What set this train of thought going was a conversation I had with an American friend of mine who told me that in the next few weeks she was going to spend some of her spare time in the run up to Christmas, visiting sites and filling shopping carts with products she intended to purchase for herself or as gifts for friends and family and then abandoning them! She realised that by doing so several of her favourite online retailers would send her vouchers and incentives to purchase products she left in the carts.

Another friend here in the UK buys her weekly shopping online and switches between three of the major supermarkets every three or four weeks. She is regularly rewarded for her disloyalty with email vouchers triggered by the supermarkets’ customer reactivation schemes.  

These are very powerful examples of the tendency we have to use email to reward bad behaviour, but how often do we reward loyalty? I am a very loyal consumer by nature. I hate being forced to shop around to make sure I get the best deal. Yet, I could only think of two examples of my loyalty being rewarded in the last year. The first was in February, when I was sent a thank you email and a voucher worth £10 off my next purchase by a software company a week after my purchase – it made me feel special by the way.

The second was last week, when BT sent me an email offering me £2 off my broadband bill every month (£24 a year) if I renewed my contract with them. However, BT offers new customers a discount on their first 6 months worth £20 over the year. Given that I have had an unbroken contract with BT broadband for over 10 years, I don’t think that is very impressive at all, so I have started to look at alternative broadband providers. I could probably negotiate a better deal by calling their sales team, but why should I?

When it comes to rewarding good behaviour and loyalty, we have a long way to go.

What can we do to change this?

For a start, I would like to see supermarkets sending out vouchers to people who BUY; rather than not buy three or four weeks in a row.

The 80:20 rule is a prevalent in email as anywhere else, unless you are a supermarket, sell office supplies or carry as many products as Amazon. The vast majority of people on your email database who buy something as a result of an email you send will only make one purchase a year. To think of them as lapsed customers after four to six months is to miss the point - they are being perfectly normal.

What you could be doing is trying to make them purchase from you twice a year. I recommend a variation on the example I gave earlier. Send a thank you email and an offer for a discount on their next purchase that is valid for a year. This should be followed up with reminder emails after 3 months, 6 months and 9 months.

Good customers need rewarding too; so when implementing an incentive based scheme, it is always worth asking yourself if you are discriminating against your loyal customers and how they would feel if they found out. This is a subtle but important change in emphasis that could yield significant results.

Dela Quist
CEO
Alchemy Worx