a
certain percentage of points do naturally break and
form a part of expected revenues. Studies have
indicated that breakage in the retail loyalty programs
hover around 25-30%. Some large airlines indicate a
breakage between 13-25%.
It would be interesting to do analytics around the
profile of customers who redeem regularly & get
some insight into what customers find valuable in a
loyalty program. Program design has a huge impact
on breakage. It is a myth that high breakage leads to a
good loyalty program, its exactly the reverse!
Marketers should go back to the basics of building a
credible loyalty program & not get misled into
shortcuts through only the coalition loyalty route.
But are people forgetting a few fundamentals.
Loyalty programs, if they are to engage customers
should allow them to see value. Loyalty is no longer
about points, discounts, miles or rewards, rather
loyalty points as a method of building loyalty is
myopic and in fact a lazy marketers dream. Give
them points and they will come back is an absolute
myth today. Discounts dont have memory and so
most programmes come out with points. But
according to the 2011 Colloquy Customer Loyalty
Census, of the $48 bn worth of perceived value in
reward points and miles distributed by American
businesses annually, one-third goes unredeemed by
consumers. Companies lose money on time and
effort, and customers get no more value from the
businesses to which they are supposedly loyal.
Mr. Ajay Kelkar

Co-Founder & COO
Hansa Cequity
Here are some ideas for CMOs as they

go into Year 2015:
1. Loyalty programs are more about customer
insight: Loyalty is a mindset about building
relevance for customers through information.
So it is a larger transformation effort centred on
creating an information led strategy with the
Customer at its heart. Ensure that you have the
analytics firepower to glean insights from the
program & apply the learnings to other parts
of your business. Dont leave the insights in the
marketing department alone.
2. Having a loyalty program without driving
relevance for customers is no good: Use the
information that a powerful loyalty program
collects to personalise the experience for your
customers.
3. Get more ownership of loyalty programs at
the front end ? Often you walk into a retail
store or bank & expect some form of
recognition as a loyal member. Can I expect to
connect with a fashion savvy Customer care
associate of a Fashion retailer & seek his advice
as I weave fashion into my life! Would a retailer
formally allow their associates to build up such
a customer relationship! And can that be a
feature for fashion forward customers in a
retailers loyalty program.
4. Transform your Loyalty programs into Digital
centric initiatives: Can I use digital to
personalize my interactions with customers ?
a. An example is Target, which with the
MyTargetWeekly Facebook application provides
its fans a customized shopping experience with
in-store deals that fit their wants and needs
through a recommendation system that gets
smarter as they use it.
b. Another example is US retailer Tory Burch as a
company using a private website with its
loyalty data. The loyalty program provides
online access to a secure area of its website for
its better customers, where it shows designs
that could be put into production.
5. Loyalty points as a method of building loyalty
is myopic & in fact a lazy marketers dream!
Given them points & they will come back is an
absolute myth! And yet we see a flurry of
Coalition program driving into India-all of
them trying to build on the Points formula!
First build a robust loyalty program & then seek
to leverage partnerships & coalitions.
Industry Connect
We
have
it in
ome to the oldest scriptures in the world,

the Vedas, India is a storehouse of
knowledge that transcends time and
space, applicable to the modern context. Many
believe the essence of the Vedas is found in the
Bhagavad-gita, a literal record of Krishna's words.
I believe Krishna can be a powerful role model for
business. An inspiration for brand architecture
students and practitioners as a god-child, a loveable
prankster, a model lover, a divine hero, a master
strategist, a benevolent ruler/statesman, and the
Supreme Being, all segments of believers are
addressed.
An inspiration for environmentalists with the
killing of the demons Pootanaa and Trinavarta (air
pollution), taming of the serpent Kliy (water
pollution), Krishna lifted the Govardhan hill
preventing the devastation of pasture land and
advising his people to take care of their animals and
their environment that provide them with all their
necessities.
At the Loyalty Summit 2014 in Mumbai, I shared
the following personal Krishna inspiration on
CRM/Loyalty to a public forum for the first time.
Praphul Misra
Chief Executive Officer
NetCarrots Loyalty Services
us!
Its starts with the premise that the ultimate

brand-customer relationship can be likened that to
the relationship of two lovers. The brand continues to
woo and entice the customer with overtures using a
mix of Economic (rational), Ego, and Emotional
(Eco-Ego-Emo) benefits with a view to secure her
loyalty.
In one of the many episodes (leelas) narrated by
grandma during our childhood, Krishna, the model
lover, engages with and endears himself to the gopis
of Vrindavan in a unique and memorable way.
Upon hearing the sound of

Krishna's flute, the gopis
sneak away from their
households and families to
the forest to dance with him
They discover he is dancing (raas) with his supreme
beloved, Radha. Disappointed, they form a circle and
dance around them, seeking his attention.
True to form, Krishna addresses their disappointment
by creating multiple personas of himself and engages
individually with each gopi, making her feel that she
is dancing with her own Krishna. He goes on to
extend the night to extend the experience.
What better lesson in Personalized Engagement, the
core foundation around which much of CRM is
preached and practiced today ?
Technology
Are you earning
BIG VALUE
from
BIG DATA?
f late I have had many companies ask me to

provide ROI workings for investments in
CRM, campaign management, customer
engagement and so on. My standard response is:
What is your current ROI ?
Model development is a science which starts with a
host of assumptions and judgements on business.
ROI on CRM is no differentit builds on business
assumptions and more importantly, on predictive
assumptions about customer behaviour. As with
models, the more variables and time series data is
made available, the more accurate the workings.
However, establishing the base level is the first single
most important step. What you don't measure, you
don't know, and what you don't know, you cannot
improve.
I get that businesses want to maximise their ROI. But
here's the deal: value is
derived from the rate at
which the business can
absorb customer
information, derive
meaningful insights from
such data and apply those
to its operations.
Reducing the time to value
depends on the speed of
processing datanot in
terms of the speed of the
CPUs deployed for analysis
but the extent to which a lot
of data can be put to use to
define your customer
communications in good
time.
Big data conceals customer

insights that can help
businesses reduce their time to
big value. Provided they can
reveal and action those insights.
Businesses tend to limit their exposure to data that is

the easiest to collect and analyse, like customers'
transaction data. I call that small data. What about
the whole world of data out there ?
Sure, analysing past transactions data can tell you
about customers' product preferences, time of
shopping, preferred channel and store, and a host of
other information. Such analysis can point you to the
most appropriate product or service offerings for
them. But more dynamic (albeit unstructured) social
media data can tell you what interest groups your
customers belong toperhaps a culinary group or an
Indian classical music group. Dynamic GPS data can
tell you that your customer is two stores away from
your store right now. Overlaying your customers'
current location on other customer information can
spell big success in converting offers into sales.
In fact, the more dynamic data you can process in
real-time, the more certain you can be of creating
value. For instance, a customer might be checking
out two pairs of trousers on your webstore when you
drop him an offer to Buy 1
Shirt, Get 1 Free. Chances
are high that the customer
will take you up on that
offer.
Transitioning from analysing
static data (or batch mode)
to analysing dynamic data
can yield all the more
meaningful insights. When
you move from small data to
big data, you get to know
precisely what customers
want, when they want, and
hence, how to become more
relevant to them. What sort
of personalised store
window can y ou create for
Technology
customers that will keep them coming back for more?

You can literally make every customer segment and an
increased number of segments come alive across the
organisation, boost customer engagement and derive
greater value from your existing customers. Instead of
focusing on customers' generic needs, you focus on the
specific needs of different customer segments.
Consider the example of a mobile operator. Every mobile
operator marketer knows that users want good network
quality and the cheapest po ssible telephony services.
Those are generic insights. But not every mobile
subscriber could use a plan offering no free SMSs and
unlimited data per month across family numbers. Or a
plan offering unlimited talk time with 20 different local
numbers. Different customer segments can use different
plans. As customers, you and I have different pain
points and sweet spots. When customers get what they
want, your ROI starts nudging upwards. You increase
your customers lifetime value through greater
engagement and relevance in your communication, and
thereby reducing customer churn rate.
Travelling the journey from generic to sharp customer
insights involves tapping into new sources of customer
data, acquiring new analytical skills and developing a
data usage culture across the organisation. Along the
way, you will develop a customised ROI model for your
business. One that takes cognizance of the nuances of
your industry, your product, the channel you operate in,
the sort of customers you de al with and the various
segments they can be categorised in, etc.
Essentially, ROI workings cannot be the same for two
businesses. Calculating the ROI of any customer
engagement initiative is not theory, it is a practice.
Collect data, analyse it, apply it, measure the outcomes,
tweak your strategyover and over again. And the
practice must permeate the enterprise.
Granted, it takes times to acquire the
bandwidth to process data dynamically and
deliver the ultimate personalised customer
experience before the moment of opportunity
passes. But you can start to create value early
in your analytics adoption curve. You need
neither perfect data nor high-end analytical
capabilities. Start with the data in your
possession. Creating value is a three-step

