Day 2 at Loyalty Summit: Recipe for a successful loyalty scheme

After which Alexander Rittweger, CEO, Loyalty Partner GmbH delivered the keynote on "Recipe for a successful Loyalty Scheme ' Lessons from the Payback way'. He also said Payback coming to India will change a lot of things. His presentation led to an in-depth discussion on coalitions and loyalty programmes.

The first panel discussion comprised of Rajeev Agrawal, CEO, Innoviti Embedded Solutions, Sanjay Tripathy, EVP ' Marketing & Direct Channels, HDCF Life Insurance Company Ltd., Ashutosh Tiwari, Exec. VP ' Strategic Marketing, Godrej Industries Ltd. The session moderator was Akash Sahai, MD ' India Groupe Aeroplan Inc. The theme for the discussion was "Achieving Business Growth through customer Focus'. The panel was precise and brought out noteworthy points to the surface about enhancing customer management by loyalty programmes.

Tripathy said, "Customer Management is a comprehensive strategy and process of attracting, retaining, developing and maintaining a relationship with the customer over a period of time. A good customer management will lead to customer value and loyalty which will in turn lead to growth and sustainability."

Tiwari discussed "Democratizing loyalty for Mass consumers ". He shared some insightful thoughts which included the onus now shifting to "pull' instead of "push'. He said one needs to keep in mind what the customer wants and accordingly execute that. "Bespoke communication is the holy grail. Very few people invest with each customer at an individual level and make the customer feel special," he explained.

Agrawal spoke on the "Critical new customer technologies to give your company a competitive advantage'. "Feedback at the transaction time could be a rich source of information for the marketers. This data could account for customer preferences which are otherwise missed out," he stressed. He further discussed the implementation of technology to help harness this data.

Moderated by Vikas Choudhary, CEO, Aeroplan, the second panel discussion was about "Customer Analytics & Business Intelligence'. The panel comprised of Tapan Khopkar. Consultant, Cartesian and Dave Hamilton, Insights Director, Groupe Aeroplan LMG, Vinod Krishna, SVP ' CRM & Marketing, HSBC Ltd.

Once again moderated by Vikas Choudhary, the panel discussed "Using Social Media to build Loyalty'. The panel consisted of Ramesh Iyengar, MD, Select Direct Marketing Communications Pvt. Ltd. and Sushant Dash, VP ' Marketing, Tata Global Beverages Ltd. and Rajiv Dingra, Founder & CEO, WATMedia Pvt. LTd.

The 4th Loyalty Summit was a great success as a lot of issues were discussed at length around the central theme of Rewards, Recognition and Relevancy. | By Janees Antoo [janees(at)adgully.com]