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Loyally Yours
Here on Oxygen Tuesday (so named for its falling just after Cyber Monday and Black Friday, allowing frenzied holiday shoppers the opportunity to catch their breath), I’m taking the time to wade through the stack of loyalty cards I now have perched near my computer, as they’ve become too numerous to fit into my wallet.
It seems like practically every company has a loyalty card these days. Barnes & Noble, Borders, Circuit City, Staples, and Virgin Megastore are my own personal top five, listed here in alphabetical order like the cast of an all-star disaster movie.
Most of these cards allow for a discount, either in the way of an advertised sale (“For card-holders only!”) or in a cumulative manner, as in “Once you’ve spent $1,000, you can take another 5 percent off!”
There’s just one problem: I don’t feel particularly loyal to any of these companies.
Online, the lowest overall price – with all applicable loyalty discounts applied – still gets my nod. Offline, price and ease of shopping experience (read: proximity to my home) are the major factors. If, after factoring in the “loyalty” discount, you’re still $2.00 more than your competitor, zoom! I’m gone!
Part of my problem, I suppose, is that I don’t feel particularly special to any of these companies. If discounts and extra attention are being accorded non-cardholders, then I’m not sure what the benefit of joining is – and, I daresay, neither is the company.
Then there’s the “Dear Kevin” personalized emails. Hey, that’s 1to1 marketing! They used my name! I’ll bet a real live human being took the time to compose that e-mail to me!
Well, no. This was made obvious with the arrival of my favorite “loyalty”-related email of recent vintage, from Borders, entitled “Kevin, You’ve Earned $0.00 in Borders Bucks!”
The excitement engendered in that exclamation point was perhaps surpassed by the easy-to-understand directions on how to realize my booty: “Just print this email and bring it to any Borders, Borders Express, or Waldenbooks and redeem your $0.00 in Borders Bucks any time before November 30, 2007.”
To be fair, a couple of hours later I received a “correction” e-mail, with the thrilling news that I’d actually earned a whopping five “Borders Bucks” for the hundreds I’d laid out there over the previous 10 months. I then spent the next half-hour surfing the web to determine that any book, DVD, or CD that I might want to blow all this free money on was still cheaper elsewhere.
I’ve got a sneaking suspicion that some companies are offering up loyalty cards for the same reason that they’re featuring blogs or online communities: because everybody else is. And they’re probably getting enough ROI from easily-gulled customers that they don’t need to examine it any more closely.
Still, I’m just about ready to start printing my own disloyalty cards, to be used anytime I wind up going with a given company’s competitor. These would, over time, accumulate enough Kevin Koins that I could be exempt from being asked at the cash register whether or not I have a loyalty card.
Who’s with me?
I agree the cards are ridiculous, but I get even more agitated by the way some retailers treat you when you forget or don't have your card with you.
One grocery store won't give me the member discount if I don't have the card. So, I end up asking another customer to borrow their card which works great: they get their points, I get my discount, but unfortunately, the retailer now has just lowered the quality of their customer data.
My video rental store has all my personal data on their system, and I am a movie nut, so would be a Most Valuable Customer to them, but to get the free rental they just told me I earned by looking at the computer screen, I have to show my card. A year ago, the employees had my file pulled up before I got to the till as they memerized my name or phone number. But corporate policy says they are not allowed to do that any longer.
My preferred grocery story simply asks for my phone number, I get my price discounts,I even get a 'Thanks Mr. Murray', and the retailer gets smart puchase data.
You want my data, fine, nothing to hide, but make it easy for me.
Jeremy:
I'm to the point where I'm turning down loyalty cards now. It's become something of a game with one of the cashiers at the local Best Buy, who knows what my answer will be each time but still has to ask...
Liz:
Not that there's anything wrong with that...?
I agree totally, I have a half-dozen loyalty cards at least but I look for the most convenience or the lowest prices. I wish someone would come up with a card that you could use anywhere so we didn't have to carry around tons of little pieces of plastic and paper. But if that happened I probably wouldn't want to give up that much privacy to that many companies. Tough predicament....
I think the problem is with semantics. The name "loyalty program" has been attached to anything with a card and points. Everyone knows that a loyalty card doesn't by itself foster loyalty, but the name stuck.
Companies making real efforts to build loyalty are lumped into the same category as the points people, and consumers don't know the difference. And then everyone loses out in the long run. Companies don't use loyalty as a strategy, and everyone's got a wallet like George Costanza.