process:
You need to understand the important
relationships within the data you already

have (every business has transactional
data, at the very least) and you might
want to start with your most valuable
customer segment and gradually
understand how to drive their exemplary
behaviour in other customers.
You need to uncover the value in these
existing data sets (perform analytics). An

expert can help you deploy new data
exploration and visualisation technologies
which can reveal interesting linkages and
behaviour between variables and among
different customer segments.
You need to consume the insights
revealed. That is, link the new insights to

existing business processes so that the
right action to drive customer engagement
is taken at the right time.
As statistician, engineer and management

consultant Dr W Edwards Deming, also
known as the father of the evolution of
quality, famously said: If you do not know
how to ask the right question, you discover
nothing. Begin by learning how to ask the
right questions.
Maximising value and reducing time to value
is every marketers dream. The best you can do
is to start working towards it today. Instead of
focusing on justifying investments in
understanding customer behaviour, ask how
you can create a model that collects all the
customer data that could hold value and learn
how to analyse this data fast. Because again
I'm reminded of a great line from Deming: In
God we trust. All others must bring data.
There's nothing as dependable as data.
Mr. Brian Almeida

Partner
Strategic Caravan International Pvt. Ltd.
Focus On Channel Loyalty
Engaging
Channel Partner
Value-added resellers (VARs) managed service
providers (MSPs), consultants, systems integrators
(SIs), distributors, stockists, retailers and decision
influencers are all part of what we call channel
partners. The service they provide for a brand to
reach the user is invaluable and without which it
would be near impossible for products to be made
available to consumers, especially in remote
locations. More and more organisations are
realizing just how important it is to keep your
channel partners well informed, stocked and happy.
Its not simply about providing them with products
but an incentive to recommend your products.
Therefore the supreme relevance of communicating
and engaging the channel is becoming apparent.
Communication is a powerful tool for managing

channel partners and it should focus on what the
brand expects from channel partners. Effective
communication produces a huge emotional spike in
the relationship second in benefit only to that of
financial incentives. Despite knowledge of this fact,
far too many organisations have ignored it and
engage only in communicating instructions, schemes
and terms and conditions.
Communications should be cost effective, behavior
oriented and it should address each partner
personally, bases their contribution and position in
the network. This recognizes their due and turns the
spotlight on performers. Failure to do so is
unfortunate and costly mistakes could result in loss
of vital mind share. It is important to remember that
channel partners are subject to the same drivers and
emotions as employees and end customers; in fact
they have added distractions.
Like customers, the reason channel partners favor
some relationships more highly than the others is
based on a variety of factors, Financial motivations
rate the highest amongst the list. Organizations
should nurture a culture of partner engagement so
that, like employees and customers, channel
partners also become emotionally engaged: This
makes them more likely to take an active interest in
the organizations success. Disengaged channel
partner cannot be expected to build engagement
around the brand. They may meet monthly goals
and be able to accurately describe the benefits of
your product, but if they are emotionally detached,
they will be far less effective and less likely to be
motivated to make the effort to sell more.

Engaging your channel partners consistently,
give you an opportunity to control what they
communicate with your end users, about the
company, products, and services.This form of
calibrated communication provides them with
the tools they need to successfully promote
your products. Needless to add,
well-equipped partners are crucial to the
success of your business.
Amongst all of this, providing accurate data
becomes an important component in terms of
building relationship with the channel
partners. Having a solid information retention
plan is essential to ensure a healthy and agile
system. Obtaining regular reports about sales
and prospects ensure the smooth functioning
of operations throughout the chain. Proper
data and information also maintains
transparency and avoids multiple
conversations which lead to
misunderstanding. Most distrustful
relationships stem from the fact that Channel
Partners find Company data dubious. Trusting
what the company issues, statements, data,
and market facts are crucial. The brand is
respected and the alliance is valued. Certainly
a good and popular product is a welcome
business for Channel Partners. Every product
or service in the bouquet may not be a best
seller and hence good relations, quality
engagement bridges that gap and make the
relationship worthwhile.
Channel Partner
engagement in one form
or the other exists in
cement companies, other
infra product companies
and pharma, to name just
a few
However one finds that most of these relationships

are built on what we term incentives. With the
exception of a few companies, in most cases these
incentives are overriding and are bundled with
promotions. Some have seasonal programs and others
quarterly. This does not constitute engagement.
The term engagement implies that there is a
meaningful two way communication between the
Channel Partner and the Brand. Cement companies,
with large budgets, for instance focus mainly on type
of rewards (products or travel packages). A survey
conducted by the authors research team among
channel partners of some specific brands, indicated
that more than 43% of them found the selection of
Gifts/Reward products were ordinary and nothing to
shout about. Also almost 35% claimed that
gifts/products were similar among rival brands. This
leaves nothing much to be excited about. This is a
serious amount of money that is committed to such
rewards, and it would be prudent to take a step back
and have a serious relook at the entire plan. It is for
this reason that the sure fire choice of channel
partners is gold or gold coins are the sure. In other
words they have no faith in the concept of perceived
value of the reward products being offered by the
brands. This illustrates the fact that the channel
partner loyalty quotient cannot rest on Rewards only.
It is obvious then that in themselves rewards
(products) dont or cant be the distinguishing factor
between brands. We conducted a similar exercise
with mutual fund a few months earlier and the results
were similar.
Brands must give top priority in engaging channel
partners. This does not imply that rewards have no
purpose or value, it simply means theres more to this
relationship than pure rewards. The term making its
rounds is Total Reward, for employees, channel
partners and customers.
Girish Khare is advisor to several organisations, for

Loyalty programs involving Employees, Channel Partners
and Customers.
Special Feature
The power of one - How an
enterprise loyalty
program is helping Titan
itan Company integrated the various loyalty

programmes under its umbrella (Anuttara
from Tanishq, Vista from Eye+ and Signet
from World of Titan) into a singled unified program
named 'Encircle'. It was piloted in Bangalore from
Jan 3, 2013 and rolled out nationwide on June 13,
2013. To date, the programme has a sizeable
customer base of 50 lakhs+. The Encircle program
has also enabled the various businesses or channels
within Titan Company to personalize marketing
efforts and drive businesses through several means
including increasing repeat purchases, customer
acquisition, winback, and cross channel shopping.
encircle success stats

One of India's largest customer base: Total
base of 5 million within 16 months of the

launch of program; 3 lakh new enrolments
every month. Adding the customers from
earlier programs, Titan company's customer
base exceeds 10 million!
High conversion rates: 95% + conversion rate
in the jewelry and eyewear divisions
High Quality data capture: Fill rate of 98 %
for Mobile and 55 % for Email
Increasing cross channel movement: An
increasing trend of multi channel customers

over the last few quarters
Keeping Titan customers active: Encircle is
helping dormant customers of one channel to

become active in another channel. These
customers are 20% of the to tal winback
customers of a channel.
Impact to company's topline: As with any
loyalty program, we have seen that member

spends are higher than non member spends
Background
Prior to encircle, i.e., the current unified loyalty
program of Titan, there were three standalone loyalty
programs run by its retail brands
Signet run by World of Titan
Anuttararun by Tanishq and
Vista run by Titan Eye Plus
Signet customers could earn and burn loyalty points
only within the watch retail chain and similarly for
Anuttara and Vista customers. During this time, it was
also a known fact that Titan company had a lot of
common customers across its individual businesses,
but there was no 'one view of the customer'.
Special Feature
In addition, several internal studies pointed to

potential synergies through enabling customer
movement across Titan's lifestyle categories of jewelry,
watches, eyewear and accessories, there was no
enabler or motivator.
encircle: Vision and Core objectives

The encircle program was launched with a customer
centric strategy of increased customer engagement
and relevance across Titan's lifestyle categories of
jewelry, watches, eyewear and accessories.
The program seeks to garner consumer insights
which not only influences marketing decisions
but also have an impact on merchandising and retail
functions.
This translates into nurturing customers across their
life stages namely customer acquisition, engagement,
cross selling, up selling and reactivation thereby
increasing the Customer Lifetime Value of a
customer.
Given Titan's portfolio of lifestyle categories, another
of encircle's core objective is also to encourage
customers to move across Titan's various businesses
and drive incremental revenue thereof
How is encircle creating impact at

various levels of the organization ?
Over the last 1.4 years, encircle has enabled the
acceleration of customer centric efforts through
Relevant and focused targeting
Empowering of various channels and stores with
customer insights
Constant evangelization of data based decision
making
A. Retail channel (Stores) :
Improved customer engagement :

