Customer loyalty is crucial to any successful business. The cost of finding new customers far outweighs the cost of retaining your current customer base, so retention is always in your best interest.

Obviously, how you present yourself to the customer – from day-to-day operations to a demo at your trade show display – plays a factor in how loyal your customers will be to your products and business. Another element is how you conduct your customer service. But most of us have been beat over the head about presentation and customer service, so . . . moving on.

Back to customer loyalty – both presentation and service fall under the umbrella of focused initiatives that are instrumental in building customer loyalty. The global economy, with all of its benefits, presents the challenge of keeping your customers out of the clutches of the competition.

In “Defining Loyalty Marketing”, author Rick Ferguson defines what it is, and discusses some of the nuances that make it an essential piece of your overall marketing strategy.

Colloquy Corner: Defining Loyalty Marketing

Welcome to the first in a series a monthly columns by Rick Ferguson, the editorial director of loyalty marketing servies provider Colloquy (www.colloquy.com). Colloquy teaches an ongoing series of loyalty marketing workshops and seminars in conjunction with the Direct Marketing Association. For more information, visit http://www.colloquy.com/cont_conferences.asp.

I write about customer loyalty for a living, so it would seem that producing a monthly column for CHIEF MARKETER would be an easy task–until you realize how broad a topic loyalty marketing really is. What are we talking about, exactly? Points programs? Grocery-store discount cards? Cobranded credit cards? Dialogue marketing campaigns? Punch cards? Ask 10 marketers to define loyalty marketing, and you’ll get 10 different answers.

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Tags: customer loyalty | loyalty marketing | Rick Ferguson