Tight privacy laws may hamper much needed development of Australian loyalty programs
Australian loyalty programs have become “frayed at the seams” and must move away from transactional schemes to ones that “inspire and excite” if they are to stay relevant, an expert in loyalty has said.
Matthew Heath, chairman and chief strategy officer of customer relationship agency LIDA, the CRM arm of M&C Saatchi, warned that local points-based schemes are in danger of becoming outdated in a data driven world where customers have moved on quicker than brands and are demanding more personalisation.
But he said whilst there was a move towards “hyperpersonalisation” that inspires people and gives them memorable experiences, Australia’s “strange” privacy laws are hampering this development.
But he added that Australia’s strict privacy laws may be a major obstacle to unlocking new levels of customer interaction.
Smart and relevant insight overall, but I’m not clear where Australia privacy regulation is more draconian than the UK / EU.
Can Steve / anyone clarify?
Customer relationships are all about relevant customer interactions, but relevance can’t be the only Reward for customers trading their personal, transactional and preference behavior.
This article talks about the theory that customers will trade there private details purely to get tailored messages, relevant pages/offers popping / more engagement etc. From years of experience I can assure you they won’t. the mentaility is WIIFM (whats in it for me), and relevance is not top of their list.
Loyalty Programs are incorrectly named, they are really rewards programs / customer engagement programs but you do need something to trade…even IKEA offers great deals for family members on certain products, without them the customer would not swipe their membership card and IKEA would not know that this basket relates to that customer and therefore couldn’t use that info to be more relevant. Yes there are other sources of data like cookies etc, but those customers are really anonymous (especially across devices) until they choose to trade their details in some sort of overarching club?
The privacy laws in Australia are not bad, they are simply there to ensure that customers who wish to remain anonymous can do so, those that don’t want contact are not contacted. The power is in the consumers hands and the corporate will need to offer something…a reward?..to get them to trade/engage.
If we don’t protect peoples data then before we know it we will have law enforcement agencies using Telco GPS data to establish who has been in a licensed premise for longer than 1 hour and therefore has a higher propensity to be drink driving and should/will be pulled over.
All relevant, but where do you draw the line?
Great points, well made.
I was at the talk and I think Matthew was talking about the trend towards more privacy rather than directly comparing us to other markets.
The strange bit was that we seem more fearful of abuses of privacy here where in other markets the consumers seem to get it more. We’re not really collectively doing enough as an industry to communicate the value exchange going on here.