Birthdays and anniversaries: Using the
monthly birthday and anniversary information

of customers from the encircle team, retail stores
drive delight through several initiatives. These
have also been proven to contribute directly to
the store's monthly sales.
Customer focused events: encircle team also
enables stores to tailor events- for example
community based product showcases, preview
of new collections at stores.
Contact lens refill reminders: Are sent a
fortnight before the pack expiry. This has

resulted in additional business of from
returning customers
Eye test reminders: Are sent every six
months to prescription eye wear customers.
Pilot runs have shown healthy lifts of ~95%
Targeted reactivation drives :
Focused anti dormancy initiatives: Encircle
team publishes a monthly report around

dormant customers. Stores use it to refine
their anti dormancy or winback initiatives.
These are bringing back customers who
contribute to a reasonable share of the store's
monthly sales in Tanishq, the jewelry
division
Targeted reactivation campaigns: By doing
predictive modeling on customer's past
product purchase behavior, encircle team has
identified customers in World of Titan
channel who will migrate to Titan EyePlus
the eye wear division. These have helped
bring back cust omers who shopped at an
average transaction value of 2X times the
average eye wear customer
Cross channel activities :
Movement across different formats: The
retail team gets to know the impact of
opening a store in mall or a high street &
understand how many World of Titan
buyers are buying in a Fastrack store which
helps in understanding the retail behavior
better.
Analyzing new formats: Titan company
has also started operating stores of multiple
channels under the same roof-example eye
plus & World of Titan. encircle team has
provided customer insights that could
potentially aid product bundling. This
includes metrics around same day
shoppers- basket size, categories purchased
together etc
Catchment based campaigns: Encircle team
has also been driving catchment area based
campaigns for new store launches & store
anniversaries given we see a lot of
movement of customers within their
adjoining neighborhoods & trust on Titan
brand equity - this has helped maximize
reach.
Special Feature
B. Customer understanding:
This is probably one of the biggest impact of
encircle- changing the lens with which the business
views a customer. Questions which were hither to
unanswered have now been possible using the
integrated encircle database
a. Cross channel customers buying Platinum: We
noticed that proportion of customers from other
channels and buying platinum at Tanishq was
2X times the average migration rate. In fact, it
was seen that these were largely watch buying
male customers in the 45+ age group
b. Category expansion: The Sunglass carnival
campaign for the eye wear team was designed
by the encircle team- this campaign not only
helped in driving sunglass sales, but also aided
category expansion.
c. Repeat customers: Encircle team has set in rules
for timing of reactivation campaigns and efforts
based on bounce curves which identifies the
ideal time when a customer would come back.
d. Purchase laddering and category movement:
Based on the knowledge of movement of
customers across categories, campaigns are sent
to customers.
e. Continuous feedback from customers: Encircle
also leverages the customer database to
regularly seek customer feedback in the form of
surveys
C. Marketing :
2) Deployment 'day of week': Open rates are

much better on certain days-deployment of
email campaigns are usually scheduled on
these days
3) Reminder timing: Encircle team determined
that optimal reminder time - 90% of
responders came within that time
periodafter that, a long tail was observed
4) Customer base: Multiple analyses pointed to
the fact that just about 2% of returning
customers had transacted prior to a certain cut
off date-this has helped refine the targeted
base for any campaign
b. Relevant and targeted communication : Product

introduction campaign lists are carefully tailored
to maximize response rates- for example,
campaign list selection which was model driven
saw >60% of the total buyers in the higher
percentiles as predicted by the model
c. Higher Open Rates: Encircle has enabled
streamlined targeting leading to higher open
rates for emails
d. Exclusive member privileges: Preview days are
the highest selling days during an activation or a
sale. Exclusive benefits to existing members are a
big driver.
Way ahead
a. Continuous feedback loop from campaigns:

encircle team has helped design and implement
a large number of campaigns for various
businesses. Using campaign results, we
constantly refine campaign execution
1) Campaign type: Activation, birthday,
anniversary campaigns are encouraged as
they are known to give response rates in the
higher single digits as compared to product
info campaigns
Increased focus on analytics: More relevant
product recommendations in store; deeper

customer understanding by integrating data from
social, CRM and transaction data
Higher customer engagement: Social
engagement, customer relationship building

through surprise and delight at relevant times
Bidyut Nath
Head - Customer Loyalty & Analytics
Titan Company Ltd.
Publishers Desk
E-tailers Go to Draw Mobile

Loyal Customers
Flipkart is giving the Google-run Great Online

Shopping Festival a miss this year as the biggest
indian online retailer is promoting its own mobile
app. Snapdeal is participating, but pushing its
mobile app as well.
Indian e-Commerce companies are changing their
customer acquisition strategy and are enticing
people with offers to install their apps on mobile
phones. They expect the move to create more loyal
customers than those who land on the Portal
through online searches. For search giant Google,
this growing trend underlines the need to expand
mobile offerings to retain its healthy rate of growth
in a market where more people are expected to
access the Internet on the mobile than on desktop.
The e-commerce industry is now m-commerce in
India; the way you reach out to customers is very
different even from a year ago when other digital
channels were more prominent, said Mausam
Bhatt, senior director for mobile commerce and
digital marketing at market place Flipkart.
Flipkart and the local operations of US e-commerce
giant Amazon get more than half their India traffic
through mobile phones. And, these companies are
increasingly spending on mobile-related
promotions.
Bhatt declined to provide details on Flipkarts
marketing expenditure. Traditionally, its spending
has mostly been on search engine and display
advertising, but he said there has been a large shift
in spending to expand the number of customers
having its mobile app installed their phones.
An app install is an endorsement thet someone

wants to shop with you, said Kishore Thota, head of
digital marketing at Amazon India. While Thota still
counts search and display advertising as an
important part of Amazons marketing strategy, he
says from a long-term point of view, We definitely
see more investment going into app presence.
This shift means Google may have to work harder for
the advertising dollar. For Google, which posted
more than Rs. 3,000 crore in India rebenue for the
year through March 2014, e-commerce has
contributed to the 47% growth in revenue over the
previous year. For many years, search engine
marketing, or advertising on search queries, has been
the mainstay of online businesses. The other major
form of advertising online was display advertising.
Google is the leader in both categories.
As more and more consumers move to mobile, both
forms of traditional advertising have been slowing;
the first by the proliferation of apps and the second
by the smaller screen sizes that make it tough for
display advertising, You have to really earn the real
estate on mobile, said Thota.
One-time purchases, like buying insurance or car will
still be influenced by a Google search while regular
actions like recharging a mobile, ordering a cab or
ordering food, will see app install and more loyalty,
said Naman Sarawagi, founder and chief executive of
comparison shopping site FindYogi.
Google, though, has a few things going for it. There
is a shift in revenue from SEM (search enging
marketing) as we know it, but with products like
Publishers Desk
Changing Rules of the Game

Total India online ad spends proportion of ad avenue (%)
VIDEO
MOBILE
5
3
7
10
EMAIL
DISPLAY
7
3
SOCIAL MEDIA
SEARCH
13
10
41
29
34
38
23
30
FY13
FY12
1750
12
18
FY14
2260
2750
Overall Market Size (INR CR)

Ad spend
on avenues
The shift to
mobile is one
we welcome
and in Asia
change is
happening
faster than
anywhere else
in the world
Praveen Sharma
Director-performance
at Google-APAC
FY12
(INR Cr)
FY13
(INR Cr)
FY14
(INR Cr)
Search
Display
595
718
853
657
825
633
12%
-4%
Mobile
123
231
385
46%
Social Media
Email
175
53
301
68
495
83
41%
16%
88
150
330
56%
Video
What E-tailers are Doing?
CAGR
(From FY12 to 14)
Source: IMRB International Estimates
What it Means for Google?
Flipkart is giving GOSF

2014 a miss as it is
promoting its own app
This shift means Google may

have to work harder for the
advertising dollar
Flipkart & Amazon India

get more than half their
India trafc via mobile
To Serve its growing mobile

clientele, Google has launched
advertising solutions for mobile
This year, it launched app
promotions advertising formats
across its products including
search and YouTube
Over INR 3,000 cr Google India
revenue for the year through
March 2014
Mr. Harish Bhatia

