The Marketing Mix for Successful Customer Loyalty
One thing has thus far become very clear: the extensive topic of “customer loyalty” belongs in experienced hands—it is a subject for those employees who have the expertise to achieve the goals. In most companies, this is going to be the Marketing department, which can use extensive strategies around advertising, communication, and more to generate a feeling of connection to the business.
Management level is, of course, always on the ball and gives the Marketing team the task of thinking about "how to retain customers". In principle a nice job, but which marketing strategies and customer loyalty instruments can the team use to implement customer loyalty? There are countless ways to put together an individual marketing mix that can strengthen customer loyalty. It is important to keep the chain of effects in mind in order to identify individual phases that make sense from a marketing perspective.
We already mentioned that customer loyalty is part of Customer Relationship Management (CRM). So far so good, but what should bright minds do with this information? A look at Bruhn and Homburg will help: “The task of CRM is to optimize and integrate customer-related processes across all company departments. For this, a database with appropriate software is needed."
In other words, CRM is dedicated to the task of increasing customer satisfaction and loyalty. To do this, it needs comprehensive data about regular customers in order to adapt measures directly to them. CRM, therefore, needs to be part of day-to-day operations in that all important information about customers should be regularly updated in an editable database, open and accessible by all employees. These strategies are based on this great wealth of CRM knowledge.
That sums up CRM. But what other marketing concepts are there? For example, one should look at the so-called Customer Experience Management, also known as CEM. CEM is all about creating positive customer experiences, intended to strengthen customer loyalty.
Next is Retention Marketing—also known as Customer Retention Marketing—which is worth a look as it is all about customer loyalty. Here, customer groups are identified and measures are taken to address customers with targeted strategies.
If you have increasingly relied on enforced measures to secure customer loyalty, it is advisable to use an implementation of Churn Management. This tries to prevent customer churn by being active before customers leave. For example, churn management intervenes as soon as a contract term is nearing its end to show the customer the advantages of extending their contract and thus persuade them to stay.
With such possibilities, Marketing can design a colorful bouquet of strategies in order to devote themselves to customer loyalty in the best possible way.