Many companies have focused on loyalty for years; although, they weren’t doing it within a loyalty marketing department.  It was previously the growth, retention and attrition campaigns within the marketing department.  Wrapping it to one word “loyalty” not only brings more focus, it opens the door to a more holistic approach for marketing and a plethora of new branding and supporting service providers.  The volume of information available, the number of channels to market through and the choices for recognition can make your head spin.

Growth in Mobile, Social Media, E-Commerce and a down economy fuel the loyalty explosion. The industry has been further spurred by specific budgets for loyalty and the trend for companies to focus on customer satisfaction and retention over acquisition.  While many industry stalwarts are addressing the loyalty space with updated marketing efforts and product development; more are startups specific to loyalty.  Companies focused on Mobile, Loyalty Platforms and Gamification such as Badgeville (2010), Mobilozophy (2009) and 500Friends (2010). Just recently, two companies Belly and Sweet Tooth raised $10 and $2.5 million respectively.  Belly is a customer loyalty and rewards platform for local businesses and Sweet Tooth is an e-commerce loyalty company.

Marketers have more data than ever, slimmer wallets, more channel choices, more competition and customers with shorter attention spans.  THIS is a FULL PLATE.

How do you wade through this and decide what is best for your company, your customers and your sanity?  I’d love to hear what you think.

FHA Streamline has been around a while.  What makes it more relevant is after June 11, 2012 discounts on upfront mortgage insurance premium (MIP) will save consumers with an FHA loan quite a bit of money.  In reading Dan Green’s blog about FHA streamline he did a great job of defining the eligibility and qualifications, which is his job.  My job is to help you target those consumers.  If your company owns or services the loan then all of this information is at hand and you are in the best place to get the streamline done and secure your customer.  For everyone else, companies with mortgage data like Altair will help you target.   Dan’s blog had the criteria, which is straight forward.

• Perfect, 12-Month Payment History Required
• 210-Day “Waiting Period” Between Refinances
• Employment And Income Are Not Verified
• Credit Scores Are Not Verified
• The Refinance Must Have “Purpose”
• Loan Balances May Not Increase To Cover Loan Costs
• Appraisals Not Required

The key right now is if the loan was endorsed prior to June 1, 2009 the upfront MIP is 0.01% or 1 basis point compared to the standard 1.75% or 175 basis points.  On a $100,000 loan the upfront MIP is $1 vs the standard $1,750.

For loans endorsed after June 1, 2009 and but not within the last 210 days the upfront MIP will be 1.75%.  While the rate is higher certain homeowners will be eligible for a credit for upfront MIP previously paid.

Nationwide Altair has over 1.6MM FHA loans prior to June 2009 and 1.8MM FHA loans post June 2009.  To see a full breakdown by state and LTV contact me tblackman@altairci.com.

At 2012 Loyalty Expo hosted by Loyalty 360 Altair Customer Intelligence conducted a survey. We asked everyone we met, “What is your largest hurdle: Data Integration, Customer Analysis, Predictive Modeling, Performance Measurement or Access to Reports?” We had 68 respondents to our survey and as we expected Data Integration was the top hurdle followed by Customer Analysis. We suspect as everyone gets a handle on data integration the hurdles will progress down the line.

Altair understands the daunting task of Data Integration. With more avenues than ever, the ease of data capture, and the inexpensive storage companies collect more information than ever, “Big Data” as it is being called. Altair has been handling Big Data since 2001, we assimilate well over a billion rows of data each month into 5 major indexed files ranging in size from 21 million businesses to 200 million consumers. This data doesn’t come to us ready to merge. We’ve taken years to perfect our cleanse and merge technology. Take advantage of our experience and have Altair handle your integration.

Once integrated Altair has the tools and experience to perform Customer Analysis, build Predictive Models, develop and execute Performance Measurement and grant access to robust Reports.

Altair Customer Intelligence is a proud member of Loyalty 360 and will be exhibiting at the Loyalty Expo for the 2^nd time.  The Loyalty Expo is a great place to meet counterparts and experts in the field to learn and grow.