Founder and CEO
Kamikaze B2B Media
Google Maps and Google Now, Google still has

significant stake in the future of interaction,
thereby safeguarding its search and discovery
based revenue, said Saeawagi.
Googles mobile revenue is already supporting
its growth globally.
In the US, market

research firm eMarketer
estimates that search
revenue from desktop
computers will decline to
$10 billion this year from
$10.8 billion in 2013
But mobile search revenue is expected to grow
to $5.1 billion $3.1 billion. According to the
estimate, Googles total advertising revenue
will increase 14% to $43.5 billion in 2014.
The shift to mobile is one we welcome and in
Asia the change is happening faster than
anywhere else in the world, said Praveen
Sharma, director performance at
Google-APAC. Sharma added that Google has
driven hundreds of millions of app downloads
through these formats.
The trend isnt limited to India or Asia.
According to eMarked, States will decline
significantly this year, as mobile search ad
spending grows.
In India, mobile advertising has steadily grown
in proportion of the total digital market to
14% in the fiscal year through March 2014 from
7% in fiscal 2012, according to the Internet and
Mobile Association in Indias latest report.
In the same period, contribution of search to
total advertising revenue has gone down to
30% from 34%. Display advertising has also
gone down in proportion as social media and
video advertising have grown. The total digital
advertising market is expected to reach Rs.
3,575 crore in fiscal 2015 from Rs. 2,750 crore
last year. To serve its growing mobile clientele,
the search giant has also launched advertising
solutions for the mobile world. This year,
Google launched app promotions advertising
formats across its products including search,
display network and YouTube.
Rewards & More
Rewards & More
Integrated
Channel Loyalty
Management -
an idea whose
time has come ?
Background
Channel partners form an important link in the
marketing eco system of any product. They help a
manufacturer reach out to the customer , provide
product service and financial support, and ensure
visibility in the marketplace. Often they also add to
the brands marketing power by infusing their own
capital and innovativeness in micromarketing.
Naturally, a significant part of the marketing
managers strategic efforts revolve around building
and nurturing healthy relationships with the channel
partners.
Current state of channel loyalty

Channel loyalty management is a concept that has
become a hot topic in the last decade. Several
industries have adopted channel loyalty
management as an integral part of the marketing
mix. Among the first industries to focus on channel
loyalty management was the IT industry, probably
due to the fact that the product differentiation was
either becoming minimal or became difficult for the
customer to perceive. As a result the channel partner
was becoming a key influencer and so channel
loyalty program became a critical factor in
influencing the brand choice. Today, a channel
loyalty program has become an essential part of
marketing plans.
Naturally, wherever there is a widespread
acceptance of a concept, it is usually accompanied by
misunderstanding and poor implementation.
Needless to say, we are witnessing something similar
in the implementation of channel loyalty
management. Some of the maladies affecting the
adoption and implementation of channel loyalty
management can be summarized as follows:
Profusion of terms: There are several terms being

bandied about in the effort to build a healthy
relationship with the channel partner. You have
Partner Relationship Management, Partner
Engagement, Channel Loyalty Management,
Channel Rewards programs, Channel Incentive
programs and several others. The proponents of
each claim(and some also sincerely believe) that
their prescription is what is recommended by the
doctor for setting channel loyalty right! Closely
related to this is the second area of pitfalls in
channel loyalty management.
Poor understanding: Channel Loyalty
management is perhaps one of the least
understood concepts which is nevertheless widely
practiced. The result is like playing a badly tuned
violin with gusto.The misconceptions surrounding
channel loyalty are several, but I will list a few
here:
o Channel incentive is equal to loyalty: An
incentive program is called a loyalty program in
the hope that incentives will engender loyalty
o Channel rewards program: a variation of the
above this program extend the concept to include
a wide variety of rewards and usually a longer
time span
o Lack of a balanced R3 bouquet: Even when a
program has elements of rewards, recognition
and relationship elements, these are either not
tuned to the requirement of the target audience,
or are not in the right proportions
o Frequent changes to program structure: Program
elements are changed without consulting with
the members
o Earning opportunities are one-dimensional:
Points are awardee on a simple sales achieved
scale without any consideration on the buying
behavior. Questions on what behavior are we
seeking to modify are given the go by in
developing the program

These are just some of the issues seen in the
implementation of channel loyalty initiatives but
they serve to illustrate the level of understanding
of the issue
Obstacles in building true channel

loyalty
Even if we assume that we develop a complete
understanding of the concept of channel loyalty,
the structure and complexity of the channel
pipeline in the market place presents several
further obstacles and it is worthwhile to consider a
few of them here before we look at what
Integrated Channel Loyalty management is all
about.
Channel partner composition: Channel partners
present a mixture of rich diversity in terms of
experience in the business, hunger for growth,
understanding of the business, commitment to
the brand and several other factors. Naturally a
simple points based rewards program which
treats all these partners as a homogeneous
mixture will not be able to deliver true partner
loyalty
Layers within the pipeline: As is only obvious to
everyone, the channel pipeline consists of
partners at several hierarchical levels such as
distributor, wholesaler and retailer. Further the
number of such levels and the roles for each
carry from vertical to vertical. Very often,
channel loyalty programs target only one of
these levels. The challenge is that if you want to
motivate one level, it is necessary to have
triggers at each level. Granted, that there are
some levels which can be tackled by initiatives
other than a loyalty program; but the need is to
align all the initiatives together into a single
direction and several of the layers may have to
be pulled together through a loyalty initiative.
Multiple stakeholders within a partner

organization: The channel partner is not a single
individual. It is an organization much like the
manufacturers. And there are several individuals
with diverse goals- there is the owner, the manager
and the counter sales or service staff to name at least
three different role players. Each of these have
different expectations from the relationship with the
manufacturer
Partners have different focus markets: Even within
sales partners, the approach to market can differ
vastly. Thus there are channel partners who are
looking at retail customers, while others may be
focusing on institutional sales or even OEM
customers. The kind of sales organization and funds
required differ and so the kind of relationship that
the manufacturer seeks with these partners will
naturally be different.
An Integrated Channel Loyalty management
approach seeks to take into account all these factors
and approach the issue holistically. It is driven by the
realization that now, more than ever, it is important to
nurture the relationship with the channel partner. It is
built on the understanding that each channel partner
is unique and so the loyalty initiative has to be
tweaked to suit each partners requirements. So what
is ICLM?
An Outline of ICLM
Traditionally channel loyalty programs have always
had an underlying and unstated objective, which can
be stated as: How can I maximize the value of a
channel partner to my brand? So all the efforts have
been focused on harvesting the maximum benefit
from each partner. The ICLM does not do away with
this question but the primary focus shifts towards a
more channel centric approach. It seeks to answer the
question, which is: How can I help my channel
partner get the most from this relationship with my
brand?
Multiple partners within the channel: With the

increasing complexity of products, the number of
types of partners also starts to increase. Thus
consumer electronics products for example,
demand at least two different types of channel
partners- those who sell the product and those
who service it.At times, these two channel
partners could be working at cross purposes or at
the very least may not be viewing the customer
from the same perspective.
Figure 1: ICLM Framework
The Loyalty Post January-February 2015 |
25
Integrated Channel Loyalty Management follows

a five stage framework as shown in figure 1 above.
Stages 3 to 5 are iterative ins the sense that inputs
from the monitoring stage are feedback into stage 3
in the next cycle to ensure that the system learns
actively based on channel partner behavior. Let us
briefly look at each the five stages and the work
involved in each.
1. Understand the channel ecosystem: As
discussed earlier, the channel ecosystem varies
from vertical to vertical both in terms of length as
well as the diversity of the roles played by channel
partners. The first step in ICLM, therefore is to
map the ecosystem clearly with roles played by
each component defined to the extent it is possible.
The accompanying diagram shows a hypothetical
two tier channel ecosystem where the tier II
partners are further divided into sales partners and
service partners. This type of partner role division
is clearly seen in the durable industry.
Figure 2 Channel Ecosystem (Hypothetical)

2. Identify requirements of the stakeholders: As
the picture shows, there are several levels in the
ecosystem and several stakeholders. Before
designing the engagement, one needs to
understand the role played by each and the
requirements from each. The requirements span
the gamut of functional needs to fulfill the role
effectively to aspirational needs and pure
emotional needs. Very often, the cooperation
required between the representatives of the sales
and service organization are neither defined nor
mapped in any marketing effort. And yet, these are
required, if s customer who has bought a new TV
requires an urgent service call and the service
partner has a resource crunch. One of the
desirable - though not critical - aspects of a well
designed ICLM framework is to map these

informal relationships and how those relationships
(redlined in the picture above) are encouraged and
rewarded.
3. Develop the Roles/benefits/engagement matrix:
This is the crux of the development work. Once
you have identified the constituents and their
roles, then you need to carefully define the
behavior modification for each constituent. And
depending on the role and the desired behavior
modification, the R3 bouquet and the engagement
matrix have to be developed. This is an iterative
process of developing the matrix, calculating the
estimated costs, checking against the budgets and
revisiting the matrix development till the estimated
costs and the budgets converge to a single point. A
hypothetical example of an engagement matrix is
shown in the next diagram.
Figure 3 Hypothetical engagement matrix

