Getting to the checkout without hearing that phrase is a modern feat of humankind. Retailers, financial services, and expanding sectors like drugstores and restaurants know that loyalty membership programs are one of the easiest ways to get individual data on shoppers while enhancing the brand-to-consumer relationship. But when shoppers are asked (and asked, and asked again), they often can’t see the forest for the trees—that a loyalty program is an opportunity for consumers themselves to customize a relationship with brands.

The average number of loyalty programs per US household has grown to 29, based on data gathered by Colloquy. That same loyalty data shows that only 42 percent of those memberships are currently active. Just imagine what advantages consumers are missing out on when over half of their memberships are disused. Enrollment doesn’t necessarily mean engagement.

In an offline world the enrollment of a customer into the loyalty program is the main metric associates are measured to determine if they are pushing the loyalty program. I have never liked this metric, because it doesn't measure the true purpose of a loyalty program.

The true purpose of a loyalty program is to get your customers to engage with it. Enrollments are a byproduct of engagement. The metric that should be used is an engagement %. Instead of measuring the Enrollments by associate, a better metric would be to measure the amount of sales tracked with a loyalty rewards number versus the total amount of sales for each associate. The higher the %, the better the associate. When this engagement % increases, I will guarantee the enrollments will increase with it. Plus it enforces associates to be on the lookout for the best customers, not just the customers that will help them reach their goal of enrollments.

From Martin McDonald:

We’ve all been there, sat in a meeting with your boss, or client, and they’ve said something like: “Our competitors have got 40,000 Facebook likes and 20,000 followers on twitter more than we do, we need to double down on our Social Media!”.

Let’s be perfectly clear, tracking social media based on likes, or follower numbers, is a pointless metric. For a start, both can be easily gamed, but increasingly platform are moving towards more sophisticated content targeting which for many companies means their chances of getting an ROI out of social media is significantly reduced.

I couldn't agree more. I remember when we were first launching our social media sites for our brands at a casino/hotel company I was working. We were so obsessed with gaining followers, yet no one was really engaging with the content we were providing. Gaining followers was important, but if we weren't producing relevant content, then the followers would not lead to any brand equity.

The analytics that Facebook and Twitter are putting out are a good start:

Social media should never be considered a “broadcast medium” , its no longer suitable as a one to many distribution – it should be considered a discussion medium, where you can engage your audiences with your message, your brand and your personality.

Moving away from messaging and towards discussion and interaction reveals the true metrics you should be concerned with: Engagement rates!

Measuring Social Media Effectively

Thankfully, both Twitter and Facebook provide lots of metrics, and have robust, free, analytics platforms.

Twitter recently revamped their entire analytics platform and its accessible to everyone with an account just by going to http://analytics.twitter.com and it provides in depth statistics on a per tweet basis.

Being able to manage engagement has always been something I have been very interested in. Content is king and just broadcasting what you're selling or information that doesn't appeal to the many of your followers will result in ignoring your messages. This is very similar to email marketing.