How to win loyal customers

The marketing activities of the companies are focusing on direct channels instead of the formerly used mass mediums. It means that they prefer to use the BTL tools (DM letters, e-mails and targeted messages) rather than the ATL tools (TV, radio and press advertisements).

To be able to use those channels effectively, enterprises need to have an application that stores the customers’ data and supports the survey of their behaviour and the analysis of their transactions. Once the buying habits and the preferences of the target group is known we can start to create a loyalty scheme that is attractive for them and helps the organizers to reach their goals by generating regular and repeated purchase.Many researches have shown that keeping the current customers loyal is much more cost effective that winning new ones. The article tells about the major types of the loyalty programmes, the possible technical platforms and systems and shows the best practices from many different sectors. The aim of the publication is to provide up-todate description of the potential of the loyalty schemes to the marketing experts and those who want to know more about this area.

Anna Éber, Gergely Dolezsai, András Balásfalvi-Kiss, Dr.