Please note that the matrix above is only partial.
From the above, one will then need to develop the
detailed mixture of rewards, recognition,
relationship and enablement benefits for each
member.
4. Develop KPIs: This step is self-explanatory. If
you have defined the matrix of engagement
initatives clearly, then the KPIs will naturally flow
from that. But keep in mind that some of the KPIs
are short term and some will be annual. And once
again, some of them will be measurable only in soft
terms while others can be measured in defined
numbers.
5. Monitor and redesign: Once again, this step is

almost intuitive. Close monitoring of the initiative
for each member and the response rates should be
the keyword in implementing an ICLM program.
As the system learns from the feedback loop, there
will be changes made at different stages and at
each cycle the program gets fine tuned
progressively.
Conclusion
The topic of ICLM is bound to give rise to a
number of questions. For example, several of these
concepts are being practiced in parts. So what is
new about ICLM? How practical is it to move the
entire channel network as an orchestra? Is it
attempting something ambitious and so is it too
risky for a brand to attempt?
Some of the answers are readily available and
some will emerge over the next few years. But first
and foremost, ICLM is an attempt to align the
entire channel ecosystem to a single goal - to serve

the customer better. And so while there is nothing
revolutionary in terms of concepts, the attempt to
move the entire machinery in harmony is new and
challenging. But it is an essential move and one
that cannot be delayed any longer. No brand can
have different parts of the channel working at
cross purposes or in divergent directions. Just as
omnichannel marketing attempts to present a
single seamless experience across channels, ICLM
is an attempt to present a uniform response to the
customer across the channel. If CRM worked
towards developing a single view of the customer,
ICLM works towards presenting an unfragmented
view of the organization and so the brand to the
customer. It is recognition of the fact that the
channel is a critical part of the brand experience
and aligning the whole channel through a
well-coordinated engagement initiative. Is it
ambitious? Yes. But then no progress ever came
from running on the beaten track.
N. Ram
Chief Operating Officer
Direxions Marketing Solutions Pvt. Ltd.
Quoted as one of the 20 experts on loyalty marketing in the current volume of
"The Loyalty Guide"
27
Industry Connect
Getting ahead of the game:

Trends in 2015
Businesses are realising the importance of company-wide focus for customer engagement. Marketing here acts as
an important function to orchestrate customer engagement across entire organisation. There is enough
opportunity to optimize the impact of investments across the entire set of touch points. Customer engagement is
becoming one of the best practices that businesses are adopting. Engagement is not a one-time activity, it is a
movement. It is about how organizations leverage different kinds of information available for different types of
business purposes. In order to drive engagement, the value of data that was previously unattainable or
unknowable is being unlocked.
In 2014, 73 percent of companies worldwide either had already invested in or planned on investing in Data
analytics solutions to drive customer engagement, according to Gartner. Gartner found that despite the dramatic
rise in investment in Data capture and analysis, there was no corresponding rise in Data projects, signalling that
companies weren't sure what to do with it. 2015 will be the year of experimentation as companies which have got
their Data analytics feet wet, will play with new and exciting ways by which Data can change their world views.
Below are the top trends for 2015 for engaging better with the customers:
1. Digital becomes the heart of organisations : Organizations are going to see a big cultural shift. Greater use of
technology is changing customer behaviour and creating the need for new business models. From the vertical
alignment, the companies have shifted to the concentric approach with digital being the centre of the
organisation. Businesses are now realising that it needs to be reshaped for the digital age. Through the process of
automation, virtualisation, integration and mobilisation, businesses are transforming the nature of their entire
business.
Customer evolution is leading to Digitization:
India ranks third among the top countries for smartphone users with an estimated 117 million subscribers
Worlds highest yearly growth rate of internet users
Over 200 million Internet users at present
By 2018 almost half the country will be connected through the Internet
2. Analytics to become deeply embedded everywhere : Though the amount of data collected, stored and
mined will continue to grow at exponential rates, the noise about data capturing and analysing is soon going
to blend into the IT landscape. It is going to become usual business, thus leading to customer engagement at
each level of work in the organisation.
With technology solutions being readily available, all the talks about engagement analytics is finally turning
into action. Brands are finally able to harness all of those nuggets of information and put them to use to drive
purchases, increase customer satisfaction and improve the customer experience. Vast improvements in CRM
systems and integration with the cloud have made it possible for every customer interaction to move smoothly
and efficiently. Customer analytics has become an unavoidable metrics to profitability in business as the
empowered customer of this era is obsessed with engagement at personal level.
Analytics will become deeply, but invisibly embedded everywhere. With the kind of awareness about big data
spreading across businesses, the focus is going to shift to big questions and big answers rather than big data
itself.
3. Wealth of data to result in proactive engagement : Proactively reaching out to the customers not only offers
a chance to hold on to them, but turn them into the brand advocates.A great deal of important data is
generated by any engagement with a customer, and smart companies are gathering and analyzing that data to
Industry Connect
more informed decisions moving forward. They have
now actively started feeding that data to their customers
via customers channel of choice. With wealth of data
available with the businesses, businesses are now actively
feeding information to the customers before they actually
ask for it. This proactive customer engagement approach
has been adopted by several brands and is going to see
rise in popularity across businesses.
User ask for information
System responds to user's request
Reactive
Proactive
User responds to system notification
Systems Information productively
Image Proactive engagement gives a chance to hold on to

your customers
4. Non-Traditional companies joining the data marathon:

Companies of all stripes and sizes will increasingly adopt
a data centric approach as they set strategy, encourage
collaboration among colleagues, and interact with
customers.A few years ago, big data tools were available
only to corporate giants that could invest in proprietary
and largely inflexible infrastructure. Amongst the big
giants as well, it was just customer centric sectors which
thought about engagement based on data analysis.
Now, even the non-traditional sectors, like building
materials, auto ancillaries, etc. are realising the
importance of quickly accelerating customer engagement,
forcing the companies to react if they want to remain in
the competition. In 2015, big datas ability to connect dots
in ways never before, possible will prompt even the b2b
companies to rethink the way they connect with their
stakeholders.
Analytics will become deeply, but invisibly embedded
everywhere. With the kind of awareness about big data
spreading across businesses, the focus is going to shift to
big questions and big answers rather than big data itself.
Image Information Source: Harvard Business Review
3. Wealth of data to result in proactive

engagement: Proactively reaching out to the
customers not only offers a chance to hold on to
them, but turn them into the brand advocates. A
great deal of important data is generated by any
engagement with a customer, and smart
companies are gathering and analyzing that data
to make more informed decisions moving
forward. They have now actively started feeding
that data to their customers via customers
channel of choice. With wealth of data available
with the businesses are now actively feeding
information to the customers before they actually
ask for it. This proactive customer engagement
approach has been adopted by several brands
and is going to see rise in popularity across
businesses.
5. Hyper personalisation to be the new normal
2015 will bring personalization to a new level
with the advent of hyper-personalization in
customer interactions. Every interaction will be
captured and compiled. Algorithms will float
through all data to provide customized, tailored
information for each customer. Each interaction
will be an opportunity for brands to fine-tune
these algorithms to determine the wants and
needs of each individual, and not just the
collective demographic. Personalization goes
deeper into every aspect of marketing like; your
message, content, offer, templates, timings, and
mode of the communication.
6. Real time marketing campaigns: When it
comes to customer engagement based on
analytics, enterprises are looking for the ability to
discover, access, analyse and act on insights in
near real time. This gives businesses the critical
capability to nudge to their consumers with
relevant content, at the right time and via the
right communication media to deliver
incremental ROI. However most insights for
marketers were traditionally available in
retrospective manner and rarely helped them in
navigating a live campaign towards better
results. Tools like FirstHive are fundamentally
altering the game here - brands not only get
access to real-time data & insights but also to a
never before capability to hyper personalise their
consumer communication in real time.
Aditya Bhamidipaty
Co- Founder and CEO
eMart Solutions India Pvt. Ltd.
World View
The
future
of Loyalty
The Crafting of a Loyal Employee

