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The future of customer loyalty lies in the hands of zombies, so to speak. However, it’s a little less like the apocalyptic visual presented by The Walking Dead and more about the opportunity for brands to “redeem the dead” within their loyalty programs. This reference comes from Barry Kirk of Maritz Motivation, who has a colleague that likes to say that “a lot of loyalty programs have a small amount of active people and a whole lot of dead people.” And while “zombie loyalty program” may sound like a clever description, the challenge hidden behind these loyalty-dead consumers is no laughing matter for marketers. Both Kirk and fellow loyalty expert Ashley Tate believe that retention and engagement are the keywords for loyalty marketers in 2015. While enrollment into customer reward programs is essential, engaging the customers so that they redeem their points or take part in the brand community is just as important. Marketers have been experiencing a decline in engagement lately, despite the fact that almost three billion people are currently enrolled in loyalty programs in the U.S. Kirk believes that “tribal loyalty” will play a more integral role in customer rewards programs going forward. Such a tribal component goes beyond the traditional financial aspect of most loyalt

When talking about consumer loyalty programs, Ashley Tate and Barry Kirk speak from deep experience and a shared passion for customer engagement. The pair of loyalty experts understand what drives loyalty and keep keen eyes on the loyalty space to further understand how to increase engagement in an ever-changing consumer environment. In this following interview summary from TechnologyAdvice’s Clark Buckner, Tate and Kirk discuss how to engender social loyalty through two proven social media strategies. Increasing Brand Loyalty through Responsive Social Media Tate opened the interview by sharing two interesting social engagement statistics recently released by SAP: 15 percent of the customers they surveyed said that more than 25 percent of their customer service inquiries had been initiated over their social channels. Based on that 25 percent of inquiries, 27 percent of the brands surveyed said it took them less than an hour to respond to questions posed to them on social media.   Tate was most interested in that second statistic, noting how an hour’s response is “almost real-time to me.” She went on to say, As a customer, th

Maritz Motivation Solutions’ VP of Loyalty Strategy Barry Kirk and BigDoor’s Director of Marketing Ashley Tate discussed loyalty currency with Clark Buckner, host of the TechnologyAdvice podcast. In this insightful interview, these customer loyalty experts defined loyalty currency, compared different types of loyalty consumers, and considered the driving question of every loyalty rewards program: what motivates people?   What is Loyalty Currency?   Loyalty currency is what a consumer earns in a

Ashley Tate is the Director of Marketing at BigDoor, a loyalty marketing, rewards program, and engagement company started in 2009. Maritz Motivation Solutions, where Barry Kirk serves as VP of Loyalty Strategy, has been involved the loyalty space for the last 100 years.   One of the biggest issues BigDoor sees changing in the future of loyalty programs are the types of rewards offered because the world has shifted into a digital landscape, bringing implications like:  

Loyalty program pet peeves: "Mistakes and How To Fix Them" is today's customer loyalty discussion with co-hosts Ashley Tate from BigDoor, Barry Kirk from Maritz Motivation and Clark Buckner from TechnologyAdvice. Topics included Ashley and Barry's thoughts on what works and what doesn’t. They also shared eight solutions for ways that loyalty programs fail to incite the kind of loyalty they strive to achieve with their customers.

Customer Loyalty 101: Best Practices from Best In Class Brands is today's customer loyalty discussion with co-hosts Ashley Tate from BigDoor, Barry Kirk from Maritz Motivation and Clark Buckner from TechnologyAdvice. Topics included today’s best loyalty programs and the impact they’re making, as well as strategies for creating a more engaging customer loyalty program.

Seeing the human beyond the number in customer loyalty programs is today's customer loyalty discussion with co-hosts Ashley Tate from BigDoor, Barry Kirk from Maritz Motivation and Clark Buckner from TechnologyAdvice. Topics included understanding customer personas as the first step to creating a loyalty program, the four-drive model of motivation, and the bare essentials of persona marketing.