In addition to Mark Johnson’s, always insightful, keynotes we have attended sessions hosted by the following and they were excellent:

B2B-Focused Session: Shifting from Satisfaction to Advocacy in a Member Organization

Samantha Keyes, VP Corporate Marketing – VHA
Melinda Gladitsch, Managing Director, Client Services – hawkeye

Latest Findings in Loyalty Research: What Does it Mean for Marketers in 2012

Mark Johnson, President and CEO – Loyalty 360
Tim Suther, Chief Marketing Officer and Senior Vice President – Acxiom
Pamela Prentice, Chief Researcher – SAS
Emily Murphy, Researcher – Forrester Research

Philosophy on Loyalty: Essential at the Confluence of Mobile, Hyperlocal and Daily Deals!

Jay Loeffler, Director of Corporate Strategy – Cox Target Media & Valpak
Bob Fetter, Senior Vice President – Pluris Marketing

We look forward to seeing you at the Expo.  We’ll be in booth #505.  Look for your poker chip in your welcome bag to participate in “with Altair everyone wins” giveaway.  Roll the dice to win an NFL Jersey, iPod touch, and more.

Unless you’ve been on the moon, you probably heard that Netflix has done some damage to its brand recently. First, they announced a price hike, increasing the price most people were paying by 60%. Then, they followed that up by announcing they were separating their business into two distinct (and separate) offerings.

They made a lot of people angry. A lot of people left, or downgraded their service. They took a beating in the stock market and lost shareholders a ton of cash. How did they justify these moves? With research. They said their research told them more people used the streaming service (or were moving that direction), and the DVD business would soon be obsolete. Therefore, in order to keep what might one day be a dying business from tearing down a profitable one, they separated them. It all sounds good on paper, but they forgot one thing – their customer’s opinions.

Sometimes we need to look past what the data is telling us, and listen closely to our customers. Had Netflix done this, they might have realized that their customers weren’t upset just over a price hike, but more over the perceived value (or lack thereof) of the service. The rate hike may have made sense on paper, but wasn’t justified when their customers already felt they weren’t getting the best deal.

Remember that part of great marketing is knowing your customer – not just the transactions, but the needs, behaviors and attitudes as well. Before you make the next big decision, consider that along with the financial data. It will be wiser and more informed.

I’m a fan of Marketing Charts. I get their update everyday, with cool charts and facts from the world of marketing. Today’s top chart caught my eye. It struck me as funny that a survey could claim more consumers are “loyal” to online sites that provide regular discounts. In fact they go as far to say that they are more loyal to sites that offer regular discounts, versus the occasional discount. I think they have their definition of loyalty wrong. Here’s the link to the full chart, or view a portion below.

This survey appears to be about use – which is only a portion of what loyalty is to a brand. I, too, use online sites more often when there is a discount.  That doesn’t mean I’m loyal. At best, it means I’m a mercenary trying to get the best price on something. Loyalty is “choosing one brand above another regardless of price based on how that brand performs for you, fits into your life, or even aligns with your aspirations.”

How do you measure that? Simple. Ask them questions. To develop a sense of who your loyal customers are, and why they are loyal, you have to ask them. Ask them questions in these categories:

• Overall satisfaction with the brand
• Product-level satisfaction
• Timeliness of delivery
• Customer service process satisfaction
• Returns and exchange process satisfaction

True loyalty indicators come from questions about:

• Interest in new potential products and services
• Willingness to repurchase
• Willingness to recommend
• What influenced the purchase

When you combine the attitudes and behaviors from a survey, data from your client file, and outside data, that is how you end up with the best way to discern loyalty.  You will weed out mercenaries and focus on the consumers that truly engage with your brand.

Seeing the strong rumor that Klout raised $30 million on a valuation of $200 million got me to thinking about the future of endorsements and loyalty programs.  This 3 year old company has a vision of their Klout becoming like a credit score.  Klout calculates how socially influential a person is on the web.  Just think, Loyalty Programs can target individuals for special rewards based on their Klout score.  Highly influential people will get discounts or endorsement deals based on Klout.   Klout runs on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.

This model allows brands to truly leverage the strength of peer recommendations.  We’ll all trust someone we know over a generic add or celebrity endorsement.  Audi, Disney, Popchips and Lot18 all are using Klout Perks for the launch of products.  It makes total sense!