If you are on the lookout for a three, six month or even a
one year program that will convert all your employees into
loyal and dependable people; heres your answer: No such
quick fix exists or ever did. If someone tells you it does, its
only to sell you a product or service.
Yes its better to put you out of your misery, at the outset.
If we are looking to build loyal and dependable employees,
its a process that requires time and a sincere commitment
with no illusions of a quick fix. It calls for a sustainable
change and that doesnt happen in a moment. You could be
a CEO or a senior manager heading an SBU, department,
project, and activity with several managers, supervisors
and others reporting to you. Keep this in mind, you can
train people in job skills but you can never train them to be
trustworthy or loyal, especially if the organization itself has
no real culture that will support the process. Most
managers tend to defend this accusation by affirming they
do have such a culture in their organization. Ask a few
probing questions and you will discover that they cant
accurately describe what that culture is.
Really ? Heres the fact: if they cant describe it
emphatically, it doesnt exist.
Take a hard look at the goings on among employees
.studies have revealed dissatisfied employees spend
considerable time (upto two working days a month)
engaged in loose talk about specific managers, systems and
other aspects of the organization in general this wastage
amounts to as much as a whole working month of a year! If
even 15% of employees engage in such activity, it makes a
serious enough dent in the organizations morale and even
affects the bottom line. This blunts the efforts of
organizations that deploy initiatives to up the efficiency
and accountability; its difficult for such programs to
achieve a mere percentage point or two, primarily because
they ignore or overlook the existence of the disgruntled.
Much has been spoken and written about the creation of
that ideal great place to work. Everyone agrees that to
achieve this goal, 100 % buy in from all employees is an
absolute essential first step.
Despite this overwhelming rational, very few organizations
have taken Recognition and Rewards to a new level, which
it needs.
Honestly, theres no room for pussy footing, either you

are in it for the long haul or dont even attempt the
journey. The other important aspect to note is that
personality driven efforts limit outcome to the tenure of
that personality. For a sustainable and lasting result such
efforts must be organization drive and not by a single
person, however well it is organized,
When Chrysler was in a rut along came the celebrated Lee
Iacocca and nearer to home Satyam. Chryslers story was
a temporary phenomenon and Satyams a real bluff. The
organisation cannot be run like an individuals fiefdom;
an organizations successful ways need to outlive an
individuals tenure.
And in the end its the people who get who make it work.
All the more reason for Companies to ignite the spark of
transparency, reduce levels of hierarchy and advertise
empowerment. I am not propagating complete
democracy in the corporate world; we all know that has
never worked on any scale.
One of Indias largest IT Company started out with all the
correct intent and purpose and had decades of a dream
run. But the exit of its founding fathers saw a decline of
the organizational health, especially in terms of attrition.
All kinds of fixes followed to no avail, even the return of
its key founder. Now theyve resorted to a fresh face and a
dynamic person taking the helm. Im sure we all wish him
well in this difficult adventure. While he has made
markets happy to some extent, down the line it would be
interesting to see how he actually handles the people
issues, the most fluid of all his challenges. Simmering
issues of mid-level managers are the most daunting and if
a permanent solution is found it would make the crucial
difference between true success and mediocrity.
Doubtless on the brink of mature growth it is now time
for all organizations in India to adopt the mentor
approach to all people development. I can site many
organizations in India who have acknowledged the
clarion call, however small the start, however simple the
initiative, its the focus and determination that will change
the landscape of people quality in India. And in doing so
will set out on the road to the creation of a new breed of
loyal and committed employees.
What an exciting time to be a part of this story.
E.H. Gori, Over 30 years as HR advisor for several companies in India and
overseas. For the last 20 years she has been consulting for people development
for several global IT organisations in the Minnesota and elsewhere in the
United Sates.
Loyalty Bytes
If we dont get that communicationand motivation
right they dont perform in the desired manner. This
eventually affects the bottom line.
You understand the nuances of your

business; its obvious youve spent a
long time in Sales.
I have been in Sales, one way or another, for over 20
years now. Majority of my work has saddled direct
sales, concept sales, corporate sales, trade sales and
retail sales. Loyalty programs for the WOT has been
the oldest and the strongest for TCL. Close to half of
our sales come from repeat consumers.
Throughout my years in sales, loyalty to the brand,
one way or another has played a significant part.
Maybe fifteen years ago it was not an integral part of
the process. But in the last three to five years, things
have taken a sharp turn. I remember in the old days it
was some enlightened pubs managers who led the way,
giving out freebees to regulars, pushing extras and one
plus one schemes. They built up a core of loyal
consumers much to the envy of other Pubs across
Bangalore. Few people cracked it well; of course there
were the biggies, First Citizen and other airline
programs. Im talking about loyalty being used as a key
differentiator at a very fundamental level. All thats
changed now its more like an essential part of doing
business Thats why its ever more important for us
to make the CS on the shop floor understand it to. We
have developed a number of training and incentive
programs to keep motivation at fever pitch all-round
the year.
Nirmal Lobo
National Sales Manager
Fastrack
It is TLPs endeavour to keep an ear to the

round on all issues related to the holistic
aspects of Loyalty; especially in key areas of
Employee/Company, Channel
Partners/Brands and even Customers/Brand
relationships.
In this interview Nirmal Lobo,

National Sales Manager Fastrack,
Bangalore sheds light on how the
important task of Channel Partner
motivation and loyalty to the
brand.
For Fastrack the importance of keeping channel
partners motivated and engaged is up at 8, on a
scale of 1 to 10. Our business depends hugely on
the warmth of people on the shop floor. So we need
to spend a large part of our energies engaging them
and helping them understand the importance of
what they do and more particularly how they do it.
But how do you face the challenge of

the online Marketers, dont they have
an impact on your sales ?
Certainly, ecommerce brands are very disruptive. This
also provides our channel partners opportunities to
duck sales targets, sometimes. There are any number of
stories of customers actually checking prices on their
phones in-store(!) However we need to be omni-present, we have to be online as well as in brick and mortar.
While this puts additional pressure on the Sales
network and channel partners, it also gives us more
serious about keeping them motivated and incentivise.
It helps to explain that on a micro level ecommerce
brands hurt us, but on a macro level less than 2
percent of our business comes from ecommerce
partners and from our own online sales.
Loyalty Bytes
There is a mad rush to acquire customers and
build a sense of loyalty at any cost. Customers are
smart. Its important to understand them and
deliver great value at every stage of the life cycle to
retain, build loyalty and advocacy. For us it is the
in stores experience, the warmth of the personal
interaction, the human touch; which brings me
back to the importance of engaging CS, the
numbers of which are constantly growing as the
outlets increase. And it wouldnt be fair to deny
the growth of ecommerce; that 2 percent will
certainly become a much larger percentage over the
next five years. It will nevertheless drive us to
focus on upping the in-store experience.
Do you get a buy in from your

people before launch new
initiatives, or is it a top down
format ?
Creating value is an important aspect of any
program. Selling and adoption of the program
largely depends on this compelling reason. Yes we
always get buy in of all stake holders, even our
channel partners, before we roll out any new
initiative. It can be an enormous task to get this
done, but we do it anyway.
Your team has to deal with

commercial and softer relational
issues so how important is it for
them to be creative ?
Creativity doesnt come naturally to many a
manager. But without doubt it is a great
advantage to possess a sense of
creativity. However there is the other half of the
issue - taking those great ideas and executing them
well, this in my opinion makes the crucial
difference.Yes our marketing team sets the
standards for all our activities. We do have others
in our team capable of creating great ideas within
those parameters and others who effectively
execute it on the ground. These are very important
exercises that we have to continually be entrenched
in, all year round. Because of the number of
activities we very consciously keep a close eye on
the quality of creativity and execution. As this
projection not upto the mark can lead to dilution of
brand rendition. Creativity is subjective so having
quality people giving directions at the top is so
important.
Do you have program to help peg

where you are in relation to your
competitors ?
NPS (Net Promoter Score) is a great tool which
comes closest to relating customer loyalty to biz
results. Great businesses have clear delta of NPS
over their counterparts leading clear gap between
them and their competitors.
Do you find adequate trained

