We’ve seen it plenty of times in the news over the last year. Rising inflation and the hiked up cost of living has had a detrimental effect on customer loyalty. If your favourite brand has increased their prices to a level that is no longer within your weekly budget, why would you continue to shop there? Our customers are, rightly, choosing spending savings over brand loyalty.
In Marigold’s latest e-book, they talk through how these challenging times call for a new kind of loyalty if we want to drive revenue growth. Let’s look into a new form of loyalty management.
Emotional loyalty, experiences, and connections
We know that customer loyalty is a necessity for our industry. Our loyal consumers are our advocates, ambassadors, frequent purchasers, and more. But how can you actually create that consumer base?
Loyalty programmes are common tools, personalisation is foolproof, and using omnichannel communication is effective in our digital world. But we need to start going beyond these, especially in times of economic turmoil, if we are to keep up these devoted relationships.
Marigold have invited us to consider a new form of loyalty management. Let’s seek to answer: Do your brand experiences and customer engagement drive emotional loyalty?
What is emotional loyalty?
When achieved, emotional loyalty comes with numerous benefits, including:
- High customer retention
- Cross-sales (increased revenue for less cost)
- Brand advocacy
It would serve you well, and make the most business sense to work with building a more connected, emotional relationship with your customers. It costs up to 25 times more to acquire new customers than to retain existing ones.
Marigold’s definition of emotional loyalty is made up of three components: affinity, attachment, and trust. And the latest e-book gives an excellent breakdown of each of these components, including definitions, key indicators, pitfalls to avoid and more. This will truly help you develop a fully rounded strategy and execution plan for deploying emotional loyalty.
In the meantime, here’s a quick overview of what these components can symbolise:
- Affinity – “I like you… but I don’t love you.”
- Attachment – “You know me well.”
- Trust – “Let’s be friends.”
Loyalty is an outcome, not a tactic
Although this statement is true, it’s important to strategise how you will foster long-term loyalty. Keeping customers consistently coming back to you requires something special that they won’t get elsewhere. When the world is at their fingertips, create experiences that can’t be matched.
Intentional, meaningful, brand-to-customer engagements are not just a good idea; they’re crucial. For loyalty, they’re a basic necessity. But there’s more to it than that.
Marigold’s e-book also provides 7 essential guidelines to build true emotional loyalty. This can help you to consider your next steps once you realise the significance of outstanding customer experiences. These include:
- Staying true to permission
- Giving your customers a voice
- Tapping into mobile
Let’s start seeing how we can build lasting customer relationships in our new age.
To learn about emotional loyalty in depth, find out its components, and guidelines, read Marigold’s e-book: ‘A New Kind of Loyalty.’ Download it for free on the CXM website, and use this valuable resource forever.