Not only will your product be supported by people who are trusted by peers you’ll be collecting enormous amounts of data that will help you better understand why they like it, what influences the purchase by the peers, what purchases are made and for how much, and the ability to align the reward accordingly. Integrating this with offline data only makes your profiling, segmenting and predictive capabilities stronger.

Brilliant!

Everyone in the Customer Intelligence world is used to the term Customer Data Integration (CDI).  Now, data from the digital age needs to be integrated, Social Data.  Social Data by its very nature already links a persona to a brand or sentiment of an event or brand.  The researcher, like me, will use brand sites, reviews and “friends” opinions to decide on large purchases.  The next generation is adding sentiment to the mix via world of mouth, which I’ll lump blogs, Facebook, Twitter and the occasional actual conversation.  The question is how do you tie this together?  How do you stay on top of the Earned, Owned, and Search Channels?

Make the most of the content generated by linking it to your “offline” data.  Including Social Data in the CDI mix takes more finesse than traditional CDI.  Some data such as comments and reviews generated by users with shared information on your brand site or Facebook page can be directly linked while other content will need categories or buckets built to collect them such as using the combination of channel, location and/or product.  Knowing this will allow you to optimize your communication and SEO.

The Infographic below is a study conducted by beyond, www.bynd.com.  Understanding this is step 1, step 2 is integrating the data, and step 3 is taking action!

Social Data

It’s a curious situation.  As the company doing the data processing for many lenders who do refinances, we’re always asked to remove current customers. It is common practice but why?  The models are telling us they’d likely respond, the mortgage amount falls within the criteria, and the home value is at the correct threshold why not contact them? The true finance wizards out there could be yelling at me for not knowing why.  Feel free to comment.  I truly want to know.  As I see it, the bank is operating at the same margins but at a lower rate for the loan that is being replaced.  Why not DELIGHT your customer?

Even if there was a lower income stream wouldn’t it be better than no income stream?  The data tells us this customer is ripe to refinance. I’m not advocating that banks lose money to make customers happy but the potential to keep customers and have insane referral rates seems like a very high potential.  I know I’d tell everyone of my friends that my lender put me in a lower rate because I qualified.

At the moment that hasn’t happened and when the need or ability arises for me to refinance, my current lender isn’t my first choice.

The title is not meant to say that the data you collect on your customers is not real or factual, but it is only a portion of what you need to have the full picture. For example, I’m 6 foot tall and weigh in about 197. Take a look at me in my running clothes (with the slight love handles) and you’d never know I could run 50 miles. Here’s another example: I have two dogs – a Golden Retriever and a Chow mix. When feeding them treats you’d expect the Chow to be the one you have to be careful with, but it’s the Golden that will get your fingers. In both instances, you need more data than what you can see to make a good judgment. The same is true with your customers.

Here are some examples I’ve seen, and things that can be done to get the full picture.

Grocery Store

The loyalty program at the grocery store collects your personal information and the transactional information on your purchases with them. They base their sales and marketing to you, and others, on what is being tracked by this system. Never looking further into you as a customer, they could never know that your standard milk, bread, peanut butter, fruit, and occasional meat purchases are not your full potential.

Going out and purchasing additional information they could find that you have 3 children with 1 still at the age for diapers. Your household income is well above what the purchases indicate and your location is not the closest to their home.

Now you can surmise that this is someone on their way home from work picking up things that are out of stock at home. Marketing more wisely, you can pick up share by introducing them to the closest location, letting them know about great prices on diapers, and incenting them on kid friendly foods.

Retail Banking

Banks often use information coming to them via their various accounts with a consumer to estimate income and decide which product to market next. If the bank never looked outside its walls to gather further information, or verify calculations, they can miss great opportunities.

Going outside the bank and getting additional demographic, economic, and credit information will enhance the decision making process and potentially uncover hidden gems. Using external data such as the following will give a full picture.

• Household Income
• Investable Assets
• Home Value
• Discretionary Spending
• Job Stability
• Household Deposits
• Loan Amounts for Mortgage, Auto, Home Equity, and Installment
• Additional property ownership
• Net Worth

What are the hidden datasets in your organization? Are you missing key opportunities because you don’t have the whole picture? Altair has the data and the capability to make your decisions more informed.