Jeffrey Siebert, Schlitterbahn’s Corporate Director of Communications & Sales, started off his presentation with the hope that “everyone would enjoy the show.” After comparing his speaking engagement to the likes of performing in a dinner theatre, his sentiment seemed to capture the theme of his entire approach to guest loyalty—keeping the customers happy while adding value.
Siebert, who has spent the last five years at Schlitterbahn, has been in the theme park industry for 16 years holding positions with The Walt Disney Company’s sport division and Paramount Parks, Inc. At the July AMA luncheon Siebert provided examples of how Schlitterbahn works to keep its customers happy and coming back to the park. By catering to both out-of-town guests and families, Schlitterbahn provides extra services like free parking, free tubes, and the ability to bring your own food into the park. “Offering intangible rewards like these cannot be underestimated,” Siebert said.
Guest retention and loyalty programs are there simply to provide exceptional customer service and keep the customers or guests coming back.
According to Jupiter Research, more than 75% of Americans have at least one loyalty card. One-third of shoppers have two or more loyalty cards. Yet companies are implementing retention programs that actually lose revenue or do not change consumer buying behavior. A prevalent problem retail companies face is taking a one-size-fits-all approach to choosing a loyalty program. They do not have adequate tracking measures in place to measure the ROI, nor are they in touch with what type of program their customer-base would value most.
As Siebert shared, Schlitterbahn has the technology to track valuable information such as where customers buy their season passes, when they visit the park, and how many times per year they return to the park. Another great example of a successful approach to program implementation is at the Las Vegas casinos. Their loyalty programs enable the casinos to categorize their customers for their benefit as well as reward their guests at a low cost. Casinos can personalize a guest’s visit by greeting their customer by name or rewarding them with a free hotel stay. The types of consumer insights that new technology can provide are invaluable to the sustainability and evolution of loyalty programs.
So which program should your company use and how should you go about it?
Siebert’s suggestion is to group your customers by purchase motivation. To find out what motivates your customers, you can survey shoppers, analyze the data customers provide on loyalty-program enrollment forms, and review shoppers’ transaction histories. Shoppers will change their buying behavior in response to a reward if they judge the value of that reward to be higher than its cost.
Another aspect of a successful rewards program is to increase rewards for natural purchase motivation and decrease rewards that sit apart from a person’s normal shopping goals. Hotels.com, for example, does a great job of rewarding its customers for booking more rooms through its site, regardless of the hotel chain. They know that customers who use its service are likely to collect rewards faster than by using the reward program of any one particular chain.
At the end of the day, take a hard look and evaluate your guest loyalty program.
Will your customers put the purchase option on your product or brand, in spite of having a loyalty program? Does the program you have in place produce the necessary ROI? Are you increasing existing buying behavior and listening to your customer base? If you answered yes to these questions, chances are you are on the right track to running compelling and productive customer retention and guest loyalty programs.
View the slides from this presentation: http://www.slideshare.net/austinama/loyalty-programs
Visit the SchlitterBlog: http://schlitterblogkc.blogspot.com/
Visit Schlitterbahn’s new Cedar Park location opening in summer of 2012! http://www.schlitterbahn.com/news/press/releases/2010-cedarpark.htm
Let us know what you think. What loyalty and customer programs do you use? What are the benefits to the consumer or end-user?
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