people for the role of CS at the
franchisee level or do you have to
invest in training them ?
CS is most often measures in silos and no clear
linkages are articulated to biz which make the buy in
and execution weak from franchisees; however,
showing linkages changes to whole equation and the
effort that goes in. But attrition to some extent is
good in the retail sector. It brings in freshness.
Robust process of training and transition
management is key to maintaining the overall
experience.
Its therefore imperative that we get the right kind of
talent to manage the channel partner networks.
While educational upbringing should cover subjects
like analytics, which by the way is turning out to be
crucial in reading the customer trends, but I think
we need more rounded personalities, good creative
thinkers at the least.
Lets not forget that all our efforts are focused on the
CS on the shop floor. And we continue to devise
programs that keep a high excitement level while
maintaining simplicity and managing to remove the
many layers that came between the store staff and
the target. This makes it sharply targeted ensuring
the program has great impact. Technology tools,
Spirit of competitiveness and great prizes make it
very compelling.
Eventually we have to think differently, out of the
box, because at the end of the day like every brick and
mortar business we have a handful of occasions to
connect with our customersi.e. Anniversaries
Birthdays, preview sales, raksha bandhan, etc.
Industry Connect
Command
loyalty, sure
Demand loyalty ?
arayan Das is the only other voice, besides my ex- boss

who agrees with me on the subject of Loyalty programs.
He did this little workshop on consumer loyalty with all
the top management of my previous organization he spoke
about how we were blowing up Crores of Rupees building this
glorified program and challenging us to imagine on what else
one could spend it on. Of course I kept hammering my point but
the rest of the senior management just didn't buy it. However the
MD eventually forced ever y brand to come under an umbrella
programessentially aligning our very youthful brand with the
host of other unrelated group brands.
NO
I believe Loyalty applies to something that is a result of a deeper

relationship; an outcome of a relationship built at a very
intangible level. There are very few brands that have achieved
this status, the so called iconic brands, Apple or Harley
Davidson. People will kill for these brands my
The author Simeran Bhasin is
husband, a diehard fan of Apple will not listen
credited for the rapid growth of India's top youth
about any problem wit h Apple products he
will never admit it and will fight tooth and nail.
brand this year. She has taken charge as CMO of
Only .001 percent of brands are able to achieve
Wildcraft. Her strong views on how customer loyalty ought to
this, over decades of consistent building of a
very
sharply positioned brand. That's when you
be approached, speaks volumes of her deep
command loyalty.
understanding and passion for brand

building.
Unfortunately programs today are demanding

loyaltyyou cannot demand loyalty it goes against the
very notion. Expecting that someone is going to come back to you
because you're giving them something additional that's not
loyalty it's actually incentivising them to come back to you
you're paying them to come back in some form or the
otherpoints, gift voucher, etc. You're buying loyalty not
commanding it.
Brands need to spend time building relationships that command
loyalty that is a far deeper relationship. Brands need consumers
fighting for them, even when they occasionally slip up you
can't have a loyalty program without reaching that level of
relationship. You need an engagement program, customer delight
programs use it to understand your consumer and engage him
in different ways but the word loyalty certainly doesn't fit in
from any angle. I think done the right way this can build Loyalty.
In categories like FMCG, quick service restaurant, like Starbucks
Loyalty programhonestly you're going to Starbucks because
you love Starbucks, you're part of the fan club and as part of
that fan club you get a lot of those benefits but are those benefits
the reason you're coming? I don't think so. Otherwise CCD
would be up there with Starbucks. Imagine Mufti Jeans having a
loyalty program, would you be part of that program? Or would
you be part of the Diesel Program ? Then that's because it's Diesel.
One immediately devalues a club by calling it a program and
linking it to loyalty. I think in today's transitory world you're
only as good as your last collection or last campaign. See
consumers aren't patient anymore, I mean there's so much of
clutter, so much of stimulation all around us that who's going to
remember what you did, if you don't do enough good stuff ?
Industry Connect
You'll soon be forgotten.
I think if the consumer is open to entering the world you're
creating for them, that's a start. In Wildcraft's case it is the
world of the great outdoors. Wildcraft wants to become the
window to the outdoors. Maybe you haven't considered it
or have no relationship with itor if you've liked those
fabulous photographs on someone's trek on Facebook and
you've pinned a lot on your Pinterest board. You don't know
what to do beyond that more than 65% of people are
talking a bout and updating their status about anything
linked with travel and the outdoors Being able to convert
that interest into action i.e. what would be ideal is to get
our consumers to actually engage with the outdoors. We've
realised that the outdoors has a beautiful magnetic force, go
there once and you'll keep going back. Different for different
people, some go back again and again far more frequently
and others once a year.
The outdoor experience is

something that is unmatched by
any other experience in the
world
Certainly not anything man made our objective is to
create a program that can inspire them, enable them and
keep them informed and finally, engage them to get out
there. We're certain consumers will want to say ya let me
try this I'm fairly confident that once they try it, the bug
sticks. Remember there's no end to the number of outdoor
experiences you can have; every experience differs from the
other. I mean if you go to one night club in one part of the
world chances are that 80 odd percentage of night clubs
in the rest of the world at that point in time are playing
similar music, have similar looks and feels of various
themes by and large the same experience with the
outdoors that's not so.
I want to provide my consumers opportunitiesthere is not
enough information as to what opportunities exist and with
our lives becoming so much more intense, whether it's
education or work during the week, people want a release
on the weekends. Restaurants, multiplexes are jam
packed in this fast paced age you don't consider that
getting that lung space is actually just an hour or so away
and what's more it doesn't cost you a leg and an arm maybe
a couple of litres of gas or finding transport to get there.
We're witnessing a growing active lifestyle with more and
more youngsters doing something that is away from the
comforts of TV, air conditioners, EDM music, etc. There is a
going back to simplicity, a back to the basics. However only
a percentage of them take the initiative to get online and
know exactly what to do once they make

that connection they meet people become
part of the community before they set out
there's a lot of uncertainties, because there's
no fixed way once they have done it once
or twice it is not as forbidding as they
thought at first. But to most others who've
thought about it or said wow I'd like to do
thisit has stopped there as they don't know
where to begin; where to go, how to get there,
how much will it cost, what to carry or not.
These are basic qu estions that I've asked and
there aren't enough people asking these
questions.
As a brand we need to ask these questions on
behalf of consumers and at an advertising and
activity level we need to inspire them and
only then have other programs plug in to
enable them and actually send them out
there. And yes along the way if they need any
tips and help to get there, what to take and so
on, the brand is there. It's not like we flog the
products, it's a larger vision that we have
crafted for ourselves and that vision is
something that I can't put a number to. The
vision is To redefine India's relationship with
the outdoors. To me buying our products and
using it is a very small part of it. It is the
creation of an outdoor culture which does not
exist in this country unlike the west. If we
were brought up there we'd have memories of
trekking and camping with our parents. The
closest we got to outdoors was going with
grandparents on pilgrimages. Which was
more of sufferance, a penance ? We are still
aspiring for all the creature comforts of city
life which is great but now you have at least
two generations that have enjoyed it and are
feeling the strain of having too much city life.
The future for brands is a mad rush with the
internet making things a lot crazier . Take
the baking industry after the internet there
are 5000 plus small online ventures producing
very customised and better products than
established brands There is ever increasing
pressure on brands to stand out through a
meaningful relationship with consumers or
high degree of brand differentiation better still
both. If the combination is cracked you've
arrived. But cracking it once doesn't make you
for life; you've got to keep cracking it day after
day after day.
Take your eye of the target and it's gone.
Rewards & More
Corporate
Rewards Program
Intangible Corporate Rewards Program, the new

favourite initiative being adopted by the corporates
to motivate, engage and retain its employees and
channel partners.
If you wonder what getting and keeping the right
employees has to do with getting and keeping the right
customers, the answer is everything. - Frederick F
Reichheld: Author of "The Loyalty Effect"
Rewards and Recognition programs are powerful
tools for motivating and driving performance from
employees & channel partners. Increasingly,
companies are looking for new and creative ways to
boost the morale of employees and channel partners
which goes beyond just financial rewards. PAYBACK
has developed its Corporate Rewards
Program, an exclusively designed
incentive tool for Corporates to fashion
year-long goals into smaller more
achievable milestones which can be
celebrated and rewarded. This program
has the flexibility to be customised to
different organizations, product
categories, objectives or any other key
performance indicator.
Giving something back to your best employees &
channel partners has become a competitive necessity
in most companies today and this unique program
enables enrolled members to be incentivised via
PAYBACK Points that can be redeemed offline or
online, at over 50 partner brands that constitute the
PAYBACK Network or at a customised catalogue. The
fungible nature of PAYBACK Points and the
possibility to earn them from both the employer and
further augment the bank through PAYBACK
Network makes it a double bonus. This power is
further enhanced through regular flow of deals and
offers designed to create excitement and in turn
motivation!
The PAYBACK Corporate Rewards Program

currently has been successfully adopted by varied
organizations such as Cognizant, HPCL, Fidelity,
DuPont, and American Express to name a few.
According to most of these organizations their
employees & channel partners prefer intangible
rewards that offer instant gratification and give
them the freedom to shop as per their needs and
preference, making it a more attractive option
boosting loyalty in the process.
Heres why the PAYBACK corporate rewards
program is fast emerging as a favorite tool for HR
and Sales Channel heads:
1. Flexible Platform: Allows corporates to calibrate
and structure the rewards program in line
with their strategic imperatives.
2. Plug & Play Model: An existing vibrant
program which requires minimal
integration and making it possible to
go-live quickly with minimal investment.
3. Intelligent Analytics: Inherent potential
to intertwine behavior patterns with
predictive modelling on usage of rewards
and its impact.
4. Innovative Coalition Model: With a diverse
portfolio of partner brands in-store and online, the
model creates infinite redemption options thereby
creating one shoe that fits all sizes! Further the
member can augment his point bank by also earning
loyalty points from the coalition network.
5. Expertise: The program is managed from start to
finish; from operations, MIS and rewards
management, providing organizations with essential
time to focus on strategic initiatives. Besides this,
interest generation activities to engage members
through earn and redeem options are also provided.
6. The program also offers an additional advantage
of a ready repertoire of effective engagement
initiatives which can be deployed for further impact.
Mr. Rahul Rana

