We have been lucky enough to work with a number of retailers recently and the research and campaign results have given us a start to a growing library of marketing 'rules of thumb' that are proven to get the tills ringing. 

A summary is below, but if you are interested in the details behind these learnings, please feel free to ask here, or directly through email, twitter etc...

Learnings

Not too long ago one of the people I follow on twitter posed the rhetorical question; ‘when is the last time your loyalty programs showed it was loyal to you? ‘ Mmmm go me thinking.

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An interesting posting technique - take something in marketing that is being impacted by the writeable web/interactive web/Live web/ Web 3.0 - and amaze people by predicting how different the coming customer-fueled future will be.

I was talking with Wayne - a old fashioned advertising man who has reinvented his thinking after having a 1:1 marketing epiphany some years back - about where classic 'branding' fits with the whole concept of marketing as a conversation. (He was the one who put me on to "The New Brand World" and persuaded me to re-read "The Cluetrain Manifesto").

In short, Wayne has convinced me that a company's brand is the sum total of the experiences they provide to their customers. Loyalty programs included - especially.

Us Aussies love our points and prizes! We collect points when we use our credit cards, when we buy our groceries, when we travel, when we stay in a hotel, just about every chance we get. Partly because so many organisations give them to us.