Customer and loyalty experts explore 2022 trends

Customer loyalty is one of the most rapidly changing areas in customer management, with digital developments having a direct impact on companies and consumers alike

To help both retail brands and loyalty vendors navigate a path to this digitally enabled future the Customer Strategy Network (CSN) brings together the world's leading independent practitioners and strategists in customer advocacy and retention strategy.

CSN represents a diverse mix of global experts in advisory, academia, architecture, data regulation and analysis of customer loyalty solutions. Its collective focus is on global enhancement and promotion of best practices in customer loyalty engineering.

In the recently published CSN Guide to Global Loyalty Trends in 2022, Partners provide their individual views on the future for consumer engagement. Some of the key trends are highlighted in the following quotes from four of our Partners based in the US, UK and Malaysia.

Richard Dutton, managing director of Elias Partnerships, focused on the growing importance of first-party data. "The personal data of the members of your loyalty programme is an asset owned by the member, not by your brand or your business," he said.

Miya Knights, publisher of Retail Technology Magazine, added: "I’m also closely watching privacy-enhancing computational developments, such as cryptographic algorithms, whitebox implementations and data trusts, to increase the reach, scale and returns on loyalty investments in future."

Shawn Tan, managing director of Interactive Rewards, was concerned with the impact of digitisation over the lifetime of a customer. "With the rapid pace of digitization, transactional loyalty data alone is no longer sufficient to accurately gauge customer value," he said.

Dr Yuping Liu-Thompkins, Professor of Marketing with Loyalty Science Lab, Old Dominion University, advised: "A successful business needs to build the right loyalty model into its overall business strategy, influencing wide-ranging areas, such as product development, brand communications, journey design, and even hiring."

All CSN Partners have significant industry knowledge and combined global experience in the creation and application of consumer loyalty strategy, and many have previously launched and operated several highly successful digitised loyalty programmes. Partners have unique global insights on the promise of Web3 and whether adoption will continue to require the “big tech” corporations controlling the digital media platforms to deliver the sharing of value across the entire community.

CSN offers and actionable recommendations to affect customer numbers not theoretical concepts. These recommendations can be implemented by CSN's own specialist Partners or in-house teams (depending on capability and capacity).

For those seeking an independent view on how best to build sustainable competitive advantage into digital transformation initiatives to enhance customer loyalty, drive profitable behaviour from best and best potential consumers, or are seeking ‘best-in-class’ technology solutions to support business processes, existing technology stack and commercial performance objectives, CSN carries out initial audits.

The CSN Guide to Global Customer Loyalty Trends in 2022 is available to download from the CSN website.