MD and CEO
PAYBACK India
To know more about the program you can contact

PAYBACK Corporate Rewards
(corporate.rewards@payback.in)
World View
The Focus for 2015
- A single window view

of the customer
he idea is of a question set which begins with a
customer question Where shall I eat today?
and then expands your knowledge of that
customer through their journey with your brand by
asking and answering other questions from basic
identity and demographic information, transactional
behaviour and satisfaction. All of this delivered in a
structured, non-intrusive way via the customers
current channel of choice. Questions must be asked in
context and only where the answer is unknown.
The tools proposed are intrinsically designed to gather
and integrate information not just to broadcast however intelligently. So the ethos is to continually
enhance the picture of the customer and thus
continually enhance insight to deliver a deeper and
more meaningful two way relationship. So a two way
dialogue is sort from the very first interaction with the
customer. Thats the kind of thrust of it and how were
seeing that manifest is first with very personalised
communication. So are you always taking into account

who you are speaking to, what you know about them
and what that means they might or might not like to
see. Weve discovered that from day one a customer
of mine is going to do all of these things and for me to
truly understand them I need to have asked them all
of these things. And you define what the universe of
attributes is on the very first day. Then you should
strive to complete that picture.
So you start with a blurred indistinct picture and we

move towards having a clear picture of that consumer
in the context in which we would want to understand
them. And in a way that is useful for us to ultimately
develop a relationship and eventually its the
relationship that we lead to growth for us as a
business. And once you understand what these
questions are, many of which are answered
behaviourally so a question could be how much
money do you spend with me? you obviously dont
ask them that question you get the answer from the
transactional data. Whereas whats your favourite
colour or when is your birthday? we are typically
allowed to ask that question. But we are only going to
ask that if we dont already know it and at an
appropriate point in the relationship. Ask yourself
have we created enough trust in the relationship for
the consumer to provide that information; otherwise
it will be intrusive and will worsen the relationship.
Think of it as a first date and route to marriage. You
are careful about what you ask her or even what you
tell her. But as your relationship grows youre
comfortable about asking more questions, as you
begin to understand at the right time. You

understand perfectly valid questions cant be asked at
the wrong time, it would obviously weaken the
relationship or you never get married.
World View
Discover what and how you should

communicate
All this information will help you discover what and
how you should communicate so that you can use
communicated preference or demographic
information to work out the tone, style or format of
the communication or even the channel if they
havent actually explicitly chosen one. Importantly
you can use segmentation information to decide what
you can communicate.
You can divide up your

audience base in order to
give them meaningful
communication then deliver
it in a way that is most likely
to be responded to
Thats the result of a combination of the answers that
people have given you, either behaviourally or
explicitly. If you hit the right channel of choice and
the right message at the right moment you are much
more likely to get a response. Then to really close the
circle from the response you will learn just how good
your judgement was in about both the style and
concept of the first communication. Eventually its a
combination of all of those things that gives you a
better outcome.
Frankly it was a bit of a revelation for me, recently,
though it should have been obvious. If people are
playing with big investments in insights and what
they should be trying to do is find any small
correlation that they just didnt know about or didnt
have and by finding that very small correlation they
can move the needle enough to make a significant
difference to the bottom line. Youre not always
looking for the silver bullet in this data - to take sales
from X to X to the power of Y. Youre looking for
something that allows you to go from X to X plus a
little bit more, by creating a stronger relationship. It

is the only sustainable growth model.
Its small movements that make a big difference.
So you dont need to have some epiphany about
how or what youre going to communicate. You can
just use the data you have to play the probability a
little bit better. A simple example is channel of choice,
if you send everybody emails because thats your
default communication method, but if you give
people a choice between sms and email, what does
that do? That immediately gives you something to
look at. Because youve then got an A, B testing to
say do more people respond to sms or emails and
you can do that all the way through by just playing
with variables; if I use a different email template or
use a different title, send this age group a slightly
different format of email or slightly different
language; does that help me? What if I include
Facebook likes on these emails but not on these, what
does that do.
Its a constant process of inquisition of the data to try
to find out what going to move the needle. While it
all may sound a little bit mechanical at the heart of
it is the idea that the next best action that you want
to give the person which in the most simple and
accessible terms is if Ive brought some strawberries,
people who bought strawberries also bought cream.
Thats my proposed next best action the next best
action for the consumer and not about the business
youre trying to sell him. That will help to deepen
and enhance the relationship.
The brand gives the consumer the thing that
provides the best value to the brand rather than
what the consumer really wants brands have to
appear to be altruistic in order to generate better
faith in their customer base. So if theyve genuinely
got their customers interests at heart versus their
own interest that leads to a better long term
relationship.
Whitbread is moving in this direction, the change
that there are proposing to make on their program is
to take it from currently a loyalty program to being
this whole two way communication engine where
its all about gathering information in order to give
people the right next best action. While they still see
loyalty and points as a part of the mix but a
significantly smaller part.
Paul Brown, CTO for one of largest global performance

improvement companies Grassroots, has the unusual
distinction of being both an engineer and MBA with
problem-solving techniques as his specialisation.
39
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Publisher & Editors Desk

LOYALTY ON A GLOBAL SCALE

Executive Editors Desk

08 Loyalty as we know it, is dead, long live

28 Getting ahead of the game: Trends in 2015

34 Command loyalty, sure demand loyalty? NO

20 E-tailers go Mobile to draw loyal

30 The future of loyalty

2 | January-February 2015 The Loyalty Post

19 power of one- How an enterprise loyalty

FOCUS ON CHANNEL LOYALTY

24 Integrated channel loyalty management an

REWARDS & MORE

36 Corporate rewards program

Fueling next-generation reward design

What it is and how can brand earn it

out on a better deal, which in itself is rewarding. In a more

To overcome these challenges, brands need to

The Android brand is open source because it was created to

Mr. Harish Bhatia

People are more promiscuous because brands

The Loyalty Post January-February 2015 | 3

Rewards & More

How to make use of

Mr. Rahul Rana

Have you always wondered why companies give

4 | January-February 2015 The Loyalty Post

Rewards & More

Leverage the Power of Accumulation: Choose a

Flexibility is Essential: For transactions made,

Keep it Simple: Avoid confusion of using and

Convert every Opportunity into an Advantage:

Try it! It can be a very rewarding experience.

Leverage the Power of Aggregation: The real

A good loyalty program

Loyalty programs have gone beyond earning and

Most organizations today understand the importance of building customer

Setting expectations for customers is an important first step in

2. Train the front end franchisees and their

3. Create multiple channels for customers to

4. Empower front end staff to resolve

5. Maintain constant engagement with

All of the above lay the foundation for building a

The Loyalty Post January-February 2015 | 7

Loyalty as we know it, is Dead,

8 | January-February 2015 The Loyalty Post

separate checkout line in a retailer or give me a

India is seeing a plethora of

Mr. Ajay Kelkar

Here are some ideas for CMOs as they

The Loyalty Post January-February 2015 | 9

ome to the oldest scriptures in the world,

10 | January-February 2015 The Loyalty Post

Its starts with the premise that the ultimate

Upon hearing the sound of

Are you earning

f late I have had many companies ask me to

12 | January-February 2015 The Loyalty Post

Big data conceals customer

Businesses tend to limit their exposure to data that is

customers that will keep them coming back for more?

possession. Creating value is a three-step

relationships within the data you already

You need to uncover the value in these