What’s Your Loyalty Program?

A loyalty program is such a simple thing to construct, and they work. I buy from Amazon because I get Amazon Prime – free shipping – a loyalty program. I fly with American or United because they give me priority boarding, upgrades, and other perks – a loyalty program. In the latter example, I continue to use American and United even though I am not delighted with their service or price. But the perks have more meaning to me than other options.

It is really hard to break free of loyalty programs. For years, we consolidated our hotel preference to Omni Hotels or Hilton Hotels. When you travel 100 nights a year, the perks make all the difference. We stuck with Hilton through two years of crappy hotels. This year, we sucked it up and converted to Marriott. The Marriott offers convenient locations, competitive pricing, but way better hotels than Hilton in the cities I tend to visit. My point is that switching from Hilton was really hard because of the loyalty program.

My favorite quote of the year is "A lead is a customer that someone else lost," by Brian Boero of 1000Watt Consulting. The story of listing syndication and online advertising and search engine optimization is a fool's game if done ahead of affiliate marketing. Don't you think that an agent or a brand should be marketing to the people that they know and have done business with before they try to convert strangers?

Don't you always give your family and friends a good deal when they purchase services from you? Don't you expect the same when doing business with your friends and family?