Benchmarking your data in loyalty programs is an important step to understanding performance and growth in your loyalty marketing efforts. Without it, you run the risk of having disintegrated data that does not make much sense, or help you towards your ultimate goal. The benchmarking we are going to talk about is purely internal. If you did have the opportunity to share metrics with your competitors, it would be a fantastic gift for you to know how the competition fairs in the same ways as retention data is hard to come by for private companies. So for this post we’ll focus on internal benchmarking.
Benchmarking Channel Data
The most effective way of benchmarking your data is to look at the use of a specific channel across your organization. Many aspects of your company use email for example. How do everyone’s open rates compare? By looking across the departments and uses of email, you can start to see a trend emerging as you see the data and response from different departments.
Benchmarking Customer Data
A second way of benchmarking your data is by customer segmenting. Having a loyalty and non-loyalty base in your customer data will allow you to look at behaviors in ways that can differentiate and add value to your loyalty and reward programs. Try doing your retention rate for loyal customer vs non-loyal customers in your segments. Does that comparison bring up some interesting questions?
Your Loyalty Program Needs Data
We can’t say it enough, without data you are flying blind with your loyalty program. Powerful companies are using data to drive loyalty, and not just relying on a smile at the counter to do it. Track data, and benchmark it as your program grows and changes so you can see what is working and what is not.
