198 V I EWPO I NT Loyalty programmes allow organisations to learn about their customers in a way that leads them to deliver individualised experiences E R I N RA E S E : ANNE X C LOUD Building long-lasting relationships Today, loyalty is a two-way value exchange with customers. Loyalty programmes create a commitment to this – when a customer joins one and agrees to share their data, organisations, in return, promise to be a good steward of this data by delivering personalised and relevant experiences. It’s important for organisations to protect customer data in this way, not only to ensure compliance with regulations like the General Data Protection Regulation, but also to show respect to customers. Businesses should only collect the data that they need to deliver the best possible experience and make customers’ lives easier. This value exchange and personalisation can start even before someone becomes a customer. Once they start consuming a business’s products or services, the relationship grows, and that’s when loyalty and retention happen. The importance of customer retention can be best understood by this statistic from management consulting firm, Bain & Company: a five per cent increase in retention can increase profitability by 75 per cent. Keeping customers and keeping them spending increases the bottom line. Then add in their advocacy and companies can reduce their customer acquisition cost significantly. Loyalty programmes are an important strategy for businesses to engage and build strong relationships with their customers. They establish a conscious two-way value exchange, allowing organisations to learn about their customers and deliver individualised experiences. A platform like Annex Cloud, combined with the Microsoft Dynamics 365 suite, allows organisations to consensually capture first-party loyalty data and then create experiences based on this. When we look at today’s challenges, organisations need to focus on their customers. When times get tough, it’s harder
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